Reflections

Rehearsal Reflections
The first chunk of the process was using method of physical action. I really feel the benefit of MPA because firstly it creates blocking that looks natural as it comes from the actor in character, it isn’t contrived, and it’s a work of natural impulse rather than a work of the director. Stanislavski was a practitioner that thought actors should take more control over character choices and not be merely pawns of the director. Another aspect of MPA that really interests me is the physical and psychological parts of a person working together at all times. Stanislavski discovered that the psychological and physical of a human being is connected by thousands of nerves. Every outer action is spurred on by an inner motive, a want. When Toby paces at the start of the play it looks realistic because that was a choice spurred on by his inner motive, pacing on stage can look forced but this looked natural because it was a intuitive choice by an actor giving himself up to the character. By using MPA at the start of the process we take text loosely memorised, we grasp the basic gist of one unit, and then we use our impulses and physical initiative working with our inner choices and create something that seems natural and real. The Stanislavski system works on creating natural emotion over and over again in a controlled environment which I think we managed to do because we connected physical life with inner life. MPA is enhanced by good imagination, Katie had laid down the basics for her character, the movements the blocking in the first few weeks, and then for the rest of the process she used her imagination to add layers of hilarious and believable actions and variations to her text.
I feel like I have learnt a lot about what big truth is through this process. Big truth is something that is necessary in the theatre more than TV/film because you don’t have the luxuries of close ups, camera angles, sound etc to give you the subtleties that occur in everyday life. In theatre we need characters big even when low status or shy so that they read to the audience, but we still need them truthful. Nico is someone who does this very well. The conversation when he talks about the history of England with Dimitri is a conversation between two people that is quiet in the setting of a dinner party of ten, and this reads. Nico comes off like he is talking at a conversational level and being realistic but at the same time he’s got a very big presence and is being big with his facial expressions and animated in his voice. It’s his ability to stay true to the character and commit to the character that it comes across hyper real, and there is the big truth.
Another thing I learnt a lot from was Nathan’s use of the Miesner technique when he is doing the science experiments. This came late in the process and he had already a solid grounding of Alistair, being comfortable in your character and then putting an action like the fiddling with the glasses looks so natural, because you allow your subconscious to take over with the lines that you know inside out and focus on the activity, this creates something that is a replica of real life, concentrating on the physical action firstly and letting the psychological work slide over the top is so believable. I have so many conversations at work while I’m constantly focusing on physical activity and this is the kind of real life moment that Nathan created on stage.
For me in this process I found it a struggle, but I think I always find things hard and rewarding. I don’t think acting for me is as natural a process as it is for maybe people like Tommy and Nico, I feel like I have to work quite hard to create an imaginary world around me and stick in it, to commit to a character and take it to the next level. It was a bit of a slow process at first but I think in the end it started developing. Again with Miles I see how beneficial an accent far away from your own can be. Miles doesn’t have a lot of lines and I had no idea what I was going to do with him, had no idea how I would connect and make that character believable. The same as with Phebe, an accent put a handle on a character that I struggled with and gave me a way in and something to build on. Rachel was a nice character to play because she was so innocent, I only found this really hard when I was having a hard time in the process, she would turn into some sort of south east London rude girl all of a sudden! I realised how hard it is to be someone else when you’re so wrapped up in yourself in this process.
Because I played three small characters who’s psychologies weren’t wrote into the play as much as some of the others I did different kinds of research and imaginative work to develop them. Charlie was the one I researched most because I found her quite interesting, what does make a well educated middle class girl turn to prostitution? I looked up some of the many articles on prostitutes about girls that went to private schools and where raised in privileged families. Money is the biggest deciding factor that pushes most girls into it, and the things that come with money, glamour, success, nice possessions. These very middle class girls are doing it because they believe it’s easy money and it’s their choice, they are not forced into it or brutalised, this isn’t the sort of prostitution where a girl receives £20 max and spends it on heroin this is prostitution where the girls are living in £300,000 homes and earning £500 to £2000 pound an hour. A ‘respectable’ tier of societies daughters are now joining the sex industry, and I think this has a lot to do with sex and porn being readily available and less shocking to us, it’s everywhere, its normalised. Because everything has such emphasis on sex, media advertising etc, it’s become a ‘profession’ that is seen as somewhat acceptable, at least to the privately educated girls that work in the business. However, the dark side is that some, in rare moments of vulnerability, do admit the grubbier side to the job where they sleep with undesirable men and have to block it out. For some there backgrounds of wealth have helped, with girls admitting that they used their knowledge in areas like art and horse riding to meet well off punters. I enjoy understanding the previous circumstances of a character and using research to create a back story and an empathetic approach to building a character.