Chorus Work... Again - 9.1.17 & 11.1.17

Almost got through the first chorus section...

Monday:

Worked on Creon's section and following this, the old woman and guard section. To present the idea of Creon being tired, suddenly under a huge amount of pressure in his new position of King, we had the other members come up to Creon with piles of paper which they gave to him, Creon taking each in turn. One of the things I struggled most with in this section was being able to hear The Chorus' lines as the rustling of paper and movement as well as concentration on what was being given to me meant that there was a lot of noise and I missed my cues repeatedly. This time I also had a go at the page's role which was a hell of a lot easier, my only role being to follow Creon around the stage and stand with my head bent as he deals with stuff. Best part.

Whilst Chipp did work on the other Chorus members in the cast, we were sent to work on a moment to show the idea of Antigone and Haemon's marriage being a political affair. We achieved this through Creon walking up to them and forcefully putting their hands together and looking very pleased with himself, and them also. Think it worked pretty effectively in portraying the idea of the marriage being one of circumstance.

Our work on Monday:

Our Video

Sadly don't have me as Creon, but as the page, but thought I'd share the general movement of my character.

Wednesday:

Went back to our first entrance today for the first time in ages, working again on the fight sequences at the beginning and now also in the middle of the prologue's monologue (again bringing back the bruises on my arms - why did I create an interlocking sequence, it hurts!) It was a bit ropy after having not rehearsed it for while, but got it quickly back together after a bit of rehearsal. Chipp also pointed out how it had lost a bit of the intent/purpose as well as violence, with the direction of attention to the tips of weapons and the movement. Me and my partner also developed our sequence a bit for the violent scene, adding a new level with me kneeling down and then dragging my partner around to get out of her 'clutches'. I loved this lesson for the physical movement we created, the best bit was making a giant mass of bodies through different levels of people using lifts etc. I was kneeling whilst another student stood on my knee and draped over another person, I sagged and another person draped over my back whilst Jenna (very elegantly) lay in front of me.

To put in the eloquent words of my drama teachers, it was 'lit' or put it otherwise 'sick!' I really felt that this physical movement created an extremely eye catching and memorable scene. Although it was tricky to move from the individual fight scenes to the mass of dead, I feel like we achieved this pretty well, getting the timing pretty slick by the end of it. May need to work on my slithering away like grungy buts of body, but im sure Ill be great at that in the end.

Antigone Chorus and Creon & Antigone Blocking 4/1/17

With a new format to Wednesday evenings after the end of N2C, I was surprised with a four hour rehearsal of Antigone. No complaining though, it was pretty fun. The first half was taken up with Chorus work, firstly experimenting with puppeting for the fight scene between Eteocles and Polynices and then blocking more of the first scene.

As Mr Chipp (not an exact quote but in as many words... I think) experimenting may not produce results but it is always helpful... And fun. The aim was to create a slightly believable puppet out of items of clothing to portray the fight scene, we didn't get very far with this despite a lot of experimentation with ideas. I think people tried too hard to make it look realistic, in all effective puppet work that I've seen (haven't got masses of experience) it hasn't mattered wether the puppet looks real, it's about how real the movement is. My group were going too much for making the audience think it looked real, though some ideas like having one of the group get into the coat then slip out whilst others hold it in place did create a good shape in the coat as it fitted around the body, and made it look less like 'just a coat.' I also think one of the problems came from too many bodies trying to move the clothes around meaning that it obstructed the view of the coat from the audience (theoretical audience). I think the most effective comes from the most simple, and I thought having a real hand emerge from the coat made it look more realistic, and I think the best thing would be to have a really big coat with a hat emerging from it and two people buttoned inside operating the arms. I also think the polythene suggested just made it too large and the figure the other group was frankly terrifying.

Giving up on the puppets for a bit, we decided to carry on with the giant 'Chorus' monologue we began before Christmas which meant my bit! The idea is to make me look a bit rushed off my feet, so the rest of the cast come up to me in masses with sheets of paper for me to look at. I really liked doing this and although at first I felt a little stressed having masses of paper shoved in my face, got used to it pretty quick and tried to relax into a tired but thorough and calm King. I found it quite hard to hear the cues for various actions such as dropping paper and moving forward over the rustling of paper and moving of feet, but with practice I should be able to get those pretty accurate.

The next two hours concentrated on the scene between Antigone and Creon which takes up a third of the play. Didn't finish, blocking it, but we got a good chunk thoroughly run through. Probably go wrong for the next couple of weeks but I'll get it into my head soon enough. There was a lot of walking behind Antigone with right-angles to follow the edge of the stage which I cannot get right because it just doesn't feel right (hehe ironic) and I can't seem to pronounce "Ecclesiastical Rigmorale" or remember not to say "Pocket" but "mini" instead. Apart from that, it felt pretty good. How to say the lines and move around the stage basically feels a hell of a lot more comfortable now having gone through it, and I think it will really help with learning the lines.

Director's Challenge Review

I really enjoyed Director's Challenge. I think it was a great experience having a Year 13 direct you and get to be in a small cast with a mix of years. I think I especially enjoyed it because I had Jermaine as a director who is probably one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, he managed to create a really nice atmosphere at every rehearsal and therefore meaning it was never dull even when you weren't doing anything. He really was a lovely director and very positive too, perhaps a little too relaxed, but he had a lot of good ideas.

I think one of the things I really liked about the Director's Challenge was seeing the development of Sam who was playing The Drummer. Must admit, in the first rehearsal I was a little confused about Jermaine casting Sam as the Drummer because he was just too nice and didn't seem to be able to act intimidating or confident. There was even a major question over changing actor when Isabel stepped in when he was absent and did a great job. But Jermaine kept faith and it really paid off. Sam really stepped up to the role and on the night delivered a very convincing performance, he just needed to settle into the role.

In respect to my own personal development, if I'm brutally honest with myself, I should have done much better. I find I fall into this trap every time I have a smaller part, I get too relaxed about the character and then in the last few weeks go, "Oh, I actually need to develop this." I do feel that part of it was a lack of direction on my character from Jermaine, but I should taken much more initiative. At the start of the rehearsal process I did go through my script and looking at what I thought I should be contributing with each line to the scene, but I didn't really think enough about the actual character just more about the lines. Mistake.

In the first rehearsal, Jermaine told us that each of our characters were simply meant to be "balls of emotion" as we didn't have names, just titles, so there wasn't really a specific character behind it, just a hell of a lot of emotion. On direction for mine and "The Singer's" role, he told us our purpose within the play was to break the tension which had just been building up between "The Drummer" and "The Boy"  to contribute to the waves of tension in the play. I think we were also meant to bring some light relief to the play which had just been awkward, emotional teens so far. Therefore, in the first blocking of our scene, we burst in together laughing to break the tense atmosphere, then from that lightness we gradually built our tension until the climatic head-lock from 'The Drummer'.

Now that headlock. That caused a lot of problems. I don't know why it just didn't click the first few times that we did it that we need to DO MORE! As we hadn't blocked that bit till the last few weeks, I had decided to just learn the lines, which I think meant I was more just saying the lines how I'd run through them with "The Singer". We were also restricted by the atmosphere of the rest of the play which had been a lot of distance between each character and a lack of movement meaning we didn't feel we could really move much. Eventually, the night before the performance, Jermaine gave us freedom to improvise lines and movement and that just made it a whole lot better. It did contribute to me feeling a lot more comfortable on the stage in the actual performance as I think the restrictions I felt in the movement I could do meant I felt very uncomfortable.

Anyway, the performance and rehearsals were all very enjoyable and a good experience, especially for learning from mistakes. I enjoyed the rehearsals even when I wasn't doing anything on stage as it was such a nice atmosphere and I enjoyed watching and making little comments on the direction.

Director's Challenge Performance

Nerves.

Everyone was nervous.

We weren't really sure we'd be able to pull it off, I think the thing I was most scared about however, was dropping the friggin base: the last three rehearsals with the bass I had managed to knock it over and it make almighty racket. You'll ecstatic to know, I managed to place the bass perfectly on the chair so that it did not make a horrific noise as I delivered my next line. Well done me :)

The set looked pretty good, well awful but in a good way. Litter and debris all over the floor, instruments and amps, and a grim looking door. Pretty much how I imagine a teenage boy rehearsal space in the basement of an abandoned warehouse.

As the audience came in, we had to stay behind the 'door' which meant we were stuck in a cramped dark space for half an hour before the performance. Great for nerves. There were some useful lumps of blue tac stuck to the back of the board which served as useful distraction and left some very nice artwork for whomever was next stuck sitting behind the board - the humming bird was especially cute.

I think the performance went very well, there a couple of slip-ups but we covered it pretty well. One of them was the improvised bit in reaction to the headlock as the dialogue kind of petered out towards the end and left a little awkward silence before The Drummer spoke.

Inevitably I had rush of nerves as I entered the stage but I quickly sunk into the role and I think I did alright. A couple of the lines weren't my best deliveries (not saying they've ever been great mind) but the scene managed to maintain a pretty decent pace and I felt pretty comfortable on stage which I hadn't really felt for most of the rehearsals. Good timing eh.

All in all, had a very positive feeling after the performance.

Director's Challenge Preparation

The Saturday before the performance was a full day rehearsal and it really started to come together. The Boy and The Drummer seemed to finally get there lines (just about - they did miss out a chunk by accident in our performance to Monsieur Chipp) and as always Caitlin was great. One problem: me. In my defence, I didn't feel that me and Isabel, 'The Singer' had been directed fully and so wasn't really confident in what Jermaine wanted us to do, hadn't gone through the character thoroughly with him so didn't really know what he wanted from my character apart from someone who breaks the tension. However, this doesn't really cover the main problem which was our lack of a large reaction to the Drummer headlocking The Boy.

On the Tuesday night rehearsal, the day before the performance, we went through this scene and decided the best answer was to use improvisation and basically make a lot of protesting noise at The Drummer's actions and not be afraid of using our faces more. The result I junk worked pretty well and definitely made me feel more confident and comfortable (ironically considering the situation) in my role in that section. It also made me look forward to the performance a lot more as I began to believe we could really pull this off.