Monday
We used Monday as a rehearsal in preparation for us to show them to the class on Wednesday. We had the weekend to work on the lines so some of us knew bits and pieces of lines which meant that we could start focussing on the Berkoff elements more. We tried to get our lines as snappy as we could but some lines were harder than others as they had bigger movements and we were wanted the movements to be right before we added in the lines.
We made sure that we all knew the movements and knew what was happening at all times. We also discussed the fact that all of us needed to be reacting to all lines that were being said as Berkoff's style is very quick and has a fast pace, this meant that we all needed to keep making noises and adding to the atmosphere at all times for the continuity of the style. As the consious this meant that any line that was said by the man in reality, I had to be appalled by as it lead the conversation in completely the opposite direction to which I wanted it to go in.
Wednesday
After putting the finishing touches on the lunch extracts, we then performed them to the class.
One thing that I think we made clear to the audience was the juxtaposition between the consious' and the actual people and we did this by making sure that they had completely opposite body language and facial expressions. For example, we had the consious' being very closely around the real life people and making physical connections with them, whereas the actual people were very static and weren't interacting with the consious' and sitting in a position that they thought would give a good impression to the other person. We also thought that the facial expressions of the consious' needed to be pushed to the extreme like in the Berkoff style to accentuate the difference between the motives of the the consious' and the actual people.
By the end of the extract, I feel like we added in too many actions for the sake of trying to continue to style but by doing so we lost the motivation for the actions and they became out of place and distracting from what was actually going on. A way that we could have continued the style without having to add in any more actions would be to keep the vocal energy up so we could have reacted to each other as the consious' and then reacted to the words that our real life people were actually saying.
Another element of the Berkoff style was onomatopoeic words, which means making the words sound like what they mean. For example, with the line "burning holes in my back," we tried to make it sound like there was actual holes being burnt and so me and Emily, as the consious', made the sound effect and motioned as though holes were being burnt in the real life woman's back. I think that we could have done this more with other words such as "bees" and "ghost" where we could have made sound effects that would help with the continuity of the style.
The last thing that I thought could be improved was the definition of the moves. I felt like the moves could still be fast pace but needed a clearer start and end. If all the movements were done this way it would mean that the piece would look more finished and also all of the movements would become more defined.
After performing, we were set the task of creating 3 freeze frames of 3 different images of how a woman should be. We did, a good mother, a housewife (so cleaning) and religious, because in some views a woman should be religious and always follow God. I think that this exercise was a good introduction to the play, Woman Alone, as there is obviously only one woman on stage and so we had to think about all the different ways that she could be played or even the different ways that she could portray herself to the audience throughout the duration of the play.
After talking about all the different ways we came up with about how women have been portrayed in the past and how they could be portrayed now, we were given the first 3 pages of woman alone and we begin to read through and label the different ways that she says the lines.
My first impressions when reading through the script was that the play is funny but covers some serious topics and I actually thought that the Woman had multi-personalities because it seemed that she was nice to the neighbor at one point and then she could be saying the next line very furiously, which also give me the impression that she was delusional. I also got the impression that she was side-tracked very easily but her mind always came back to her husband and so I thought that she had orientated her life around her husband and he was the focal point of her life.
- Bubbly
- House Wife
- Psychotic
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