Evaluation of Final Performance

Today we did our final performance and I thought it went really well. I was proud of my entire class and felt that all the performances were well rehearsed, all lines were learnt and no significant mistakes were made. 

I watched a few videos on Look back in Anger, all of which were very different from each other, but none of them really struck out of me and I never watched any of them and thought 'Oh, i need to say my line like that' or 'I'm going to lie down against the couch like that' I thought to myself I would rather read the script and do what feels natural, and that's exactly what my group did from the very beginning. No rehearsal we have done has been exactly the same, in every rehearsal we've experimented and moved when it felt natural to. Many structures of the performance changed gradually throughout the rehearsal process, and we incorporated many new ideas, all of which stayed in the final performance. We used emotional memory, all of us in our own scenes. For example, Jess used emotional memory in the scene where Helena decided she was going to leave and when she is explaining to Alison when she saw her at the door 'ill, tired and hurt'. I used emotional memory when I saw Helena and Jimmy holding each other when Helena told Jimmy she was leaving but told him she will always love him, as I thought that was something that would make Alison's stomach turn, and make her feel sick, and sad. I also used emotional memory specifically to encourage the natural emotion of Alison's state of mind in the last few lines where Jimmy explains to Alison how he remembers the first night he saw her, as Alison thinks that Jimmy is leading it to something positive in Alison which is something he never did before, and as Alison. I smiled, as if she idolised him and was in a daze because she was remembering that very night. Although, Jimmy wasn't leading it to something positive as he was really stating that in fact he thought she was relaxed, when she wasn't and she never had a hair out of place. I thought this was a significant moment in the play and wanted to portray this moment of realisation for Alison, which soon causes her to pour her heart out. I used emotional memory saying these lines as I felt this scene had so much raw emotion and heartbreak that we all wanted to show, and in the final performance I felt we all did that. In the script, in Alison's last few lines, it says she slides down the couch on her knees, and when rehearsing this, I felt it was uncomfortable and very unnatural, and I felt it would be natural of Alison to remain where she was. Also, in our final performance, where Jimmy says 'Don't, please, not any more...' Adam and I rested our heads on each other and held hands and cuddled which was something we had never done in rehearsals before, but we both did what we felt was natural for our characters at that moment in time, and we didn't expect it at all. At the end of the play, we thought it would be  appropriate to add our own little twist at the end, we decided that Helena would walk back in at the end to find Alison and Jimmy cuddling on the couch, we thought then Helena would feel as she did at the beginning of the play. I think if we were to make any improvements, it would have been really beneficial if we had more time to set up the set before hand, we would have felt more comfortable as we had rehearsed so many times in a certain way. For example, we had the living room including a couch, single arm chair, ironing board in the back ground and we also had a kitchen part where Helena would go up to the kitchen and make tea and do the dishes, and this was not something she could do as we didn't have time to set up the kitchen set. Also, if I was to make another improvement it would be that when I was so emotional, I think I could have maintained the accent more and pronounced certain words better, as I think I was being so emotional and I was trying to concentrate so much on the emotion that my lines were just flowing out, and I think if I had just slowed down a bit, it could have gone a lot better. Although I was really happy with the way we were all so emotional as that was one of the things we had worried about as we agreed to not be so emotional until our final performance so that it would seem more real, and I think that really benefited us. 

But all in all, I felt really proud of my groups performance and my class as a whole.

realisations

In rehearsals today, Jill came and sat in our rehearsals and asked our characters questions as if this were a real moment and we were really in the 1950s. She asked me if Alison was okay and how is my character feeling at this moment, where should I be sat, what facial expressions would I have? Although we thought the idea of Jill sitting in our rehearsals was weird, it really gave us an idea of actually thinking of how my character would be feeling, and actually as odd as it sounds, my characters husband has been having an affair with her best friend behind her back, she's living in her flat, even sleeping in her bed, and actually gives us a huge understanding on how Alison is feeling at this moment. Realising this gave me different ideas of saying certain lines to different characters, different attitudes even. Jess also said the same. She is playing Helena and we talked about Helena's realisation and how she gets an attack of morals because she finally realises what she's been doing is wrong and how she goes on in saying she believes in 'good' and 'evil' and how Jimmy is still married to Alison and how she cant forget it. 

Having Jill sat watching our performance allowed us to get some positive feedback, and getting to grips with using the 'fourth wall' technique. After our previous performance was completely unnatural and involved us speaking out to an audience, having to then do such a contrasted script was difficult to adjust to, in order to keep up that fourth wall you need to maintain focus and committment, and reprouce something that is realistic and natural like Stanislavskis theories. Although there were parts in my performance were I wanted to throw my arms in the air and shout and go completely theatrical but I know that wouldn't be realistic or natural at all. Jill did say we should use more emotion as Helena is in fact leaving Jimmy, and Jimmy is upset but doesn't like to show his emotions, and Alison had so much to get off of her chest to Jimmy, she was sad, angry and still hurt at the fact she lost her child which had a huge affect on her. We especially in our performance wanted to portray Alison's body language and mannerisms as oppose to Helena's. We wanted to exaggerate the fact they had completely switched roles. We incorporated minor parts such as Helena repeatedly sorting the papers in an orderly manner, making tea, her moving from chair to chair but never sitting in Jimmy's chair as we wanted that to show that Jimmy has asserted his dominance even when he is not in the room, we also wanted to use the trumpet sound effect in the background to portray that too. We also decided that Alison would sit on the edge of the couches and stay in the same position at all times as she was a guest, at that time, but in fact she did live there in the first place. 

The following afternoon, we did another rehearsal, this time we all tried to be more emotional. We sat down and discussed emotional memory. We talked about previous events that had happened in our lives, that we use to become that emotion our character is feeling and most importantly make the emotion real as Stanislavski believed during his life that an actor should approach a role as directly as possible and then see if it "lives."
If the actor connects with the role to the point where the role is brought to life, then a technique or a system is not necessary. In this sense, the actor does not so much become someone else as he becomes himself. Stanislavski believed, however, that this achievement in acting may only happen once or twice in an actor’s life, so the remainder of their performances would require some sort of technique. Each individual actor, however, should make the decision as to whether or not an approach or technique to their acting 'works' for them in their performance, and I think the technique did work for me and I will be using it in my final performance to show the emotional state of my character.

The scene we're performing

At the beginning of this scene, Helena and Alison are enjoying a cup of tea and talking about the past few months, Alison talks about how so many times she's managed to stop herself coming back and how she couldn't believe this place existed. Helena soon realises she wants to leave and has a sudden moment of realisation, and her moral standards re-assert themselves, she relates her statements to religion and she gains her strength from religion and wants to do what she belives is morally right. Alison's scared of Helena leaving Jimmy as she doesn't want Jimmy to be alone as she knows he wont like it, although both of them realise that Jimmy's politics don't belong in the1950s but they interpret them very differently. for Helena he's a revolutionary in 18th century France, and for Alison he's an 'Eminent Victorian'. Alison feels sympathy for Jimmy even though the way he treats her, and after she lost his child and he was so harsh about it as losing her child made Alison realise the true nature of love, to Jimmy it meant nothing, he states this when he says 'it wasn't his first loss'. Even the loss of her baby is worthwhile to her because it has made her what Jimmy has always wanted her to be - 'stupid, ugly and ridiculous'. Alison's last lines are exactly what Jimmy was longing for all along, it shows how far she has changed and not even being with Jimmy has made her that way, she states she 'wants to be corrupt and futile' to please Jimmy. At the end they talk about being squirrels and having a laugh and a real connection, and I think this is a significant moment in the scene as this is their parallel universe, where they escape from the real world and create their own little world. This scene has most definitely been an emotional challenge for our group but we have enjoyed it so much so far.

The themes of Look Back in Anger and how they relate to my character and scenes.

The play consists of three acts. It is based in a one-bedroom flat in the Midlands. Jimmy Porter is a lower middle-class, university-educated man and lives with his wife Alison. His friend Cliff Lewis, who helps Jimmy run a sweet stall, lives with them. Jimmy, intellectually restless and frustrated, reads the papers, argues and taunts his friends over their acceptance of the world around them.
-info from gradesaver.com

Style:

Two sound images from off-stage are used very effectively in Look Back in Anger: the church bells and Jimmy's jazz trumpet. The church bells invade the small living space and serve as a reminder of the power of the established church, and also that he doesn't care at all for their domestic peace. The jazz trumpet allows Jimmy's presence to dominate the stage even when he is not there.

Set:

The play takes place in the Porters' one-room flat, a fairly large attic room. The furniture is simple and rather old: a double bed, dressing table, book shelves, chest of drawers, dining table, and three chairs, two shabby leather arm chairs. The drab setting of the play emphasizes the contrast between the idealistic Jimmy and the dull reality of the world surrounding him. We purposely inserted a single arm chair into our performance as we wanted it to reptresent the same meaning as the trumpet; Jimmy is the only person who touches and sits on the chair and we wanted to also show again that Jimmy still had authority even when he wasn't in the room.

Inevitably, previous discussion has touched on many of the themes and issues which have been seen as significant in the play:

• the continuing sense of class division in British society in the 1950s despite
the post-war changes.

• a clash of generations: that of Osborne, Jimmy and Alison versus the older
generation represented by Colonel Redfern and the people quoted in the
newspapers.

• a sense of disenchantment with political processes.

• the expression of a desire for emotional contact and intensity.

• the supposedly sado-masochistic relationship between Jimmy and Alison;
• a supposed misogyny on Jimmy Porter’s part.

Although the play was initially taken up by some as expressing some sort of
oppositionist political viewpoint, fairly quickly critics began to qualify this.
-research from enotes.com

The Kitchen Sink Drama

Kitchen Sink drama is a term used to denote plays that rely on realism to explore domestic social relations. Realism, in British theatre, was first experimented with in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by such playwrights as George Bernard Shaw. This genre attempted to capture the lives of the British upper class in a way that realistically reflected the ordinary drama of ruling class British society.
-research from gradesaver.com

According to many critics, by the mid-twentieth century the genre of realism had become tired and unimaginative. Osborne's play returned imagination to the Realist genre by capturing the anger and immediacy of post-war youth culture and the alienation that resulted in the British working classes. Look Back in Anger was able to comment on a range of domestic social dilemmas in this time period. Most importantly, I think it was able to capture, through the character of Jimmy Porter, the anger of this generation that was developing just below the surface of British culture.
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The Angry Young Man

Osborne's play was the first to explore the theme of the "Angry Young Man." This term describes a generation of post-World War II artists and working class men who generally ascribed to leftist, sometimes anarchist, politics and social views. According to cultural critics, these young men were not a part of any organized movement but were, instead, individuals angry at a post-Victorian Britain that refused to acknowledge their social and class alienation.

I think you could say Jimmy Porter is most definitely considered to be an example of the angry young man. Jimmy is angry at the social and political structures that he believes has kept him from achieving his dreams and aspirations. He directs this anger towards his friends and, most evidently, his wife Alison, which definitely takes its toll on her.

Loss of Childhood

A theme that impacts the characters of Jimmy and Alison Porter in the play is the idea of a lost childhood. Osborne uses specific examples -- the death of Jimmy's father when Jimmy was only ten, and how he was forced to watch the physical and mental demise of the man to demonstrate the way in which Jimmy is forced to deal with suffering from an early age. I think Alison's loss of childhood is best seen in the way that she was forced to grow up too fast by marrying Jimmy so soon. Her youth is wasted so early on by marrying him and also in the anger and abuse that her husband levels upon her early on in their relationship. 

Osborne suggests that a generation of British youth has experienced this same loss of childhood innocence. Osborne uses the examples of World War, the development of the atomic bomb, and the decline of the British Empire to show how an entire culture has lost the innocence that other generations were able to maintain.

Sloth in British Culture

Jimmy Porter compares his quest for an emotional life to the slothfulness of the world around him. It is important to note that Jimmy doesnt really see the world around him.. He seems a kind of slothfulness of character, and Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins in Christian moral tradition, that refers to laziness, abd being physically and emotionally inactive which is exactly what Jimmy is. 

This slothfulness of emotion is best seen in the relationship between Alison and Cliff. Alison describes her relationship with Cliff as "comfortable." They are physically and emotionally affectionate towards each other and have a connection to each other that is like no other relationship in the play, even though Alison is actually married to Jimmy and that is a complete opposite relationship, but neither Alison or Cliff seem to want to take their passion to another level of intimacy. In this way, their relationship is lazy. 

Masculinity in Art

This is seen in the play in specific examples in which Jimmy Porter emotionally distresses Alison, his wife, and delivers a grisly monologue in which he wishes for Alison's mother's death.

Osborne, however, asserts that he is attempting to restore a vision of true masculinity into a twentieth century culture that he sees as becoming increasingly feminised, which I think he most definitely did when writing LBIA. This feminisation is seen in the way that British culture shows an "indifference to anything but immediate, personal suffering." 

Real Life

In the play, Jimmy has the desire to live a more real and full life. He compares this burning desire to the empty actions and attitudes of others. At first, he generalises this emptiness by criticizing the] opinions of those in the newspapers. He then turns his angry gaze to those around him and close to him, Alison, Helena, and Cliff.

Osborne's argument in the play for a real life is one in which men are allowed to feel a full range of emotions. The most real of these emotions is anger and Jimmy believes that this anger is his way of truly living.

Hero and anti hero:

Most plays embody more than one myth. Though Jimmy's alienation - his feeling of being out of place, his idealising of the past, his use of memory, as a defence against meaningless. Jimmy's way of looking back is congruent with his country's way of looking back. Both share assumption about explaining current affairs by contrasting them with an idealised past. 

Anger and Hatred

Jimmy Porter drives out of a deep well of anger. His anger is directed at those he loves the most such as Alison and Cliff. He lashes out in anger because of his deeply felt helplessness. When he was ten years old he watched his idealist father dying for a year from wounds and nursed him. "pouring out all that was left of his life to one bewildered little boy." He says, "You see, I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry—angry and helpless. And I can never forget it. I think this is one of the most expressed themes in the play and one of the most common themes.

research and notes from:
-enotes
-wikipedia
-wikidot
-gradesaver