Initial thoughts
When I first received the play, my initial feelings towards it were excitement as I loved the writing style of Jen Silverman, and was enraptured by the eccentric characters and abnormal world that Silverman created.
Originally, the characters that I was most interested in playing were Huldey and Emilie. This was due to their more youthful, positive energy, which I would associate with my usual typecast; however, we were pre-cast, and I was given the role of Agatha. The concept of playing this character initially terrified me, as it is outside of my comfort zone, and I was doubtful of my ability to act as an older, more cruel, and dominating character. Over the course of the rehearsal process, however, I enjoyed the challenge of pushing my boundaries and exploring a character which I would never choose for myself.
Research
To better understand the text, I researched the key themes, setting and style of it, as well as conducting research on Jen Silverman, the playwright. I also completed research on other plays that Silverman has written, and noted the common themes of: the expectation and perception of females, queer relationships and challenging social norms of the time. This piqued my attention to Silverman’s portrayal of Agatha as the powerful martiarch, especially given the expected role of women in the 1800s. In the Victorian Era, women were expected to desire marriage (to men; queer relationships were not recognised) and become servants to their husbands. Silverman’s shocking subversion of these societal expectations highlights their use of art to make a political statement, creating a world where a woman can rule her household without the need for a man. This encouraged me to play with Agatha as a less gender-conforming character, highlighting both her feminine sexuality and virile nature.
I had never performed a piece of Gothic Horror before, and was excited to fully immerse myself in research on the genre. To gain a better understanding of this genre, I watched movies such as James Watkins’ 2012 ‘The Woman In Black’ and Guillermo del Toro’s new adaptation of ‘Frankenstein’. My biggest takeaway from watching these was the sense of constant suspense that the actors kept us in as an audience. I chose to imitate this in my work, aiming to keep the audience in suspense by creating my character to be one of an unpredictable nature.
I also chose to research the titular setting of the play, ‘The Moors’. I visited the small Yorkshire town of Hebden Bridge and hiked to find remote fields that would emulate a moor setting. After roaming the countryside for a day, my core insight was the sheer sense of isolation. After reading the play a second time, I decided that Agatha would see this isolation as freedom rather than loneliness, particularly due to her dialogue in scene 7: “I find it comforting”. This research provided me with both a better understanding of the setting of the text and also a mental/visual reminder of where Agatha was most content.
Preparation for rehearsals
Before every rehearsal, I would complete a physical and vocal warm-up. To prepare my voice, I followed the warm-up that I constructed in Jo’s voice lessons last year (with added exercises to engage my diaphragm to cater for the projection needed for my character). To prepare my body, I followed a mixture of Eilon’s body awareness warm-up and Donald’s stretching routine (spending extra time stretching my back, to avoid it seizing up as I kept it rigid during the scene). Additionally, before every run of my scene, I would do a fight call with Hayden, where we would check in with our bodies and practice the stage combat scene. Here, we would first make the other aware of any physical ailments or reasons why we might be unable to partake in this contact. If we both consented, we spoke the lines leading up to the physical contact, and then practised the kick, staying in character for long enough for us both to react to the contact. We would then check out with each other and make adjustments if needed before the scene.
Building my character
To help initially familiarise myself with my character, I completed a list of facts and questions which I had noted in the early stages of rehearsals. For these facts, I used Stanislavsky’s Given Circumstances tool (found in ‘An Actor Prepares’), finding all circumstances which I am provided with by the text. For these questions, some were taken from practitioners, such as Uta Hagen’s 9 questions, some were from previous classmates’ examples, and some were from either the director or fellow actors, challenging my understanding and perception of the text. Completing these exercises gave me a much deeper understanding of my character: her wants and needs, relationships with other characters and reasons behind her personality.
To continue building a life for my character outside of the dialogue that I was given, I decided to write two letters from Agatha to Emilie, which are referred to many times throughout the play. I used the context given from the play to base these letters on, and altered my handwriting to match Branwell’s “elegant hand” referenced. I thought that I would find this exercise incredibly useful in building my relationship with Emilie, however, I preferred using the facts and questions as a way to discover Agatha’s inner thoughts.
I also created a mood board of pictures based on my character and the play as a whole, as a way to further visually immerse myself in the world of the play.
Scene work and collaboration
In our first two days of the rehearsal process, we united the play as a class. I then went through these units and used Stanislavsky’s objectives to give myself something to focus on in each one. I also decided on a superobjective – to gain romantic love – to provide me with a motive to work towards throughout the play. Additionally, I wrote objectives for the scenes I was not playing Agatha, as I wanted to have a rounded understanding of the shape of the play and Agatha’s character development.
Upon first entering the space, our director noted where our set pieces were and what they looked like. I then researched 1800s house interiors and moors and created a stage plan to help picture it better. I also created a map of where my character moved within the scene to help me remember my staging. After laying out these building blocks, I used Uta Hagen’s fourth side technique (found in ‘A Challenge for the Actor’) to deepen my imagination of the character’s surroundings. I used this technique particularly to picture the sprawling landscape outside the window downstage centre. I pictured a sprawling brownish field littered with gorse and heather, with a big oak tree to the right side of the window that looms over the house. I then sketched this landscape and noted features in the rehearsal room to substitute key points in the landscape, e.g. the oak tree. Using this technique then aided the scene, for example, when describing the “savagery” of the moors to Emilie, I was able to picture the exact landscape that I was showing her.
Finding my voice & physicality
I decided to work on my physicality first when building my character, particularly focusing on my posture. In the early Victorian era, a woman’s posture was expected to be acutely straight and rigid; this was particularly influenced by the fashions of the time, such as corsets. Corsets were worn to smooth the bust area, create the illusion of a thinner waist, and improve posture. I also researched posture-correction instruments from the early 1800s, such as the wooden backboard; this was worn to maintain an upright stance. From this research, I decided that my posture would be upright due to the corsets and backboards worn in my past, with my back and neck straight and my hands generally held over my stomach.
I also used the Laban effort duo, Glide and Punch, to create a sense of dissonance in my movements, in order to exercise more control over the other characters. I played with switching between the two efforts, preferring more sudden, unprompted switches for increased impact. To find where these efforts sat within my character, I undertook an exercise where I transitioned between fully embodying my character, then embodying Glide, then Punch, eventually blurring the lines between the three. This exercise allowed me to play with switching between different iterations of the three in rehearsals, as I’d found where the efforts lay within my body.
In order to find my character’s voice, I first looked at the accent and the stage directions given in the text. The accent that we were given was General American. The opening stage directions given for Agatha are: “Elder spinster sister. A steely charm. Dangerous. Powerful.”, and other stage directions given in my scene are: “steely”, “cold”, “breaking in, cool” and “decisively”. I then asked my classmates to give me one word which summed up Agatha as a character, and they gave: bold, cold, domineering, malevolent and authoritative. Using these words, I decided that Agatha’s voice would generally be strong, sharp and loud. I worked with a vocal coach on finding more support when speaking at such a loud volume, as I found that in the first few rehearsals, I was straining my voice due to a lack of support from my diaphragm. She gave me exercises such as reciting my lines while holding a chair over my head, and changing the start of words like ‘it’ to ‘yit’. I then played more to find light and shade within her voice in rehearsal, but these initial discoveries were paramount in accessing my character from the first rehearsal.
Response to feedback
One of the pieces of feedback that our director gave me was that I was utilising the tactic of scaring others too often to achieve my objectives/superobjective. With this feedback in mind, I annotated my script with an array of different tactics to try out in rehearsal. Some of the tactics that I added were: belittling, feigning sadness, condescending, humiliating, threatening, and dismissing. I found that through trying out these different tactics, I had more colours to play with within my character, which made the rehearsal process much more playful and varied.
Another note that both my director and classmates gave me in rehearsals was to push the comfort zones that I create for myself when acting. For example, I was challenged to vary my volume between the extremes. I applied this in moments such as when warning Emilie away from both the dog and the imagined child. In these moments, I raise my voice to a higher level than I, as an actor, would ever use – but what I imagine to be a volume that Agatha would utilise regularly to scare others. Similarly with proxemics, when scaring Emilie, both on the sofa and kneeling downstage centre, I use extremely close proxemics to push the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour, unsettling the audience even more.
One of my main challenges within this project was breaking the barriers which I unconsciously set for myself, and learning to work in the state of positive discomfort. I found this particularly challenging due to my experiences with anxiety, and my constant need to please others and avoid being judged. The main way in which I challenged this was: when receiving feedback (particularly from other classmates), I reminded myself that it is the acting being judged, not the actor. By the end of the process, I felt much more open to feedback and therefore noted myself acting on it more, and making bigger choices. I am proud of how I overcame this obstacle and responded to feedback, and I hope that in future rehearsal spaces, I manage to maintain this mindset.
Growth and development
Over the three-week rehearsal period of this piece, I watched myself blossom in confidence, learn to be playful in the rehearsal room and build a character/story that I was ultimately proud of. I managed to dispel my initial anxieties about playing a character so starkly different from where I would usually place myself, and uncovered a whole new style of acting which I will definitely explore in the future. I was also able to use my acting process (which I have been gradually building over the last year) for the first time, exploring what worked better/worse than expected, and realising what to do in the future. For example, I found writing the letters to Emilie slightly pointless, as after writing them, I barely referenced or used them. However, I found that completing the given facts and questions was extremely useful, as it gave me a deeper understanding of my character’s inner workings.
Overall experience
Overall, I am proud of the way that I approached this project, and my final performance of Agatha – this experience definitely pushed me, and I believe that I am now a more versatile actor because of it.
