This week we have carried on with rehearsals of the play and even went to see a play by Anton Chekhov (The writer of "The Cherry Orchard") called "Platonov", a play he wrote before "The Cherry Orchard". I was honestly not looking forward to seeing the play due to that I don't really like "The Cherry Orchard" all that much but I gave it a chance and was very surprised. It was a very entertaining play and was extremely well performed. I was expecting something rather slow and dull and while it was slow paced, it was done in a good way and it wasn't at all dull. It was surprisingly funny and consistently good throughout the performance. The thing that surprised me the most however was the acting and this was due to my idea of what naturalism meant. The play had a lot more energy and was a lot less subdued than I thought it was going to be which made it all the more entertaining to watch. The plot itself was pretty well done and was driven by the well written and entertaining characters. so overall I highly enjoyed it and am now more looking forward to trying to develop "The Cherry Orchard" into something more entertaining than it is at the moment.
Development and understanding: When we went to see "Platonov" and had expectations of it being dull I think my idea of what naturalism was exactly was not right. I had the feeling that it means it's extremely subdued and subtle but from watching "Platonov" that just wasn't the case. While some people said it's a little outside the realms of naturalism and to some extent I agree but it still made me realise that our play lacks energy and needs more in order to bring more character and to bring out the humour more otherwise if we keep it as it is then it will be somewhat stilted or wooden or at least for me it will be. I realised that naturalism isn't extremely subtle so when I get to do Leonid again on Monday I'll try and give him more energy and a more upbeat personality and if this works since I have less feeling of restriction now but I'll try to keep it natural and not go into melodrama. I'm going to try and develop more of an understanding of naturalism and see if there's any further developments I can achieve.
Strengths and weaknesses: The strength of this week is that I have developed a little in playing Leo because due to the change of perspective on naturalism I've been putting more energy into the performance than before and it's becoming more and more interesting to play and is opening up more ideas for me in how I can portray him. I have tried adding more energy because I realised I can be natural while being energetic and I have a feeling that it may help with the humorous side of the character because at the moment I seem somewhat flat when portraying him. another strength is that most of us are getting better with our lines. I'm almost ready to not use a script for parts one and two (the parts i am going to learn off by heart while part 4 I'll use a script most likely) but there are some pieces and cues I'm struggling with especially my monologue to do with the bookcase. the first half i can do just fine however the second half i always seem to blank when trying to do it with out a script but I'll keep practicing and I'll get there. I've been relatively focused while in class and outside of it terms of doing my work and learning my lines and I've even been helping people with learning theirs. I'm trying more experimenting with tone and body language more instead more than I did in the wardrobe even though I was fairly focused during that project but there is an improvement in my opinion. This may be due to the time limit we have and the need to do as much as possible puts more pressure on me but that's in no way a bad thing because I'm actually trying my best to do what I can with Leo and be natural.
The weakness is that I feel I'm playing him in a way that is too down beat for some of his dialogue and I'm coming across as somber in my vocal tones when I don't mean to and it seems to contradict my body language and sometimes i think may come across as unintentionally funny instead of how it should be. I'm still going to try and experiment with my vocal tone but I have a feeling I'm just gonna go with something much more upbeat than I originally intended. which in itself isn't a bad thing it's the fact it's taken me this long with in our time limit to establish this. Even though we're getting better at blocking, we've discovered that the pacing for part 1 is very slow and it's not supposed to be. this is due to some people reading scripts or forgetting cues which meant there were a lot more pauses than needed and it was way too long and went over our time limit for each part. I hope that the more we practice and get used to the lines then the pace should pick up. I'm doing OK at the moment but I do feel I can still pick up the pace by saying my lines with more enthusiasm and at a faster speed.
Teamwork: An example of people helping each other out in the production is that some of us have been helping each other with learning lines or practicing cues to say certain lines. this has paid off for the people that are actually using this technique because most of us are off book and getting used to the cues. Me and Chloe often rehearse our lines and read our cue lines to each other over the phone. At the moment I'm not focusing on how to say the lines during these calls just trying to remember them but as I get better I think I'll move on to things such as pacing and tone and see what I can do.
Personal aims: My main aim is to try and finally work out Leo as a character because I'm still somewhat confused but I'll get there. I'm going to try and experiment more even though I have made some improvements from last week such as I think I'm getting the body language and energy right but the vocal tones while apparently well done don't actually suit what I'm doing so I'll try to be more upbeat during the next few rehearsals and hope that it suits him more and brings more life into him because at the moment Leo is a little flat still.
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