I played Sophie, the sufferer, and thought that by giving her a brief monologue at the beginning would allow her to explain how Anna affects her in her day to day life. As the role began to emerge, we thought it useful to take Sophie on an emotional journey so we could really understand the character. We aged her at around 17, which was obviously easy to relate to, as all teenage girls are somehow unhappy with their body image. To communicate this to the audience, I wore a baggy jumper and kept a very low status compared to Anna, as she was my bodies ‘puppeteer’. My low status was shown through my constant fidgeting and lack of eye contact with the character of Anna. I also thought it was important that my voice should reflect my journey. It started off relaxed, and then when Anna appeared in the mirror it changed to a more nervous style. I also became whiney and high pitched when trying to prove to Anna I hadn’t been eating. The contrast in the script where Sophie became defiant of Anna’s instructions was shown through a sudden strength in my voice, which rose to Anna’s status. The conclusion to the scene where Anna regained her power over Sophie was originally portrayed through a scream, but we thought this was too much of a cliché ending, and therefore we decided Sophie should collapse to the floor crying in a rocking motion. This action was to try and make the audience feel uneasy about the situation and leave them feeling helpless. Anna ended the scene with a monologue explaining how she/anorexia can affect someone’s life.
In another part of the performance there featured a scene in which we, as a choral group, read out a poem and represented the role of somebody trapped by illness. Again, we thought we would just have one person reading the poem as if they had written it, but although the poem was written by an epilepsy sufferer, it had no reference to the illness, therefore leaving it open to interpretation. We tried reading it out with all of us saying the lines in a monotonic voice, but we felt that had no power or emphasis, so we decided to split the lines up between us. Some lines would be said by just one person. Other lines would be spoken by maybe 2 or 3 people, and the words or phrases we felt the most powerful in relation to our main theme of being trapped, we all spoke in unison. We tried to portray the emotion of the words we said through voice. For example, ‘helpless’ was said in a very desperate, needy manor; and ‘devil’ was spoken in an evil whispery tone. The actions we used originally whilst still exploring this role, we’re very stiff and restricted. This we felt didn’t really work as it was hard to show the emotions effectively. We also tried the extreme of this, by using melodramatic actions and very over the top physical theatre. Neither of these suited the role, so we decided upon a minimalist approach, and like with our voices, use physical expression on the words that had emphasis.
There was one scene where communicating the role became difficult. We decided upon a poverty scene where everybody would multi-role, apart from one person who would remain in the same position at all times. Firstly we decided upon using voice in some way, but without any form of duologues or conversation. For example coughing, and drunken burbles – general utterances associated with poverty. However, due to the music being played over the scene it made the scene look messy and unstructured. The lack of vocal use to portray a character resulted in mime. Through this we figured we would be able to communicate our ideas with the audience, and they would understand the link to main theme. We further extended this scene and its pragmatics by running the same scene through twice. However the second time everybody apart from the one person sat in centre stage wore a mask. We thought this would be a powerful way to show the lack of responsibility people want to take for poverty, and the way people simply walk by without turning a blind eye.
This scene proved difficult for me, as typically I am a very vocal performer. A lot of my emotions come from my voice, and obviously within this scene I could not do this. Therefore I had to work on my facial expressions and gestures through various rehearsal techniques, including mime and melodrama. I did feel an improvement within my character after practicing the scene more and more. I started off by making the character over the top and gradually toning it down, to create a more realistic effect.
The audience however didn’t seem to grasp this concept, as proven through evaluative questionnaires. Looking back on this scene now, I think that perhaps a different approach could have been taken. The mask’s were maybe unnecessary, and the ignorance of today’s society that we we’re trying to show could have been shown through more character interaction. Not necessarily through voice, as we had already dismissed that idea, but through stronger use of physicality.
