This Monday, we were given our section of A Woman Alone. Our class will be performing sections of the monologue in three groups of four. Our group was given the section at the end of the play, where The Woman is overwhelmed with her surroundings and starts to think suicidal thoughts. We decided that we would start our extract five pages from the very end of the monologue, because we want between10 and 15 minutes of stage time.
After choosing our extract, we decided to divide up all of our lines according to our characters and also, decide when we will be saying things in synchronicity. Below are some pictures of the section we were given. My lines are in blue and yellow (yellow being the synchronised lines). I think that synchronised lines will help establish that we are the same person but it's not a perfect way of doing this because although we are all saying the same things, at the same time...we are not necessarily saying them with the same intonation. This of course is because we are supposed to have different opinions about what we are saying.
We talked about how we would distinguish between our characters/elements of The Woman further and experimented with some movements we could implement. But again, one thing we talked about is how our characters would react to the others when they were speaking differently, yet still have the same initial reaction because we are all the same character. We're basically trying to figure out how we can be one person, but still so separate in how we react and act. How do we find the balance between being the same and juxtaposing -showing The Woman's sporadic personality?
Last week, when we were devising the beginning of A Woman Alone, to show that all the elements were the same character, one of the other groups had the brilliant idea to have the whole group start out in one place -connecting them as the same character- and after this had been established, they broke off into their more separate acts. I think that this was an excellent way of informing the audience that they were all the same person, only different elements, because it's a physical representation of this fact -which in fact is also coinciding with the Berkoff style.
Below:
- Melody's lines are in orange, again, she plays the 'psycho'
- Megan's lines are in green, she plays 'housewife'
- Emily's lines are in pink, she plays 'sexy'
- My lines are in blue, I play 'bubbly'
- Yellow lines are synchronised lines
Today we decided what our set would be, choosing to stick with a simple riser frame... or the metal bit of the tables we often use in drama (I'm sure you will see in future videos if you haven't before), without using the wooden lid (that makes the table). We decided to go with only using the frame this time around because there are so many ways that you can hold the frame without even using the top of the table. For example, you can hold it in front of your faces as a 'picture frame' or knock it on it's back for us to step into and isolate one of the elements of our character (and draw the attention of the audience to them). I think that if we really need to we can add the top bit of the table back into our piece if we really need to later on.
We also thought that only using the frame would allow us to experiment more with physical theatre and force us to use more of a Berkoff style of movement. It would force us to use each other for height, as we wouldn't have a table for that... and to focus more on the proxemics with each other rather than the relationship one may have with a set. This set will be easier to move about and manipulate as a group, creating more dynamic and fast paced movements like Berkoff's.
With language motivating what we were devising, we started to read out our script and come up with movements that seemed to represent what we were saying. For example, at the very beginning of our section, The Woman is trying to keep out her former Italian lover (the young boy who is infatuated with her) and has chained the door to keep him out:
"Get the hell out of my house with that hand of yours! (the hand makes insistent signs that she should come closer)"
-To represent this, we decided to have Emily hide behind Megan and I and stick out her hand in between our bodies as we knelt in front of her. The frame was in between Emily and us, representing the 'door'.
-When Melody says, "hand", we all put out our arms in a synchronised motion and hold up our hands, as if to say stop with that hand to the boy at the 'door'. When devising motions we are also trying not to make them too fluid or dance like as the Berkoff style is more harsh, defined, and staccato. So for instance, when we put out our arms we are keeping them straight and doing it quite suddenly.
One thing I've been thinking about is how in our section the door is mentioned a lot, so we are going to have to think of many ways to create the door. Because although creating or referring to the same door would establish who we were talking to (the Italian boy), The Woman herself seems not very aware of her surroundings. It's only a theory, but even her own monologue, story, and movement may all just be in her head...this is her own representation of what is going on. This is why the Berkoff style of physical theatre, I think, caters itself so well to A Woman Alone because the style itself is odd and seems like a very good representation of how The Woman's mind would be working if she is mentally ill (very likely). Some of the YouTube videos I linked in my last blog for instance show actresses performing A Woman Alone first of all by themselves...but also, performing the monologue without much movement and an element of realism. The Berkoff style is allowing us to represent her mental state through movement, so (linking back to the 'door') it does not need to be consistent in staging and representing the same things but rather, more expressive. This is the same with any reoccurring thing in our bit of the monologue -such as the brother in law, her baby, the phone, or any other object in her flat.
Additionally, this variety in how we represent things will allow for the audience never to be bored and consistently engaged. It's a bit like what you call the 'Kuleshov Effect' in film, how different little clips edited together (montage), can challenge the audience to create meanings for the images that are being portrayed and connect them together in their heads. People will be taking more away from the sporadic and sequential bits of our section, rather than the realistic isolation portrayed in the YouTube videos I watched -I'm thinking. It will require more brainpower for sure, but will be exciting.
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