Evaluation of Naturalistic Improvisation.

GCSE Drama: Evaluation of Naturalistic Improvisation

My group consisted of four characters:

Me
Roxana
Vaishali, and
David

In our Drama lessons over the past few weeks, we have been working on a style of drama called Naturalism.

Naturalism is a style of drama, which accurately recreates the details of real life on stage. It attempts to make events/situations as realistic as possible, including the characters.

We were made to create and rehearse a naturalistic improvisation and present it to the whole class.

Firstly, we thought of a setting that we could act as realistically as possible. We didn’t think of a plot. I.e. a classroom or a family round the dinner table etc. We then went off and thought about our own individual characters, then shared out ideas with the rest of the group.

During rehearsal, we each thought about our characters status, objective, action and subtext. I based each of these things on specific features of different friends. I.e. one of my friend’s status would be very confident and conveyed to the audience by slouching on a chair but with her head up high. Another friend’s objective would be to get whatever she wanted etc.

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Status means how much confidence someone has and how much they are thought of in the world. My characters status was quite high (except she wasn’t thought of in the world!!) until the end of our piece. She was very confident in herself and towards other people. She could have been seen as a bully. Her body language however, showed a moody teenager. She had her feet up on a chair that she had moved in front of her, she was moving her head and feet backwards and forwards to the beat of the music from her walkman whilst ...

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The objective means what the actor’s aim is by the end of the scene or play. This is what they want to achieve. The objective of my character was to get some piece and quiet. Ashe was in detention, despite her refusal, with a miserable and boring teacher (David), her friend (Roxana), and an “annoying new girl!” (Vaishali). Vaishali wouldn’t stop talking however much Nicola (my character) tried to stop her.

My characters action started off as being very subtle. At the opening scene she was moving her head and foot to the beat of her music whilst playing with her nails. This made an affect as when Vaishali came in, Nicola suddenly became motionless as she stared at Vaishali. Apart from moving around a lot, the end of the piece involved Nicola looking in a mirror doing her make-up and hair. This involved more movement. Action means any kind of movement in a scene whether it be walking and dancing to running and fighting.

Subtext is the invisible meaning behind what someone says. Just because they say it doesn’t mean they mean it. Subtext can be shown through facial expressions and body language. In our improvisation, Nicola uses a lot of subtext. A lot of subtext was used towards Vaishali. Nicola appeared to look interested in what Vaishali was saying, but Nicolas facial expressions and body language showed that it was the complete opposite. Some subtext was used towards Nicola’s teacher. When Nicola and Roxana threw some paper at him he questioned everyone. We lead him to believe that we would never do anything as rude as throw paper at someone and insisted that it was Vaishali. He believed them then, but the two girls got caught later on.

I thought our piece of naturalism went quite well and I feel that I played my character quite natural and realistic as possible. There were only a few improvements that I think we could of made. They are:

David’s character could have been shown and introduced to the audience a bit more. I.e. he could have been included into our scenes more often.
Roxanas characters and mine could have been a bit more different, as we appeared practically the same. For example, we could have same characteristics but have completely different opinions that make us argue a lot. This could of happened on stage.
All of our characters could have been studied and explored in a great detail. We could of all found people to base our characters on, and either study them or ask them about themselves. I slightly id this but not to a great extent. I think this way; our characters would have been more natural, more real and more pure.

By Nicola Bellerby 10H