Week 3 - Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Class members feedback

This week I found that Phoebe would be playing the part of Beatrice, as Kennedy had left and that role needed to be filled. I was excited that Phoebe was Beatrice as I haven't had the chance to work with her much before and I think she is a wonderful Actress. To start off I hadn't learnt my lines for the part where I am with Beatrice (Phoebe) as I was focusing on my lines. I quickly started to learn my lines with Phoebe. We would run through the short duologue and every time I got a bit wrong she would tell me to do it again, this approach to line learning helped me learn the lines as I would be reading them over and eventually it would stick. 

After finally learning the lines, me and Phoebe went through the scene, at first I found it difficult to be confident when addressing Beatrice in a flirtatious manner as it was awkward, I quickly got past this and started to play the scene more and more confidently. As this started to happen, me and Phoebe gained a bond and the scene started to become more fluent and started to experiment with the scene and deliver the lines in different ways. For example at the end of the scene, where I am confident Beatrice is in love with me, 'If I do not take pity on her, I am a villain, if I do not love her, I am a Jew, I will go get her picture.' In this I tried many different ways of delivering it to see which worked best for the character and for where it is placed in the scene. To start off with I said the lines very naturalistically as if I was thinking over what I was going to do about this love that I perceive. I then tried saying the lines as if I was really excited and that I was going to rush and show her love as soon as the line ended. This delivery I felt was much better and much more fitting to the character and where it was placed in the scene. I feel like Benedick firstly acts cool in front of Beatrice but then gets really excited when she is gone because it all comes out at once. I think that it would give my scene a greater impact if I played it excited because it is the end of the scene and so I want it to end with a big impact of emotion.

After doing this scene I got feedback from Nathan and Frank, Nathan said that he enjoyed the way I delivered it, he said I needed to slow down in areas and gather the thought process, overall he said it was about a 6 out of 10, which I'm happy to get considering its Week 3. Frank also gave me some feedback, he said that I should make Benedick more of a lad, and also bring him down to earth and make the lad elements more naturalistic but still keeping it funny, he also gave me some great advice to say the double meaning line 'there's a double meaning in that', really excited as if Benedick is completely blinded by love and is getting excited. He also showed how its the first time that Benedick believes this love has been proven by Beatrice so he needs to be very animated.

Much Ado About Nothing Adaptation

We watched David Tennant and Catherine Tate take the stage to adapt Much Ado About Nothing, Tennant played Benedick and Catherine Tate played Beatrice. I enjoyed the modern adaptation it was set in Gibraltar and Benedick and Claudio have just got back from the Falklands War. This adaptation of Beatrice and Benedick was much more over the top and this may have been because it was an on stage adaptation. Compared to Kenneth Branagh's version and adaptation seemed slightly more naturalistic and memorable. I preferred Branaghs adaptation as I found it more believable. When watching the David Tennant version I didn't enjoy how Beatrice was portrayed by Catherine Tate, I feel that she didn't really give a brilliant adaptation as she was playing herself. After looking back at Branaghs version I enjoyed the chemistry Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh had. I hope to achieve this same chemistry when portraying Benedick as it is a massive part about this character. This is probably due to the fact that at the time Branagh and Thompson were married.

I enjoyed looking through my monologues this week and getting feedback that I can act on.