IMPROVEMENTS

At the moment, we have blocked the entire play with the exception of the last multiple pages. Act 1 is looking really good, and the energy is up and people seem to know their characters and understand what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. I believe this partly due to the fact that at the start of our rehearsals, Will would sit and watch every scene and work on small details of the acting so their characterisation was truthful.

He did this throughout out Act 1, and partly Act 2 but I believe it was less thorough, and by the time we got to Act 3 it was barely, but I do not blame him as he didn’t/doesn’t have the time to sit through every scene and pick at cracks until the purest form of the character is achieved. Therefore, whilst we weren’t in a scene we were to watch a scene as a director and tell the actors when we didn’t believe what we saw on stage, and I did this but I realised certain people either didn’t value my opinion or thought I was being pedantic or vindictive when I told them to keep doing a certain bit because I didn’t believe them at all, or that they should experiment with different ways of communicate the happenings in the scene.

I was slightly ruthless whilst directing scenes but because I wanted it to look good for the audience, and for the actors to truly feel their characters, but also because I could envision so clearly how the scene could look, and the potential the actors weren’t fulfilling yet, but by accepting my criticism and being truthful it would be practically perfect.

Nevertheless, some improvements/things that we need to insure we collectively do for our next rehearsal are;

1. Learn lines and cues: not everyone knows their lines which slows down the progression of the play and causes the audience to lose interest and energy, which has an effect on the other actors on stage who know their lines. This also has an effect on those who do not know their lines as they feel incompetent and unimportant.
2. Knowing your scenes: there are times when one person will get up to go on stage but everyone else is still sitting down when it’s a chorus scene because they’re not following the script or they haven’t noted their entrance into the scenes. This wastes time, and prolongs the time the play needs to be devised.
3. Character: we should remember that although this play is our first encounter with our characters, they were not only birthed when we met them. These characters, yet fictionally, have lived and continue to live, depending on the time period, without us – basically, they are people like us; with problems, cracks, memories, and feelings. We need to bring our characters to rehearsal, and establish them.
4. Energy: we need to stop exhaling before lines, and therefore exhaling our preparation and energy for the scene.