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.