Evaluation

Strengths - 

I thought overall my performance went really well. I had managed to find a distinct and specific character within myself that, I thought, reflected Arkadina really well. For the majority of my lines they were delivered with a purpose and true emotion that I properly felt within myself. This was a very important thing for me to find as towards the beginning of devising these scenes I found that I was just repeating the lines without engaging myself mentally or physically. However, last night I was able to connect with Arkadina and the relationship she had with her son and as a result I felt I gave a relatively believable and truthful performance even though Arkadina was quite a melodramatic character. I also felt that I managed to capture her physicality quite well too, demonstrating that she was an upper class women with a lot of status.   I did this by keeping my body upright and rigid, and therefore not slouching, with quite a fast pace in her step to bring about the idea that she is a very busy women who doesn't really wait for anyone, apart from Trigorin. What I also feel was very strong within our piece was the energy levels and the pace, making it interesting and dynamic. To begin with I found finding the energy within the scene quite hard as it starts half way through a scene yet the continued energy from that scene isn't present as we don't start from the beginning of the scene. To help fuel the scene I decided I had to bring on the energy when I make my entrance and this really helped kick start the scene. I also enabled myself to be energetic by giving Arkadina an almost nervous or flustered energy so that there was a constant buzz or movement (even when she was standing still) around her so that the pace or energy levels were never dropped through out the scene.

What might I have done differently -

Something that I definitely struggled with was portraying Arkadina's age and if i had more time I would have worked on how I could demonstrate that in my character. Although for some parts I felt that her age was communicated I felt that the older physicality and tone of voice dropped often when I bring in some real emotions and therefore it wasn't sustained. There were aspects of Arkadina that I wanted to play but was unable to while holding onto to her older upper class self. For example, there were moments when I wanted to demonstrate my love for Trigorin or my refusal to believe anything bad about him because of this, but those feelings came out of my 16 year old self not 40 year old Arkadina, and therefore they turned a bit into a love struck teenager in denial. The love struck emotions are perfect for Arkadina but I needed to find the way that a 40 year old upper class women from the 1800's would embody that instead of the way I, as a 16 year old girl, shows that. I also found that my depiction of Arkadina was very cold and cutting, although this was effective there was room to go between the harder emotions and the softer ones. I did try to incorporate some more loving and softer moments into my performance, yet I still feel that if I had more time I could have pushed the different levels of emotions further so my characterisation was more dynamic. It would mean that I would have more places to go with my character and emotions instead of just staying at this very angry and high energy state that was almost constant through out the performance, as there are limited places I can take myself when you are staying at a state that is extremely high energy and dark. From there you can only really take your emotions down, hence the moments of love and softness towards her son. This then makes her anger more effective for the audience as it contrast against her moments of kindness.

Stanislavsky's techniques and how they helped - 

Towards the beginning of working on The Seagull I was finding it extremely difficult to understand the world of the play and Chekov in general, with my scene proving to be slow paced and with little dynamics or emotions. I found the character of Arkadina to be extremely challenging as I couldn't really draw on many of my past experiences or emotions to play her as she lived in another world to me. This is where Stanislavsky's techniques became very helpful. After setting out my objectives, units and given circumstances I didn't really consider how I was going to apply these things, so when it came to acting through the scene I found it incredibly hard as I hadn't actively put these things into practise in my work. They were just written words that hadn't left the page and therefore had no effect on my work. After realising that I needed to actively engage more with Stanislavsky's system and what i had written I started to find that it benefited my acting and characterisation hugely, enabling to really pick out the key elements of each line and drill down to the core of what Im saying. However, I still found it incredibly difficult to hold what I was trying to apply in my head whilst acting. This became easier through practise as my objectives etc.. became engrained in me sub-consciously so I no longer had to put all my energy into focusing and remembering them. From this point onwards I was able to access my character, their emotions and purposes a lot easier and felt that my understanding of Arkadina went further than just the script, as I was able to think her life outside the text and how she is in those situations as a character (The Magic If). 

Communicating objectives and intentions -
I thought that I communicated my intentions/objectives fairly well to the audience, there were times when I felt they were lost amongst other things. The intentions within Arkadina's with held love for her son and her cold on the surface nature as a result of it I think were communicated quite well. I tried to portray them in the first section when she enters and has a very busy and almost scorning air about her, this presents the side to her that is cutting and stern to all but Trigorin. However, she lets this guard drop slightly when she comments on his wound being nearly healed and when she tells him not to despair and for a split second we see her concern for her son. She then goes back to her usual stiff faced and blunt self, removing any signs of her concern. All these things, I thought, helped the audience see that inside Arkadina is actually a caring person, yet through her status and a rigid upper class life she is no longer able to display emotions outwardly as it conflicts with her reputation. One things that I felt wasn't communicated enough was Arkadina's hurt feelings for when Kostya insults Trigorin and her need to defend her lover at all costs. These aspects didn't come through enough in my characterisation as they compromised how I played her age and therefore the true emotions did't come out properly for the audience to pick up on it. 

Character Development

Rehersal Process

In today's rehearsal we carried on running our scenes, although I managed to get a better of an idea of how Arkadina is within this situation I am still finding it extremely difficult to really connect with her as a character and the relationship with Konstantin. My characterisation of Arkadina was alright but it needed to be pushed dramatically and defined choices needed to be made. I could tell that my grasp of her wasn't adequate enough because during my scene all my lines just sounded the same and therefore a sense of distinct character wasn't really present. This monotone voice came from the feeling that I wasn't connected enough with her and therefore I was unable to get lost within the scene and emotions that she should be feeling, the whole time able to think about what I was going to have for dinner or something. It also meant that I was reduced to just yelling the majority of my lines in the argument instead of making effective and informed choices about how I was going to portray each line. Therefore through out the Tuesday rehearsal I felt that I was almost there but I still found Arkadina to be someone that was forgein to me.

After doing some research and looking at videos of how others had played that scene I started to get an understanding of the dynamics between them and of Arkadina's character. Within most of the scenes I saw that Arkadina was played as a very loving mother and as someone who worries for her son deeply. I decided to take these aspects on and to test them out on our Friday rehearsal. However, it still didn't feel completely right and I again wasn't fully connected with the emotions in the scene and my relationship with Konstantin. This is when I decided to scrap all those things I had seen and just play Arkadina the way I felt was right. I made some key decisions about her character and these helped me ENORMOUSLY ->

1. Arkadina does love her son but she wont she it easily as she is a tough women who doesn't let her protective guard down to show any emotions to anyone
2. She is very blunt and often cold to her son, she isn't good at all the mothery warmth things that other mothers do
3. She puts Trigorin first above anyone and this is the only time she will let herself release all her 'ugly' emotions and make a scene
4. She drinks a lot of alcohol very openly and it would be questionable wether she had a small drink problem.
5. However, her drink never gets in the way of how she must socially behave to keep her outstanding repuatation of being a famous actress
6. She can be quite melodramatic and can't bare the thought of anyone being upset or crying, because this display of emotions makes her feel uncomfortable and agitated, and also because she believes not many people have a good reason too as she never cries so why should other people get the right too. 

Once I had made the choice to play her COLDY TOWARDS HER SON everything feel into place, this character choice enablled me to access her in a whole new way and as a result I became Arkadina within the scene. I felt like it was a real turning point, yet I still had some refining to do. I also found that at some point within our scene people laughed, I took this as a sign that the scene flowed well as The Seagull is meant to be quite comic and therefore if you are able to get some of that comedy out then you have served the scene well. 

Given Circumstances for The Seagull, Act 3

Units, objectives and physical actions

Units ->

 

<- Unit titles, objectives and physical actions

Applying Stanivslaky's methods in rehersal

Today we focused on our rehearsal process and how we are applying the methods we have learnt such as the making of units, objectives and physical actions. I found this to be so much harder than I had anticipated, with all the work I had done on my script being forgot about the minute I started to rehearse the scene. Up until now learning about Stanislavsky and his methods had all been theoretical, and so when it came to applying the work I had done I found that I was unable to  hold any of it in my head and therefore it felt like I hadn't developed massively over the time period in terms of my character and how I act within the scene. The rehearsal was a big eye opener as it made we realize that half the work I had done (objectives, physical actions ans given circumstances) had not been properly thought about or been done in enough depth, explaining why it was impossible to apply it to my work as there wasn't enough of an understanding for me to be able to utilize that work I had done. Therefore from this rehearsal I know that I have to go back to all of my units, objectives, physical actions and given circumstances and really commit to working through each one of these things in detail so it become ingrained within my brain. When reading Bella Merlin's book, I found a

passage particularly interesting where she talked about how Stanislavsky said that you need to do all of this work and then forget it all once on stage. After experiencing this first rehearsal that concept makes perfect sense, however it is only possible if the work you did is really understood and imprinted in you as your character. If you reach this point you wont have to try and forget all your work while on stage, it will just disappear as you will no longer need to make the conscious effort to apply it as its so ingrained within you. 

I feel these methods are more important than ever with The Seagull as my character of Arkadina and the stage world of the play is something that is far away from the reality I live in, Arkadina especially is a character that I find really hard to grasp as shes so different to me and my encounters in life. She is a mother, someone of great wealth and status in the arts and is around 40 years old, all these things make it very difficult for me as a 16 year old who doesn't live on a huge country estate to connect with. Therefore methods like emotion memory are needed for me to draw on and real get inside this character and the play. 

Method Of Physical Action

The method of physical action is used in expanding on Stanislavsky's methods in creating units and objectives, so that the actor is more able to understand the thought processes and physical direction that accompanies each line/unit in the scene. When working through your script a physical action is needed for each unit so you understand what your character is physically doing to the other elements/characters in that scene. A physical action is made up of a TRANSITIVE VERB where the verb fits into the structure of I ____ you, for example I empower you. This physical action also fits alongside your objective so both things should correspond in terms of their aims. A physical action is important for your objectives as it enables actors to connect their minds to their bodies. Objectives focus on how the thoughts of the character operate and what they are trying to gain. This method on its own purely focuses on what the brain of the character is doing and therefore offers no incentive for the actor to translate this into a physicality/what actions would come out of it, by creative a physical action (transitive verb) for each unit you are able to have an overall understand of both the characters thoughts and how these are pursued in their actions. 

The method of physical action was explored in rehearsals via creating a 'score' of physical actions and then repeating these until they become so familiar that you are no longer acting them. To understand thks furthur in class we did a simple action, like opening your front door, in such detail that was only specific to how we open OUR EXACT front door. This piece of movement should feel natural and not forced, the aim was to be able to do it/describe it in such detail that anyone could come along and action opening your door exactly how you would.