Evaluation

Over the last eight weeks, we have explored Shakespeare as its own existing art form through the play 'Much Ado About Nothing'. The entire process has been wholly enlightening, challenging and rewarding as we have learnt the various aspects of Shakespearian language, including the typical agents of verse and iambic pentameter, to paraphrasing text, to physicality, historical context of the time and most significantly, the significance of Shakespeare's ideas and applying these to a staging in a modern day context.  Over the process of the eight weeks, I have pondered how Shakespeare is often misunderstood in the sense that his plays are seen as outdated, however to act in a Shakespeare play exposes you to the most extreme of emotions that fluctuate from one minute to another, and in this way studying Shakespeare has exposed me to raw emotions that in themselves are still as prevalent today as they were then. Taking the play of Much Ado, studying its context and its themes and modernising these to the timeless era has also been a fascinating concept and has posed a challenge in finding the balance between keeping some of the traditions of the text and the language/rules but also changing it to be more engaging and relatable for a 21st century audience. Alongside this, we have taken a blocked show from theatre rooms to the New Theatre including set, lighting and costume with the help of TTA, therefore we have tackled many challenges throughout the term.

The initial challenges of working on the text was the language and this arguably continued throughout the entire process. We tackled this by paraphrasing very easily in the process to gauge the exact sense of the meaning of our lines and expanding on that the intentions, however the lines became one of the biggest struggles, evident in our director feedback from Rae, whether we were adlibbing lines or butchering the original language, or getting the iambic pentameter and verse meter wrong. Shakespeare is something I didn't expect to conquer this term but with this continual challenge ubiquitous for all of us in general throughout the process I had a real determination to get Hero's lines learnt very quickly and get them engrained into my body so that they weren't an issue, but having said this I had to keep on looking over my script as rehearsals commenced to ensure that I hadn't accidentally got into the habit of saying the lines wrong and messing up the verse. Furthermore, verse, I have learnt, is one of the most underrated and challenging things I have come across this year and definitely is something that I didn't manage to master this term. It's something that in itself is so different to how we talk today and so I never really perfected it during the process, but I definitely got to grips with it more than I had done, and a lot of the way that I did this was ensuring I was always practicing my lines. By the performance, I felt comfortable enough with my lines to be spontaneous and more instinctual/playful because I had undergone this continuous process.

Overall, I would argue that our two performances on the 16th of May in the New Theatre at 4.30pm and 7pm achieved a lot of success, drawing on my own personal experience as well as audience feedback I received - a lot of whom said they'd like to see Much Ado performed again and who enjoyed the acting. 

Generally, I think that we all acknowledged the ubiquitous sense that we all had our jobs to play in order to ensure the smooth flow from scene to scene, and to tell the story of Much Ado to the audience. This involved having a real awareness of what was going on on stage as a form of establishing our given circumstances, giving a lot of support to each other as a cast and particularly  being on time for our cues. In fact, I would argue that one of the biggest successes in terms of the professional execution of the play was that every single individual was on time for their cues and there was never a moment on stage in which it wasn’t occupied. We all managed to make our costume changes on time, and we all dealt with the transition onto the set and with costume in the New Theatre well. This was effective in itself just because it made the pace of the play quite fast, and ensured further that the audience could remain immersed and sustained in the development of the plot. With this, it tackled one of the pre-conception towards Shakespeare that is long and mundane - and with us approaching Much Ado with enthusiasm from the forefront of rehearsing to putting it on stage, it allowed us as actors to tackle this stereotype through our performance, and epitomising it through our commitment to the show itself.

Something I particularly noticed in the show too was the general energy increase, which contributed to the fast paced essence of the show - in rehearsals there had been an issue on the whole that there was a lot of dead time in scenes where cues weren't being met fast enough, and there wasn't enough emotion and energy behind lines. In the show, I think we reasonably tackled this as the adrenaline of having an audience there helped us act on our instincts more, and the audience definitely responded. I would strongly argue with Rae's direction mainly, our acting, comedic timing and energy the comedy aspect of the play was mastered - we received continual laughs and it was interesting to see how the different audiences at the different shows reacted to various moments in the play. Regardless of this, these reactions were rewarding as it showed the sustained colour that people brought to the scenes they were involved in, as well as the dances, which immediately picked up more character and shape as people began to bring their given circumstances into the body of the dance and commit to the dance too. However, on the subject of scenes, two people who did this well in particular were Dogberry and Verges played by Amy and Jess: they did their job as the comic relief characters within the play but with such commitment and energy that I felt really inspired by them during rehearsals and this pushed me to commit to all of my scenes more, particularly the more intense ones such as the wedding scene. Dre also inspired me a lot in his performance as Don John because during his scene with Conrade he had so much emotion and anger and this was carried through the language very well - his diction was another particular strength.

Personally, I think my individual strengths in my performance as Hero came from the fact that I had done a lot of character research into her and her relationships with those around her in the play, particularly Leonato, Beatrice and Claudio. I felt that by the performance I was very present and open could play based off theis research and react in the scenes truthfully as my character would react. I definitely had improved on Hero's physicality throughout the body of rehearsals, especially as I did further character research and asserted her status in comparison to other characters in the play. In the performance, I found myself playing more to the extent where new reactions and improvised moments were emerging. Specifically, I found that in the wedding scene where Hero is shamed, I bounced off Luke the most who was giving me so many new offers to react to every time we ran and I found myself reacting instinctually as Hero and not thinking about it. Nevertheless, with this same idea came one of the significant challenges for me throughout the process which was playing the comedy and pantomime aspects of the play and almost rejecting the notion of naturalism at some points or 'truthfulness'. Moreover, I haven't done much comedy before and equally have found it challenging to balance the pantomime wacky aspects in Hero's gulling scene with Ursula with truthful reaction, but having rehearsed this scene a lot and eventually having a physical capacity to play with this comedic aspect in by the time of technical and dress rehearsals, I found this scene much more comfortable as I felt assured in the way that I could play with it spontaneously to reach the same objective. I also found having a large audience there much more encouraging to play with that aspect of the scene more, and a personal strength that I think I had during the gulling scene in particular, and especially in the last show as I became more comfortable was the utilisation of the space and the audience. Initially, during rehearsals, I didn't necessarily consider the massive impact the audience would have on my delivery of lines, but, during the performance, I attempted to open up my lines and thinking towards the audience during the gulling scene and I think this was effective because it allowed the audience to be more immersed in Hero's thinking process. Speaking from hindsight however, this process was actually more subconscious and how effective my inclusion of the audience was I don't think I am in the best position to judge.

Otherwise, I think that my projection and diction was good throughout the shows according to audience feedback, but the premise of doing balcony scenes equally is inevitably going to engulf the sound, and so I think my projection was better at sometimes than others. My breath control during the shows was admittedly better in the second than the first - in the first I noticed myself taking more sharp inhales before speaking which took away from the performance, and this was because I was quite nervous. The process of performing in the theatre with lots of costume changes and quick entrances/exits equally also alerted me to continual hydration, as my throat got quite dry during the first show too. Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with my voice delivery for the most part: I tried to ensure that my projection was as good as possible with the awareness of being in a big space speaking to a thrusted audience.

Moreover, in terms of doing the more intense scenes as are prevalent in all Shakespeare plays, I think the capacity at which I tapped into my more extreme emotions definitely developed the more we rehearsed the scenes. My biggest challenge was the wedding scene throughout the process because as Hero I was very vulnerable and at such a heightened emotional state of distressed, but the reason why it was so difficult to achieve (in Shakespearian standards this is the norm) was because prior to this the emotional state of Hero was extremely happy and content, and achieving this drastic change with a sense of truth but also encapsulating the Shakespearian essence of it proved one of the hardest parts about it. However, I was pleased with this scene during the performance as I felt quite in the moment and wasn't thinking too much but rather was just reacting to the offers made by other actors on stage, and thus it seemed quite successful as a component in telling the story in the play.

Director Notes

GENERAL NOTES THROUGHOUT THE MAJORITY OF REHEARSALS

• Wait till you've finished speaking before you move.
• Stage yourself on a diagonal to reach all 3 sides of audience. 
• Balance the stage!
• Have fun with the scene when you're teasing Beatrice - needs to be big and over the top. 

SCATTER THROUGH NOTES

• Check lines for idiosyncrasies in the language/subconscious paraphrasing. 
• Pronunciation of certain words: florentine, Benedick, canst, ere/air
• If you're speaking in verse, check iambic pentameter and include ED's to follow the rhythm
• Pronounce st's
• Work on dialogues. Do I need to stand further upstage etc? If you can't see two bits of the audience at the same time move position. 
• Think about separating the stage as opposed to coming together.
• Don't close the space to talk to people - keep it open.
• As you go through scenes in script, work out a reaction to every line said by someone else for every scene you're in.
• Heighten first scene with Claudio. Needs to be more sense of lust. 
• Needs more emotion, tears and passion overall. 

RUN THROUGH NOTES: 14TH OF MAY

• Hero needs to enter before Beatrice in first scene to end up on stage right.
• Girls need to curtsy instead of bowing head. 
• Everyone on stage needs to be engaged in something during Benedick-Benedict exchange. 
• Everyone needs to be enjoying the men's dance and chatting.
• Refer to Claudio as the 'good husband/ in scene with Claudio, Don Pedro and Leonato.
• Both gulling scenes need to have much more awareness of Beatrice and Benedick. Audience need to see you seeing Beatrice.
• Pleach-ed not pleached
• Hit on 'not to be so ODD from all fashions'

JOHN'S NOTES ON THE 15TH OF MAY 

• Project so noise isn't lost in New Theatre.
• Think about eye lines and involving the audience: let the audience in
• Dance as your characters.
• Smooth out the faint. 
• Diction and articulation is key.

RAE'S NOTES ON THE 15TH OF MAY

• Find the bird when Beatrice plays the bird - play with her offers more.
• Roll eyes at Margaret's rabato scene - have an attitude towards it. 
• Get cue lines into your head.

Rehearsal Tasks

Here is a record of some rehearsal tasks that we engaged in during the 8 week process that were particularly interesting and helpful in enabling us to get to grips with Shakespeare: 

1) Romeo & Juliet Speech dissection

During our first rehearsal, we broke down the following speech from Romeo and Juliet:

Tis torture and not mercy. Heaven is here,

Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog

And little mouse, every unworthy thing,

Live here in heaven and may look on her,

But Romeo may not. More validity,

More honorable state, more courtship lives

In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize

On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand

And steal immortal blessing from her lips,

Who even in pure and vestal modesty,

Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.

But Romeo may not. He is banishèd.

Flies may do this, but I from this must fly.

They are free men, but I am banishèd.

And sayst thou yet that exile is not death?

Hadst thou no poison mixed, no sharp-ground knife,

No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean,

But “banishèd” to kill me?—“Banishèd”!

O Friar, the damnèd use that word in hell.

Howling attends it. How hast thou the heart,

Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,

A sin-absolver, and my friend professed,

To mangle me with that word “banishèd”?

To summarise, as a whole cast we read the speech by lines for sense, and then began to contextualise  the position of Romeo in the speech. Most predominantly however, we focused on the speech through multitasking saying it with movement. We associated various themes prevalent within the speech, such as death, heaven, animals, Juliet and the word 'banished' and created vivid actions for them which we had to deliver as we said the speech with projection. The amount of actions that we had to do throughout the speech increased steadily and exerted a lot of energy since they became more physically demanding. But in hindsight, this reflected to a great extent the amount of colour and detail and imagery in Shakespeare's texts, and the way in which Shakespeare with these images isn't an academic exercise but moreso something that should come physically from the whole body instinctually to emit those emotions. I also learnt from this exercise the fact that a lot of the emotions that Shakespeare represents in his plays are extreme emotions and this accentuates the amount of physical presence the body needs to tap into for the acting to be truthful and for the Shakesperian text to be resonant.

In this same session, we also did work on the same text and a scene from Hamlet to focus on iambic pentameter and paraphrasing. 

2) Shakespeare Text Workshop with Michael from the RSC

3) Chemistry with Claudio

One of the first specific character based exercises that I engaged in as Hero was playing the objective with the relationship of Hero and Claudio during the scene following the ball. Because myself and Sean hadn't yet touched base with the relationship between the two characters, it was an interesting exercise that involved Ruby holding me back and Tahj and Luke holding Sean back as we tried to reach eachother. The physical restrictions of the exercise actually allowed to me to tap into the extreme emotions of lust and affection associated with Hero's objective in the scene, which from the forefront helped me connect with Hero more. The exercise also helped emphasise the sense that Shakespeare's emotions presented through the text come through the physical presence of the body and not just through the text, and really helped me embody this emotion since Hero was being held back from Claudio so much.

4) Playing It - Line Run 

A few weeks in, when we all became very familiar with our lines, a distinct exercise I remember was playing it while doing a line run of the wedding scene. The wedding scene requires extremely quick cues, responses and reactions since the emotions of everyone are heightened and playing the game 'It' which had strict rules while also practicing lines and cues essentially helped us to initially tap into the essence and atmosphere of this fast paced, high stakes scene.  This scene became one of the hardest scenes for getting lines and responses correct and on the ball so exercises like this essentially became really helpful. 

5) Relationship Development

I had a rehearsal session with Ruby, Luke and Sean which really helped establish the relationships between us four as characters and was essential into feeding into the scenes. More of the results of working on this relationship development is in this blog post on Character Circumstances but what I learnt from this session is how integral the relationships in Much Ado about Nothing are to the whole scope of the story considering the whole play is about how relationships change. Having this session was really helpful for me and it made me consciously think further in the future about how I would exemplify those relationships in my scenes to bring them to life further. 

6) Movement Workshop

Having the movement workshop with Kenrick allowed me to associate how closely linked movement is with dialogue and emotion. As we have a dance during the ball scene where we also speak, Kenrick told us to break down our text whilst doing a simple routine. It required concentration and focus, and he also taught us how important it is that movement exemplifies emotion and doesn't take away from the dialogue itself, which I took with me when we practiced the dance section. 

Kenrick also reinforced the importance to me of remaining physically disciplined and fit through vigourous warm ups and I think this is something I not only have taken into rehearsals of Much Ado but also something I will take with me into any future with acting.