This quote made my group think about Rebecca’s voice of wisdom and the idea that children where innocent and were to be seen and not heard. Children were supposed to keep there heads down and only speak if they were spoken to.
Throughout Act one and indeed the rest of the play, there are many references to witchcraft words like Devil, Hell, and Witchcraft are all used and many of the characters talk about the girls (Abigail, Betty, Mercy, Ruth) dancing and flying in the woods. There is an image of Tituba dancing in front of a fire and chanting placed in my mind by Parris this is the main influence of one of the many still images we used, while exploring the themes of the play.
Another important issue in the play is gossip. This is how most of the trouble starts. One example is at the beginning of the play when Parries is talking to Abigail he says;
Parris…I have heard it said I tell you as I heard it…….
Abigail’s reputation is a bad one this is due to gossip throughout the village. My group showed gossip in a still image by having one person stand in the middle of the stage and other people in pairs dotted around the stage whispering and pointing to the person in the middle.
Faith or religion are both important factors throughout the play, because of this there are many superstitions and the witchcraft stems from this. The belief in God is strong throughout the play and many characters talk about it. A couple of examples of this are near the middle of Act1 when Proctor says that people no longer come to church as Parris hardly ever mentions God anymore. And later Rebecca: If so let us go to God for the cause of it…
We also used narrating and through it we explored the theme of Witchcraft. We used a scene from the end of Act 1 were Tituba is being accused of witchcraft. Abigail, Parris, Putnam and Hale are all present in this scene. We played out this scene using two people as narrator’s one person on either side of the stage and divided the lines between them. We then had the characters play out the scene in the middle of the stage in between the narrators.
The narrating and the still imagery helped me understand the themes of the play as well as getting to know some of the characters a little better. I also felt that the plot was easier to understand once I had done these exercises.
We used other forms of explorative strategies to help us better our understanding of the play they were as follows;
The Stanislavski Technique to help us understand why we did certain movement on the stage. We used the beginning of Act two this is where John Proctor is returning home to Elizabeth his wife after being with Abigail. It was quite a challenge accounting for every movement we made on the stage we tend to move naturally without thinking, but using this technique we had to give reason for each movement we made as our character. I found this extremely helpful as it deepened my understanding of both the characters involved; it gave me a better understanding of the relationship between Proctor and his wife, and gave me an insight in to their marriage. It also helped me think more about the visual aspect of the play and how spacing is extremely important both by acting and directing. We had to consider how close or far apart the characters would be from each other.
We went on to use thought tracking by explore the subtext of this part of the play, this helped me even more I really began to get a feel for the characters and started to understand how their minds worked and how it must feel in real life to be them I started to feel real anger and hatred for Proctor and great sympathy for Elizabeth. I became more aware of my expressions, through my body language and my face and how it would affect the audience’s reactions.
From both the exercises above we when on to cross-cutting. We played out the scene and then had another scene being played out at the same time and cut between the two.
We used Forum theatre unfortunately I was absent and missed this lesson but I can imagine it would have helped me to see characters from another persons point of view and be given advice on how to improve my acting.
Marking the moment -We discusses how we could uses this in our scenes and how it would affect our overall performances.
In conclusion this is a complex play with complex characters, explorative strategies helped to unravel the play and helped me understand how the characters thought and how they felt. I feel it helped me better understand the plot and made me less aware of the audience and helped me improve my naturalistic acting.