So we have finally completed both shows. It was a long hard process but it all payed off in the end as they both couldn't have gone any better, although there were a few minor incidents, we don't think the audience picked up on them once we recovered ourselves, and I am so proud of my group.
Once the show began, it just exploded, everyone was so much more enthusiastic with their characters, and their gestures. All the props and costume were all in the exact same place and everybody knew where everything was which really helped us all a lot. Although in our second performance I did have to play the guard without a moustache in the matinee performance, which oddly felt weird, as I had rehearsed so many times in a moustache, but it had fallen on the floor backstage and I was unable to find it.
I loved the fact we all stuck together in the play and their was a lot of teamwork:
- We all helped each other backstage by helping each other get our costumes on, and there was always someone prompting backstage just in case. At one point Beth forgot her line "put out your hand Miss Green" and kind of froze, but recovered and said he line just in time. The stage combat that followed Beth's line was excellent, the timing was perfect, the drop was perfect and it was went really well. Come to think of it, all the stage combat went really well as it was the timing that we were worried about but it all went brilliant.
We were all also very light on our feet, whether it was a stage entrance, a dance routine, there was no heavy stomping about. It is especially important to be light footed when walking back stage because the audience can hear you, and also when you have to be on stage somewhere else but you're not supposed to be seen yet it's important to remain quiet, and we all did well at that.
And of course we used Brecht's placards idea, and extended the idea to use projection on to the cards, using images that are pertinent to the piece. And because I was behind the card all the time, I had never seen the full effect of the cards until I saw photographs later posted, and I thought they looked excellent.
Also, although the routine kept changing because different people were struggling with certain moves, the dance routine worked out really well and gladly there were no mistakes made. There were a couple of minor technical errors in the first performance such as the music playing late and repeating itself, along with a few lighting issues, but it had no impact on the performance so it was okay.
In previous rehearsals, there some issues with some of our voice projection and diction, as people were letting their accent slip, but as soon as we got to the show, the accents were there, the diction was there, the pronunciation was there, and everyone did really well.
Although I loved the play itself, I did have my favourite parts:
- The fire - In the scene where Miss Slighcarp and Mr Grimshaw burn the letter, we had Zoe, Dan and Chloe keeling down clicking and clapping their fingers. I loved this idea. It was unique and something I had never seen before, I loved the way it looked, it sounded and I got a lot of good feedback from some audience about this specific part.
- Costume - I thought everyone did really well with the responsibility of picking/buying their costumes to suit their character/s, and having all sat down and discussed who we think should wear what and what type of clothing we think characters should wear. I especially loved Beth's costume (left), because we imagined her as such a theatrical, evil dark character, the costume and make-up Beth had suited her character perfectly. I also loved Sian's hair (right) as it was evident she had done her research on orphans in the 19th century and the hair was spot on.
- I also loved the gun that Ryan used to play Mr Grimshaw. It was a fake gun but sounded just like a real gun. In rehearsals, we had a lot of trouble and it didn't seem to be working, until we found out that Daniel had been loading the gun the wrong way around! So on the day of the show it went perfectly and the gun fired three times, and got such a huge gasp from the audience which we were thrilled about!
- I loved the chorus. At first it was hard to read the chorus and act it out, so it took a lot of time to sit together and discuss what we wanted to do. We wanted to act the chorus out, and not just read it aloud. We wanted a narrational style - not like Greek theatre where you stand still and read, and as an actor we want to make it sound interesting, and on the night of the show it was just so much more exaggerated and here was so much energy which made it look and sound a lot better.
- Physicality I think was a huge element of the play. You have to think about physicality when playing a character, a wolves, even the chorus. For example, the wolves showed gestus which is a technique by Bertolt Brecht.
Wikipedia describes gestus "Gestus is an acting technique developed by the German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht. It carries the sense of a combination of physical gestures and "gist" or attitude. It is a means by which "an attitude or single aspect of an attitude" is revealed, insofar as it is "expressible in words or actions."
They used gestus by doing the intense wolf stares and the slow panting of the wolves, which adds a huge effect and layer to what is being said. The physicality of all the characters is very expressionistic and brechtian, resembling the verfrendums effect.
There weren't necessarily parts that I didn't like, but I think there is always room for improvement. I think if I were to suggest/make any improvements I think we should have most definitely incorporated more sound effects and music, as in the parts we had music I think It created such a spooky and dark ambience and worked really well, and I think if we added more in the wolf scenes it would have made the scenes a lot more creepy. Although, I think if we had more music some of the characters would have had to speak a lot clearer and louder for the audience to understand them.
I thought the audience reacted really well, but I do think the audience in the second show reacted a lot more to the comedy parts of the play, but I think it's because most of them were drama students themselves and they got the pay more than others. But I cannot complain about the audience from both shows what so ever, we were all thrilled with our efforts and the reaction and excellent feedback from the audience and our tutors.
Our first run through with Jill was a disaster, there were some of us who had not yet learnt all of their lines and not even brought in their costume, and I think when you're not dressed as your character or when you don't know what they say it affects how you act.
In this rehearsal, there were props forgotten, many lines and it fell apart. We sat with Jill and she spoke to us and explained everything through and through about how it matters to learn your lines and make the effort to go out and buy costumes etc. And I don't think we shouldn't have been given that talk as its our responsibility to get our own props and costume and we all should have known that.
Although the next day when we did another run through it was a lot better. There was still a few minor mishaps but it was a lot lot better than the previous rehearsal we had. We sat and made notes to make sure we put all props in the right place, all our costumes were in and in the right place.
We then had a tech run, which should normally last around 3 hours, and only took us an hour and a half and was the best run through we have done yet, but was then followed by a dress run which went even better! We were thrilled as there were no visible mistakes made and it went really well.
Today we sat in a group and decided what scenes we thought needed work and improvements we could make as a group to make the play better.
So those who were in a specific scene would get on stage and show us their scene whilst the others would sit, watch and make notes. Before each show we do we always try our best to watch others and make notes to give them advice on how they could improve certain elements of the scene.
As I wasn't a main character in the play, I spent a lot of the time watching others go over their scenes and suggesting ideas to them because I think in the rehearsal process its so important to experiment with different types of staging and dialougue and trying scenes in different ways and getting feedback on all of those things. For example, the scene at the beginning on the train carriage with Sylvia (Sian) and Mr Grimshaw (Ryan Loftus) and they were sat on the train and although the dialogue itself was good, nothing was really happening as they were supposed to be just sat on a train. We all first made the first point that they should be bopping up and down slightly as the trains were very bumpy and not as smooth as the trains we have nowadays, we also suggested that as trains were very loud that we have some form of sound effect to play in the background, and even these two things a lone made the scene a lot better, including the likes of props like cheese, suitcases etc. There is also a part in this scene where Mr Grimshaw is knocked out whilst trying to get his suitcase off of the shelf. This scene was all about stage combat, timing and getting the hit just right. In the scene, when they arrive at their destination, Mr Grimshaw stands to and get his suitcase. At first he used to just grab the suitcase and just let it drop to the floor, along with himself! Although we all found it funny it didn't look naturalistic, although we know it's not a naturalistic or real play at all, certain elements that are performed need to look real in order to get a better reaction from the audience. After a good few lessons going over this specific scene, it was perfected in the end, he struggled to get the case off the shelf, and when he eventually did he was knocked out by the case, and it did look real and natural and worked really well.
There are many other scenes including stage combat:
- Mrs Briskett in the school scene - I think it was only best to give Chloe who plays Mrs Brikset the opportunity to include plenty of stage combat moments in her scenes as I think is suits her personality and the point of her character, just like Miss Slighcarp, they are both very melodramatic characters who back then punished children for the littlest things. For example, in the school scene, the girls are admitted to detention for 'speaking too loud' 'speaking to quiet' and 'working too slow', these are just simple little things yet children were brutally beaten back then for doing such things, so in this scene we definitely thought we should include a few hits and punches. As Bonnie was in detention for speaking to loud, Mrs Briskett pulls her by the ear in a line and one by one hits one of the children, like Jess who plays Emma gets a shove into the line, and myself who plays one of the servants gets a punch to the face. This scene took a lot of work to perfect and get the timing accurate. But once finished looked so real and got a few gasps from the others watching. Also, in the school scene, we incorporated another element of stage combat by getting Mrs Briskett to knock one of the servants in the face with a rotating whiteboard. We worked on this with Daniel and thought this would be a really good gag if we get this to work to perfection. What we actually did was get Chloe to turn the whiteboard around and whilst doing so Zoe place out her hands, the whiteboard hit her hand and she then held her hands to her face, and because of the angles and the places they were positioned it looked so real. And a few days later when showing Jill the scene with the gag she hadn't actually scene yet, she gasped and was in complete shock as she thought this was real, which really was the reaction we wanted to encourage from the audience.
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I think an important part of the rehearsal process was vocal technique. We knew when reading the play that most of us would have to master a posh accent, baring in mind class, status of characters. For example, there is Miss Slighcarp who is played by Beth, and the first time Beth played Miss Slighcarp, I thought she was brilliant; she had the posh accent, the posture, the diction, the emphasis, and especially inflection. I think inflection is so important in such a play as this with so many exaggerative characters like Miss Slighcarp and Miss Briskett. I think accent is significantly important when devleloping your character. Take Mr Wilderness, in the play, his dialogue is written in a Northern accent:
"childer come afore wheels. Eh, a pretty little fair lass she be. What's amiss with her?"
"Nay, where lass? I've only the forge, and the kitchen where I sleep mysen"
Although Ryan, who plays Mr Wilderness struggled to read the dialogue never mind perform it, I think in the end he did really well maintaining his character and his characters personality and accent all the way through and I think he did exceptionally well.
