This was also shown when I played part of the chorus in the ‘Positive Hour’ scene. Josh, Dan and I were sitting on one of the blocks watching the scene, and particularly the realisation of Hannah’s character, Miranda. Throughout the scene, there would be moments when she would pause and begin to comprehend what was happening, which we as chorus members would immediately pick up on. Miranda’s husband Roger, played by Nick, was attempting to tell her that he was homosexual, and she had put up an emotional barrier of denial which prevented her accepting this. We all used frustrated facial expressions, silent lamentation through gritted teeth and occasional frantic hand gestures to emphasise this.
More choral work was used throughout the performance, particularly with the use of mimed masks. To communicate the idea that characters were using defence mechanisms and emotional barriers against love’s realities, we mimed masks being put over, and removed from the characters’ faces. This allowed us to work without awkward props of literal masks, and showed the control that love can have over us as individuals. This was used repeatedly, and every time, the chorus worked together, and all performed the same synchronised movement. We were all playing the role of blind love itself, changing with the central characters. When there is a moment of realisation, the hands would move away, and when denial seemed to be only deepening, they moved closer. The main characters ultimately had the power to control the chorus, yet did not always use it. When playing a member of the chorus, intuition was vital, and we had to ensure our motivation was always the basis of every movement we made. Although very demanding, this definitely strengthened each piece of ensemble work we devised.
The role of Gerald was used in the Time and the Conways-based scene, to show conversely to Helena and Miranda, someone failing to see true love, and not someone seeing love that isn’t there. Gerald and Madge in this scene are so obviously besotted with each other, yet are too self-conscious to admit it. I portrayed this by physically standing far away from Ele, and using nervous laughter and lack of eye contact. Whereas the lack of eye contact with Helena symbolised low self-esteem, here it represents real insecurity and fear of what Madge may think of him.
The staging in the scenes based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream aided the characterisation of both main characters involved. The chorus members acted as a forest where Dan and I would struggle to move through, and the blocks on stage also acted as obstacles and barriers. Helena’s emotional inability to be on the same level as Demetrius was echoed through the staging, as she could physically not keep up with him, and he could easily escape. This gave me something very real to fight against as an actor, as I was not simply pretending to try and reach him, but physically it became much more difficult.
Our original stimulus material consisted of a Steinbeck quote “We are all lonely individuals, acting out our lives in a hostile environment made only acceptable by our dreams of escape.” We ran a series of workshops around this, with each group member taking a different interpretation of the quote. This introduced us to the challenge of directing and generating completely original pieces of drama. One lesson working on Berkoff led me to research some of his plays, and one that looked particularly interesting was his “The Secret Love Life of Ophelia”. Because I had studied Hamlet in English Literature, I was intrigued by the title, and found certain lines inspirational. The quote that I took from it and brought to the group was part of a letter that Hamlet wrote to Ophelia:
“So if they fail to see our burning love
If they fail to see beneath the game
If they fail to see that God demands the fusion of two souls where nature mates
They fail God’s purpose for the human race.”
We discussed the main points we took from this, and ended up with Dan coming up with the phrase “circumstantial love” – something we carried the whole way through the process, and continually referred to.
We began to think of the different ways love can change and affect our lives, and rape seemed the most extreme example. We had one lesson focussing on Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s “The Rape”, working on different ways of representing the emotions connected to this. Surprisingly, the most sinister yet effective way of staging the text was when I sat alone on the stage, reading an account of a rape, yet with no evidence of emotion whatsoever. It seemed almost like the victim had been completely stripped of any feeling; this ended up forming the basis for our rape metaphor which opened our piece. Ele played the ‘victim’, yet apart from heavy breathing, again showed little emotion. This, we felt, had a bigger impact than if we had portrayed a more dramatic reaction with screaming or crying.
One after-school session really set off our practical work on our production. Hannah had brought in a piece of music called “Lovestain” by Jose Gonzalez purely because she saw the connection with our “circumstantial love” quote, and played it to the group. Instantly, we all liked it, and two members both stated that they could imagine having something very physical happening on stage at this point. We immediately all got up from talking in a circle, and started trying out ideas.
We originally had the idea of using the setting of a doctor’s waiting room as a vehicle to expose the different circumstances of love. It was a way of realistically making the characters interact rather than creating a falsely dramatic environment such a plane crash. By having each character go into the surgery with the doctor, we would expose more about each character which eliminated any random monologues which didn’t fit or flow with the piece. Each individual character’s appointment would be interrupted with pieces from other texts that had a connection to their situation. We eventually decided against using it when watching it back on video, as it didn’t seem to contribute anything clear to our concept. This naturalism would not have been engaging for the audience, and would not have sufficiently communicated what we wanted to. It was, however, an important stage in the development of our piece, and one that we had to go through before moving onto more sophisticated ways of devising.
Texts such as Noel Coward’s ‘Private Lives’ and Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ were brought in relatively early on in the process, and even though the former was not directly used, it led us onto other similar pieces, as well as strengthening our concept. They all showed different types and severities of blind love, and gave us characters and situations to identify with immediately. Lines in ‘Private Lives’ such as “That was the trouble with Elyot and me, we were like two violent acids bubbling about in a nasty little matrimonial bottle” and “It all depends on a combination of circumstances” were so relevant to the idea of circumstantial love, yet did not fit so securely with blind love. Although it was such a shame to cut such brilliant lines, we did not want to confuse the audience by bringing in too many different elements to our concept. One member also found a selection of poems that seemed to be relevant and interesting to use. We decided on using “Babble” and “Acting”; both incorporated elements of what we wanted to achieve within our production, and had definite dramatic potential. “Now we’re acting we’re the partners in love” and other lines in ‘Acting’ seemed to sum up exactly what our concept was, and so we felt this would be very useful to use near the start of our performance. Our instinct very early on was to use Babble as our closing scene, and the title of our piece was chosen: (the last line of the poem) “It doesn’t fit this time”. This made this line stand out as an important statement which the audience would hopefully leave thinking about.
It was when we were exploring plays such as Beauty and the Beast and Time and the Conways that our final concept really began to take form. We saw a common link between all the stimulus material we had collected, in that all the characters were victims of some sort of blind love. Helena in ‘Dream’ failed to see Demetrius’ disinterest, Gerald and Madge from ‘Conways’ failed to see that they were both hopelessly in love with each other, and Beauty failed to see beyond the appearance of the Beast. This was a major breakthrough in the latter stages of the process where everything started to fit together. It linked perfectly with the original loneliness quote, as all the characters were putting on this defence mechanism of a “dream of escape” and so did not face reality. It also had obvious connections with the Berkoff play “If they fail to see” and the statements of the characters in the “acting” poem: “Now we’re acting the partners in love”.
