Evaluation - 13.10.15

Final Rehearsal

Today was our performance of Hedda Gabler, which is what we have been working towards so far this term.

To begin, we spent the whole day rehearsing and refining our scenes in order to make our performance as successful as possible. The first lot of rehearsing was individual, and the scenes were directed and observed by Jack, one by one, in 411.

As I am in the play for three different sections, I found it hard to find time to rehearse with each as effectively as I had wished I could have., however, I found it to be very helpful to have a sort of one-on-one directing time with Jack as there were no distractions to pull us away from doing the work and getting feedback.

After running through the play once, we were given general and individual feedback. General feedback included , keeping our voices up and sharing our voices with the audience; this also included keeping tongues muscular. Another piece of general feedback which was given was that we have to sound as if this is the first time you are hearing these words so we need to make the words, our own. There were some impressive improvisation skills shown today by some people however we all have to learn to improvise if we forget our lines because as long as we know our objectives, the scene will drive itself. The last piece of general feedback was that we shouldn't play our state but instead we should play our objective. I found this advice to be very helpful as I later realised that I play my state, as Thea, instead of my objective so I could then improve my performance with that advice on board.

My personal feedback mentioned that I need to make stronger, bolder actions, and also to ensure that I don't half-do things; this is so that I show dedication and commitments to my movements and actions to make them more believable and entertaining to watch. Also, I must not play the stake, so I should play my objective instead. The emotion has to be real, so I must ensure that I am always bringing the world of the play into the play. My final piece of feedback is that I must always come onstage with a different energy each time I enter, to show what has just happened to me in my life and how has that impacted my life.

After lunch, we decided to do a full run-through in the Space. Keeping in mind that the final rehearsal before the show is always the worse one, it put me quite on edge; this is because many people were forgetting their cues and talking outside of the Space, unaware that we could still hear them inside. This made me very worried that we could possibly ruin our work due to not being focused/on task.

The Performance

Although we had a very unsuccessful final rehearsal, the performance went very well!

At the beginning of the play, where we performed our abstract movements, I feel as if we all committed to them and completely forgot that we were on a stage surrounded by people; glancing around slightly while doing them proved to me how ready everyone was for the performance as I could tell we were all getting into character and remembering all of our character and background research.

There were only slight whispers backstage, instead of loud talking, which I was worried about previously. This was very helpful and effective in the sense that we could all communicate and rehearse lines, if needed, but it did not draw any attention away from what was happening on stage.

In my first scene, Izzy and I knew our lines very well. On the downside, I feel as if, when I was attempting to project further to fill the space, it made my acting slightly less naturalistic, as I was more focused on projecting and articulating than showing emotion in my voice. On the other hand, it helped my performance slightly in this as it made me less of an emotional character and more of a realistic one as I was showing that I was upset, at the same time as trying to disguise my emotions.

In my second scene, I was very proud of myself as I kept forgetting my lines when rehearsing this scene, however, when I decided to focus on my objectives rather than the lines, the lines seemed to flow out of me. This really taught me the importance of learning the characters objectives and given circumstances as it made me feel more comfortable as the character as I was not so caught up in my head and my thoughts about what the next time should be.

In my final scene, I was very impressed with how all the actors seemed to bounce off of each other and react well in the scene. The thing that I was most proud of in Hedda Gabler was my reaction to Hedda's death in this scene; this is because I used all of my work and research into voice and screaming using your diaphragm into this scene and I feel as if it worked quite well. As I have a high pitched voice, when I have screamed previously, I have felt as if it has come out too high, however, in this scene, I felt as if I really felt it coming from my stomach instead of my chest, making it sound a lot deeper and emotional.

Overall, I believe that Hedda Gabler went very well, although the gun-shot sound effect did not go off in the final scene. I am proud to have been able to bring in my new-founded research into this unit and be able to experiment and working with it in order to refine it and make it work. This has taught me numerous things about acting and also about myself, as I have been able to have to opportunity to experiment with many new and different acting styles/techniques.