Tuesday, 11 February 2014

Development 11.2.14

Running through the show and watching the other groups scenes and developments.... 

What are the groups doing well that we can use? 
All the groups had a great energy about their performance and scenes, some more than others but I definitely felt the emotions and passions all the actors had for their characters. I feel very in touch with Mrs Marshall and I understand her as a character and an individual, but the main notes I was given today about my acting was to use restoration acting more and use more gestures when my character is performing a monologue on stage from a restoration play. I have been observing Greta and Heta and they both use Restoration acting to extremes, but these are good extremes as Restoration period acting was very over the top and so un-naturalistic! I feel I will use them as role models in terms for my Restoration acting and will make much more grand gestures and let my body be more free when acting out the monologue. 
I feel watching Sav perform as Nell I have noticed that she has so much energy and really dives into her character and I can see the connection she has with her character, as Nell is very outgoing, energetic and almost ditsy, it is really entertaining and endearing to watch and Sav definitely plays Nell Gwynn very well and I want to portray this same energy in my character like she does, although Mrs Marshall is not as energetic and certainly not ditsy, I feel I portray energy when playing Mrs Marshall in different ways, for example, I feel I portray her as very sarcastic and confident, and she is also rather rude at times but very professional and grounded, but after watching Sav in particular, I will definitely always put all my energy and ability into portraying Mrs Marshall as accurately as I can, as it is much more enjoyable to watch someone playing a character with spirit and commitment.
What do they need to improve on? What does my group have to improve on?
I feel on the whole my whole acting class have put together a very good, strong show with some really interesting characters and great objectives. I definitely see who are the stronger characters and who needs to understand and research their character a little bit more.
Improvements for the group as a whole would be to work more as a team and make sure character relationships are present and to portray the women as united! Even though there is some healthy competition within the theater and definite "cliques", the women need to be shown as united together as they are all there for the same reason, career wise and they should be shown as a unit, and not just individual people.
Another improvement is that everybody needs to learn their lines! People should really know their lines by now, but it is understandable that some people have more lines to learn than others, but you cannot act to your full ability until you have learned your lines, as they need to be in your mind and you need to understand what you are saying, and reading from a script is only just the beginning, and we only have a couple of weeks until the show! Little improvements I noticed need to be made today by the class as a WHOLE are some people need to be projecting more and need to have more of a stage presence, as these women are very strong and confident, and this needs to be shown by EVERY female character. I also notice that the MALE characters need to be stronger and much more energetic and confident, as there are only 4 males in this play, so the male actors need to really stand out and almost compete with the female actresses, as they could be out shone and not fully appreciated! As the male characters are very interesting as well, and I feel after watching it, I saw that the females were definitely stronger than the males, which should not be the case, the female CHARACTERS could be seen as stronger in this play as it is written by a feminist, but the male ACTORS need to be putting as much energy and understanding into their characters, and not feel that their characters aren't as important as the females are.

Improvements for myself and my group would be to work on the staging more, as at this point I feel we have all established an understanding for our characters and portray massive amounts of character and we all pretty much know all our lines. But at times the staging can be a little bit messy so I definitely want to work on this more than the characterization as we are all at that point where we know our characters and are thinking like them 100 percent. 
Personally I need to improve on my Restoration gestures, which I mentioned at the beginning, and that is the main improvement I need to make, as I am portraying Mrs Marshalls objectives and personality very well I feel, but need to work on my physical movement more. It is just little things my group and I need to improve on, and with a couple more rehearsals, I feel we will have a very rounded strong piece ready for our performance night!


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