For '13', I was Stephen Crossley, a main character who is in a lot of scenes, for me to perform Stephen to the best of its ability I had to be confident with my lines. I felt I was confident with my lines, however in the first of the three performances, in at 4 scene 8 I said a line a the wrong time, fortunately I was with two brilliant actors who managed to repair my stumble, because of this it wasn't noticeable to the audience and it also meant that this error was unlikely to happen again.
In our performances the cues for entrances and exits and also transitions is fundamental to a good performance. In act 3 scene 4, Zia and Shannon are on stage, I come in after this to deliver my speech to Oxford union. Between these two scenes, I found it difficult to know when to come on. This was a weakness in the first performance but by the second one I had learnt my cue and when to exactly come on stage.
As the piece is very modern the style is naturalistic. For example in act 3 scene 5, Stephen has a speech to the Oxford union, in this speech I needed to feel the emotions behind my speech as it had a real deep meaning. This is shown in the script. 'If, as a women, you cheated on your husband, you would be stoned to death'. (BartlettM.2011.'13'.Retrieved 19th November 2014 from http://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/13-iid-18480/do-9781408175187-div-00000045 ). For me as an actor to channel this emotion I did research on the way women were treated in Iran and also watched a small clip of a women being stoned. This, I found difficult to watch but it meant I could feel the way Stephen should in this speech, this I took upon myself as the actor to research and I feel it helped strengthen the scene.
In one of my performances my voice was very quiet yet I felt I was projecting in the right manner. I found his out through audience members and the director. This mistake annoyed me a lot because I felt I had just ruined my performance but I knew I had to do better in the next performance. I rested my voice that day for the evening performance and it really helped as I spoke to one audience member and they said 'I was loud'. They said this in a good way and that it helped in the scenes with John.
One of the skills I felt I did particularly well in was characterisation. In act 4 scene 8, for each of the 3 performances I tried to portray Stephen in a different way. In the first performance I played Stephen in a shocked way at what John was suggesting is stupid. In the second I was angry with John as I felt he was wasting Stephen's time. For the last performance I acted quite sadistic to make it seem like I was winning in this war of words.
As an ensemble I felt our class did well, in Ruth's speech I am apart of the chorus. In this scene I felt Joe and Frankie did well as they showed teamwork as Joe was holding a camera filming Ruth while Frankie was holding a microphone to get what Ruth was saying, this gave a great naturalistic impact as they portrayed a news team.
Overall, as a class the performances went well, I think I also did well as I improved throughout each performance.
No comments:
Post a Comment