This lesson we decided to start blocking an entirely new section of our monologue -taking a break from the stuff we have already begun to do- in order to have a clean slate. We don't want to find ourselves running into a rut because we keep going over the same exact things. I think that in doing this we can always return to the bits of the monologue we have already blocked and improve them with new ideas.
Also, we're in a bit of a pickle because it's exam season at the moment so everyone in our group are having to take some time off from our drama lesson to do that instead. Since this week we're missing a person, we thought that blocking a whole new section would allow for us to progress through blocking the script and allow us to practice something without her. Later we will add her back into what we have already blocked. We're having to think ahead a little bit and think about how she will fit into the staging later on, but it's proven to be effective because we blocked quite a big section of the monologue (about a page).
Whilst blocking, we kept the discussion we had in last Monday's lesson in mind...taking care to define who was the chosen voice of The Woman for each line and passing the voice in different ways. We've also taken special care this lesson to experiment with proxemics and how this could help define who is the voice -for example, we've tried bobbing up if it's our turn to speak or putting our heads down in unison, excluding the speaker of that line. I think that in doing this -especially if we do it in the fast paced and staccato style of Berkoff- it will clearly define which element the audience is supposed to pay attention to at a certain time.
Wednesday
Today we are still missing a cast member unfortunately, and we decided that it was best to try and clean up the section of the monologue that we already blocked without her rather than try and visualise more of the piece without her. Despite this, we thought that we could do our best to try and quicken our pace and slicken the movements that we came up with on Monday.
One thing that we have been struggling with is the bit of the monologue where we basically are forced to wank off the Italian boy who is trying to get through the doorway of our flat. We've gotten to the point where we have created a doorway using the metal frame and decided to form a phallus with all of our hands connected to each other (similar to an earlier section of the monologue where we form the Italian boy's hand in the doorway). However, we were finding it hard to represent this correctly to the audience.
We were given some time to talk to Mr. Chipp about any problems we may be encountering with our devising and we asked him how to better create this part of the monologue. As you may be able to better visualise by watching the video pasted below, he instructed us that in order to create a more realistic phallus, we should a) physically hold each others hands, which can be done by the person on the bottom hold the person on top of the them using their thumbs, and b) start the movement (of the wank... ... ...) at a slower pace at first and gradually speed it up.
We also have been having problems integrating the riser frame into our piece and basically abandon it at the back of the stage for the majority of the piece. We think that perhaps incorporating it as a physical representation of objects and people will establish the overall situation and help define what's physically happening in the room around us and outside the door as we tell the story to our 'neighbour' (who, as I've discussed before may not even be there! But is essentially in the position of the audience...). We also think that by incorporating the riser in visually interesting ways will keep the audience engaged and help keep up the pace. Additionally, we think that it may be hard for the audience to establish where everyone is within the room (where is the brother in law and the baby, and where is the doorway?). So we think that in using the riser to create images it may be easier for the audience to understand where everyone is.
Mr. Chipp also gave an idea of how to create an image of us wheeling our brother in law along in his wheelchair into the glass door. Megan, who is the housewife, will wheel him along because she is the loving and caring element of The Woman...she will do this by holding the riser sideways to create a chair like structure. I will do a sort of squatty walk adjacent to the wheelchair and create the wheels with my hands and squeak as they rotate around. This isn't shown in the video below, but it's something else we came up with. I think it's a good way of showing this movement because it's keeping to the Berkoff style; it uses onomatopoeia with the wheels, and motivated by language after the line, "Come on. Let's take you for a nice little sexy walk". I think that the line itself and me creating the wheels makes the darker action of killing our brother in law comical which is in keeping with the Berkoff style.
The last thing we talked about today was the gun and how we are going to tackle the bit of our monologue where The Woman starts to become suicidal. We thought about adding a handgun into our props and placing it somewhere towards the front of the stage so that Melody can pick it up before she goes mental (as she is the psychotic element of The Woman). I also had the idea that perhaps we could place the gun in the hands of one of the audience members and take it from them when we need it -that way it's out of our way when we are performing and it would seem to appear out of nowhere to most of the audience. However, this may be a bad idea because it could be distracting for the audience, and it would create direct rapport with only one audience member.
After doing all of this, we performed a section of our monologue to the class. Here is the video of the performance:
There are some things we definitely need to improve about this section:
- we need to learn our lines, but that will come with time...we only just started blocking this section. It's slowing down our pace and making there be gaps in between our lines that are unnecessary
- we need to make our movements slicker and more staccato -keeping with the Berkoff style- which will be better when we have all of our cast members I'm sure
- I need to stop looking so concerned...my mouth is smiling but I'm overdoing it with my eyebrows...making me look scared at times (I'm the one wearing the Batman jumper). My character is meant to be bubbly and happy at all times; I dropped this persona at times.
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