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.