Evaluation Of Playhouse Creatures
Sophia Hinchliff
Playhouse Creatures is a contemporary feminist play set in the 16th century and was written by April De Angelis in 1993.
The main concept of this play is to depict the lives of young women in this era trying to achieve the dream career of becoming an actress and portrays how hard it was for them to gain status and respect. The play is very female heavy and portrays two types of men; high status men who treat women badly, and low status men who also treat women badly! Women were seen as objects of lust and entertainment and were not fully appreciated for who they truly were.
In my scenes from the play, my group and I were trying to convey to the audience the downfalls and strengths all these women had, particularly within the theatre. We wanted to portray to the audience each of the women's individual struggles and how the women united as a team and worked together, having said that, they did not all get along very well and there was masses of jealously, rivalry and hatred between all the women in the theatre and they were constantly trying to upstage one another. My group and I also managed to achieve the light hearted fun the women had with each other and the "banter" they all had with each other. Particularly in my second scene when Otway, a male playwright is reading his entire script to the women and they completely rip him apart with sarcastic remarks and flirtatious threats. This scene is one of my favorites as we had a lot of fun experimenting and seeing how far we could push Otway, and it just shows a group of girls having fun with each other and holding their own against this man who they barely know, who is trying to tell them what to do and almost undermining the women's acting abilities.
Overall, my group and I wanted to achieve an audiences understanding of how life was for young women in the 16th century and how sexism and feminism have been around for centuries, and we wanted to capture the female audience's attention and make them realise just how different it is today for women and how female status has been increasing for centuries and the female population have come along way since the 16th century.
I feel in many ways my group and I were successful in communicating our objectives to the audience. Particular parts of my two scenes were we were successful was firstly, The Abortion Scene; this is probably the most traumatic and painfully hard hitting scenes I have ever been in. It was so raw and gruesome, when acting in this scene I really made my mind believe that it was real, and made me react the way I did as I was so involved in the scene. This scene really communicates to the audience what little power and options women had. Mrs Farley cannot stay an actress at the theatre whilst pregnant, as this was against the law, to be parading round on stage whilst flaunting a pregnancy which is not lawful, she is not married, she is very young and she is seen as one of the Kings many mistresses. So this scene shows just how hard it was for a pregnant woman in the 16th century, she has no support and it is seen as a problem which has to be fixed immediately, as all the women could lose their jobs as actresses as they all know about it.
The Abortion is really the only option Mrs Farley has, and my character is chosen by her to be the one to perform the abortion, I feel this is because my character is seen as a strong and powerful woman, she may be only young, but she has a wise head on her and the other women definitely see this in her.
My group and I experimented with this scene quite a lot, we decided to have Mrs Farley sitting with her back to the audience as this creates more suspense and mystery for the audience, and also allows the audience to use their imagination, as they cannot see what Mrs Marshall is doing to her, but from seeing my characters facial expressions and hearing Mrs Farley cry and shout, they can definitely imagine what is happening to her! We also agreed that the abortion should be at least 40-50 seconds long, as before we were doing it too quickly and it was not allowing the suspense to rise and was not portraying the seriousness of this scene.
Another part of my two scenes were I felt my group and I were successful in communicating our objectives was when my character has shit thrown in her hair from two men outside the theatre.
This scene had a lot of experimenting and improvising, I wanted to try out every possible way in order to portray my characters emotions clearly to the audience.
This scene was quite a shock to the audience, as my character has been strong and confident throughout the scenes, and I feel the audience had developed an understanding of her that she was powerful and was not to be messed with, and then when I enter the stage again, my character has completely changed. She is vulnerable, angry, out of control and above all, upset. This shows to the audience that my character is only human, and has put her trust in a man and this has happened! It is showing the audience how the men had all the power and women simply just did not have enough power to avoid these situations. I wanted to show anger in this scene, and I feel I successfully did this. The main objective to the scene, is to portray just how vile men could be to women, and what women had to put up with.
Within both my scenes, my group and I were constantly referring to Stanislavsky and naturalistic methods. We wanted the character relationships to be as naturalistic as possible, and to portray a naturalistic setting for the theatre. Of course, Restoration acting is the complete opposite of naturalism, so in my 2 scenes, I was using Naturalism and Restoration methods, which creates an interesting contrast within the play. My group and I used "Through Line of Action" with all of our characters, this method helps you get into character more, and enables you to use the characters lives and experiences to create a well rounded character. We also used "Given circumstances" which also helps you get into character as this allows you to understand why the character is the way they are, and what circumstances they were given growing up. I feel using Stanislavsky methods definitely allowed me to understand Mrs Marshall much more, and to create my own version of how I believe she would of been, physically and mentally. I feel using these methods allowed me to get into character more, and helped me see that in some ways Mrs Marshall is similar to my own personality, which is positive as I have empathy for her, and can understand her objectives and motives more.
On the whole, I believe my group and I were successful in portraying our characters objectives and the super objectives to the audience, however there were parts in our scenes were I feel we could have been stronger as a group, and individuals could have taken more time to get to know their character and really understand their lines and objectives a little bit more. We could have taken the Abortion scene even further, and could have portrayed how disgusted and horrified the women were a little bit more, but on the whole I feel with the rehearsal time we had, we did the best we could. I feel throughout we could have been stronger at displaying the different relationships the characters had with each other. Mrs Farley and Mrs Marshall had a love/hate relationship, and I feel Lucy and myself did well at portraying this to the audience. And my characters unapologetic behavior towards Nell was definitely visible for the audience to see. I just feel that we all as a group could of spent a little bit more time during rehearsals getting into character more and expanding their relationships, rather than just running the scenes.
I feel the part of the play where Nell freezes on stage and then returns to the tiring room, could have been more clear and stronger for the audience. I feel we did well at showing just how disappointed and angry we were at Nell, but we could have taken this further. I feel it was clear that my character was very angry with Nell, especially with my line " You, you showed me right up you silly cow" but the other characters could have portrayed their annoyance with her a little bit more. Nell had just completely messed up their scene, and the other women just left Mrs Marshall on stage with her, as they obviously felt my character could sort it out, which she tried to do and failed. So the women definitely should have seemed much more angry with Nell for ruining their performance, in front of probably hundreds of people, mainly male and more than likely drunk.
Overall, I believe my groups performance was strong, clear and well rehearsed. Our characters were very clear, and each had their individual strengths and weaknesses, and all had distinctive personalities. And we all projected very well, so it was never hard to hear what was being said, and our blocking was well rehearsed, so we all knew exactly where to be on stage, and were never masking or upstaging each other.
I feel we could have used rehearsal times more to focus on our character relationships and developments, rather than running the scene over and over again, which helped of course, but we should have all been more in touch with our characters. We all used research very well, and knew the background stories on all the characters, apart from Doll Common, who is fictional. We could have used our rehearsal time more wisely, and some individuals in my group took longer at learning their lines, but overall we were all pretty confident on lines, and in the actual performance no lines or cues were missed.
We also should have informed the boys in our group that we needed them to be the rowdy men in our scenes, as this was only rehearsed a few times before the actual performance, and during rehearsals a lot of the cues were missed, purely because we had not spent enough time running through this with the boys.
I thorougly enjoyed working with my group for both these scenes and I am really pleased with how it turned out, and feel we communicated with the audience our characters emotions, objectives and the storylines throughout the performance.
