Lunch and Woman Alone 10.05.17

Caitlin was ill again! This meant we had to perform Lunch with only three people, so followed the adaptation of it. We weren't sure how to pull it off at first, either there are two sun-consciences or the female does both real and sub-conscience, in the end deciding on the latter. This meant that Charlotte had to suddenly learn all of hers and Caitlin's lines and in way which meant you could tell which part was sub-conscience and real. I also had to adapt to being the only full-on Berkoff person, as before I was working with and interacting with Caitlin, and using her energy as well as my own to pull off an engaging performance - therefore it was pretty difficult.

It was hard to adapt at first, but once we got into the swing of things it began to get pretty smooth. In the end, the first two pages had a lot of energy, and a decent amount of valid Berkoff style action, somehow managing to work out the last bit of page two which was an interlocking dialogue with me and the girl. The last page was also pretty good as the two 'real' began to have more movement, the problem came from the fact that it didn't have quite enough pace, energy or engaging movement, plus, I din't really have much to do other than listen, but I think considering our circumstances and how much we had to adapt, it turned out pretty decent.

From the feedback of the performance, although apparently my voice had the right volume and energy for Berkoff, it was a little too much too much of the time and I needed to add more variation. Furthermore, I stumbled very obviously on a couple of my lines, Charlotte doing a far better job despite half of her lines being new that day. The physical movement was good and appropriate to the lines, though it slackened towards the end. However, overall, it had a good reaction and I believe that we did pretty well considering we lost one of our cast members.

After the lesson, during N2C, we began looking at Woman Alone in the same groups as Lunch. The first thing was splitting the monologue into the three different attitudes, we had gossipy House Wife, Mother and Sexy. We split the lines and then began adding the physical movements but we found it quite difficult to achieve - partly because we just exhausted - as the text didn't have quite the same indication of physical movements as the last two.

We didn't really come up with nearly enough Berkoff movements, and the ones we did come up with were generally not quite defined or mimetic enough. This was especially with the dancing which I hadn't realised until the performance. I found that the whole lacked an energy or a confidence required for Berkoff and I had no confidence performing it: it felt awkward and slow. Did not go away from the lesson feeling like I'd achieved much.