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.