Rosie Allen - BTEC Acting
'MORE LIGHT' by BRYONY LAVERY
Read-through and Initial Response - Wednesday 28/1/15
Today we were assigned our roles in the play and did a full read-through to get an idea of the piece as a whole and then had a group discussion about our initial reactions to the text. Personally, my first response was mixed. On one hand, I was intrigued by the writing style and the themes of the play as I think they will be incredibly interesting to explore during the rehearsal process from both a practical and analytical point of view. On the other hand, however, I was hesitant about the play because I was, initially, unable to visualise what the piece would look like once we got it up on its feet. This is a daunting prospect but I think that, as the rehearsal process progresses, the play will start to take shape and the meaning of the large amount of text will become clearer as time goes on. Overall, I am looking forward to starting rehearsals as it is so contrasting to the previous contemporary text we looked at ('Memory of Water' by Shelagh Stephenson) and it is a perfect opportunity for me, personally, to step outside my comfort zone and explore a totally different type of play and character.
http://www.jimmulligan.co.uk/interview/bryony-lavery-more-light
Rehearsal Log 1 - Friday 30/1/15
Today we began rehearsing and, focusing on the scene in which the audience first meets the Emperor's Ladies, we started to get a sense of how the piece will work stylistically. I found it quite challenging to tackle both the dialogue and the movements simultaneously, but as we repeated the scene's blocking several times during today's rehearsal, I gradually grew more familiar with the very wordy text and was able to interact and connect more with the rest of the cast, especially since the majority of this particular scene involves my character taking charge and addressing the other women in the tomb about the need for survival.
In terms of character exploration, I feel that this was a really good scene to start with as it is such a pivotal moment in the play. It is the first time these women, who have only ever interacted with the Emperor, speak to other people and raises the themes of leadership and survival instinct as well as the formative stages of friendship, solidarity and sisterhood, which are important themes and ideas throughout the play. This first rehearsal has made me feel incredibly positive about the rest of the process and I look forward to seeing how the piece evolves as we progress as an ensemble.
Literal interpretation of the text - tableau of the 'Greatest Minds In The Empire'
Whole ensemble creating the 'Bronze Army of Death' - still image in complete unison
Use of different levels increases visual interest and a contrast to the previous complete unison of the ensemble
Rehearsal Log 2 - Friday 6/2/15
Today we continued to progress through the blocking of the next scene. As an ensemble, we are definitely getting a sense of how the play is taking shape and how it will look once we get to the final performance and today was a particularly productive rehearsal as we were able to contribute ideas to the staging of the scene we were working on as well as devising certain sections that helped to develop our distinct characters through physicality, vocal qualities and interactions with other characters. In terms of the text, however, one of the notes we received as a group was to be careful not to treat it too much like verse and find the naturalism within it, despite the fact that it is written like a poem. This is something that particularly applies to me, due to the large sections of text that my character has to deliver in the play and that is something that I aim to be more aware of as rehearsals progress and I begin to familiarise myself with the script.
Rehearsal Log 3 - Wednesday 4/3/15
Today we primarily focused on polishing the initial few scenes that we have been working on so far in rehearsals. This was really beneficial to me and the ensemble as a whole because some of the movements lacked clarity and we needed to familiarise ourselves with the blocking a bit more in order to really get the atmosphere of stillness at the beginning of the play. When rehearsing the scene in which my character addresses the other ladies to put forward the idea of eating the Emperor, I feel that my words weren't having the desired effect on the other characters and the director suggested that I play the objective of getting the ladies to agree to eat the Emperor, using the transitive verb, 'to persuade'. When I repeated my lines and blocking with this objective in mind, I felt that I connected much more with both my character and also, from the feedback from the rest of the group, had the desired effect of persuading the other characters why eating the Emperor is a good idea.
We also experimented with different ways to create atmosphere in the scene and convey the tense silence within the tomb. One suggestion from the group was to use a metronome or similar device in order to build the tension and also reflect the time passing in the tomb. This idea then developed into using some kind of repeated knocking sound, a technique that I saw recently in 'A View From The Bridge' in the West End where long stretches of awkward silence were accentuated through a metronome-like knocking effect as an underscore for these moments of the play. We all agreed that this would be highly effective and also discussed ways in which we could create these sounds ourselves, to keep everything very much within the setting of the tomb to keep it very insular with a much more organic feel than if we used a recording of these sound effects.
As we progressed through the script in today's rehearsal, we all realised that Scene ___ wasn't working for some reason and that the literal mimes of the sexual acts performed on the Emperor by the ladies weren't effective and looked too simplistic. We held a group discussion about different ways we could portray this and tried an essence machine in which we all decided upon a different sexual noise to be repeated so that an overlapping effect is created aurally. Unfortunately, this didn't work in practice and one alternative suggestion was to use a sheet that we can manually undulate to give the illusion of people making love. I think that, once we have props and resources such as a sheet of fabric, we'll be able to try out this idea and see if it will work within the context of the piece so far.
Rehearsal Log 4 - Wednesday 11/3/15
Today we continued to think about how we could interpret the text when the ladies are talking about their experience with the Emperor. We all agreed that it would perhaps be more effective to represent the text by incorporating a physical theatre sequence into the piece at this point. Charlotte H brought in a large piece of white fabric that we thought we could utilise to resemble bed sheets, manipulating it to mimic the movements of sheets on a bed during sex. Charlotte H contributed a suggestion for the music that could accompany this sequence of movement (with the text being spoken over the top of both the music and the physical theatre) - 'All is Full of Love' by Bjork - which aptly fits both the content and atmosphere of this particular monologue in the play:
Rehearsal Log 5
Today we concentrated on the duologue between the Man and More Light, which is a very contrasting dynamic to the scenes between the ladies. For this reason, it was really interesting to explore from a character point of view and it allowed me to access a different facet of my character's personality and enabled me to explore different objectives within the scene. Personally, I think that there is a turning point in the dulogue where More Light decides to use flirtation as a tactic to escape from captivity, as soon as she realises that the Man is sexually interested in her and that silence and stoicism will not make him release her. I think that this manipulation of him is a result of her newfound freedom and sense of identity that has steadily grown since the beginning of the play, as the ladies are no longer tied down by their duties to the Emperor. There is one particular section in this scene where More Light describes in detail the actions she and the other ladies performed on the Emperor and, as a group, we thought it would be effective to represent this in a more abstract way instead of literally, in order to add variety and interest to the scene, instead of it being completely naturalistic throughout the duologue. Someone came up with the idea of the other ladies lifting Kai as a group as I speak the lines, to represent that this is all taking place within the Man's fantasy/imagination. However, they struggled to execute this successfully (SEE VIDEOS BELOW) and we spent a significant amount of time working out how to perform this movement safely and effectively. We decided to revisit this scene in the next lesson and settle on set positions for each of the ladies, so that it is the same each time we practise it.
Rehearsal Log 6 - Friday 24/4/15
In today's lesson, we did our first run-through of what we have staged and devised so far, in order to gauge how much we still have left to do in terms of putting scenes together to form a coherent yet abridged version of the full play for our assessment. I have made an effort over the Easter holidays and the time since the last rehearsal to learn my lines for the first two scenes, and I think that this benefitted my characterisation and portrayal of More Light as I was able to fully explore more aspects of her and interact more effectively and believably with the rest of the cast (SEE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT PICTURES BELOW). Now I am familiar with the text itself, it is no longer a barrier to my acting and I feel that I am finally getting to grips with the play as a whole in terms of character and themes.
Initially, my body language was quite closed-off and my eyeline was not directed towards the other ladies. This was partially due to me reading my lines, but also due to my lack of familiarity with the text, meaning that I was unable to fully play out my objective in the scene which is, ultimately, to persuade the women that eating the emperor is the best idea.
In the most recent rehearsal, this photo from the run-through shows that my body language as More Light has a lot more character to it and the personality is becoming much more believable. My facial expression is much mroe believable, conveying my objective much more clearly to the audience. I think that this is a really positive step towards the future development of my character in this play.
6/2/15
My physicality here lacks the strength and power of More Light as she prepares to cut up the Emperor.
24/4/15
I feel that this scene has really progressed as there is a lot more tension in my body at this crucial point in the play, and I am finding it easier to really convey a sense of the inner and outer strength needed to do such a thing.
Rehearsal Log 7 - Wednesday 30/4/15
Today, we ran through what we have done so far in terms of blocking and came to the realisation that certain elements of the staging in some scenes didn't work for various reasons:
Closed off from the audience
No variation in levels, therefore little visual interest for the audience
Facial expressions are obscured from view
Formation/positions are opened up so facial expressions can be seen by audience
Variation in levels adds visual interest and engagement for the audience and also ensures that no one is being blocked from view
Here, there is no physical indication that we are listening at the wall, and the ladies' desperation to hear what's being said is not clear
Although it is now clear physically that we are listening at the wall, the formation of the ladies is still very linear, which doesn't really contrast to the staging of previous scenes
The use of levels adds visual interest and the more clumped together proxemics show the desperation of the ladies much more clearly
Rehearsal Log 8 - Friday 1/5/15
Today we focused primarily on how we should end the piece after the scene between More Light and the Man. We thought that we should use the scripted ending of the play as the final scene of our performance with the modern man and woman discovering the tomb in the present day, but in order to transition into that scene, someone came up with the idea of incorporating a physical theatre sequence set to music to show the ladies killing and ultimately eating the man. In terms of potential music to accompany the movement, I put forward the suggestion of using something with a tribal feel, perhaps of African origin to show the ladies' descent into savagery and primitive behaviour in order to survive for as long as possible. We found a piece of music by African artist Ayub Ogada that we thought fitted really well with the tone we were trying to create - violent, yet also melancholy and disturbing. As I end the previous scene upstage and standing on a chair with the man on the floor in front of me, it was decided that, in order to maintain this status and power, I should stay on the chair at the beginning of the physical theatre sequence and use very simple, puppeteering movements to indicate that I am directing the women in how to attack the man in order for him to be eaten. We wanted the action to be clear, yet still have an abstract feel to it, and we experimented with many different ways of showing the ladies attacking and devouring the man. We wanted to end with him lying on the floor, powerless, as the ladies crouch over him so that he is nearly totally obscured from view to the audience.
Rehearsal Log 9 - Wednesday 6/5/15
Today we went over the movement sequence we started devising in our last rehearsal and discussed as a group how to conclude the whole play. I came up with the suggestion of ending the sequence with a tableau of the ladies frozen in various positions as the modern man and woman enter and discover the tomb. This is an effective way to convey the overall impression that, through their new-found freedom and sense of identity, the ladies have become the often-mentioned art within the tomb, taking the place of the Emperor and his bronze army of death and finding their own power and strength when united together. I think that the simplicity of this final sequence is an incredibly impactful and powerful ending to the play because of the frozen image's stillness as the modern man and woman move amongst us.
More Light Evaluation
I think that, overall, the performance was very successful in terms of what we were trying to achieve. The very nature of this play is that it is, in essence, an ensemble piece which meant that we, as a company, had to work collaboratively not only in rehearsal, but also in performance. The elements of physical theatre that we devised and incorporated into the final piece required an incredibly high level of focus and a tight circle of attention in order to execute these sequences to a high degree of effectiveness to add to the atmosphere of the piece as a whole. We wanted these non-naturalistic aspects of the performance to highlight significant moments, especially those relating to the ladies’ sexual experiences with the emperor to provide a stark contrast to the naturalistic dialogue and narration in other scenes. I think that we were successful in creating a dreamlike atmosphere in these sections of the text and it added an additional layer of interest and depth to the piece for our audience. Although, initially, it was challenging to get to grips with the very wordy text and the highly stylised tone of the dialogue, I think that we were able to deliver it in a believable, naturalistic way once we overcame the barrier of being faced with such different dialogue to the conversational, naturalistic tone of ‘Memory of Water’ with its relatable characters and modern-day setting. Because of this, I personally found it to be a really interesting challenge to tackle such a different piece of text in terms of style, setting and themes. Although the performance was not perfect, we managed to work together successfully to create an atmospheric, powerful and impactful piece of theatre.