Berkoff/East -Week 2

Monday 

This Monday, we had a bank holiday, but my group still decided to meet up because our performance is on Wednesday. There were a few things that we needed to sort out to do with: cockney accents, defined movements, and defining who was playing the two main characters in East, Mike and Les.

Accents/Voice

The cockney accent I found particularly hard because my usual accent is an American one... I tend to go slightly Australian or 'pirate' when I try to take on this particular accent. In lesson on Wednesday we had looked at a few Youtube videos that instructed you how to do it. This is one video I found helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WvIwkL8oLc

I ended up getting a neighbour of mine, who used to be a drama teacher, to help me out. She read out the script in her best impression of a cockney accent and I tried to copy her. I still sound terrible at the end of this clip but have improved slightly: Attempted Cockney Accents

One thing that my group also wanted to implement more of into our piece was onomatopoeia, or noises. This seems to be another signature of the Berkoff style so we've added some synchronised sound effects many places -such as when we draw out our 'knives'. I think that adding these sound effects adds more to the pace and rhythm of the spoken word.

Movement

Whilst we came up with most of what we needed movement wise last Wednesday, we intended to slick this aspect of our piece up, and make our movements have more defined beginnings and ends. I think that defining the beginnings and ends of a movement are part of what contributes to the staccato feeling of Berkoff's style. This is why we felt we really needed to get this right.

Characters

At first, we had divided up the lines of  this extract evenly between us, and we became three characters instead of just two. However, in East, usually there are five cast members, but only two of these members are not ensemble. We felt it was important to define our characters as well so we switched up who said some lines and made it so that I played Les and Alexis played Mike, whilst Megan played the ensemble.

Wednesday

Today in our lesson we were given about an hour to slick up our extracts from East and to take on an extra criticisms from other groups before doing our final performance. During this time we didn't change much but it was brought to our attention that -at times- we speak too fast. Despite the fact that the Berkoff style has a more staccato pace, that doesn't mean speeding up when we say things is a good idea. You can still have a staccato beat to your movements and words without rushing your lines -there is a difference.

This is a video of our final performance of this extract from East:

East Performance

After watching everyone's performances, we were given another extract of a play by Steven Berkoff called Lunch. Usually performed by two actors, one man and one woman (as pictured below), the play explores the ups and downs of relationships over the course of a lunch hour by the seaside. In our lesson, we were put into groups of four, where one actor would play the character and the other, would play that character's consciousness. I was given the role of the man (not his conscious).

www.thestage.co.uk

When dividing up the lines of the extract, we decided to give any irregular or sexually charged lines to the consciousness. We decided that anything that one would not say to another when they had only just met should be left to the conscious to say, whilst anything that seemed relatively normal or guarded the character could say "out loud".

After we divided up the lines, we decided to start blocking out the extract using what we already know of Berkoff's style. We decided to opt towards the conscious(s) having more of a Berkoff style of movement -with huge gestures motivated by spoken word- whilst the characters would be more passive with their facial expressions and naturalistic in movement. We also decided that the conscious(s) could react to both to the characters and each other but the characters could not react to each other's conscious.

We also thought that it would be a good idea to establish that we were the same characters, just different parts of the character (conscious and man or woman), from the very start of the extract (and to enforce that throughout). Megan, who is my conscious, and I decided that when we walked in we would be attached to each other and Megan would be the first to recognise that the woman was there...making me look. Megan grabbed my waist and we synchronised our movements when we walked onstage, so that it would look like we were the same person. When reacting to things, Megan and my reactions are often similar, but we decided to distinguish between me and her, making mine more subdued and less verbal, whilst she uses a lot of groans and sighs.

Below are some pictures of the extract from Lunch, the highlighted lines are mine. You can see that there are more lines for the conscious of the man than for the man. Because of this, I decided that I would subtly react to what my conscious was saying almost every time Megan said or did anything. I thought that this awareness of Megan would show that we were connected. Megan for the most part motivates everything that I say and do.