Howdy collective doodies. This week I haven’t really thought in depth about any of the stage craft areas outside of my own as I have been quite preoccupied with these ones. Shall we start with acting?
Acting
…Is the hardest profession in the world. Haha, when musical rehearsals and homework start to blur together, you know its getting sad. This week I’ve been struggling a bit with the acting. The Guide is such a good character and I really want to do a good job of her and live up to the potential of this character. This week I haven’t been playing the guide consistently, one second she’s a bitch then she’s nice then she’s just Lisa running around yelling at people. There are two main reasons for this.
1) I’m no the most literate person in the world, so even though I go over the lines before hand and think about what emotion to put into them, each time I read the lines its like I’m reading them for the first time. So until I learn my lines, I will have to be reading them and stumbling over them and they will be foreign to me so I won’t be doing them convincingly. It’s like every rehearsal is a cold read, which is why the Guide seems a little two dimensional at the moment. But of course this will correct itself as soon as I learn my lines off by heart.
2) I haven’t been getting into character before each rehearsal. I now have a back-story for my character and I know her motivations for everything, but I never seem to have time to get into character when we’re warming up. This might be because we play Zap as a warm up and while it gets us energised, it doesn’t allow time to focus, and warm up our voices and bodies. I really found it so much more useful when myself, Tash, Josh and Erika (and I think Burak? I can’t remember, haha sorry Burak!), did our little warm up in the private side bit of the room where the bolsters are. This helped a lot but I think it may have been a bit rushed.
Anyway those are my excuses for sucking right now. But what is more important is why I rule. Haha. I made up the background story for The Guide which I think fits with everything she does and explains everything.
The Guide
So here are some little things about the Guide:
*Her name was Seana
*She was 24 when she died
*She was born and raised in Castle Hill NSW
*She moved to Sydney when she finished school and did a business course for 3 years
*She was engaged to a man named Mark who was born in Australia but spent most of his life in France.
*She travelled with Mark to France often but never bothered to learn the language
*She was a secretary at a big company
*She wasn’t one for reflection; she was more of a “live for the moment and never look back” person
*Mark owned a motor bike and drove her to work each day on the back of it
*She was a bit of a wild child but always acted professionally at work
*She had an excellent and polite phone manner
*She had a very short temper and often had fights with Mark; she’d crack it with him over the smallest things
*She didn’t have much contact with her family, simply out of laziness, though she claimed it was because she was a free spirit
*On her and Mark’s 3 year anniversary when she was walking across the road to get coffee for her boss. A car came screaming down the street and hit her, she died before the ambulance arrived
*When she reached the void she was in denial and didn’t believe she was dead at first
*She had never reflected at all in her life and couldn’t think of just one moment to sum her up and to live for again and again for all eternity.
*She watched everyone else in her group choose their memories almost instantly which made her even more frustrated that she couldn’t think of anything. She vented this frustration by fighting with and yelling at her guide and was so busy being angry she didn’t stop and think about what a nice, polite person she mostly was.
*She has been stuck in the Void for 13 years and has aged that much, though it seems to her like forever
*She gets bored of doing the same spiel over and over again so tries to make each group a little different
*She is so tormented by being stuck in this loop of being the Guide forever and not knowing anything about who she really is
*Her good side does shine through though, as she doesn’t want people to have to suffer the same torment as her
*But she has her own selfish motives too, hoping that each person may prompt a memory of who she is, and some have come close, but no one ever really gives a memory that she can use to remind her of who she was and stop this hell, which just makes her more frustrated
*She grows almost angry at the people she is trying to help after some time, as they aren’t doing anything to help her and they seem to pass on so easily, which makes her a bit jealous
*After a while this spite turns to arrogance because she realises that she is the only way out for these people, that she is almost God-like to them and that they are entirely dependant on her
I came up with these things because it explains her spontaneous “chameleon like” behaviour. It also explains why she seems to direct most of her speech at Alex and is interested in his and Nia’s memories. He feels familiar to her as he is so much like Mark. The motor bike memory especially captures her attention. At the end she says:
“I listened to your stories as I’ve listened to thousands of others…hoping in some way they would remind me. That some faint image of my life would return… something to cling to. A second chance to decide. From the moment I saw you there was something familiar about you. I had a feeling your memory could be the one.”
This prompted most of my thoughts on her and helped to develop her well.
Directing
I started blocking this week, and sort of got thrown in the deep end, having to block a scene because someone was away, so we had to jump straight to the first Void, which I hadn’t prepared for. So a bit of spontaneous blocking was needed. But then I called a lunch time rehearsal to tidy it up and choreograph the bikes and it looked really, really good. No one had their scripts so the new direction wasn’t written down by the cast, so next time we run that scene in class I’m just going to make sure everybody knows where to jostle and when, and make sure the cannon effect is achieved on the corners with both the bodies and the voices. I had a completely different idea in mind from what Mr Cooper suggested and ended up blocking for Sophie’s memory, but his way seems to work well too. I’d still like to see my way as well and compare the two just to make sure we’re doing it best, we may end up putting in elements from bot of our ideas.
I’ve also been doing some dramaturgy on near death experiences and found some interesting stuff that I’ll put onto a word doc at some point in time so as I can post it up here. I think it will be especially helpful for Sophie as she supposedly has had a near death experience before.
Well that’s all folks, till next time
