Playhouse Creatures 6

We worked through our first scene bit by bit, perfecting and fine tuning it. We decided that when the actresses are teasing Otway in the tit-after-tit bit that we were too cramped. We decided to place Doll (Chloe) further away from Otway (Yunusa), facing the audience and laughing, sharing the joke with the audience. Mrs Marshal (Sophia) would be reciting from Otway's script, again facing away from Otway and sharing with the audience. Heta and I decided that we would have fun with the bit, we tried circling Otway thinking it would bring more tempo and movement to the joke, and avoid "clumping", however it felt a bit jarred and awkward. Instead we simply went full on with the joking, making it very sexual and embarrassing for Otway. Then, as we were running through it, I blew on the back of Yunusa's neck as part of the scene, sort of joking around and trying to distract him, then Yunusa looked round and Heta tapped him on the shoulder. This developed into a really funny bit between us, teasing and joking with Yunusa, it became incredibly funny.

Next, we worked on the abortion scene and made some big decisions. With Yunusa out of that part of the scene, he stood and observed and gave some input. He said that the pace of the scene just dropped and became slightly stagnant which meant that we lost half of the drama there, so we found the point where Mrs Marshall says "Sit down. Doll, get a cloth" and decided that that would be a good point to pick up the pace. So that's when the tension gets hiked up and it made the scene so much more interesting. Next, we focused on the actual abortion moment, which Sophia and I felt was too short. I wanted to lengthen it out a bit and really enjoy and make the most of the moment and the drama. We made it at least 15-20 seconds long and Yunusa mentioned that due to the positioning of it, the only faces you can see are Sophia, Greta and Chloe's. Their reaction is what you take from the moment, and Yunusa felt like he wasn't seeing that. So, we sat down and had a conversation about how our characters would feel, we felt that these actresses spent and had spent the almost all of their time with each other for the last few years. It would be like a sisterhood, they would feel the pain and fear that Mrs Farley would be feeling. They would also be knowing that if she kept the baby, their company would surely be shut down. If she kept it and left, they'd lose a sister and she would probably die. If she succeeded she may be able to get away with it, however she may die anyway. Whilst they would desperately want Mrs Marshal to stop the "procedure" she desperately would, however they would also be dreading what they may see if she continued. It's a horrible moment and once we'd properly worked it out, our scene completely transformed.

Notes

We performed our scene to Jerry Lee and she gave us some very helpful notes:

• Good emotional work, really got into it, good portrayal of the drama
• Heta's olive branch, buying the petticoat, is an act of kindness. Mrs Farley has had a very tragic life, no one has been that kind to her without expecting something back (men are nice to her when she gives them sex, as such this is the only way she knows)
• the live a lie/tell him moment made a brilliant connection, the scene needs more moments like this. Build up real lives and real people
• Try getting more into characters, realistic dynamics and connections will follow

Playhouse Creatures 5

Today we did some work on blocking. We decided where we'd be standing and moving to during the piece. This also included some pretty big decisions about staging. As it stands, we only have simple staging to give a feel of the different spaces. We have the Tiring Room and the Rehearsal/Stage area,where all the performances are held. To give the sense of a backstage area we just have chairs, which the actresses lounge about on and spend the majority of the performance. Whilst we have basic props to help show this most of the work will be done by us to differentiate between the spaces. We decided to do this in small ways, like our stature. Whilst backstage we are relatively well held in our bodies, as women would have been trained to be in the 17th Century, whilst on the On Stage area, we will hold ourselves differently, with more poise and stature. This reflects the acting of the time, slightly pompous and VERY overdone.

Above is a diagram of the stage and the journey around the stage of my character - Mrs Farley. We chose to have the attempted abortion scene on a chair facing away from the audience. I will sit with my back to the audience with all of the other actresses gathered around me facing the audience watching. This makes a rather graphic and intense scene a little more interesting to watch and a little less difficult to stage, r.e. making it look realistic and being historically/biologically accurate. Also, Greta made the rather true comment that it would be far more effective for the audience to see the responses in the other actresses' faces than to see me screaming for 20 seconds. I think that now days people have become quite accustomed to gore and people screaming their heads off, it's quite difficult to actually find an emotional response to something like that since we've been made immune to it. However, as a group we felt that the reactions of the other actresses told a far more important story and gave more insight to their characters and the dynamics. 

Then, afterwards, I stand at the front of the stage and direct my words towards the audience, however not in a way that breaks the fourth wall. Sort of in a way that if it were a film/TV show there'd be cut scenes between a shot of my face and one of the other actresses. It isolates me from the group, shows that I'm no longer one of them and I may as well be talking to a brick wall. It highlights both the unity of the actresses but also how volatile their relationships are and how easy it is to slip through the net.

Playhouse Creatures 4

Definitions

Objective [described using verbs]

What are your character's aims? What do they want to gain from the situation? What motivates their actions?
+ units [sections of the text to which to which the objective applies]
You could map out your scene with the changing objectives.
Your character's objectives will change as their personality and situation changes, so objectives will alter throughout the play.

Super Objective

What the play is about and what we as actors wish to communicate. This helps the actors influence their own character's objectives. To effectively perform the play and convey a clear message an actor and the company must have an understanding of the superior objective of the play.

Through Line Of Action

The Through Line Of Action is essentially the characters own timeline, starting at birth and ending at death. An actor must  be completely sure of every relevant part of their character's Through Line Of Action. Any event in the character's life could influence their emotions, objectives and way of thinking.

Homework

1) From our mind maps

Objectives

Doll: has a lot of information on the actresses from listening to their gossip, being someone to rant to and a shoulder to cry on for them all. She is actually very powerful. I think she considers the actresses to be entertainment, she watches them come and go and make silly failings and triumphs. She kind of represents the audience in the play, coming in to make small jips however watching the most important moments. She is eternal, the only one who lasts through all of the changes. Even when Nell - who seemingly got everything - is dying from syphilis, Doll is still alive and going.

Mrs. Marshall: a feminist, trying to overpower Otway, wants to get more plays with female leads. She is one of the most strong women of the group. Having been jaded by men she has kind of grown, she doesn't flirt and sleep around and try to win her keep through lovers and men of power, instead she tried to make her won way and play the best leads and create more strong images for women.

Otway: wants to impress, trying to make his ways in the world, looking for opportunities. 

Mrs Betterton: trying to keep her career alive. She is seeing lots of young, talented, beautiful women who can all do her job just as well which must be very scary for her. The only hold she has now is the fact she is married to the director, which gives her some sway. I think she is less worried about the problems of the other actresses and more worried about her own issues.

Mrs Farley: trying to keep her job, wants to get an abortion and win the king back. A lot of her actions up until this scene have been influenced by pride and ambition. She wants to be on top and live a luxurious life and she sees the king as a way to get that. Having fallen from grace and have had everyone witness is must be the hardest thing for her and her defiance and shame motivates a lot of her final actions.

Overall Objectives

Otways play:he wants to get more exposure, Otway wants his play read, actresses are sick of listening to 4 hour long plays about men

Readthrough: sucking up, reflects their own lives of having to sweet talk rich men so they can make a living

Abortion: Mrs. Farley wants an abortion, she's desperate, others try to warn her and help her however it's only halfhearted

3) For Mrs Farley my first ideas for objectives are ambition, pride and the desire for a good life. She is an ambitious woman who believes she deserves the best in life and I don't think this is a necessarily bad trait. Everyone wants to live a comfortable life and everyone believes they deserve something. She will do anything to get what she wants and she plays with quite high stakes. A lot of people looking at first glance at what she does in the play, such as deceiving Nell in the first scene and sleeping around with the King, would judge her, however I think that when you look at it and realise why she does these things it becomes a little less strange and a little more like human nature - to strive and to aim to succeed. 

I feel like I am very similar to her in some ways, I too am a very proud person and when I fail often it's not the failing that's a problem. I will pick myself up, dust myself off and carry on trying. Often what's harder is having other people see that I've failed, I hate that. When I was reading through the scene and asking myself "What if that happened to me?" I felt like having other people seeing my failure, and worse feeling sorry for me, that was worse and I would probably act defensively with coldness and irritation. 

4) For me the play is mostly about feminism, partly because I am such a strong feminist myself. I feel like these women are fighting so hard to be equals and to be treated as such, just getting a salary at all - let alone a decent one - is a huge thing to them. I think that whilst we have come a long way since when the piece was set, these themes are still relevant today. I think that April de Angelis felt this too and that's why she put in the lesson that Lord of Rochester gives Mrs Barry near the end of the play, which is a very modern lesson with very modern forms of acting being taught which where very modern and didn't actually come about until after the events of the play. 

Playhouse Creatures 3

Given Circumstances

Today we got into our groups for the first time. We first read through our script and started to work our the relationships and dynamics between the different characters. Then we started a mindmap of all of the Given Circumstances in the scene, including things like relationships and situations of the characters.

Characters:

Otway: struggling playwright, the girls think low of him and have little respect for him. He's artistic and thinks very highly of himself, he is a man trying to take charge in a room full of strong and confident women. 

Mrs. Betterton: a mature woman, married to the director of the company, strong however she is aging, a fading flower of sorts. 

Mrs Farley has been discarded by the King and Nell is his new lover. This must create a lot of jealousy and broken pride in Mrs Farley, what is interesting is that Nell is in fact the one who buys the petticoat and helps Mrs Farley out at the very end of the scene.

Playhouse Creatures 2

Having found out the name of our piece and read through the script, we have been given our characters. I will play Mrs. Farley from pages 180 to 190 and pages 203 to 213. Although not character I would have automatically pegged for myself I am really pleased. In the first scene I am a silly girl, so vain and proud of herself for bedding the King, showing off my fancy petticoats and bragging about my adventures. However by page 203 I am reduced to a scared wreck. Mrs. Farley has become pregnant with the Kings child and been cast off by her lover. Due to laws on adultery and sex before marriage, she is kicked out of the company and realises that her only real options from this point are either prostitution or death. I love the contrast, and the fall from grace. She is incredibly different from me and will be quite a stretch for me to act, however I share several qualities with her: my pride and my ambition for one thing, however I go slightly different ways about getting to the top than her!

What I love about Playhouse creatures is that all of the characters are based upon real women and events. Elizabeth Farley was a real actress who worked with Nell Gwyn. In real life her name was "Mrs Weaver" on cast lists, however she never married anyone by that name. She was ousted form the theatre company and sued multiple times, however remained an actress. I like that I can play such a tragic role, and yet there is still a glimmer of hope on the horizon even though it is unwritten in the play, and the character herself doesn't realise it yet.

http://prezi.com/ayv-ymh_yzha/mrs-elizabeth-weaver-nee-farley/

Playhouse Creatures 1

Naturalism

We looked a bit at Naturalism in the theatre and at Stanislavski, a Russian actor and practitioner. Before Stanislvski's time, acting was very one dimensional. Actors used "Stock" acting - very simplistic, over-the-top movements and expressions - to portray their work. Acting is not thought to have shown very real or truthful emotions or messages. Towards the end of the 19th century Stanislavski, an actor at the time, began to question why the theatre that he was watching entertained him but didn't make him feel anything. He developed his own style of acting, Naturalism, and also introduced the concept of method acting and emotional memory. He considered acting to be a highly stylised craft and was constantly subjecting himself to self reflection and analysis. The only problem with his new concept was the fact that non of the actors of the time knew how to act like that, so by the begining of the 1900's Stanislavski had set up the Moscow Art Theatre, in which he trained new actors in the form of Naturalism.

Naturalistic acting intends to portray a perfect illusion of reality, using three-dimensional sets and normal speech instead of prose, which was what had been used in theatre up until that time. The plays focus on every day, ordinary lives of working and middle class people, instead of upper class characters, royalty and other people of note that theatre had fixated on previously (such as Antony and Cleopatra [royalty], Romeo and Juliet [upper class] etc.). 

Exercises

In the first exercise we did, I had to pretend I had lost my earrings. I started out quietly, however soon Andy had stopped the entire class and got everyone looking for them. Andy and I were the only ones who knew the truth, and the class was looking for a good 5 minutes before Andy finally told the rest of the group what happened. He then had us all try and repeat the exercise and act and work in exactly the same was we had before. The first time we did the exercise people instantly started to help me and actively looked for the earrings, due to the fact that they were genuinely concerned. Some people tried to stay out of the way and others were logical and started to clear the room and open the curtains to make looking easier. The second time the class was looking, after Andy had told everyone the truth, I was interested to see how things changed. Some people threw themselves into the exercise and tried to mimic exactly what they had done the first time, some people I noticed tried to be more helpful than previously, perhaps because they were acting how they would have liked others to act if they had lost their possessions, and others - having learnt that it was all a stitch up - simply cracked jokes and acted less helpful than when they had first thought I genuinely lost my earrings. It was interesting doing the exercise from my point of view, being the person who knew that it was an exercise and not real life, since I was more of an observer. Both times I was pretending, so I didn't change too much. I enjoyed observing how people changed and reacted, and I'll admit that it was quite fun being the only person who knew that I hadn't really lost my earrings!

Next, we did an exercise about Given Circumstances. We were all, one by one, given a situation for ourselves, someone waiting for a phone call, a girl waiting for a pregancy test etc. We all had to go and sit in the middle of the room in front of the class and act it. I was given a girl waiting at the doctors to hear the results of a pregnancy test. At first I enjoyed the exercise, I simply tried to feel the emotions of someone in that situation and forget the audience. I felt like the more I got into the emotions and forgot about everything else, the more real it got. However towards the end I got distracted or pulled out of the state by something and I lost it. I started to "Show" the situation instead of just feeling it and lost the truth. I feel like that's a recurring problem of mine when I'm onstage, sometimes I can start to over think my acting. I don't immerse myself in it and concentrate only on feeling the emotions of my character and suddenly my acting becomes far more wooden and much less effective. I really want to work on training myself not to over think. It's good to analyse my work at times and to have thought through it, however I need to be able to just feel and be the character.