Mrs Meadows- Mrs Meadows is the eldest of the women who visits the baths. She is in poor health living alone with her daughter Dawn, who has a mental disability. She is a mother of 3 but rarely gets to see her other children and this has an obvious effect on her relationship with Dawn. They appear to have a love hate connection with Mrs Meadows constantly telling Dawn to “shutup and go and get in the steam” and in turn Dawn nags and pesters her mother about inane things such as food and whether or not her mother has been seeing someone! The baths for her are a place to relax with a trashy novel, have a gossip, talking to anyone that will listen, and have her corns done! She is quite firm and old fashioned and it is clear that having to look after dawn is a huge strain for her.
Like Josie, we didn’t want Mrs Meadows to come across as a caricature of an old woman with a bad back and an East End accent. We particularly wanted to focus of the relationship between her and her daughter as the majority of her speech is either moaning at Dawn or talking about her! Having said that however, we thought it was crucial that we got beneath the façade of her as a troubled mother with a disabled daughter, and to pick out emotions and past experiences from her life as a young girl. It was apparent from the text that she is a comical character, particularly in her the relationship with Dawn. As she is the oldest character we wanted some form of wisdom to be emitted from her, a character to which the others could look up to, especially as she does have a lot to say!
Dawn- Dawn is around the same age as Josie but the contrast is amazing. Mentally disabled, Dawn lives with her mother in their run down house. She is constantly hungry and makes a habit of pestering her mother Mrs Meadows. She is on heavy tranquillisers to treat her mental illness and doesn’t go out of the house only to go to the baths. It is apparent that she feels tied down by her mother’s authority and also that of her sister Bernice who tears up the love book Josie made her. It could be said that she recognises how different she is from most women her age but through most of the text she is seen obeying her mother’s orders, wandering around or skipping.
When we read the text we found Dawn to be incredibly funny, however we weren’t entirely sure of her age, we interpreted her to be quite a young girl but clues such as her former job at the police station were an indication that she wasn’t. As she is around the same age as Josie we wanted to provide a distinct comparison between the two. We didn’t want to make Dawn appear completely stupid and dependent on her mother, as although she is a very comical character, it is not something we wanted to use just to gain a laugh.
Jane- Jane is a friend of Nancy’s from school but has been visiting the baths for a lot longer. A divorcee with a young son, Jane has gone back to university to study Islamic history. Although from the same social class as Nancy, with the same schooling and coming from a “good home”, she lives off a grant and without the income of a male, like the majority of women that visits the baths. This is a point of aggravation for her and much of her speech revolves around the men in her life, past and present. She has a very clear opinion of what she thinks about men and isn’t afraid to voice it, perhaps being the most feministic of all the women. She is certain of what she wants in life but is also very sensitive, particularly about her past.
There is a striking difference between Jane and Nancy, who share a very close relationship in the act. Reading the act, we saw Jane and the sort of friendly peace maker, who doesn’t, like Mrs Meadows and Josie, have a lot to complain about. But in her own way she does have a lot to say and we didn’t want the voices of the more prominent characters to overpower her too much. We imagined her to be quite hippyish, if not that then well cultured and travelled. She speaks about men very passionately, in a different way to Josie and we ultimately saw her as a contrast to many of the characters.
Nancy- recently divorced, Nancy is a friend of Jane’s and enters the baths as a total stranger to the others. She has 3 children all of whom live away from home. Because of this and the recent separation from her husband of 22 years Nancy is very lonely, and seeks comfort in her dog Nina. Nancy is from the upper class, with an account for a father and having never experienced debt. As a newcomer Nancy is very weary of the other characters and reluctant to expose herself, both physically and emotionally. She talks of her children with great fondness and her husband with contempt but also bewilderment at what she did with wrong for him to leave. Nancy is only just realising what was missing from her relationship, being able to ask for what she wanted and this gives the impression that as a wife she was obedient and wifely, perhaps a explanation for her obsession with washing machines and decanters. She certainly isn’t the girl that Jane knew to be the one “who could fit herself into a 2 foot square locker with the door shut.”
I was cast as Nancy, humorously as I am a white middle class girl who speaks good English! Reading through the character of Nancy I thought she looked quite accessible and easy to portray, but I think I felt like this as when reading the script the parts of Josie and Dawn really stood out in comparison to Nancy. It was apparent from the text that Nancy and Jane have a close relationship but also a very sentimental history and as most of Nancy’s speech is between herself and Jane I felt it was important that this relationship was conveyed in a way that enabled me to bring out the character of Nancy as unlike Josie I do not move around or use my body a lot. Josie is another character that Nancy forms a relationship with. When reading the script it was very noticeable how different they both are, the different backgrounds they come from and lifestyles they lead. This was the way I initially interpreted it but in actual fact when putting the text into action it became clear that they do infact admire a lot in each other and desire to be a little like the other and less like themselves. This relationship was important for me in portraying Nancy as through their conversations she reveals much about her husband and her distant children, 2 issues very close to her heart. I wanted to establish Nancy as feeling increasingly accepted within the baths as the play progressed because essentially the ruling idea of the play is the unity of women from different class and walks of life. However, she only fully converses with 2 of the women so I concentrated intensely on her reaction to what other characters were saying and the way she used her body in different situations and at different phases of the pla,y confident at the start, closed during the middle and quite open towards the end. When reading the script I got the feeling that Nancy was the stereotype of a housewife from the upper class. She does not have financial problems like the rest of the woman. One thing that sets her aside from this stereotype and makes her equal to the others is the experiences she has endured with men. Her husband recently left her and she is feeling very lonely and at a point in her life where anything is possible, the fact of the matter is, she doesn’t know what she wants. Factors like this become more apparent throughout the play as she relaxes and opens up. It was hard to steer away from the stereotype and typicality of a woman like Nancy, and at first I wanted to dig deeper and completely reject this stereotype but throughout the rehearsal process I realised that the qualities she has, and the fact that she appears in such way in the text was in fact deliberate. It was challenging having to play someone who I couldn’t relate to atal, despite being cast for the role because I was thought appropriate for it!
I did many things to develop Nancy as a character. I focused on getting into her shoes, literally, by practising her walk and pyhsicalisation through the act. For example, when she first enters she is full on confidence and walks with an heir of confidence but this is destroyed by nasty glances from Josie and as time goes on through this scene her body language is very closed. I had to concentrate on making her voice very posh and so watched television shoes to acquire this. I used staneslaski techniques such as breaking down the objectives of lines such as when talking of her finaical status to going on to telling Josie that her husband left her. These 2 topics, although said in the same conversation depicted a very different mood and feeling from her. I used emotion memory when talking about her husband to gain a sense of sadness, concentrating on ordeals from my own life that stirred these emotions.
