Rehearsals and feedback sessions before final show

Thursday the 27th september 2018

Today, Me and my partner Chloe practised our pieces of Greek theatre. I was still on script but the words were coming much more naturally. However I did learn the last half monologue, as I thought that would be the most challenging. Even though the saying goes, "Don't run before you can walk", I decided to jump straight in because , as I had said, it seemed more harder to master.
My approach to the role was more to make my inferior, who is Hecuba ( played by chloe), feel a lesser status to me , which I originally thought o getting close to her almost sort of looking down my nose to her. I circled her , from when when I entered from the point of my open paragraph, " As an emissary from the army of the greeks", with later rehearsals and the final performance I always kept that in as it is almost that my character is mocking her , telling her she's going to be sold as a slave to someone of higher of authority. He almost circles her to make her objectified, like he's admiring her in a museum, eying her up , see if shes good enough to be a slave, unknown to her at the time being.

In these rehearsals, I came to struggle with the pronunciation of the greek names. this is what I found most challenging even other than the acting itself. My original approach was to belt out my last monologue to make it seem more powerful; the character more fierce and more menacing, And to show a more furious and horrible side to him.
But with Robs feed back today, he helped me with pronunciation of the names, which sets a fundamental improvement to the acting immediately because now I will sound like I know what I'm doing and it will seem less slap-dash and un-bothered to learn the script, which wasn't the case at all. 
He told me to under play it a little, most primarily to not belt out the last line as it's really meant to be conversational , it can still have same effect if said more with spoken-anger than aggy and over the top emotional anger, which I took these notes on bored for a different approach next rehearsal.

Thursday the 4th of October 2018

Today, I attempted to totally switch things around with my approach to the acting. First of, I tried a comedic approach. But not for the reaction of laughter, but more to look like I'm properly mocking the other character , Hecuba . The gestures were bigger , the expressions were more jester like. I wanted to try this approach because , the character of Talthybius is essentially mocking her but this time round I wanted that to be more obvious.
However, to the audience this came across the complete opposite. I appeared kore like a fool , and people couldn't exactly take my character seriously. I appeared to me more musical-theatre like , than appearing in a greek play. But on a more good and confident note I had learnt my lines, and pronounced the names much more better and clearly, than previous attempts, which was a perk.
Robs advice , was to keep your eyelines up. You are essentially engaging with the audience at points as well, Like on the 24th when he told us about using the 4th wall usefully and engage when needed to be to add extra effect. But you are telling the audience the story, so eyelines up is a good tip.
He loved the energy, but upon my entrance I have big hand gesture which comes across similar to jazz hands , which wasn't my intention whatsoever. I was told to under play enough , a subtle approach is the better option and can still have an equivalent effect. He said to keep the stillness of the piece as it adds the more conversational , natural feel to our take on the play.

Upon my feedback, I decided to give the character a more militant like authority, as he is an actual soldier. I decided to get rid of the "posh" accent I put on to make him seem more authoritative because in reality , like i mentioned on a previous post , the audience will find it more effective coming from the truthful meaning behind the character. So I just used my own accent, because virtually I'm playing myself as the character not someone else playing him. And with this approach i came across far more menacing and powerful than previous approaches.
I received feed back from peers, who all liked this new and original portrayal of Talthybius and they  deemed that this take on the character will be far more effective and successful.