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Process Assessment Portfolio

Introduction

During this first semester, I have worked with actor, Claire Eden, to discuss techniques on how to break down scripts and how to apply these techniques to a range of styles. We worked on texts ranging from Shakespeare to contemporary musical theatre and how we can use the same techniques for these texts even though they may seem like they’re completely different in acting style.

Serious Money (Churchill, 2002)

The first play that we had read through fully was Serious Money (Churchill, 2002). This is a black comedy that was largely written in verse, something I had only seen in Jacobean and Elizabethan texts previous to this. At first, I struggled to get a grasp on the play but during our Actor and Text lectures, we began to world build which is what helped me to understand. During the lecture, we read the quote, “You cannot afford to confine your studies to the classroom. The universe and all of history is your classroom.” (Adler, 2002, p.120) which changed my perspective on how to go about working on a new piece. We looked into the 1980s to get a grasp on what the characters were surrounded by.

At the beginning of our research, I realised that I was trying to be too specific too quickly, I was attempting to look at the fashion of office workers in the 1980s, whereas it would be more beneficial to start with a broad idea of the time and look into what was popular clothing choices before delving into more detailed ideas. The other categories became easier as I realised this and thus, I began building the world that the characters actually lived in and not just the little snippet of their lives that we see. This idea of world-building could arguably originate from Stanislavski’s ‘Magic If’ and ‘Given Circumstances’, both mentioned in his book An Actor Prepares (2013). I used to find these two techniques the best in terms of my understanding of my character and the play but what I was doing was very surface level and I was only researching what I felt was important. Though, after doing such a deeper and more extensive dive into world building with Claire and my group, I quickly realised how much more information you need to truly get into your character’s mind and physicality. A great way to start world-building would be to also answer Uta Hagen’s nine questions (Hagen, 2008) as these answer questions relevant to what is happening at the exact time and place of the extract chosen.

I believe that this piece of text helped me most out of what we did in these lectures because it made me realise how much more work and effort I should be putting into my craft. This has been exceptionally helpful in lessons, such as Acting through Song (ATS), especially considering that we have been working on Jazz Age and Golden Age pieces. Before, I would have learnt the song and gotten the basic plot of the show and read into my character but now I’m researching into how my characters would have lived and this has begun to show in lessons.

The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde, 2015)

After working with contemporary plays, we moved onto a classical piece written by Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (2015). The play has more of a rhythm to it than a contemporary play typically would. The reason this was the order was so that we could practice the techniques on familiar, colloquial language before attempting to dive straight into pieces that require more focus when reading and taking in. The rhythm of the text almost simulates musical theatre, in the sense that there is a beat to follow and keep the emotions and physicalities real whilst also keeping to this beat and keeping the integrity of what’s written on the page.

For this piece, we read through the script and then chose three emotions to use whilst acting the extract and only using these three. Personally, I found this really difficult and confusing as I have always believed that characters should act the way that a real human would with multiple complex emotions that could change any moment. Therefore, being constrained to three made me feel stiff and rigid when practicing this piece. I felt as though my acting became too on the nose due to this and would find myself almost slipping into different emotions if I saw fit. Though, when we watched some of my peers’ renditions, I found that their emotions were so clear due to them only focusing on three in this extract. I could understand how their characters felt and how it changed and developed throughout the scene and I realised that characters, although are meant to be human, sometimes should be simplified so that the true emotion of the scene and that character shines through. It’s much easier for an audience to recognise anger that transforms into heartbreak than it is to recognise anger and heartbreak at the same time.

A practitioner who helped me to truly get into the ideas of staying on the one emotion was Lee Strasburg’s ‘sense memory’. It is where you associate emotions with a mental image or a past experience that happened over 7 years ago, also using an object can help you begin to associate with the emotions, even if the object is imaginary (Strasberg and Cohen, 2010). I had to adjust this technique so that it made more sense for me, due to my aphantasia I struggled to picture the image in my mind so instead, I wrote out what I remember from the memory and highlighting what in that memory caused the emotions. This adjustment made this technique more accessible to me and I found it useful as I would reread what I wrote and feel the emotions that I felt at the time of experiencing it, also in a written form I could use other ways to evoke emotions. For example, in my angry emotion section, I included grammar and spelling mistakes so that it would frustrate me whilst reading it.

So, while I may not use the three emotions technique in the near future, I can focus on the ‘sense memory’ technique in order to crack down on feeling just that one emotion for once and sitting in it to see how it feels in my body and see how easily it would come to me without reading my notes. This technique can also eventually help me outside of acting as it can be a way to regulate my emotions, so if I were to get some feedback that feels world ending at the time, I can calm myself easily and use the memory recall to help this. This would also be useful for auditions where you must get into character for roughly two minutes, as in an audition room, you can’t go in already feeling the emotion that you will feel for your monologue. I need to train this technique more over the years to see if I can get that recall to be almost instant, if possible.

Me and My Girl (1955)

Our first musical that we looked at was Me and My Girl (Gay and Furber, 1955). This was a musical that I was already rather familiar with, having worked on some of the songs with my singing teacher. The process of reading this piece was different to plays as not only do you have to consider the fact that there is dialogue, you must also get the tone of the music. Therefore, when trying to characterise you had to go off of what the text was saying about the character and how the lyrics and the flow of the music reflects the character also. So, there was a lot more to consider with a musical.

For this extract I was given the character of Bill, this was completely out of my comfort zone as I had never played such a loud, confident and socially unaware character. I did the world building technique from a few weeks prior and although I had all of this information about the time period and what life would’ve been like and I had reread the script for all the given circumstances, I still struggled to characterise him. Between lectures, I revisited the ‘walk[ing] the text’ technique, where depending on the punctuation you would do an action. For example, if there was a comma, you would walk in a different direction or pause if there was a full stop (Berry, 1973). This gave me a foundation of where to start with Bill as it forces me to move and slowly let myself ease into the movements. It gave me an idea of how he would walk, leading with his pelvis and walking quite ‘laddish’ and improper and it let me see what felt natural with how he would stop or turn around.

During our performance of the extract, we did not stage it with how I had rehearsed with walking the text but I could at least have the basics of how I thought he would move. I also added in the accent on the day that we showed our peers our work, though I feel like I ended up focusing more on trying to sound Cockney rather than relaxing into what was rehearsed.

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Watching this back, I feel as though my portrayal comes off as lazy and unrehearsed whilst also being a caricature of a lower class man which is not at all what was intended. Also, the accent wasn’t accurate or consistent throughout the extract. It is also obvious in how I’m holding myself that I am not fully in character and am rather insecure with my portrayal, something which would take the audience out of it. I need to work more on characters that are out of my comfort zone in order to work on this insecurity and nerves that can be seen when performing. Despite these issues, I do feel as though walking the text made this piece more bearable and easier to try. It allowed me to move as the character without putting much thought into it, which is what I needed due to me overthinking the character and his traits. I will continue to use this technique when I feel like I have nowhere to start on blocking a piece to get me ideas of how to move and when.

Conclusion

I enjoyed getting to explore all of these different techniques that were new to me, even if they weren’t effective for me at the time. The technique that I believe benefitted me the most was world building. It gave me a new insight on these pieces and made me appreciate the text even more because I would understand the slang or references more than I would before researching. It has also made me want to read older plays more so that I can get an even better grasp on these time periods so that in the future if I were to ever be cast in a show in that time period, I already have an idea on what is happening at that time. This is also helpful now for ATS and acting lectures so when I bring a new piece in, I either already have an idea for this time period or I can add to my notes for my. future self. I will start with my favourite plays and musicals and world build into them and that alone will build my knowledge and then I can work through other pieces that interest me.

Through this module, I truly feel like I’ve developed to be a more responsible actor. I take more pride in what I do to prepare for pieces now and this will help me be more self-sufficient for auditions later on. If I continue to do what I’m doing, I will make life easier for myself later on. The notes and research that I have now, act as a base for my future self so that I’m not constantly starting from scratch to understand my character and what I need to do to get the right emotions inside of me.

Word Count

excl. references – 2069 words

Bibliography

Adler, S (2000) The Art of Acting. New York: Applause Books

Berry, C (1973) Voice and the Actor. New York: Wiley Publishing Inc

Churchill, C (2002) Serious Money. London: Bloomsbury

Gay, N., Furber, D (1955) Me and My Girl. London: Samuel French

Hagen, U (2008) Respect for Acting. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

Shakespeare, W (2012) Romeo and Juliet London: The Arden Shakespeare

Stanislavski, K (2013) An Actor Prepares. London: Bloomsbury

Strasberg, L. and Cohen, L. (2010) The Lee Strasberg notes. London ; New York: Routledge.

Wilde, O (2015). The importance of being earnest. Oxford: Oxford University Press.