Monday the 5th November
Today we received our individual parts that we will be playing in the play we were given. Im playing the part of Pyortr Nikolayevich Sorin in, "The Seagull". As I researched my character "Sorin" I found out that he is Irina Arkadina's older brother. He is sixty years old and lives with Konstantin Treplov on the farm, his nephew. He has bad health, which over the course of the play (possibly his through-line) his health deteriorates. He is quite jolly, he listens to other peoples woes and he's the main person everyone confides in, he is quite the patriarch. He admires his sisters and nephews work and talents. He seems unsatisfied (unsatisfaction being one of the interpreted subthemes of the play) with his life choices and how his life has therefore turned out. He wanted to find love and become a writer. My interpretation of my character is that he is very wistful and nostalgic, he tends to look back on his past and seems that he never quite accomplished what he wishes he had. Yet this doesn't really get him down, as seen by other people. I feel that he does regret, and that his predicament does somewhat get him down but he puts up a front so that others don't worry. Like with his ill health, it is hardly mentioned, most likely because he doesn't want people to fuss over him, he just wants to get on.
Later that lesson, me and my co-actors Daniella and lucky, started to think how we could start to stage the play. We thought of having me and lucky slow walk on, appearing as we had just come back from a walk. we would walk in like an S shape towards where the chairs are placed toward the centre front of the stage. We also tried to stage the beginning because we wanted to know how well we acted together and what came naturally, and it did indeed felt very natural when acting with them.
Wednesday the 7th November
Today with Sharon, first of all, we sat in a Circle and spoke about yesterdays visit to watch the hit musical/rap play called Hamilton. it had mixed views and on the contrary had positive views. I thought it was pretty well scripted, it allowed you to follow the story easily even when the play was entirely sung with minor bits of dialogue. I liked the staging of it all, parts of stage were mobile as in they moved the stair well back and forth with a slick transition to a different setting. They also had conveyer-belt flooring , to show the forwarding of time, the consequences of actions ( especially the love affair of Hamilton and Peggy) and to show the people walking in the streets of New York.
We then started to think of subtext of our lines, and what our objectives would be. As I want to really play my part with Sorin putting up a front, hiding his true emotions behind his invisible wall, that would be his subtext.
We sat as a group with all the different plays together, had to think what our objectives would be in each line of dialogue. My characters main objectives would be that he wants to stay light hearted. If he lapses into his nostalgic regretful state, he wants to make sure that he doesn't let his guard down because he doesn't want the people to worry or feel sorry for him. we were taught that the actions, are what enable our characters to fulfil their needs and goals. So a simple sort of facial expression change shows the audience that he has realised he is showing his inner emotion and immediately lifts that guard up again so its sort of dramatic irony as the audience can see what's going on but the characters don't.
We were left at the end thinking what our character essentially wants at the given circumstances; what they want out of the whole play, and thus how they will accomplish these wants and needs.
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