Characters development throughout the rehearsal process

Once we had been given out characters we had a lot of script work lessons 

Learning about horizon words from Jess who is the teacher assistants working with us throughout this project. She told us about this technique which she learned while studying at uclan. This technique of finding horizon words has massively helped me when experimenting with how I want to perform a piece. Another script technique I used was writing verbs to describe how I feel or what I’m doing a technique I learned at the royal exchange this was how I handed in my emotions and felt more connected to the what my character was saying. What I found hard during this process was how I did not necessarily have “character” in the cast as 1, in a few monologues that are all connected but I have no name or background or clear story. This left me with a lot of freedom to create my own character and experiment with who I wanted to be. After reading through the monologue and discussing who she might be I came up with the character Rosie (loosely based on another character I created in a show called (“that boy”). I used Stanislavski’s technique of the magic if, to create imagined facts for my character to have a deeper connection to her. http://broadwayeducators.com/stanislavski-method-magic-if-and-illusion-of-the-first-time/ (Article of the importance of the magic if.)

She’s 17 at goes to Oldham sixth form in her 2nd year, we had a small debate I class discussing how old she should be we thought that she might be in university as she gets the train which is a little odd if she goes to school but she later discusses that her mum gives her a lift which would be even stranger if she went to university and as she speaks about “when I stay at my dad's” she must still live at home. She studies English literature, Biology science, media, and political science. I chose these subjects because of the way she speaks within her monologues, one of the lines “it’s like where one organism one moving breathing thing.” that shows how observant but also critical of life she is. However, she also has a creative side with how she describes her feeling like the line “and there's suddenly this moment, this feeling where I know, where, I know exactly what's going too”.  I also think she finds it difficult to be vocal with how she is feeling due to perhaps anxiety. She speaks about “all these bodies and it’s like they're too close, somehow, too much” Her parents the split which is still fresh most likely about a year and every time she gets stays at her dads in the city center as we decided the train platform she gets on is Manchester Victoria.

However once there was a recast my original facts didn't quite fit, her personality is still the same with only slight changes. I wanted to play Lauren as a ditzy character loosely based on Cassie played by Hannah Murray from the 2007 series Skins. Even though Lauren on the outside she seems quite simple and ditsy there's this underlying sadness that I think stems from what she saw on the train platform and seeks constant reassurance from Imogene.  

During the monologue she's circling around the audience while there is action in the middle, this is her recalling the events of witnessing what happened at the train station. Once it gets to “it’s like there’s a rip, a tear I the universe” the inner action splits into the corners of the stage while I’m in the middle re-seeing the woman get hit by the train. I used Stanislavski's technique of “the magic if” to understand how my character would react to seeing such a tragic event. If I was in her situation I would feel more shock than that trauma this is why I decided to hold off on the intensity of the emotion until near the end of the monologue. It isn't clear until the end that she’s actually seen a woman jump in front of the train until it is implied at the end “and I look to my right and the woman she’s not there…” I wanted the audience to feel the same as she would have done once she had seen the event, therefore, I held back on my emotions until the end. I thought it was important to create “the first time” in each perforce, I didn’t want my performance to feel like it was just blocked and rehearsed a specific way, I wanted the word I was saying to feel like the first time she was saying them in every performance. I did this by directly talking to the audience breaking the fourth wall in all of my monologues. A technique commonly used by Brecht in epic theatre, even though it’s mainly used to separate the audience from emotional attachment I did the opposite and used the fourth wall breaks to include the audience in the performance which I believed I did successfully, especially during my last monologue which brings the whole piece to a poetic end. Recreating “the illusion of the first time” by taking advantage of the audience being in such an intimate space meant that every performance I did was slightly different for me as a performer because there’s a new audience every night, and I’ll be speaking and holding eye contact with new people every night. https://morderntheatrefoliobycam.weebly.com/brecht-and-epic-style-theatre.html website with all of Brecht’s techniques and definitions.