One key person, who had a big part found the accent especially frustrating. This added tension to our group even in early rehearsals because some people who found the accent hard were not really doing their utmost to co-operate with everyone. In retrospect, we didn’t really do the best we could to support the people who were having difficulties, but it was hard to feel understanding when people weren’t even trying their hardest.
Another problem this brought was that for a few lessons, or just brief moments, we had people getting so frustrated with the script and the accent, that we weren’t spending our time doing productive rehearsals.
One rehearsal that went particularly badly was when we were rehearsing the fight scene between Audrey and Peter. To be fair, it must have been a difficult scene to choreograph, because the two people had to flip over, whilst still fighting. But the fact that we were spending so much time getting the fight scene perfect meant that we had less time to work on other unsure parts. This annoyed me, amongst others because I felt that the amount of time we were spending on that one part was too excessive. At this moment there was a definite divide in our group: the two girls wanting to do the fight scene and everybody else getting annoyed about the amount of time it seemed we were wasting. At this rehearsal it seemed that our group were not working together to help each other.
We read through our script in the next few lessons, and then we started to block it. Our group had scenes 15-29 (the end) and in these scenes we needed to be in “The Hollow”. We had a basic idea of where we needed to be for each part. But the sections we had involved us running around the back of the audience many times throughout the scenes.
Blocking was relatively successful, but I found it hard to concentrate on my lines and move to the right places at the same time, especially as I wasn’t totally secure with my lines. Other people who had more lines than me found it even harder to remember their cues. This made the first few rehearsals with movement very slow and tedious.
There were several moments where we thought we staged it well. One was actually the fight scene.
At this section we had the Peter and Audrey fighting in centre stage and we had John standing at the back of them. Whilst Raymond and Willie were on hay bales, and Angela was just standing between John and Raymond. When we blocked this we managed to space out evenly on the stage. But in the actual performance, neither Willie nor Raymond stood on the hay bales and it just looked like we were in a huge crowd all on one level. This could have definitely been improved if we had remembered our positions.
One scene we did stage well was when we ran to the field. We were spaced out well on the stage on lots of levels to make it look visually interesting.
We had Audrey, Angela and John on hay bales. Raymond and Willie were on the floor and Peter was lying on the floor. It would have looked really interesting for the audience.
A scene where that we had to stage well was when we went into the Hollow. We stayed in the Hollow for lots of scenes so we had to make it look interesting. I tried to fidget a lot to make myself look childlike. When we watched the video of the performance, I noticed that I was actually fidgeting a lot. I kept stretching my legs out in front of me and playing with bits of straw. I think this made me look like a seven-year old.
A moment where it was really important to remember the actions and directions was where Peter and John went to get the pram.
Select a key moment and really analyse the actions of the group – and especially yourself; how did you make your character convincing, what were the childlike movements that adopted?
Talk about the switching between scenes, some in tableaux whilst others continued acting.
Lighting.
Use of whole performance area.
In following rehearsals, getting further towards the actual performance, the biggest problem our group had was that not everyone knew their lines. This was a major problem for us because for the people who did know their lines, they didn’t have the cues they needed. This made other people annoyed, including me! Eventually we overcame this problem by having fast read-through’s which helped people learn their cues. Another technique we used was Miss Pearson read a line and we had to say the following line. I think this also helped people learn their cues more thoroughly.
SKETCH OUT HOLLOW WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS AND STATUSES
One big break through with the script was when we added costumes. I think this was because it helped us get into the mindset and feel more in character. Another big change when we had costume was that we had a lot more energy as a group. Everybody in our group agreed that costumes really helped, and everybody was a lot happier with the way the play was going.
Costumes
Props