NOTES FOR SECOND PERFORMANCE

I feel there was a detrimental lack of energy and positivity during this performance, I feel that we lost our belief in ourselves and they play and so this was reflected to the audience. Moreover, I picked up on some things I was not happy with personally, and wrote down five things for me to remember to think, not necessarily do, but to feel before and during the final performance:

1. To be bold and fearless; to be afraid to seem unattractive or silly.
2. To keep the energy up, by giving it, retrieving, and accepting it in scenes.
3. To put emphasis on the important words in my dialogue; colour the words.
4. To be loving/caring/nurturing as Sister Ambrose yet firm/slightly chastising, by remembering what the stakes are and how high they are – Grandier is going to die!
5. To give myself wholeheartedly and wildly to the play, especially in the scene where I have to pretend I am ‘orally birthing a melon’ and as Sister Ambrose.

In this feedback session we gave each other notes; notes for the cast. Here is what I recorded;

• Remembering our diagonals especially in Grandier’s ‘with the turn of a scalpel’ scene
• To not be dead weight on stage, always living in the moment in character
• Knowing cues
• To be precise and sure of what you’re supposed to be doing on stage
• Enjoy what you’re doing, and if not, pretend!
• Speak to affect
• To project and keep the voice steady, supported and consistent
• To layer the chorus sections, and overlap the scenes
• Chorus need to feed from the action on stage
• To forget your lines before speaking as if you don’t you are not speaking instinctively
• To remember character relationships
• To alienate the audience through expressive weirdness; to be abstract