On the nature of things

Found out this week that the Latin that Pope Joan speaks almost incomprehensibly in her drunken state is Lucretius On the Nature of Things which is a poem which, amongst other themes, mainly discusses the problems brought about by religion and fear of death. The particular passage recited is from the proem of Book II and talks about watching other men struggle with turbulent lives and troubles from a serene platform.

Also found a really useful study guide, which has a lot of comment by Caryl Churchill and some interesting points about the Brechtian style which is ingrained in the play simply by the type of writing. Click on the title (On the nature of things) above to find it.

Yes, I'd always interpreted the last line 'Frightening' as Churchill's premonition/warning of what the eighties would be like under Thatcher but it could also be read like that. I don't think that this interpretation changes much about how we play it except perhaps that we need to believe that Angie is capable of killing her mother in the scene with her and Kit. The real animosity between them and Angie's vicious streak are definitely there in the script.

I had thought of that myself Liz! It is probably a fair assumption as in act 1, Angie does seem set on the idea, and is very sheepish when questioned about Joyce in Act 2.

Though there is no solid evidence, I think the way Andrea has played it so far, it could be fairly assumed. Does that change anything in the way that it is performed then if we are working on that assumption?

There is a thought that the final words from Angie at the end of the play are off the back of Angie having some sort of a premonition of killing her mum, and the end of act 3 would seem much more sad. hmmmm

I found myself wondering when we ran Act One (including the Angie and Kit scene) whether Angie has in fact killed Joyce before running off to London to see Marlene. 'Does Joyce know?' - 'It doesn't matter.' Just a slightly odd thought.

Half way there and we are on track. Tonight we ran the whole of act 2 (The office section).

Even with the books, the girls are really developing their characters and relationships on stage. blocking aside, we found some really great relationship moments.

* The relationship between Marlene and Angie is really developing. We saw how needy Angie is in this scene. The repetition of the phrase 'I Wanted to see you' from Angie to Marlene is highlighted with Marlene being pro active in moving away from Angie whenever she shows affection toward her, and in turn Angie responds to her avoidance by becoming introverted and distant. Andrea's body language during these moments is perfect - she becomes deflated and defensive all at the same time.

This in contrast with Marlene s later affection towards Angie at the end of the scene when she is sleeping, and not directing any love and respect her way.

* We discovered Nell's masculine side as opposed to Winn's more feminine side. Nell opens the scene telling her Magazine gossip column style story about her weekend and her scandalous relationship with a married man. She makes it seem romantic " his wife was visiting her mother. It was like we were living together' - as opposed to Nell's very straight down the line view of Derek who asked her to marry him ' I told him I'm not going to play house'

There are a lot of moments throughout the scene where Nell comes across as being busy and hard. He dialogue is very quick and sharp and she often bites back and criticises Winn in a backhanded way.

Win: Tough bird like us?
Nell: We could do with a few in here
Win: There's nothing going here.

This reveals that Nell clearly doesn't think Win is like her and Marlene, and certainly doesn't have the same aspirations, and we later discover in Win's Monologue, that unlike Marlene and Nell, she has a failed Marriage and has been flaky and emotionally unstable throughout her life.

I asked the girls to really play on this contrast in character and directed Becky to play Win much more scatty, lounging and relaxed in comparison to Nell who I asked to play busy and direct. I think this gave them a lot of lea way to really play on these elements and I think helped Paula(Nell) to develop her annoyance of Win throughout the scene.

This contrast is then really highlighted when Marlene enters - as Win skips around with joy about Marlene s promotion and really sucks up to her

Win: We'd rather it was you than Howard. We're glad for you aren't we Nell?

And Nell's abrupt and sarcastic response

Nell: oh yes. Aces.

It is even more clearer by the end of the scene that Marlene is much more like Nell than she would like, and that neither of them particularity find Winn a threat.

I have highlighted this by having Marlene and Nell's desks close to each other and Nell over the other side of the office.

Their desks and their costumes will also highlight this contrast. Win s desk will have trinkets and nick knacks on as opposed to Nell's tidy and organised desk. In comparison, Marlene's desk will be almost empty to show : She is no longer part of this 'team' and that she is on her way up and out of there.

The interviews highlight these attributes even more. Nell's interview with Shona - a 'woman' she thinks has the same ideals as her- shows Nell's desire to have someone more career driven in the office, and when she turns out to be a fake, we see an admiration for the girls brave attempt to be successful and a slight disappointment in not finding a co worker who thinks the same as she does.

In contrast, Win's interview with a strong, experienced female, who is clearly not feminine or gossipy like herself turns out to be a complete shambles - she becomes over emotional and loses control of the situation - accidentally coming across as patronising and bored by the conversation - when in fact she just doesn't identify with her.

The rehearsal went great. I just cant wait until they get their books down as I'm sure we will have more scope to delve deeper into the characters.

Rehearsal after rehearsal...

This week has been a bit challenging, to say the least. It got off to a great start with Mike's workshop which, as he has said, took Stanislavskian and Brechtian techniques and applied them to our historical characters. It was nice to be able to get away from the scenes for a rehearsal and just spend some time getting in to our characters, and also learning about how the other girls see their characters. I think it also gave us a bit of a chance to get to know each other too. Mike led the workshop without the slightest hint of fear, so much so that we didn't suspect he was nervous. If anything, he was making me a bit nervous as he really was applying the techniques just as I remember learning them years ago in college and being quite the teacher-figure.

It was helpful to think about Gret and her movements and gestures, and to some extent the world from which she emerged, despite her being an entirely fictional character. I think, however, I am going to need some help from Mike to get me into character as Angie. I am finding her increasingly difficult to fathom out as the rehearsals go on. She is described a 'slow-witted', 'lumpy' girl. She is regularly referred to as being thick and shows it on occasion. But she shows very different sides to her character depending on who she is with. Her first appearance with her younger friend, Kit, shows her being aggressive and dominating. She's moody and full of attitude. This is continued with Joyce, her 'mum', who she despises and threatens. It's anger she shows more than slowness with these two. But with Marlene she is desperate to impress, sweet and polite and her lack of intelligence really comes across . It makes me wonder that perhaps she is not just stupid, but maybe there has been no one around to notice that she is struggling and to help her. Her Dad has left, her Mum blames her for not being able to have a life and kids of her own and the only kid around is 4 years younger than her, it's not surprising that she is a bit angry. But to portray all these traits and emotions and still keep her a realistic and rounded character is proving difficult. Not to mention that I am playing a girl more than 10 years younger than myself! It will require quite the stretch of the imagination by the audience and I really hope I can make it work.

Well, I have had plenty of time to work on Angie this week, with three consecutive rehearsals during the week and I am already exhausted! I have rehearsed Act 3 over three nights, but because not everyone is able to do rehearsals on the same day we rehearsed once with Emma and myself, with Mike being Liz, once with Liz and myself, with Mike being Emma and then slotted it all neatly together with myself, Liz and Emma. Well, maybe not so neatly as Leasa would have liked. It is a really difficult and emotional scene and brings the whole play together. However, watching the confrontation between Marlene and Joyce as a spectator gave me shivers so I think it will turn out well.

Character work-shop

Sunday was a bit of a daunting prospect for me, as I had been asked to lead a work-shop with the girls, by the director. She was hoping to get the girls to develop a 'gesture' which they felt best represented their characters, plus help them understand a little of how, developmentally, Leasa was intending to focus the action and acting in the differing scenes of the play. The daunting aspect of this for me was two-fold; One, I was doing a work-shop with teachers (most of the girls professions) of which two of them are Drama teachers, and Two, This was my first official work-shop session that I had ever lead. No pressure then.

I decided early, and with Leasa's lead, that I should focus on the different acting techniques Leasa was looking to adapt to the performance; Stanislavski and Brecht. I also knew that I had a limited amount of time in which to convey a general idea of these techniques to the actresses.

I therefore began with having the cast stand in a circle and imagine a beam of light around them. The only things they could see were the clothes their 'historical' characters were wearing, taken from each of their characters periods in time, eg; Pope Joan's attire from 854-856ad. Each actress then chose a single moment from their particular characters period and focused on their clothes from that moment. For Marlene and the Waitress, their particular histories began 5 mintues before the resturant scene began (The Waitress), and one hour before the scene (Marlene). This technique of visualisation and imagination is a technique mentioned in Constantin Stanislavski's book 'An Actor Prepares', in the titled section 'Imagination'. In order for an actor to fully immerse themselves into becoming a character, Stanislavski believed in using certain methods, including 'Circles of Concentration'. In this technique an actor or actress is encouraged to fully engage their imagination and visualise the world around them in great detail. Obviously to start with a blank page as it were and blindly come up with a characters surroundings would be asking a lot. So each character is given a reference point from which to start. For the historical characters in this play, this was easily created as they had time periods, places and cultures from which to work. As the technique also called for a lot of detail, the Circle of Concentration method was divided into three seperate circles. The first one being the beam of light mentioned above.

I asked each of the actresses to not only describe the clothes, in detail (patterns, colours, etc.) that they were wearing, but also the feel of them, the state of them, their weight and comfort, etc. Each actress in turn took a good few mintues describing in detail their attire, with some of them even phyiscally feeling or animating the clothes to the rest of the group in order for each of us to 'see' what they had.

From that I moved onto the Second Circle of Concentration, the immediate world around them. I told them that the beam of light around them was expanding to reveal what they could now see to their left, right and front. The images they produced were from the period they came from, rather than the time they appear together in the resturant scene. And again not only did I ask them for what they could see, but also things like the weather, the temperature, sounds and the like.

For the final Circle, I altered the technique a little and asked each of the characters how they felt emotionally about the world around them. Where they comfortable in the place they found themselves? Did they recognise it? How did they feel about their life up until this point? What were their immediate thoughts and feelings? What might they be thinking about in terms of their future?

It must be noted that there is no right or wrong answers for any of the questions or descriptions that any of the actresses came up with. This is a technique designed to encourage the actress, or actor, to see, and feel, a little more of the character they are portraying. One of many of Stanislavski's methods.

Now I wanted to introduce a little of the acting techniques of Brecht, a very stylised method designed to introduce audiences to the injustices and questionable practices of the world around them. One particular technique that Brecht wanted his actors and actresses to do, was NOT to immerse themselves in the world of their characters. He wanted his audiences to be fully aware that they were watching a performance, not to get lost within a world of fantasy and fiction that appeared on the stage. In order to achieve this, one method he wanted to employ involved getting his actors and actresses to 'demonstrate' characters. For example, take the comedian Billy Connolly, one of the best exponents of this particular type of acting (though funnily enough he may be unaware of it). Whenever Billy describes his past, or people he has met, he breifly acts out the encounter for humourous effect. The audience are fully aware that they are watching Billy portray someone else. They never, for a second, forget that it is Billy they are watching, because he doesn't immerse himself into the world of that character and therefore draw the audience into a fictional world where the audience start feeling sympathetic towards that someone. So, for an actor or actress using this technique, when they themselves are seen doing something decidedly uncomfortable on stage, the audience, rather than sympathise with the character, question the reason for the actor or actress to do what they are doing, and what kind of world would allow that to happen.

The actions that Billy Connolly performs on stage, Brecht called 'gestus'. Each action performed by the actresses during the resurant scene would also be 'gestic' in nature, stylised and exaggerated. The resturant scene lends itself more towards Brechts methods than Stanislavskis, mainly because the scene involves characters from different time periods. A little illogical for Stanislavski's methods.

I asked each of the actresses, in two groups of two, and one of three, to come up with a gesture, 'gestic' in nature, that best represented their individual character. A tall order indeed, considering the vast histories and achievements of their characters. So I also asked them to narrow down their choice to a gesture that was either symbolic of their character, and what their character represented to women, or metaphoric of the struggles or feelings of their character, or representative of what their character might be seen doing normally within their particular culture and time.

After asking each actress individually what gesture they had come up with, I then asked the particular groups to devise a short 30 second performance, devised around the imaginary situation they had created for themselves previously using the Cirles of Concentration. Each actress also had to incorporate the gesture they had come up with into the performance.

These techniques, that I adapted and used, were to help, not only demonstrate a little of the acting methods Leasa wanted to utilise in the play, but also to introduce any of the girls that were not aware or knowledgable about them, some of the techniques Stanislavski and Brecht used. It may seem slightly bizzare to have used a Stanislavski method for what will essentially be Brechtian historical characters, but as the girls will be playing the 'Top Girl' agency staff and applicants naturalistically, a brief introduction to Stanislavski himself would allow the girls to utilise to technique of Circles of Concentration for these characters, and possibly seek out more techniques along similar lines. The gestures that each of the cast developed for they own historical characters will also be seen and used during the performance as well, specifically during the resturant scene. This possibly includes the Waitress and Marlene.

I personally thought the work-shop went very well for my first, but its benefits can only be felt by the actresses involved, and possibly seen by the director and audience. I invite them to comment honestly about the experience. I hope this blog proves useful in any research, debate or discussion you wish to use it for. Thanks for taking the time to read this.