Evaluation of performance

We did our assessed performance of The Cherry Orchard on the 14th of October,  I feel that the performance went incredibly well despite some doubts during the rehearsal process. With the help of a brilliant cast and a great director we pulled off a successful show.
For my performance of the character of Ranyevskaya I think I've used the methods of stanislavsky well during rehearsal and performance, the use of characterisation, private, personal, public, objectives and given circumstances have helped me to deliver my lines successfully with meaning. I really felt as if I was living through that character. All the research into her and her lines during rehearsal really made me understand her character and how she feels about her home and family.
One person I thought pulled off an excellent performance was Skye, he took on advice given during rehearsal and really thought about what his character's objective was in the scene and played off other actors in the scene he was in really well. Although he had difficulty with objectives during the first couple of rehearsals he worked at it and came put with a great improvement.
One criticism I have to make about our final performance was the organisation backstage. It's difficult to work under a stressful condition and us as a cast did get quite agitated when we were trying to listen out for our cues and organising everyone backstage at the same time. Luckily I don't think anyone actually missed and cues and managed to get on stage on time but it was a close call.

Rehearsal notes

Costume ideas:

• long skirt
•blouse
•jewellery
•coat??
•scarf??

In my scene make sure I fake madness enough to make Joe feel awkward and drive him away off stage

-come on in character and interact with objects and people
- when new russia look up, look down
- two gestures, fiddling with bracelet and straightening cardigan
-exit

My scene

- get up in Joe's face and make sure he knows how you feel about the orchard
-give a shit about what I'm saying
-realise Joe has left and the madness act stops and brush it off as if it was nothing
-switch emotion and fade out of scene

•walk in and out of scene if it feels appropriate - treat stage as an active world

•know what my intention and objective is
•visualise the setting and the scene I'm in
•don't devoice
•remeber ranyevskaya's relationship with everyone
•be in character 4 steps before being on stage
•change patterns of the scene
•know point of address (PPP)
•understand my lines and the meanings the words have to my character

"You've got to act like you have something to lose" -Will Rennison

Rehearsal 6 evaluation

In today's rehearsal we did our first full run through of the play. There are still a few things that the group need to improve on such as not being afraid to change the pattern of the scene and finding freedom in tbeir chararcter to feel comfortable to live in the scene. They need to be open to suggestion and offers the other actors on stage are giving them.
Also becoming used to the transitions between scenes, we have only just added them in today so we have to find a way to make them work and still look naturalistic. What is going very well is some of the actors are really taking on the attitude of their character's and giving offers and playing with their character. Tbis experimenting on stage is really bringing the performance to life. One example of this is Joe's performance,  you could tell he had worked hard on learning his lines and he really got into the attitude of his character and played around and experimented with different idea's on stage.

Rehearsal 6

Speaking with meaning was one of the main things we looked at in today's rehearsal.
For me personally in this rehearsal I found it quite challenging at first to realise the meaning behind the lines I was saying, I didn't "give a shit" about the words. Ranyevskaya loved the cherry orchard and didn't want to give it up for anything because it was an emotional attachment she had with it. In my scene i had to take this into consideration and work with my character's objective to find out how she would really feel being inside her childhood home after years to find she had to let it go. After I did this I found that knowing what the lines meant to mu character made me perform with much mire energy and passion as my character would.

Rehearsal 5

In this lesson we looked at given objectives for our character's. Given objectives are important for a character to have because if they don't have them they don't have a purpose in the scene.
Given circumstances are things such as:

•Opinions your character has on other characters
•Facts about your character
•where you live
•who your are related to
•what's your character's backstory-could affect the attitude of your character now

We explored our character's given circumstances by looking through the text and finding quotes from other character's about our character or pieces that gave us a clue about our character's personality, objective and purpose.

"Acting is nothing but to live within the given circumstances" - Meisner

Objectives are broken down into two types throughout the play:

•super objective: your character's aim and purpose throughout the whole play
•objective: character's purpose throughout the scene

Circles of attention
Circles of attention is at what distance your character's attention is based. For example, a character could be having a private conversation with another character on stage but because it itba performance they cant nesisarily become quiet because the audience wouldn't hear, they'd lower their volume slightly but mostly show they're in a private conversation through their body language .There are 3 types of circles of attention:

•public- this is when they are basing their attention round the whole stage and they are in no way privatising themselves with another and speaking clearly for all to hear.
•personal- this is when two characters are in conversation but it's not necessarily private,  they might stand a little closer together but not completely closed off from everyone else.
•private- this is when the character is complety focusing all tbeir attention towards the other character they are talking with and getting closer to this person to show they are in a private conversation making it hard for others to divert the attention of the conversation.

Rehearsal 4

In today's lesson we looked at breaking up our script.
This will help us in our rehearsal process, learning our lines and exploring our character's objective. Delivery of the lines is extremely important in petformance and if you fall short of breath you will not be able to perform to your best ability. You practise saying your lines with breaking up your script and adding in slashes (/) telling you when to breath. You can use a bigger breath (//) if you feel your character needs it.
Something mentioned in our lesson was that when we inhale it is thinking about what our next action is to be and exhaling is acting on those decisions that you made whilst inhaling.
Inhale: inspire
Exhale: human action

Rehearsal 3

Rehearsal 3

In our lesson on the 2nd of september we explored different types of performance.  We looked at melodrama which is what most people were going to see before stanislavsky started putting on his plays.
Melodrama is very exaggerated and always over the top, they use typical characters such as a hero, damsel in distress, villain etc. We had to show each character physically and how obviously different they all were.
We divided up into groups and devised a piece of melodrama that included the stock characters. This was quite an easy task as all the characters were just one

 type pf personality so there was no complex character you had to portray.
We were then asked to perform again but do a naturalistic piece, this included acting an everyday scene with no melodrama in it at all. This was quite easy as well because it was just like acting as you would in an everyday situation. The pieces weren't the most exciting to watch but they were incredibly realistic. We worked on cutting them down so they were as 'to the point' as possible so it wasn't dragged out at all.