Shakespeare Week 3

If I am being honest, as exciting as our production of Much Ado About Nothing is, I feel as though the whole process is going rather slowly. I know the outcome (hopefully) of this will be a very well performed Shakespeare piece, in just under the six weeks have left to rehearse. But, as each rehearsal goes on; it hasn't yet began to really come together.
    I understand that this is a big project and we all want to make it as good as we possibly can, but like I said, being honest, it hasn't yet began to pick up. Which leads me onto saying how this week (week 3) it seems as though I don't have an awful lot to write to you, because I didn't feel much was achieved.

However, saying that, our scene was blocked this week which has helped to really bring the scene to life. To begin, I see the scene as just a group of friends whom have set out, specifically, to set up there friend. This, slightly more old-fashioned approach to 'setting two friends up together' wouldn't really happen nowadays, but it still would to a certain extent. For example, I know my friends certainly wouldn't hold back from telling a guy if I liked them. So in that sense, the situation in which myself, Donna and Frankie all have to act out doesn't seem to wildly absurd. However, being that type of friend,  I wouldn't say was quite like my personality. I agree that I can be loud, and fun but I can also be quiet and fairly unconfident. Which makes me want to create Hero as such a loud, good-fun and boisterous character purely to really push myself.
In this scene, Hero most definitely takes the lead and so therefore I know that I have to be the loud and playful one of the scene purely because the scene would have no leader without the character of Hero; and the scene would become rather repetitive and possibly boring. Yes, it'll all be a matter of myself, Donna and Frankie all bouncing off one another and incorporating the banter between us all. Mentioning the others in my scene, makes me point out that this could be rather difficult as I would politely say that Sophie, Donna and Frankie aren't the closest of friends on the course. Which brings slight tension to the group which will be interesting ha! I don't mean this in a rude way, its just something I have noticed with being with them for a year etc. So saying this, I feel it more my job to pick up the group and the scene and begin to stir up the playfulness and banter of the scene- which is probably out of my comfort zone- but I like a challenge.

With that said, our scene was blocked today! And the layout of the scene is very clever! We have the use of three black boxes and a smaller black box painted and designed to look like a toilet. The toilet is situated SL and to the right of the supposed 'portaloo' sits three stacked, black boxes which creates the divide between Beatrice in the loo and the other three characters. We, myself Donna and Frankie remain to the right of the portaloo and a continuation of our blocking simply consisted of a more natural take. We can move freely, with the space of SR. Which is another reason why I need to make Hero so big and bubbly; to save the scene from staying in one place on stage!
      With this blocking process completed, we ran through the scene fully. I felt really confident to run this today because it wasn't the entire class watching. We had just Phoebe and Joe sat down watching, as well as Sally. I think for me, confidence wise, less of an audience makes it feel a whole lot less daunting; plus I am good friends with Phoebe so it just felt a lot more informal. Plus I was also in a good enough mood to be able to pull off the 'banter/loud' side to Hero that I so, desperately want for her to have. So running this scene was quite good fun, we had a good mix of running the scene and messing around at the same time which again made it more informal; which meant I felt a lot more comfortable experimenting with Hero's personality.
    So all-in-all, today's practical went really well and I came out of lesson having a good image of how I want Hero to be and also ways in which I can embody this.


My next two Shakespeare sessions consisted of a continuation of blocking, and this included my first scene. This scene is with Frankie, Donna and Nathan. As a whole, I am quite excited to start working on this scene because I've not really had the chance to act alongside Nathan, whom as the character Isabelle, is married to. I only have about three lines in this scene, so the blocking was fairly simple. Myself and Donna start the scene with setting up the drinks bar for the disco (i.e. the masked ball.) which is quite good fun as we can sort of just amuse ourselves throughout the scene. My only real blocking for this scene is to, at one point, go over and stand with Nathan. But apart from that, this scene, for me, is one I can almost just float about; which is a slight relief as to my role in my 'Hero scene'.
    We then had all scenes blocked, so began a full-run!!




















These are the notes which I took whilst watching the run through. All of the notes I have taken are small things in which I noticed when watching the scenes, and I have sent them onto those in the scene so it gives them something to work on. Making the notes also helps myself, as I can then start identifying what things I don't like on stage, and ensure that I don't do the same etc.

We covered a lot of voice/language work today with the Shakespeare pieces. We were each give a 'Shakespeare insult sheet' and had to combine three insults and speak these to our partners. This was just a fun exercise but it gave us a good insight as to a few more words that Shakespeare uses, and I can imagine it was extra helpful for those playing our Beatrice and Benedick's, as they are always insulting one another in Much Ado. This exercise also made us try out more emotions in what we were saying, for example we had to say our insults aggressively, panicked, joyful and in love. We then had to perform bits of our scenes to Karen, our voice lecturer, for vocal feedback. Annoyingly, my group didn't get a chance to perform, which is something I really wanted to do because I understand my vocals are the weakest part of acting as I am always being reminded to use better diction and project more. Instead, she did briefly remind me to focus more so on the use of the iamic pentameter as she overheard me using it incorrectly.
      With that said, I went home to look into it all more. And bizarrely I noticed on the bus home, that the bus voice monitor uses the same concept as iambic does. It says something along the lines of "your next stop will be: ..." but I noticed how it emphasised certain words quite significantly, for example 'next' and 'stop' were heavily emphasised, I suppose to make it clear what the next stop is. They also emphasise the name of stop, especially its two words, such as 'Waterlooville Precinct.' It emphasised each of the syllables in both words, which meant the words itself sounded really clear, audible but also abnormal because noone says them that broken down. I can only presume Shakespeare used the iambic for the same reason as FirstBuses do; to make the audience pay attention to what was being said. Shakespeare's plays were meant to be heard, hence the expression "to hear a play." I quite like the thought that they went to 'hear' a play rather than to go 'see' or 'watch' a play, in which is what we do now. 'To hear' a play, meant that the audience would never be watching the action on stage. You would very often have the 'groundlings' -those who stood throughout the show, causing chaos. If they got bored of listening, they would start to walk around, talk, shout, throw things and very often have sex and drink. You would also have to entertain the 'royalty' of that time.  The lords room was the name of which were considered the 'best seats in the house.' You'd have those of the highest hierarchy/royalty sat here. But I endeavour to disagree with them being the best seats. The lords room was, as you can see in my drawing, situated facing the other audience members. So they couldn't see the stage, all they did was be admired and looked up to by the 'peasants' that were the groundlings and others. So it was Shakespeare's mission to find a way to keep all of his audiences entertained. So he used Iambic Pentameter. It made it much easier for the audience to understand what was being said, and the rhythm of it makes it much nicer on the ears, which again was in aim to get the audience to listen. From looking more into the language of Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he avoided any thing of the ordinary. I have earlier spoke about how I reckon he was Protestant because everyone else was Catholic, which allows me to see that he goes against everything everyone else did at the time. For example he has written Much Ado About Nothing in prose, going against everything else he's used in previous work.
    A quote that features on the front of the scripts we were given reads "How is it possible that Shakespeare understood the human heart so well?"  This also backs my point up of how different Shakespeare was to the rest of his era, which meant he really stood out. (See image below.)

Script.

Also on the front cover shows two small masquerade masks. (See image on the right.) This, on the surface, could simply relate to the era. Most people would recognise the masks and relate it to the Elizabethan era, or an era of a similar time period. Shakespeare lovers may see it in relation to the fact he has included a masked ball in Much Ado itself. However, I interpreted it in a much deeper and innovative way. Perhaps its a kind of metaphor about love. In the original versions of Much Ado, Claudio and Hero fall in love at the masked ball, despite being masked and not being able to see one anothers facial features. Which, to me, says that Shakespeare believed in loving a person not just for their looks and beauty. He wrote Claudio and Hero to fall in love at the ball, which backs up my point simply. 'What does Claudio love except her external beauty?' Contradicting myself once again, but that is all that he loves, "In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that I ever looked on." But Shakespeare's tells us, through his story, that the young and innocent love in which Hero and Claudio have both fallen for, is fatal. Claudio is quick to believe Borachio's and Don John's trick and is quick to drop Hero because of this. But this helps Benedick and Beatrice grow closer, so a tragedy helps the love of another. And after the whole Claudio and Hero tragedy is resolved at the end, Claudio could then finally be seeing Hero's true beauty as a person, for perhaps the first time, as he begins to see her innocence. http://www.gcseguide.co.uk/much_ado_about_nothing.htm