We have been given our new play "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chekhov and have started rehearsing it only a day or two after finishing our last play "The wardrobe". We have had a couple of rehearsals this week and the performance is in about weeks so this is one we need to get moving on. I play the character Leonid who is Lyuba's brother and Anya's uncle.
The play focuses on a family of people and some of their associates as they welcome back Lyuba after staying in Paris for a few years and having some horrible things happen to her. They welcome her back and this is during the liberation of the serfs (A time when a lot of servants were allowed to leave their masters and chose to do so) and they are somewhat trying to get used to living without them even though they still have two left. Lyuba is in debt and can't pay off the mortgage of the cherry orchard estate and neither her nor my character Leo can pay it off so the bank is going to auction the house and they will lose everything. The play has quite a few sub plot but the one that gets the most attention is to do with Lyuba's debt because it's the one that has the most consequence or at least in the script we've been given. as of now I have not read the complete script but I feel I may need to in order to try and flesh out my character Leonid.
Strengths and weaknesses of this rehearsal week:
Strengths: We have worked out the staging of the overall set quite well and did it quite fast, so less time was focused on that and we get more time to focus on actually blocking the scenes. We've put a table in the middle with some chairs which is where we'll spend most of the time, there's another table that may become a cot which should be on a separate higher piece of stage to show it's another room. Also everyone including myself seemed very open and willing to do their parts over and over again because Karen wanted them perfected while it may have been a little annoying having to do a single piece about ten times, we all did it and got through it and we achieved what Karen wanted.
Weaknesses: A major downside to these rehearsals is that I have no idea how to portray Leonid at all. I don't know whether or not he is overly sarcastic, bitter, energetic, optimistic, pessimistic, somber, melancholy or all of the above. I'm finding it really hard to define him and it definitely comes across in the rehearsals because I feel that what I'm doing doesn't really match what's being said but on the flip side I can't think of what matches in anyway. So I think I'm coming across as quite inconsistent or just a bit wooden and confused at the moment. Another weakness is that we are quite slow with blocking the scenes at this point because Karen is trying to perfect everything and while being a perfectionist isn't the problem, the fact we're taking so long with a limited time is and I feel that we'll most likely get it done it will just take a while.
Rehearsal methods: The class has had one read through of the play and that was when we were doing "The Wardrobe" and it was very quick and to be honest not very well done and we haven't had another one since then. We're just focusing on actually blocking it and rehearsing our lines at the same time. This is a somewhat slow process because we have to do individual pieces over and over again at points and go slow for some parts just to figure out how they should be done. While this may take up some time, I honestly think it's a good way to do it because it helps me somewhat with remembering lines alongside learning them outside of class. So it's an effective way and a good compromise to how we do it normally due to the time limit.
Personal Aims: My main aim is to try and focus or to figure out Leonid's character. I'm going to have to try and do some research into the play and the character to see what conclusion (If any) I can come to. At the moment I have not done much in terms of research except look up a character synopsis and it says he is one of the more comedic character but I don't know if that really means much because it doesn't say if it's bitter humour, energetic, light hearted humour or what but I'll figure it out the more I play around with the character.
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