d3: Develop and apply research for the role, employing findings in a constructive, progressive and imaginative way during the rehearsal process
d1: Apply imaginative, disciplined and skilful responses to research and analyse in rehearsal.
Before we start, I want to begin with my action plan. This is something we had to write just as we'd been given our characters and it was to be a personal plan for yourself to keep and adapt to as the project unravelled. So here is my action plan for you:
Action plan:
Work the script:
A personal must when working on the script, is to know it really well before I get into learning the lines and rehearsing it. Obviously, this is a major process that will happen as the rehearsals begin and develop, but I often like to understand what the play is about and to understand the ways of my, character before we dive into the project fully. For all of this beginning research, I need to:
- Know the story. To start with, just the basic, on-the-surface story. And then as it progresses I will dig deeper.
- Understand the language. It is very much an un-known language to us 21st centenarians, so this will take time but ultimately, it will allow me to understand the story line.
- Really work on and understand my character fully. The meanings of their prescense in a scene, understanding what the other characters say about her (Lady Loveit), her back-story etc.
- Not forgetting embodying her, voice work, characteristics, body and movement even down to the speed she turns her head (bearing in mind she is of a good age.)
- Simply enjoy working on it, despite the read-throughs being painfully long and slow!
Background research:
Research is obviously just as important as the script work...
- To research woman in the specific era. Lady Loveit, as far as I can tell is a well-liked female in the play so I want to look more into her status as well as just researching the history of woman in general.
- Clothing, throughout any era is always a big thing. Research into what Mrs Loveit and the other characters might've worn would be beneficial as well as researching what the clothing she will wear means colours and eccentricity etc.
- The influences and back ground information into how Man Of Mode came about (I believe it was originally based on a poem...?) Further research into Stage Beauty and The Libertine (both partially related films.)
- The usual, being : Social, Economy, Politics, Global and Historical, would all be other headers I would further my research under.
Character study:
Character studies can be as detailed as you wish, and I tend to really dig deep into everything and anything I can which relates to my character purely to help me to perform them as well as I can:
- The background to Lady Loveit.
- Hot-seating?
- How they act around other characters, as well as how they are spoken about from other characters
- Question what they say and do, to further understand them
- Find and/or create characteristics for them through all of the above research.
- Like other projects, go all out on imagination and creativity about Lady Loveit, as well as any other character that pops up along the way; not only on blogs though Issie, make it a more vocal ambition.
Rehearsal Process:
Personally, I think I need to up my game during rehearsals...
- BE ON TIME regularly!!
- Take more notes but share them more instead of not really having the confidence to do so
- Really work on taking-on notes/feedback i.e. come back the follow week to question if I have managed to improve "..."
- Be more vocal. I have the tendency to keep quiet and not express ideas, opinions etc
- Be more observant, about everything to do with the rehearsals
- CONFIDENCE
Learn Lines:
Possibly the most important... Up your game on this one Issie!!
- Again, up my game!! Get them learnt, make it a competition to get them done before anyone else, not to the deadline in which Sally sets!!
- Really work on practising/rehearsing them regularly... especially because of the amount of learns I have for this show
- and don't let Sally down, I'am grateful to have been given such a large role which means I now have some expectations to live up to, in a sense.
Introducing Man Of Mode:
So today we were informed that our next production will be a 'restoration' which I'm not even sure of what a 'restoration' consists of. Two or three read through's were done at this particular stage, and I must admit I had formed an early negative opinion on The Man Of Mode- by George Etherege. The read throughs were long, it is a very hefty piece with about 50 pages to it.
So today we were informed that our next production will be a 'restoration' which I'm not even sure of what a 'restoration' consists of. Two or three read through's were done at this particular stage, and I must admit I had formed an early negative opinion on The Man Of Mode- by George Etherege. The read throughs were long, it is a very hefty piece with about 50 pages to it.
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| Image 1 -2 : First read-through notes |
As you can see in the notes, I just made a few points about all the female characters in order to get a bit more understanding about them before our casting day. The two older characters, Lady Townley and Mrs Loveit are both characters I don't wish to be. They are both loud character whom have quite a lot of meaning to the play. They have quite a few scenes, and Mrs Loveit especially has many scenes in which she is getting really angry and from what I can tell from Sally, this is something whoever is casted as her, will have to do; and its something I desperately do not want to do. Townley is a little bit calmer, but she is very much the lady of the house, three or four scenes are apparently set at her house and she becomes the leader of those scenes; again something I don't wish to be doing although I know I should in order to challenge myself. Belinda, whom I have missed off my notes, seems a lot more less significant during the play. She is much quieter and actually sounds quite interesting as apparently she spends the whole piece sleeping with Dorimant behind everyones back. This, as a character trait, would be quite different from me so actually I'd be relevatively interested in playing her. Although I have my eye set mainly upon Emilia. She's most probably the smallest female role, which again is something I shouldn't be aiming for but I know I'm going to struggle with this whatever character I get. She marries Young Belair in the show, which is a nice touch to her character but again she doesn't stand out as one of the characters who are busy hogging the stage with their loudness or bizarre character traits.
You'll all be as pleased as I am that I was casted as Mrs Loveit.
In all honesty, I am really quite gutted. She was the one character I desperately didn't want, and maybe this is the exact reason why I was casted as her-who knows. Like I said earlier, I don't think I went into this play with a very open mind, and I was definitely a lot more against it when I casted as Loveit. I think this held me back a lot, I had no real intention to read-through the script or properly look into my character until the proper rehearsals of Man Of Mode begin and I hugely regret it. With me, its all a confidence thing. From the minute I was casted as Loveit, I was really, really apprehensive. I was aware of all her character traits, and was worried that I couldn't access the anger I had to have on stage, or the loudness of the character and the ecentricness of her, and the fancy costumes and learning all the lines I had as well as just simply worried about not enjoying it and knowing that I could really loose out here.
Characters:
From what I could tell, everyone else was really pleased with their characters. We are to have 6 shows in order for each cast to perform (Vagabond and Vizards.):
Mr Dorimant: Matt
Mr Medley: Lewis and Joe
Old Bellair: Milo and Nathan
Lady Townley: Sophie
Young Bellair: Frank and Brandon
Sir Fopling Flutter: Luke and Jake
Lady Woodvill: Lewis and Nathan
Harriet Woodvill: Phoebe
Emilia: Donna
Mrs Loveit: Issie
Belinda: Frankie
Pert: Becky Heath
Busy: Chloe Smith
Handy: Joe and Frank
Mr Smirk: Luke and Jake
Orange Woman: Yasmin Thorpe
Footmen: Jack Ashley, Jack Collins, Brad Mudie
Our first session for working on Man Of Mode fell quite late in the process, although the process itself never felt too rushed. However, our first session consisted of us learning the basics of restoration. The basics consisted of:
- Costumes
- Fan
- Walking
- Posture
- How to sit
- To bow and curtsy
- Emotions
- Gentlemen and Woman
- Laughter
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| Image 2: Costumes |
Costumes:
To begin with, I shall introduce you to the costumes. Bright colours were something really key in the restoration period which meant the clothing they wore was nearly always bright colours. Charles II was nicknamed as the "merry monarch" which gives you an insight as to why such bright clothing was loved back then. The colours were used mostly as a reflection of the latest European fashions. Through research, I found that the females would wear the brightest of colours, and then perhaps still colourful, but less bright than the females. I interpreted this as though it was the womans duty, at this point in time, to dress to be seen. In all the years before the restoration period woman were instructed to dress down, they weren't intended to be the eye of the town so now, as soon as these colours became fashionable, it was the woman who were going all out on being the brightest dressed. In the image attatched, you can clearly see the difference in colours from male to female (excluding Dorimant.) We had Harriet in the brightest coloured dress (red.) She is a very innocent character and red sort of contradicts that, as red can often be viewed as evil. However, her role in the play is to 'love. Stereotypically, red is the colour of love. She falls in love with Dorimant, a man whom as the audience, we all know won't be good for her, which is were the dark tone of red comes in handy. In terms of red being a strong and dark colour, it suits Dorimant's character wonderfully. It makes him stand out compared to the other men characters and also portrays his evilness (not in a cheesy way, but he messes around woman which is evil in a different sense.)
Emilia is dressed nicely in a green dress. Again, she is innocent. The green, from my perspective, shows this innocence but where it's a light colour, it shows that she brings no drama with her. She is quiet and the green sort of gives off that vibe.
Belinda is wearing a deep purple/red coloured dress. Similary to Dorimant, this definitly gives us an insight to her slightly evil and bitchy ways. She is one of Dorimant's new lovers despite being very aware of the fact her bestfriend is Dorimant's lover...Mrs Loveit. So the dark colours of her dress suit her character perfectly.
Myself (as Mrs Loveit) and Lady Townley wore fairly plain coloured dresses. Which I think matched our age more than our personalities. The older ladies of that era would have lived through the period in which woman were not allowed to dress as extravagantly as this new phase has just brought in. They were brought up not being allowed to show themselves up and so therefore they were much more aware of dressing down. Our two costumes (mine and Lady Townley's) fitted this interpretation quite nicely. The dresses were still very glamorous, just as all the younger ladies costumes were but the colours were a lot more reserved.
The rest of the male characters, as you can see in the image, were a lot more reserved. They were fairly ordinary outfit colours. Which again suited the whole woman trying to over-dress themselves etc. This all includes the Fop of our play-Sir Fopling Flutter. He wore a very well together green and white costume. It looked trendy (or as trendy as restoration costumes go) The green was, again, a light colour which didn't seem too over the top (although I think if we could redress him, I'd go for something 10x more vibrant!!) His wig was the main attraction so actually his costume didn't need to be more extravagant.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Costume_History/Restoration
Women were always seen covered up, even when men used to play them. Woman were not to be dressed inappropriately and anything like an ankle on show would be seen as outrageous. Belinda, however, is a woman who does not obey these rules of her time, which would've caused quite some talk during the play. This just shows Etherege's new ways of theatre, he incorporated a sexual scene between Belinda and Dorimant, and both characters are advised to be wearing little amounts of clothes-especially Belinda.
In this scene, we had Belinda dressed in a small, matching pair of breeches. They aren't seen as anything outrageous to us nowadays, however because of their skimpiness, and the amount of arms, neck and leg that was on show in this costume, would've been seen as really inappropriate.
The men would all wear wigs, and would have to shave their heads in order to wear these. Any facial hair was banned for men on stage, but later a simple moustache was allowed.
Woman wore their hair with clusters of curls at the back of their head, with simple curls hanging down either side of the face. Richer woman such as Mrs Loveit would sometimes weave pearls into their hair, but this was only for special occasions. The restoration period also saw the adaptation to the female's dresses, the neck line was beginning to become wider and started to drop further off the shoulders. In the image below, you can see how my dress sat widely along my neckline and sat just perched ontop of my shoulders, the neck line also being quite low for that era.
Woman such as the Orange Woman would simply wear a skirt and blouse and they often spent hours hitching up their skirt so it sat way above the ankles!!
Peri wigs that the men wore gained favour when the length of mens hair became longer and curlier. However, as soon as the peri wig came into fashion, men then shaved their real hair and wore wigs as an easier alternative. The French did well in manufacturing these wigs, and the French wigs were of the best kind, and no doubt this is where Sir Fopling Flutter got his from.
http://www.cwu.edu/~robinsos/ppages/resources/Costume_History/restoration.htm
The use of props in Man Of Mode was definitely more than I had imagined, all the females had matching black fans with gold decoration on them. They look fancier than my description
The men used wine glasses as their main props, such as Dorimant, whom you never saw without an alcoholic beverage in his hand! 'Nosegays' were something Loveit and Belinda mentioned a lot and it wouldv'e been nice to have used some of these. A 'nosegay' is a scented piece of cloth or any other material worn on the body or held for when you walked through a bad smell in the streets. Mostly used by the upper class and we can only imagine someone like Loveit would use it when walking past someone like the Orange Woman.
The first session we messed around with costume and spent the entire session in them to get a feel for it all. I must admit I wasn't a huge fan of the costumes, not that you have to be to act in them, but I didn't feel confident in them as I'm most definitely more of a jeans kind of girl. But they came in handy for this session specifically when we moved onto posture:
There was no such thing as a hunched back. Everything up until recently was done with a perfect posture. It was just something people were brought up with, And this is both men and woman. It was a sign of status, to stand/walk/sit and speak well meant you were of a higher status than those whom weren't brought up with those kind of compulsory manners. All of the character in The Man Of Mode are of a high status and so posture was something we all had to achieve. "The posture when stood and walking: erect, relaxed and without affectation: the steps, moderate in length, amde with the heel touching the ground first." (The Polite World- A Guide To English Manners And Deportment (a) Deportment and Ettiquette by Joan Wildeblood.) During this first session, our exercise was to simply walk around. I find that my posture has improved since around about the time of joining college as I have been teaching myself to be more aware of it. And keeping my posture during this project has been something reasonably easy for me. I was brought up in the world of yoga, so sitting and standing with a good posture is something that I can easily access.
I have been spending a lot of time at home working on my posture. Something Sally had told us all was 'to make everything we do feel and look natural'. So the way I held myself had to look natural because at the time, it would've been the most natural thing for these characters. At home, I started off by looking at how I stood in the mirror. Observing where my shoulders sat. how my neck and head sat, how far apart my feet stood, if my hip was thrusted forward or in line with the spine.
Women were always seen covered up, even when men used to play them. Woman were not to be dressed inappropriately and anything like an ankle on show would be seen as outrageous. Belinda, however, is a woman who does not obey these rules of her time, which would've caused quite some talk during the play. This just shows Etherege's new ways of theatre, he incorporated a sexual scene between Belinda and Dorimant, and both characters are advised to be wearing little amounts of clothes-especially Belinda.
In this scene, we had Belinda dressed in a small, matching pair of breeches. They aren't seen as anything outrageous to us nowadays, however because of their skimpiness, and the amount of arms, neck and leg that was on show in this costume, would've been seen as really inappropriate.
The men would all wear wigs, and would have to shave their heads in order to wear these. Any facial hair was banned for men on stage, but later a simple moustache was allowed.
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| Image 10: Restoration hair |
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| Image 11: Restoration costume |
Woman such as the Orange Woman would simply wear a skirt and blouse and they often spent hours hitching up their skirt so it sat way above the ankles!!
Peri wigs that the men wore gained favour when the length of mens hair became longer and curlier. However, as soon as the peri wig came into fashion, men then shaved their real hair and wore wigs as an easier alternative. The French did well in manufacturing these wigs, and the French wigs were of the best kind, and no doubt this is where Sir Fopling Flutter got his from.
http://www.cwu.edu/~robinsos/ppages/resources/Costume_History/restoration.htm
The use of props in Man Of Mode was definitely more than I had imagined, all the females had matching black fans with gold decoration on them. They look fancier than my description
The men used wine glasses as their main props, such as Dorimant, whom you never saw without an alcoholic beverage in his hand! 'Nosegays' were something Loveit and Belinda mentioned a lot and it wouldv'e been nice to have used some of these. A 'nosegay' is a scented piece of cloth or any other material worn on the body or held for when you walked through a bad smell in the streets. Mostly used by the upper class and we can only imagine someone like Loveit would use it when walking past someone like the Orange Woman.
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| Image 12: Fan |
The first session we messed around with costume and spent the entire session in them to get a feel for it all. I must admit I wasn't a huge fan of the costumes, not that you have to be to act in them, but I didn't feel confident in them as I'm most definitely more of a jeans kind of girl. But they came in handy for this session specifically when we moved onto posture:
There was no such thing as a hunched back. Everything up until recently was done with a perfect posture. It was just something people were brought up with, And this is both men and woman. It was a sign of status, to stand/walk/sit and speak well meant you were of a higher status than those whom weren't brought up with those kind of compulsory manners. All of the character in The Man Of Mode are of a high status and so posture was something we all had to achieve. "The posture when stood and walking: erect, relaxed and without affectation: the steps, moderate in length, amde with the heel touching the ground first." (The Polite World- A Guide To English Manners And Deportment (a) Deportment and Ettiquette by Joan Wildeblood.) During this first session, our exercise was to simply walk around. I find that my posture has improved since around about the time of joining college as I have been teaching myself to be more aware of it. And keeping my posture during this project has been something reasonably easy for me. I was brought up in the world of yoga, so sitting and standing with a good posture is something that I can easily access.
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| Image 3: Posture |
This link took me through the process of improving your posture, but mainly focussing on the neutral effect you can create for your body. Throughout the video, he talks you through various body positions,one being just a simple 'neutral spine' position, and a neutral spine in the seated position. The video talks you through all of these positions and I thought I could try them all out. Obviously I am aware of the correct posture for Man Of Mode but these are just some tips and come into practise for me.
In the seated neutral position, I felt comfy and it felt natural to be speaking in this position. It felt very much as though I was performing, however my neck felt awkward. For the neutral position, you have to line it up with your spine, so to me it felt a little bit out of place but apart from that it felt like a nice position. In terms of voice, I felt my voice was clear. There was nothing trapping the voice, not that that is something you can notice in your own voice anyways. I tried projecting and then whispering my lines in this position, and again it felt easy enough for my voice to do so.
In the standing position, it felt a little more forced. I find it tricky to remain with slightly bent knees as I tend to lock my knees, and I found holding them unlocked for this amount of time, meant my lower back began to ache. I tried to keep my arms dangling down in a neutral and relaxed position but I found I wanted to use them as a gesture type thing; but I think I can be leanient with small aspects like so.
This was good practise for me and it gave me ways to slip into the correct posture each time I needed to. So I have decided to set this as my weekly homework, to spend about 20 minutes per week practising my posture.
All of the above images show my notes from four weeks of my posture task I set myself. I did all these little bits per week until the run up to the show itself. They are all quite random and not professional posture exercises in the slightest however they were all things that really, really helped me improve my posture. Things like actors neutral was something I did every week in order to begin each week of posture exercises, I just found this was an easy way for me to remind myself of everything I needed to be aware of, and it just kept bringing me back to what I needed to be working on each week. The 'relaxation system' is just a short relaxation I had learnt whilst doing yoga a few years back. Its simply just focussing your mind to be able to breathe into each part of the body, I did this a few weeks and it was a good closure to my posture work as I found when I was focussing on not locking my knees, for example, my lower back would often ache so the relaxation was useful. My mum is a yoga teacher, so I managed to squeeze in attending one her classes one week. This, I feel, helps to improve my general posture, and although it's not something I did every week for these four weeks, but a lot of yoga appeared in my exercises- but my mum's class was a good one-off.
People have always noticed I am an 'observer.' I will always be sat back slightly instead of in all the drama and just sit and observe people; sometimes this doesn't work in my favour but in cases like these, it works very favourably for me. One of my four weeks, I spent observing everyone elses posture. We are definitely the era of bad posture, very few people hold themselves well and I noticed how differently everyone walks too. Some walk with their heads, some with their hips- when I am sure that walking with a well-postured, straight body.
Fan work was another thing we covered in that first Man Of Mode session. Although this true fan work was something we knew we weren't going to incorporate into our performance of Man Of Mode, it was something we felt was important to learn. It was part of the ladie's attire and in this time period in particular, fans were becoming the trend as they started being made from materials such as: silk, leather, ivory, whale-bone, tortoise shell and oak. The fan was originally used a simple means to keep the heat away, it provided a nice cool breeze (as we all appreciated muchly as actors when hot on stage !) But they soon became the means of expressing emotions- which is where they came in handy for us during Man Of Mode.
"In the days when women yet blushed, the the days when they desired to dissimulate this embarrassment and timidity, large fans were the fashion; they were at once both a countenance and a veil. Flirting their fans, women concealed their faces; now they blush a little, fear not at all, have no care to hide themselves, and carry in consequence imperceptible fans" ~Madame de Genlis http://www.angelpig.net/victorian/fanlanguage.html
I found this quote through my research of the fan work in the restoration period and I found it very relateble for Mrs Loveit- apart from the 'dissumlation of embarrassment, because that's nothing like Mrs Loveit in the slightest. However, Loveit used her fan in many ways, so the fan work was very useful for me. She used it to flirt, to begin with. With use of the link above, I began to look into the movements of the fan that would show 'love' or 'flirting'. 'Shut the fan, hold to chest - You have won my love.' In the piece, she is flirting with Sir Fopling Flutter in order to make Dorimant jealous-"He is not jealous, but I will make him so." So the use of the fan in this scene specifically (Act 1, Scene 3) was widly different to how she uses it in her other scenes. With 'love' in mind, I made sure to fan myself slower here, which as a general term is to represent calmness. I made sure to close my fan when perhaps I wasn't making contact with Sir Fopling, to represent both the calmness but by also implying the hidden meaning of: 'You have won my love.' 'Close the fan and hang from the right hand- I want to be engaged' without planning, I found that I did this a lot with my fan when not in use, and although its a bit against how I've created Loveit, it's something that tells a good story during the parts where she flirts with Fop. She clearly leads him on here, because the next time we see the two characters meet again, she is already against him because she knows she did what she set out to do; which was to make Dorimant jealous.
In terms of the other scenes, Loveit was a lot more angry. So the use of the fan changed dramatically again here. In our first session of Man Of Mode, we were taught how to flick our fans out at quite a speed. I found a little trick to do this, which was to pinch the first wing to the fan, and make all your other things detached from the fan, this way you could swing the fan back and expand it, all with just the pinch of two fingers. This made the whole process a lot more elegant, as bad use of fans would be seen as very ugly. It took me quite a while to get the hang of the fan, but then it took me even longer to use it correctly in these angry scenes. But I found, just faning it quickly represented anger simply! It also became quite comical, as I used it so much at such a speed.
Context behind the play:
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| Image 4: King Charles II |
The play was written in 1676 which seems a very logical place for me to begin my research. The end of the 17th Century was when the monarchy began to change and in ways that hadn't happened before- they were now subject to Parliment. Charles II was restored the throne in 1660 to mark the end of the republican rule in England. He was the eldest son of Charles I who was executed. And was only 12 when the Civil War broke out. The war was in 'protest' of how unhappy people were as to how Charles I was running the country. The final straw for this was when Charles I tried to arrest five important leaders, and the war broke out. Charles II was forced into exile after Cromwell won the victory of the Throne. Whilst in exile, Charles II heard of his fathers execution. And so the years in which Charles II won the throne back, these were the years of the 'restoration' period.
Restoration: The act of returning something to a former owner, place or condition.
Charles II saw this as his restoration, his plan was to restore his fathers way (like father, like son.) It was his duty to 'return' the throne back to its 'former owner'. Although, I questioned as to why we, now, call it a piece of 'restoration theatre'. My only answer for this was because we, as actors, are returning to the original ways in which these 17th Century plays were meant to be played. It is the process of 'restoring' how these plays were meant to be so - 'the act of returning something to a former condition' is most suited.
Charles II restoration was to run without Parliment, just as his father had so heavily tried to protest. Charles II first couple of years in reign weren't the best years, he witnessed the Great Fire of London in 1666, The Black Plague in 1665, which both led to the rebuild of London. The fire caused much atention to religion as it was very much discussed that this was an act of God's displeasure. Researched then began studies into the world of Atheism (to not believe in religion.) The city is re-built in stone to prevent another fire, which has now become the London we know. And The Black Plaugue lead to two-thirds of London being evacuated and 70,000 people were dying per week. Another war breaks out (1665) just as our English soldiers discover a new island and name is New York after the Duke of York.
The political side of this era are all quite tense. I get the impression that living in this time wasn't particularly pleasant, people were being forced to be a part of The Church of England under the Corporation Act, and like any law, this was something you had to abide. Some people were really against Charles I, hence his execution, and Oliver Cromwell wasn't much better as it was cause of celebration for some when Charles I gained power, but undoubtedly, some people would've hated Charles I. As we are aware, any slight disagreement in opinions can cause quite the riot. Even nowadays, with the whole BREXIT issue... there will always be disagreements however I think we've learnt to cope with them now, whereas these kind of issues back then were dealt with a lot more seriously. There isn't much in terms of knowledge and research to prove that socially there were always barriers but we can assume there were as there was so many things people could disagree on back then. All the characters from Man Of Mode are all from the same background, so as you read the play, you can see that there aren't any dramatic disagreements. This is the perfect way for Etherege to show us that people of the same social status all agreed on the same things. They were all brought up with the same morals and were taught in the same ways. So as we get introduced to characters such as the Orange Woman, we can only imagine that relationships with her and the rest of us were very different. The Orange Woman becomes a good example, she is of a much lower status, seemingly because one, her job is to sell fruit. Something that was most definitely not a well-to-do career. We don't see her interact with many of the characters, which could imply that she was of such a low status that all the other characters had no interest in interacting with her at all. Dorimant is the only character to properly engage and interact with her, which tells us something significant about his character. Firstly, she is a woman and Dorimant loves woman! And the chances of him being able to pay her for sex was very high, or so we can only imagine.
Contextual: Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was an English naval administrator and member of Parliment and became famous through his diary that he wrote throughout his life. This very diary has became such an important part of the restoration history, and it provides us all the information we know about this era.His diary includes information about The Great Fire of London and The Black Plague. He began the diary on January 1st, 1660. As part of my research, I owned the book out of the library and spent some time flicking through it (I didn't get round to reading it all, but it's definitely something I want to read when I get more time!) Although he stopped writing in 1669, the diary still gave me a lot of information about the era in which Man Of Mode is based in.
Samuel Pepys was a wealthy man, he had a good earning job in some sort of office. He was definitely more of a middle-class person, more than someone like Loveit who is of the highest class. He has money to spend, and like in a few sections of his diary, he mentions about his new watch and that it was expensive it and it has some new and trendy devices to it such as an alarm. Not many people back then would've been able to afford something like that...! Another thing that proved his wealth to me was the amount of times he mentions visiting the theatre to see shows. To see a play, you had to be of a good social status, they simply wouldn't let you in otherwise! Fees to get into the theatre were free at this point, but it was only for the rich. He loved the theatre, my favourite bits that relate to his love for the theatre consisted of information about his thoughts of Midsummers Night Dream and Macbeth:
"This day my oaths of drinking wine and going to plays are out, and so do I resolve to take a liberty to-day, and then fall to them again. To the Kings Theatre, where we saw 'Midsummers Night Dream', which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure" September 29, 1662.
As we can read, he clearly wasn't fond of the play, but typically a bit like Dorimant, his pleasure came from seeing 'handsome women'. This just highlighted to me how much woman mattered to men back then. He talks so negatively about what he thought of the play but it's all quickly smoothed over by the fact he saw some women which clearly pleased and entertained him more than the play had done. This is exactly something Dorimant would say, which just shows how true Etherege wrote in terms of characterisations.
Pepys opinion's of Macbeth were very different:
"To the Duke's house, and there saw Macbeth most excellently acted, and a most excellent play for variety" December 28, 1666
"Thence to the Duke's house and saw Macbeth; which though I saw it lately, yet appears a most excellent play in all respects, but especially in divertisement, though it be a deep tragedy; which is a strange perfection in a tragedy, it being most proper here and suitable." January 7, 1667
He much preferred Macbeth to A Midsummers Night Dream, and I found it quite fun to be able to read his opinions on these two classic Shakespeare pieces that we all know so well now.
The Plague was something of quite importance throughout the years of Pepy's life and it sure affected the later years in which Man Of Mode was written: 1665:
"It struck me very deeply this afternoon going with a hackney coach from my Lord Treasurer's down Holbourne, the coachman I found to drive easily, easily at last he stood still and came down hardly able to stand! And told me that he was suddenly struck very sick, and almost blind" June 17, 1665
Although this doesn't have too much relevance to Man Of Mode itself, I found it interesting to hear a first-hand view of the plague at the time. All we know now is how horrid it must've been at the time, but I don't think I realised how sudden it was, as Pepys clearly describes to us. He also admits that this was the first time in which the news of the Plague 'struck me very deeply'.
Another similarity in Pepys as Dorimant is his views on life:
"The truth is, I do indulge myself a little more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and, out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it." March 10, 1666
This is Pepys telling us how that this is the time in his life that she should be solidly 'indulging myself a little more in pleasure'. He tells us that this is something that not enough men do, despite the fact they 'thrive' in life. To me, this is so Dorimant! (Apart from the fact that he seems to be thriving quite well off of life!) He spends most of his days during the play with leisurely things such as spending the day in bed with Belinda!! So he too is probably acknowledging that he is at 'the proper age of 'his' life.'
And again, like Dorimant, he classes woman as pleasure:
"I do still see that my nature is not to be quite conquered, but will esteem pleasure above all things, though yet in the middle of it, it has reluctances after my business, which is neglected by my following pleasure. However, musique and woman I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is." March 9, 1665.
He tells us that nothing can get in the way of his interest into woman and music, whatever his 'business is'. Again, this is something that simply sums up the thoughts of men back then (and I am sure the thoughts of men nowadays too). I find it just helps me to understand Dorimant's character just a little bit more, knowing exactly what he's thinking when he jumps from Loveit, to Belinda and then to Harriet must've been a dream come true!!
At this point, I sort of gave up on finding more snippets of the diary, because although it gave me a lot of information about male characters such as Dorimant, I don't feel there was anything much to be said about woman like how we see Mrs Loveit. I understand that they were seen as meat for men, and treated as a piece of sex. They had to stay at home and look after the husbands, never the other way around-they were just background people throughout this period. And, so Pepys clearly had no interaction with such wild woman like Loveit for me to start picking away more information, however, I found a funny part about 'the end of the world':
"Great talk among people how some of the fanatiques do say that the end of the world is at hand, and that next Tuesday is to be the day..." Novemeber 25, 1662
I just thought this was funny because almost every year, we have lived through crazy people swearing that the world will end, and even in 1662, people were saying the same thing we lived through only last year (2015!!)
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Image 8/9: Samuel Pepys diary: notes |
Audiences: Then/Now:
As I have been becoming more and more familiar with Man Of Mode, I've opened my eyes to the very hard-to-miss relateble themes that flow throughout it. For example, we have Dorimant. The player. He takes a girl out for the night at a play. His girlfriend/lover is informed of this via a bitchy friend and it all kicks off. Turns out the bitchy friend was the girl he took out for the night...
This is so our generation! It is so, so relateable! Everyone knows of someone who has been cheated on and we all know someone like Dorimant who just goes around and messes woman around. And it wasn't until this play that I realised this was some sort of ever-lasting issue with this world!
Audiences at the time in which the play would've first been performed, would've been able to relate to this just as much as the audience we had last week for our performance of the play. Men back then didn't treat woman right, and it was seen as part of their leisure activities, to have women. And sure, the audiences back then would've been more than aware of this. And I am sure many people sat and watched that play and related to it in terms of situation and emotion.
...And just like I had done when reading the play for the first couple of times, I soon found myself relating to how Loveit was mugged off by her lover, and Dorimant was out busy taking other woman out for the night and then how he moves straight onto Harriet without a care in the world. It's so relateble in a sad way, too many people can relate to this which makes it sad that it's something that happens so frequently, and although the situation in which it would've happened back in 1676 would be very different to how we receive it now, its the exact same.
I found when acting in Loveit's first scene, I had the audiences full attention. By this time they had caught onto the fact that Dorimant had cheated on me and they could guess that it might be Belinda, and so at times in which Dorimant entered, I had a few audience members sigh or gasp; because where they could relate to it, they understood that Dorimant entering the scene would only mean that they will see me as Loveit react even more so. They could see what was coming but also understood as to why Loveit would suddenly flip as Dorimant entered or whenever he tried to cover it up with: "Faith, I resolved as much as you. But the devil was obstinate and would not tell me."
In another context, we see similarities of things nowadays that can easily relate to Man Of Mode. For example, we have Made In Chelsea. As part of my research, I looked into two different characters that reminded me strongly of Mrs Loveit and Dorimant! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGV6c3UsD-w I wanted to find the most appropriate link to show exactly what I want you to see of Mark Francis, a very snobby character who spends his entire time playing woman...Sounds like Dorimant?
Dorimant should have this air about him that he's the best and that he knows everyone loves him and he gets all the woman, which is exactly what Francis does in Made In Chelsea. From the minute this video begins, you can see this air to his character. He's bent forwards towards the other character (Victoria) in a very flamboyant way. "You know you are always the most welcome of guests" ... "well that's because you have a taste that's as impeccable as mine" already we see Francis turning on his charm towards the lady, and immeditely you begin to dislike him because of this. His very quick reaction to the fact his 'room' was described as 'clutter' is showing us how big his ego is! I realised very quickly this is just how Etherege has written Dorimant, and that people as annoying and as obnoxious as Mark Francis, exsisted in the 17th Century.
As part of an extra bit to this assignment, I wanted to look into how this play could be contemporised if we ever had the opportunity to do so, because I have listed so many themes that relate to our 21st century lives that we live today. My main idea being that you could set it up at a nightclub! My first thoughts were a nightclub because of the amount of drama that normally happens there with friends, couples and strangers. And that is probably the briefest way to summarise Man Of Mode;)
So bringing it forward a couple of decades into our century would mean that very little of the story would have to change in order to fit into a nightclub. I listed ways in which we could bring this to a more contemporary style:
- Loveit and Dorimant would arrive as a couple to the nightclub. Possibly not the happiest of couples, with Loveit having trust issues for Dorimant's previous incounters with cheating on her etc etc
- Characters such as Emilia and Young Bellair continue their little story, but perhaps get together instead of marrying
- Medley being Dorimant's closest friend, a bit of a tag-along
- Harriet bringing her mum to the club because quite frankly she doesn't have anyone else to bring along with her
- So Dorimant goes off with Belinda at the club, Loveit soon finds out and talks it through with Pert and Belinda
- She then finds Dorimant and kicks off at him, he denies it etc etc
- Loveit finds another guy in the club to flirt with...Sir Fopling Flutter
- Dorimant see's and gets jealous, whilst Medley helps him through the situation
- Loveit cottons onto the fact that Belinda might be a part of this, and so gets cross all over again
- Kicks off at Dorimant once again... Maybe gets kicked out of the club at this point?
- Other characters begin to realise Dorimant's ways, and like Lady Woodville, overreacts at the very hearing of Dorimant being in the same club as her! (Some girls are very dramatic!)
- The final scene ends with Dorimant and Loveit smoothing things over slightly, Harriet making drunken and immature digs towards her and Fopling thinking Loveit's flirting meant she wanted to go back to 'his place.'
- Loveit storms off and calls a taxi....
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| Image 10: Typical 'lad' look-Dorimant |
Weirdly enough, this fits so well!! It was like it was meant to be written for our generation! 'Nothings new!' The language of the play would change, although it's not something that would have to be done, I think it would simply work better if it was adapted to the more contemporary theme of it. Names of characters would also change, but they would'nt need too much thought paid attention to, purely because the names mean nothing in the original version of the play.
However costume, I feel that the original version showed status and character through costume, a bit like how I spoke about Dorimant wearing red as a symbol of his evilness.
I pictured dressing Dorimant in a kind of 'lads' outfit, that all the ladies-men boys wear to the club now.
Its the very typical smart shirt, skinny jeans and nice shoes look with jelled hair in some sort of style. Not to say this is the stereotypical look of guys who mess girls around, but its the laddish look that I think Dorimant would wear.
Female characters such as Belinda, whom are viewed in a more 'slutty' perspective for the fact she sleeps with Dorimant could wear outfits slightly more revealing than the average girl (again not stereotyping!!) A slightly higher dress than the other female characters, with large heels and consuming a lot more alcohol and going round kissing every other guy...That's how I imagine Belinda...!
Putting Man Of Mode into this contemporary context would really work, and it would be something I'd love to have done!!
Religion:
In this era, the Parliment and King (Charles I) clashed over opinions of religion. Back then it was law that everybody belonged to the Church Of England. In 1663, William Laud was made the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was strongly against the Puritans as was the King at the time.
The Puritans were a diverse group of people who took a stand for purity in religion. Their main reason for this was, as people began to learn to read and write, people began to read the Bible by themeselves, which was something really unholy and against all things they had been teaching people. So their aim was to bring the purity back into religion on terms such as reading of the Bible in churches only. Another issue the Puritans stood up for was how Laud redecorated the churches and changed the process of the ceremonies that would happen there- again the Puritans made a fight for more purity of religion.
In this period, there was glimmers of light to prove that not everyone would want to be part of the same religion (although this is still something people are against now, in the 21st Century.) It was George Fox who believed that everybody had an 'inner light.' He was later persecuted for his such wild ways. Charles I (when he came into power) was not heavily religious, but as he came into power, it soon became a thing to set out and ruin all the independent churches that had popped up which is where the Corporation Act came into place (1661), an act to make everyone part of the Church of England.
There is next to nothing to suggest the political ways of any of the characters in Man Of Mode, however I have done some analogies give us more of a insight into perhaps what Mrs Loveit may have been for or against. There was no choice involved with the fact that people were being forced to become a part of the Church of England, and with the high social status of Loveit, she was probably brought up with both accepting and approving of being a member of the Church of England. However, I've analysed that if she had her way, she would want to be different from everyone else. She would much rather live her own life, independently and not under the influence of any goverment enforcements. I'm not saying that she's against the power that was reigning at the time, but I just mean she would much rather not be apart of the Church of England, purely because everyone else is. We see this side of her quite regularly when arguing with Dorimant. We can clearly see she is an independent woman, but brought up well enough to understand that she needs a man in her life to keep her reputation up. And if that wasn't the case, I could easily see her living quite happily alone and refusing any male help in her life- she's definitely that kind of woman.
Economy:
During the 17th Century, the population of England began to steadily increase. It was at about 4 million in 1600 and had raised to 5 1/2 million in 1700. And in this period, England became richer. Industries such as brick, coal, making iron and glass increased rapidly. The upper and middle class, such as our Man Of Mode characters, were living quite comfortably amongst all this money, they were safely separated from the poor whom all lived towards the East End of London, whilst the rich lived on the West End - so we can only imagine that Man Of Mode was set in the West End too. This time was when the poor really struggled so thiefs were really common as well as prostitutes such as the Orange Woman, these were just means of gaining money. The rich, were more than happy. In Man Of Mode, there is no sign whatsoever that any of the characters are struggling for money. All of the characters, like I said before, are of the same high social status, they all have footmen and maids. All of their clothes were nice, with colours and well-pruned wigs and jewellery.
I have always viewed Mrs Loveit as one of the most well-off. She is one of the slighlty older characters, and it's common knowledge that the mother/Lady's of the house were much more well-off. Hence why Dorimant quite likes her, perhaps? She lives on her own and affords her house without any stress (or so I can only imagine) I had in mind that perhaps both of her parents have died, as we never have any mention of them, so with that said, a lot of money would've been passed down to Loveit making more than ok for money. Also, she is the only character to have both a footmen and a maid which again implies she is good on money.
Social:
Woman on stage:
1660 was the year in which woman were allowed on stage as performers! Anytime before then, all female characters would be played by men, in long dresses and wigs. 1660 was very close to the year of Man Of Mode, so characters such as Loveit and Belinda were fortunate enough to be played as woman immeditely after publication. I get the impression that Etherege was a man to agree with this, purely because it's evident that all his female characters were written to be played by females, whereas if you looked at scripts before this time such as Shakespeare's work, you can see elements of male characteristics written into the female characters. Although we did have a male actor player Lady Woodvil. I think that Man Of Mode would've caused some talk, especially now that woman could and would be playing their roles rightfully as females, because the storyline is quite argueable because its so true. People would've watched it and understood fully the situation of, for example, Loveit and Dorimant's relationship, but it could've perhaps caused talk about how real Etherege has written these sorts of private relationships. It could've been seen as prying into peoples business, and this might've been overexaggerted by the fact that it was all made so much more real for the audience because they were now seeing females as these hard-done by characters whom we learn that their lover has just gone off and cheated on them...perhaps it was all too real for the audience in the 17th century?
The first woman on stage was a lady called Margaret Hughes who's first role was as Desdemona in Othello. And we all have the restoration of Charles I to thank for this, due to his love of the theatre! Another cause of change was during a performance, a male actor was due on stage as his female character, but he was late on stage due to the fact he was still shaving! This was a huge embarrassment to the theatre company at the time... Especially because King Charles I was one of the audience members. It wasn't too shortly after this that he declared that all female character can only be played as females, which lead to Sir Thomas Killgrew and Sir William Daveant , two royal patents, casting an all female play: The Parsons Wedding in 1664.
Script work:
Act 1, Scene 2, Loveit's first time on stage since the beginning of the play. For these early parts of rehearsal's I busied myself with looking into the script, identifying what everything Loveit was saying and what it all meant and also looked into actioning everything I could to see behind the things she said. These are all things I felt I should've done much earlier on in the process of Man Of Mode as they were all definite things that were seriously holding me back in the practical side of rehearsals. However, I made sure to note down everything I questioned about what Loveit says and also how and why is she saying it and what the real meaning behind it all is and here is some of these throughout the play:
"I know he is a devil, but he has something of the angel yet undefaced in him, which makes him so charming and agreeable that I must love him, be he never so wicked." This is towards the very beginning of the scene, so immeditely the audience are aware that she loves Dorimant but we know that perhaps she shouldn't because he makes her 'torment and vex yourself continually'. We immeditely understand that Loveit perhaps knows she shouldn't love him also, 'I know he is a devil', and that, like any typical love-struck girl, tries to cover up his evilness, 'but he has something of the angel yet undefaced in him.' Again, typically love-struck, she has slowly fallen in love with all of Dorimant's 'odious fools'. This is most definitely the most interesting scene opener that I've seen in a play, Etherege dives straight in with all the interesting details about Loveit's character and so straight away the audience are busy making their own opinions of her, both good and bad; depending on how you can relate to her opinions of this so called Dorimant.
"Some Fop has bribed you to rail at him." We are again, very quickly, introduced to the relationship between Loveit and her maid, Pert. It's definitely not an stereotypical relationship between a Lady and her maid, however we soon understand that Pert is very fiesty for the job role she's in. She causes some humour for the audience in this very scene of Loveit's, which again is a nice way to bring the two characters into the play.
In total contrast to the page before, literally, Loveit changes her feelings towards Dorimant in seconds of hearing that he was 'at the play entertaining a mask'. (He took another women to the theatre last night!!) Again, this is a nice comical touch from Etherege, because just as the audience are kindly adjusting to the fact that this nice, calm. lady character is nicely in love, we see her change completely at the first hearing of Dorimant cheating! This is something so oddly relate able to a lot people in this generation. Men or woman cheating in a relationship is unfortunately far too common, so seeing this being done in the 17th Century is funny for this era. Loveit's emotion swings are also quite relateable, because don't we all know someone like that when in a relationship?! For all of this, I'm taking special note of her dramatic line: "I will tear him from mine or die in the attempt." And here she means, she is so angry that she will tear him from an aspects of her heart (no longer love him) or if that doesn't work, she will die because of it!
Still on her dramatic high, she contradicts herself wonderfully a couple of pages down the line: "Horrid and ungrateful, begone and never see me more." At this point, she is really furious, but as soon as Dorimant agrees and starts to obey her orders and begins to leave, she contradicts herself and says: "Come back, you shall not go, could you have the ill-nature to offer it." Again this is something we can all relate to, when your'e so angry you begin to loose what your'e angry about and your just angry at them in general.
In the next scene, we see Loveit and Sir Fopling together, here, Loveit sets out purely just to make Dorimant jealous by flirting with Sir Fopling. Fopling being quite oblivious to this little trick, is loving the attention he's getting from Mrs Loveit, whereas Dorimant seems 'a little bashful on the matter.' She is still in a rage about Dorimant, however now she has a new plan in her head (about making him jealous) she is a lot calmer about it all, ' I would've died first, he shall no more find me the loving fool he has done.' Here she accepts that she was a 'loving fool' but now she has changed her ways!
"I see him, he comes insulting but I will disappoint him in his expectations...I like this pretty nice humour of yours Sir Fopling, with what a loathing eye he looked upon those fellows" She is still on her mission of making Dorimant jealous and is so focussed on him she notices that as soon as he enters, 'he comes insulting'. And her mission begins as soon as she starts talking to Sir Fopling, 'I like this pretty nice humour of yours' This is her flirting loud enough for Dorimant to hear!!
The third scene in which we see Loveit, Pert, Belinda and Dorimant together again, Loveit starts off, again quite calm and at this point the audience are very well adjusted to her mood swings and so they are ready if Loveit kicks off again. This time it doesn't take her long, as she hears that Belinda was brought by Ambling Harry: "He bring her, his chair stands near Dorimant's door and always brings me from thence." This part of the script always confuses me, because seconds before Belinda enters, Loveit is fuming that she's been taking some interest into Dorimant; but then as soon as she enters Loveit is quite calm towards her. Perhaps this is something I've been doing really wrong, perhaps the lines after Belinda's entrance are all directed in a more angry tone whereas I think I dampened down her anger in this bit specifically.
Again, this part is something I might've got the wrong end of the stick on; and that was the whole 'fruit' bit. (Belinda suddenly feels faint due to the fact 'she has eaten too much fruit, I warrant you'. Belinda and Pert hurry off, and although as the actor I understand that Belinda only becomes 'faint' when she hears Dorimant is coming. She is worried that he will humiliate them both infront of Loveit, and being Loveit's friend, she knows how Loveit will react. So she quickly gets herself out of the situation. Pert quickly catches onto what Belinda is up to and goes along with it. My theory for Pert helping Belinda out here, is because she is also more than aware of Loveit's temper, and for her own sake and safety she gets out just as quickly; she even helps Belinda with the whole fruit thing: "She has eaten too much fruit I warrant you."
I think I reacted a little too gullible for this situation, especially because I have never portrayed Loveit as the gullible kind.
Once again, she gets really angry: "Insupportable, insulting devil. This from you the only author of my shame, this from another had been but justice, but from you tis a hellish and inhuman outrage!" If this had happened with any other guy it would've been out of justice, but Loveit is well adjusted to Dorimant's ways and understands that, yes, it is just a 'hellish and inhuman outrage.' These lines she begins to almost spit them out at Dorimant. They are all really harshly worded sentences in aim to hurt Dorimant (to no avail.) But they are all in order for her to get her anger across. These are my favourite couple of lines because they are so hard to spit out at the speed in which I was saying them with the anger I had in my voice.
"You who have more pleasure in the ruin of a womans reputation than in the endearments of her love, reproach me not with yourself and I defy you to name the man that can lay a blemish to my fame." This has to be one of my favourite lines. I had such pleasure saying it, it was also quite fun to be able to shout at Matt (something I would never normally do ahah!) I added quite a bit of emphasis to this line in particular on lines such as, 'you', 'ruin', 'her', 'I', 'my', 'fame'. I found that if I emphasised the small words, the whole sentence improved and felt a lot more feistier.
My favourite line however is: "I would die to satisfy that, but I will not to save you from a thousand racks do a shameless thing to please your vanity." This is, I think, the one line that truly shows her feelings and it portrays the whole situation so simply. She would still die to satisfy his love, so she's admitting to us as well as herself that she still madly loves him. However, she would never do anything to save him from ruining his reputation if it meant that she would be the one to look ridiculous. It's quite a sad line if you look at it close enough. The line shows us that she's admitting to herself that she does still love him and I think that's something not everyone can manage. Not everyone can admit something so big to themselves; I think we spend too much time trying to trick ourselves into believing that we don't love 'them'.
Another line that allows us to step a little bit further into Loveit is; 'You might have trusted me with something of this kind, you know you might. Why did you go under a wrong name?' Here she is accepting Dorimant's ways and also accepts the fact that he has gone off with other woman since the beginning of the play.
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| A modern Dorimant and Belinda |
"Legion of fools as many devils take thee" Loveit's final line in the play, and probably the line I found hardest to say in terms of getting the meaning of it out correctly. Typical Loveit, this line expresses her emotions about how she feels about all of these people around her. This final scene, you see a lot of the characters 'digging' into Loveit, for example, Dorimant opens up about who the 'masked lady' is. Sir Fopling enters in his over-exaggerated ways and dives straight in with how he loved the attention Loveit offered him in The Mall the other night: "The great satisfaction I had in The Mall last night has given me much disquiet since." And then finally, Harriet pulls the last straw which leads to Loveit storming out on this line: "Legion of fools as many devils take thee." I know that I need to say this line with as much hate as to how she is feeling however because it's an exit line (I say this as I am walking out the 'stage door') I feel that I tend to throw it away and that way I loose the meaning of it. The line basically means that everyone there are 'fools' they have all humiliated her throughout both the play and this scene in particular and Harriet's words were Loveit's last straw. 'Devils take thee' Here I have interpreted this line as the devil is in all of these people here in that scene. They are all unkind and have treated her wrongly, and so, typical Loveit, she goes in for the harshest insults she can think of which has to be 'devils take thee.'
At the beginning of this project, I hated the language because so much of it I didn't understand. So like I have shown you above, I sat down and thoroughly went through my script anotating it with things to help me understand and remember what the lines mean. I introduced myself to actioning during this project as well. Actioning is a script work process of understanding your lines. Actioning is the process of writing what your character is trying to do when saying the line itself. For example, "He is to blame indeed" So as actioning goes, the actioning note for this line would be: 'I persuade you'. With this line, Loveit is trying to persuade both herself and Pert that Dorimant is the cause of her sorrows: "...who makes your torment and vex yourself continually." So the way in which I would need to deliver this line would be to add some glimmers of desperation. She is desperately trying to persuade Pert that 'he is to blame' .
I found actioning my script really quite difficult. I understood the whole concept of it, but the format in which you have to lay out your actioning was the part I found tricky. (And by this I mean that to 'action' your script correctly, you have to make sure it reads: 'I' ... 'You' so you add in your adjective.) However I had a lot of help from my actioning book: 'Actions: The Actor's Thesaurus written by Marina Caldrone & Maggie Lloyd Williams.
What is the meaning of an aside? An aside is just a means to access the audience, but also to give the audience a chance to understand each character and their thoughts a little bit more.
Script work: The Prologue:
The prologue starts the play and it's meant to be read by the actors, and not the characters. The Prologue is written by Sir Car Scroope, Baronet. Scroope was a versifier (which means a bad poet I guess) and he was also very much a man of fashion... Similar to how Etherege has written the Sir Fopling Flutter. Although saying that he was a bad poet contradicts my opinions on the prologue that features in Man Of Mode. I like the way it rhymes oddly, it just fits well with the language that you see later on in the play and it comes as a nice little introduction to the play for the audience, not that I'm sure they understand it at all.
However, I can't work out as to why Etherege decided to use Scroope for the prologue, if at the time he was seen as an awful poet. My only theory is because Scroope himself inspired Etherege to write Sir Fopling the way he has done. Both Scroope and Sir Fopling are men of fashion and perhaps even Scroope's personality is the exact match of the Fops.
Also, I can't work out why its a chorus piece. The prologue was intended to be read by the actors that feature in Man Of Mode, which makes it a choral piece, intended to be read by more than one actor. It's so out of context for the rest of the play, as none of the play itself is intended to be choral. However, perhaps it was meant to be that way to show how choral the cast are. When working on a show, you naturally come together as a cast. I have made so many good friends through working alongside them for solid four weeks of rehearsals and performances; and this is definitely a universal thing in terms of performing. So perhaps the prologue was a method of showing the audience how 'together' the cast is... after all, the intentions of a Greek Chorus were about being 'together in both thoughts and movements'.
"Like dancers on the ropes poor poets fare
Most perish young the rest in danger are;
This, one would think, would make our authors wary,
But, gamster like the giddy fools miscarry,
A lucky hand or two so tempts them on,
They cannot leave till' they're undone,
With modest fears a muse does first begin,
Like a young wench newly enticed to sin,
The wanton fool would never more lie still.
Tis' an old mistress you'll meet here to-night,
Whose charms you once have look'd on with delight,
But now of late such dirty drabs have known ye,
A muse o'th' better sort's ashamed to own te,
Nature well drawn, and wit, must now give place,
To gaudy nonsense and dull grimace,
Nor is it strange that you should like so much
That kind of wit, for most of yours is such.
But I'm afraid that whilst to France we go,
To bring you home fine dresses, dance and show,
The stage, like you, will but more foppish grow.
Of foreign wares why should we fetch the scum
When we can be so richly served at home?
Fir, heaven be thank'd, 'tis not so wise an age
But your own follies may supply the stage.
Though often plough'd, there's no great fear the soil
Should barren grow by the too frequent toil,
While at your doors are to be daily found,
Such loads of dunghill to manure the ground,
Tis by your follies that we players thrive,
As the physicians by disease live;
And as each year some new distemper reigns,
Whose friendly poison helps t'increase their gains,
So among you there starts up everyday
Some new, un-heard of fool for us to play.
Then for your own sakes be not too server,
Nor what you all admire at home, damn here:
Since each is fond of his own ugly dace,
Why should you, when we hold it, break the glass?"
I wanted to make more sense of this prologue, so like in the script, I made notes on what I thought some of the lines meant etc etc.
'Like dancers on the ropes' Straight away this puts an imagine in your head of some sort of circus act, but more importantly you see it as some form of performance. Its a clever and subtle way to start the show as the first thing we hear is performance-related in some aspects.
'Tis an old mistress you'll meet here tonight' It was the common place to meet a lady at the 'plays' so in their own language, they are telling the audience the story of what used to happen if you went to a play in their era. Obviously this isn't something that would happen to us now, but to me it's like an odd way of telling the audience 'this is what we used to do', almost like a new way to give over the information both Scroope and Etherege must've felt necessary to include.
'Nature well drawn and wit must now make place' People go to see shows out of leisure which, in an abstract way, could mean that their lives outside are moderate. Their lives being 'nature'. With 'nature' being 'well-drawn' and all being well, they now have to 'make place' for 'wit' and wit being the humour and leisure of the play.
'But your own follies may supply the stage' This line sums up restoration! Restoration is all about 'follies'/players owning the stage, which is something Man Of Mode does.
And 'Tis by your follies that we players thrive' is how actors work. We 'thrive' off of what we get in return from the audience and life.
'Why should we, when we hold it, break the glass?' I see this line as an act of putting a mirror up to society to allow the play to continue, a weird method as such, for the audience to now shut out society and pay full attention to the play that is about to begin...
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| A modern Dorimant and Sir Fopling Flutter |
Mozart Symphony
no.25 in G minor
K.183
Complete.
I love the upbeatness to this song. It has quite a punchy start which helps bring the audiences attention in, and as soon as the song quietens down a bit in terms of rhythm, our prologue begins, so it acts as a good filler to bring the audience directly into the prologue.
"Hey page" the name page is written in the script with a lowercase 'p' which is probably an act of showing the status of the page, who clearly is of one of the lowest social statues!!
Extra vocal work:"Hey page" the name page is written in the script with a lowercase 'p' which is probably an act of showing the status of the page, who clearly is of one of the lowest social statues!!
The restoration era was the era of immaculate RP. Everything had to be well pronounced and you were of a really very low status if you weren't well spoken. Mrs Loveit is of a high status, she is talked about an awful lot during the play and is the only 'Lady' to have both a maid and a footman-which is something that just proves her status. So therefore she needed to be extremely well spoken.
With some research into English RP I found a useful website with tips on 'how to speak like the Queen'. http://www.bloomsbury-international.com/blog/2014/09/19/how-to-speak-like-the-queen-received-pronunciationposh-accent/ A short section to this link says how its important to elongate each and every word you say, as that is an easy short-cut into improving your RP. Alot of the other information they have provided via this link is all about learning words to use more often to make you sound more posh; but luckily we have it easy here and simply have the words we need to speak, but its our task to present these in the correct manner.
I found in the weeks of our performances, tongue twisters worked best for me. They became something I was just constantly repeating over and over again to really warm up my mouth as well as my larynx and vocal folds. As Loveit, I have so many lines that need to be spat out at Dorimant but these are all hefty lines that are insulting but also really difficult to get out. So tongue twisters were extremely useful here:
How much wood could a wood chuck, chuck, if a wood chuck could chuck wood.
She sells sea shells on the sea shore
Unique, New York
Red Lorry Yellow Lolly
I found the shorter ones much easier, one because they can be found more repetitve but two because I wanted to be able to say them with pure clarity but at speed because that way it helped more with my Loveit lines. How much wood could a wood chuck etc is my favourite, its become one that I can say without fault at quite speed with it remaining clear. Whilst on the subject of vocal warm ups, running my tongue all around my mouth has to be my second favourite warm up during this entire production. It's obviously the most simplest one which is why I liked it so much and it was something I could be doing as I was literally walking on stage. It would really warm up my mouth and get my tongue stretched. Alongside this I would be doing all weird things with my mouth, as in stretching it in weird directions and opening and closing it etc.
During practise, I made one section of dialogue my point of focus, and this was because I rushed it and stumbled through it every time, when really it needed to be delivered slowly and with thought going into it:
Without sense of love, of honour, or of gratitude: tell me for I will know, what devil masked she were you with at the play yesterday?
This is Loveit, now completely outraged with Dorimant, forcing out the 'masked female' he was with at the play yesterday. At this point she is in full rage and shouting at him, she's so cross because she knows damn well that he was at the play with someone because she believes fully the words of Belinda earlier on in the scene. As well with every other bit of Mrs Loveit, I really struggled with keeping the pace of my speech down to an audible speed but struggled with making sure what I was saying was coming out correctly in the correct manner too. So I'm going to run you through how I taught myself to conquer all the said things, with main focus on this line (although this was just one of all my lines that I struggled with!!)
It's all about pronounciating every letter that you produce, and so that very much meant me spending hours in the mirror saying these lines, making my mouth look ridiculous and then once managing to say these lines correctly, reigning in the funny mouth actions (if possible!!) Although saying that, I found that my large mouth movements suited Mrs Loveit, she was no small actioned lady, so having a large mouth suited her to an extent-ha!
'Without' the word itself has plenty of 't's which are a key area for pronunciation. I found that if I elongated the sound of the 'w' but then separated the two words in order of emotion. So 'with' was said in more of a questioning tone, that way it gave me enough time to pronounce the 'th' sound at the end of it. The 'out' was then said with a much harsher tone, ending on a very harsh finish with the final 't' sound being very prominent. I found that I would often end this word with my mouth in a kind of smiling shape, which is something very much against the meaning of the script, so I would pull my eyebrows in together to make me look more cross, so although my mouth might have looked happy my upper face and eyes said differently. But the smile that my mouth formed after saying this line was an over-emphasised gesture in order to get every letter of the word out correctly. This is something I sat infront of the mirror doing, I wanted to make sure my mouth matched the emotion in which I had to portray (similarly to the smile.) 'Sense' and 'of' for me, are fairly simple words to pronounce, they have no harsh sounds that need to be heard drastically so skipping to the word 'love'. I once again, elongated the 'low' sound to the word, and also found that I deepend my voice here, but in effect for emphasis more than just simply lower my tone. I slammed down my lips as soon as the 'l' sound had been pronounced (almost like you go to chew something quite suddenly) like you can feel your tongue moving more aggressively the quicker you say it. 'Gratitude' again has a lot of 't' sounds in it, I noticed that I was making the 'tit' part of the word seperate to the full word itself. So it would sound more like 'grah-tit-oode' which, the more I thought about it, sounded quite 'cockney'. I slowed it right down and focussed on breaking it down in a more English way. I made sure to cut the line off just as I reached the second 't'. So it became more like 'grahti- tude' So the 'tude' section had a much clearer 't' sound to it. Instead of before it was getting lost. My least favourite section to this line had to be the: 'For I will know'.I understood that it had to be the most confrontational part to the line but I kept elongating the 'will' for too long and it began to sound really particular. But that was something solved quite quickly, instead I began to elongate the 'I' sound. This way, the 'will' could be said more aggressively and the 'I', being drawn out more, meant that it was a clear emphasis on how it was Mrs Loveit proving to Dorimant that she WILL know who this woman was he was with! Again, saying 'will' with this much attention showed my how happy my mouth looked. It looked like an excited face more than angry which is meant to be. Again, drawing in my eyebrows helped me in this situation aha! 'Devil' was just one that I could just add some emphasis to, making the 'd' sound the harshest sound of them all. I don't like the word 'mask' in general, I found it hard to produce the 'k' sound so 'masked' was even harder. I still don't think I managed it all that way, but I just tried to slow it down in order to say it as well as I could.
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| Image 1, Patsy Rodenburg. |
Someone I based my vocal research upon so happens to be the voice expert that is Patsy Rodenburg. As you would expect, from a vocal expert, her voice is perfect. Her articulation and diction clear, and she simply speaks well. In this short clip, I focussed on her voice, instead of the vocal information she is actually giving. She speaks in a high tone, which shows off her enthusiasm for the subject matter. 'About thirty years ago when I started to teach' every 't' sound in this sentence, that starts off the clip, can be heard. They aren't harsh 't' sounds, like some can be, but they are pronounced clear enough to tune into them. She talks slowly, which like I said earlier really does make her sound intelligent (not that she wasn't anyways) But her speech doesn't s
eem slow, because the pauses aren't over exaggerated, they are merely there for her audience to process what she is saying before she continues; which means that she nearly always will have the full attention of her audience. There is the such rarity that she uses verbal pauses, but we can always expect that off anyone purely because its more about how the brain is working before we can speak. But it adds no real effect to how Rodenburg portrays herself with her voice.
So my research started off again into researching articulation, and the ways in which I can improve my articulation. First off, is to speak slowly. That way every correct way in pronunciation can leave your mouth correctly because you aren't rushing through your lines. Speaking slower also gives off a more intelligent voice, which is something Loveit could easily house. During these endless rehearsals, I have been reminded to slow down in order to perfect my articulation, and again looking back on the project, I think this is something that highly improved my voice in the final piece. To avoid verbal pauses in speech, which is something that can lower this status that I have perhaps already created for Loveit. But mainly, it's practise on the text itself that has helped me work on improving my well-spoken character. I have the advantage that I am well spoken already, I am often being told I sound posh but I don't think this had much use to me as Loveit had such an extended version of what I thought was me speaking well. A really key tip that I came across during my research was along the lines of 'read for the ears, not the eyes' they seemed to think the pyscological effect on you as the actor massively improves your voice. I know that this is something that was a huge tip for me when working on my Radio project, however I've been finding it quite useful for ordinary stage work such as Man Of Mode, because it just brings me b ack to reality that the audience are here purely to hear you because the lines you are saying are what the story primarily consists of, so if they can't understand you, its not entertainment for the audience!! http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/business-career/communication/do-you-have-a-radio-voice?page=1
'1. Find a piece of text
2. In a room, pinpoint an object in which you will be addressing your text towards
3. Deliver your text to this object, begin with a whisper, and each time raising the volume/projection of your voice.'
For this, I chose the line: "I like this pretty nice humour of yours Sir Fopling, Oh with what a loathing eye he looked upon those fellows!"I focused my voice to the other side of my room (bearing in mind it is a very small room!!) I stood by my door and projected to the far wall. I began with a whisper, making my words whispy and soft and quiet. I then took it to more of a 'stage' whisper, which is actually considerably different in volume. The stage whisper seemed harder to maintain throughout this line, purely because you have to put more vocal effort into the voice compared to just a normal whisper. I then spoke the line at my normal speaking voice, which is possibly quieter than perhaps what you could label a 'medium volume'. This felt more than natural, as was expected. Although, I did notice I spoke slightly quicker than I had done for the whispered voice. I think this is because I had slipped into my normal speaking habit because I had reached my normal speaking volume. I couldn't label my next volume, but it was perhaps the preferred stage voice for me: think one up from my natural speaking volume. I found this one the trickiest because it felt so unnatural for me (I shall explain more when I get to the next 'volume') But it just felt weird for me to be speaking at a slightly more raised volume. I tried out more lines at this volume, to experiment a bit with it. My conclusion is that because I feel uncomfortable at this volume, I have yet to teach myself to slip into it whenever in rehearsals or on stage.
The final volume is the level I want to reach when playing Loveit (so LOUD) . Surprisingly, I find this easiest. Still stood at the other side of my room, focussing all my voice into the corner of my room, this felt quite natural to me. I have a feeling this is because every time I go in to play Loveit, I have to hype myself up a bit, and so then when I'm on stage, I can be really quite loud and silly, and for me that kind of knocks my low confidence out of the water. However in terms of voice, I think where I have been working a lot on my projection, for the above reasons, recently it suddenly felt really natural for me-despite the fact I was only doing this as a simple vocal exercise.
In terms of the actual exercise I was experimenting with, it was a clever way to help me vocally reach the volume that I needed to reach. It allowed me to observe my voice through my vocal range, and as I raised the volume it felt so much easier for my voice when I reached the preferred volume for the entire play!!
I have really struggled with every aspect of Man Of Mode, from accsessing the anger to pacing up and down the stage to show this anger; but the voice has been just as hard. I don't have the confidence just to experiment with voices, and looking back on it, I regret not making my voice more different! With an awful lot of work alone, I think I reached the correct volume level for Loveit, and in the angry bits they were strong enough to see the anger, but they could've been a lot more louder! My clarity was possibly my strongest bit, the things I said were audible however I still felt as though I was talking too quickly, which is something I shall be working on for longer.
As part of our character development, it was our task to create an improvised story based on our characters and Man Of Mode itself, all based around an object. This is part of getting to know your character and I am really dreading it. I dislike improvisation, purely because I don't have the confidence to just create something on the spot. And I am still not liking Man Of Mode, but because of the amount of research I know I have to do to make my improv piece show-able might make me come to like and understand the play a little bit more. Luckily, Sally has given us pre-warning of this activity so we've had the time to work towards this, we were also given topic tips as to how to help build up our story more:
- Relationships
- Status
- Political views
- Age
- Background of character
- Enviroment i.e. past and present living conditions
- Trends and culture
- Economics
- Womans rights
- Global issues (as well as historical and social.)
I kind of went about this project backwards. It was my first priority to find an object suitable for this task, and once doing so I would then begin to conjure up the correct story behind it. I dug out an old looking ring and decided that this would be perfect as I had already imagined Loveit having some sort of love life before we meet her (and before she met Dorimant due to the age in which I have given her.) So at this stage, I then began to make notes about my character:
- She has a maid-Pert
- Also a footman which implies her wealth
- Belinda is her best friend, Belinda is quite a bit younger than her. Why is this?
- She is in love with Dorimant (so is Belinda!)
- She's extremely feisty!!
- Dorimant treats her badly
- Belinda uses her for her secret love affair with Dorimant
- In general, she is not treated well
- Aged about 43 or older
I then made notes about Dorimant and his relationship with Loveit and his personality:
- He's young- 20's?
- He loves woman but will go for men if they are avaliable
- He likes the older woman i.e. Mrs Loveit
- But likes the young too i.e. Belinda and Harriet
- He's brave in the sense that he plays off all these women and knows the reaction he will get when they discover they've been played and cheated
"As God hath ordained remedies for every disease, so he hath ordained a remedie for the disease of marriage." ~ Preparative Marriage by Henry Smith (1519.)
The only 'divorce' related thing people were sort of allowed to do was something called 'divorce from bed and board.' This was a legal process done through the professional, but it allowed a couple to agree to be legally seperated. It does not mean they are not married however, because once declaring your 'divorce from bed and board' it meant that you could not re-marry. Just that you were not legally attached to your husband or wife.
Saying that, after 1530, Protestant countries introduced a new law to allow the 'innocent party' to re-marry in the case of a 'divorce' type process. So if the husband was the one to cheat, the wife would be able to re-marry after a very lengthy and expensive process of law and court work (sounds similar to our divorces now!) This was called a 'divorce from the chain'.
In complete contrast to divorce, I then began research into marriages. Did you know you could marry from the age of 12 with your parents consent! Those of both a high and low status could do this, and many high status people married at the earliest age possible. However, saying that, people of the lowest class would do the same in hope to earn more money for the family. Arranged marriages were also the thing to do at this period of time, so I can only imagine families such as Loveit's would have had a husband in mind for her from the minute she turned 7 (this was the age at which you could put in writing whom your child would be marrying when 12 or older.) As part of this improv/fantasy object exercise, I have said that Loveit married at the age of 12. This marriage meant she had no choice as to who she was marrying whatsoever.
This marriage wasn't working. He didn't give her the attention she so constantly needed and I'm sure there could've been many other reasons but I felt this wasn't particularly necessary. It would've been everyones advice to her to stick through the marriage, and be happy with what she had with this man, and live the rest of her life putting on an act and pretending to be happy with him. But Loveit being Loveit, I can't imagine her ever doing this. With the wealthy family she had, she paid for a 'divorce from the bed and board'. So neither her or the other half could ever re-marry. Which I have concluded is possibly why she is never seen happy, because she know's she will never be happy.
So this part divorce is the only thing she could do, but it suited her quite well. Marriage, I can't imagine, was something Loveit really wanted in life, she's far too independent for such a commitment, but obviously when she married at 12, it was way beyond her decisions.
Because of this 'divorce from bed and board' she was not un-married but she was away from her husband, which meant you had to wear the ring on your marriage finger. But I concluded that this was something that helped Loveit out. Wearing the ring meant anyone would simply assume she was happily married, whereas if she didn't wear a ring, she would be looked down upon for not marrying and would be seen as a 'witch' or worse.
...I can imagine Loveit perhaps taking the ring off whenever she meets men, just to give her a better chance in love;)
But from all this, we know that she still wears the ring as technically she is still married.
I've decided that all the information above adds perfectly into my improv story:
Loveit married young but it didn't work out, so she paid for the part divorce, which is probably where she lost the love of her parents as we never hear of them in the play itself. So now she is lonely and quite enjoying the love from Dorimant, but he doesn't treat her well, just like her ex, which makes her the crazy, feisty and angry character we know.
So the ring itself: Rings and any other type of jewellery were worn as a mark of status, and by 1300, elaborate rings were being made, for the rich and higher class like Loveit. Silver was imported from Kutten Burg (Kutna Hora, Bohemia.) At the time silver was seen as one of the poorer materials, but in a way this fits well with the age at which she married. The husband, at the age of 12 or above probably would'nt have been able to afford much more.
The ring I have is apparently called a 'cameo ring' for which the style that the ring is, which is apparently part of the decoration on the top of the ring.
But from all this, we know that she still wears the ring as technically she is still married.
I've decided that all the information above adds perfectly into my improv story:
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| Image 5: The ring |
So the ring itself: Rings and any other type of jewellery were worn as a mark of status, and by 1300, elaborate rings were being made, for the rich and higher class like Loveit. Silver was imported from Kutten Burg (Kutna Hora, Bohemia.) At the time silver was seen as one of the poorer materials, but in a way this fits well with the age at which she married. The husband, at the age of 12 or above probably would'nt have been able to afford much more.
The ring I have is apparently called a 'cameo ring' for which the style that the ring is, which is apparently part of the decoration on the top of the ring.
All in all, now that it's over, I think I quite enjoyed it-ha! It's not something I would choose to do purely because I hate improvisation but it was definitely something I needed in order to get me to understand the play and Loveit more. But it was also just as interesting to see everyone elses objects and stories. Some brought in letters, that had scandalous details in them about other woman...Dorimant, if you hadn't already guessed. Lady Townley brought in a pack of playing cards to represent her hostess ways and they were a pack that her mother before her had used one party evenings that we grow familar with during the play. Old Bellair brought in a sword and spare money, he's a bit of a strange old character so this surprisingly suited his ways- a very cautious type of character, so the sword was his method of self defence should he ever need it etc.
What interested me was how different each of the objects and stories were, it gave me plenty of information about each character but it also gave me a nice insight as to how each actor see's their character, and it was nice to see that they had interpreted it differently to how me and their double cast had viewed them.
Improvisation exercise: 2:
Before we began this second improvisation exercise today, we were allowed to use the costumes! This made doing this activity a lot easier as I felt like it was much easier to slip into the role of Mrs Loveit.
So we were all given a playing card each, the number of the playing card we were given was the level of social status. The ace being the lowest status, and the Joker being the highest. I was given the number 10, so this was basically Mrs Loveit!! Socially, I made this number 10 character loud, bubbly, flirty towards men and taking no interest whatsoever towards characters whom were acting below the number 7 in terms of social status. The low numbers would be seen to let other characters take their seats or they would be offering around drinks to show their low social status. This exercise was to help us gain more knowledge as to how much of an impact social statuses make to our characters. For me, I found it really helpful as it just emphasised how much your character can change simply from changing his walk to a more head to ground action to show a lower status or the posture of a number 10 character. This must've been an interesting exercise to sit and watch, especially because, like Sally, she had no idea what number each of us had, so it became more of an observing game for her, to see and guess what number we all had.
For the second time round, Sally then gave us cards that would challenge us to move away from our pre-exsisting characters such as Mrs Loveit. So for this round I was given a number 2. This number so much harder to portray in terms of social status. I found the best way to show this status was to keep quiet, bowing my head a little more than how I would for Mrs Loveit. Again, this showed me how Loveit will look if I don't improve how I am playing her because at the moment she is very much a 2, I keep her a quiet character with small hand movements and small facial expressions. After this, Sally, group by group, gave us a scenario in which we had to act out (all improvised and out of context with our characters stories in the play itself. So in my group I had:
Adam's workshop:
What interested me was how different each of the objects and stories were, it gave me plenty of information about each character but it also gave me a nice insight as to how each actor see's their character, and it was nice to see that they had interpreted it differently to how me and their double cast had viewed them.
Improvisation exercise: 2:
Before we began this second improvisation exercise today, we were allowed to use the costumes! This made doing this activity a lot easier as I felt like it was much easier to slip into the role of Mrs Loveit.
So we were all given a playing card each, the number of the playing card we were given was the level of social status. The ace being the lowest status, and the Joker being the highest. I was given the number 10, so this was basically Mrs Loveit!! Socially, I made this number 10 character loud, bubbly, flirty towards men and taking no interest whatsoever towards characters whom were acting below the number 7 in terms of social status. The low numbers would be seen to let other characters take their seats or they would be offering around drinks to show their low social status. This exercise was to help us gain more knowledge as to how much of an impact social statuses make to our characters. For me, I found it really helpful as it just emphasised how much your character can change simply from changing his walk to a more head to ground action to show a lower status or the posture of a number 10 character. This must've been an interesting exercise to sit and watch, especially because, like Sally, she had no idea what number each of us had, so it became more of an observing game for her, to see and guess what number we all had.
For the second time round, Sally then gave us cards that would challenge us to move away from our pre-exsisting characters such as Mrs Loveit. So for this round I was given a number 2. This number so much harder to portray in terms of social status. I found the best way to show this status was to keep quiet, bowing my head a little more than how I would for Mrs Loveit. Again, this showed me how Loveit will look if I don't improve how I am playing her because at the moment she is very much a 2, I keep her a quiet character with small hand movements and small facial expressions. After this, Sally, group by group, gave us a scenario in which we had to act out (all improvised and out of context with our characters stories in the play itself. So in my group I had:
- Frankie as Belinda
- Lewis as Medley
- Jake as Fop
- and me as Mrs Loveit
Our scenario was around a dinner. And our objectives were:
- Frankie's objective was encourage information out about myself and Dorimant
- Jake's objective was to try and push things further with myself and him
- Lewis' objective was to try and push questions towards the fact that Belinda and Dorimant were perhaps a thing
- My objective was to avoid anything to do with the Fop
So as you can see, each of our objectives meant that we spent a lot of interest in avoiding or ignoring questions and conversation coming from the 'enemy'. This turned out to be a really awkward improvisation scene as there was so many occasions that we were all just silent, and so just sat and pretended to eat and drink. I found this a lot harder than the 'playing card' improvisation activity as this was the typical straight improvisation work which I hate. Although I could see how effective our scene was, and we had the rest of our class on the edge of their seats, expecting something big to happen but the silences worked better!
Adam's workshop:
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| Image 6: Adam's workshop notes |
I noted that Adam's preferred method of blocking restoration is to make it extremely loud and over-exaggerated, which is something so very different as to how Sally is directing us. I'm glad that Sally is keeping everything under-exaggerated because I can only imagine how Adam would want Mrs Loveit; but it would be way out of my comfort zone!!
With characters such as Old Bellair, whom Adam spent a lot of time working on, we saw the most change with the voice of Old Bellair. His lines were delivered a lot louder, almost in a booming shouting voice, which worked for the age in which the character is meant to be (as old men tend to speak louder because they can't hear too well!!)
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| Image 7: Adam's workshop |
Lloyd's workshop:
Lloyd is an ex-student that Sally used to teach, and he was in the year in which they did Man Of Mode (he played Dorimant!) I was so pleased that he picked my scene to workshop, because I felt as though I had missed out from not working on much in Adam's workshop. Although it wasn't my favourite workshop I'd ever done ha!!
So we started off by just running the scene (Scene 1, Mrs Loveit house: With Pert, Belinda, Dorimant and Footman,) The main focus of this workshop was me, which was quite nerve racking for me! And it was all about making me angry! We did this workshop two days before our first show and it just proves to you how much I struggled with becoming angry as Mrs Loveit, leaving it two days before the show before I could even access this was something that really, seriously knocked my confidence.
Lloyd spent quite a while with us all sat down, talking us through how it's a really useful method to link your characters emotion to something that has happened to you that has made you angry. He listed the situation out about how Loveit is so angry at Dorimant because he's just gone off with another woman! And this sounds a bit stupid but I wrote down things that make me angry in order for me to access the anger I so desperately need for the show tomorrow! (Obviously the list I made is personal but it just contained things that have happened in my life that have made me angry and I know can still make me angry in a way...)
But some examples are:
- Upstage Luke, not in a negative bitchy way, but aim to be louder and bigger than him on stage
- Hate the absolute guts out of Matthew Todd (Dorimant by the way!!)
- Pert, the rudest maid ever be...She frustrates you endlessly, show this!
- Belinda, your best friend is using you...THIS HURTS
My main issue with accessing this anger is confidence. Its as simple as that. I don't think I'am anywhere good enough to just experiment with myself on stage and wing it and see the reaction of my peers and Sally in rehearsals, so now were here, two days before and I am beyond struggling with it! I am worried that I won't do well during the shows because I understand that the only way the lines and the scene will work is if I am acting angry as Loveit, otherwise it will look like a stupidly shit scene. I know I can do it, or to a much better level than I have been showing in rehearsals, but I find rehearsing really difficult too. Watching all the other scenes being blocked and starting to look really good just knocks my confidence even more and I think as soon as I see something done really well and I know thats what I've got to do, I complete shut myself off and do the opposite. Its just I've got to get over my confidence issue...
After talking to Lloyd about the scene situation and understanding different ways for me to access my anger, I think he probably realised I still wasn't doing much better so my next task was to get to the other side of the room, with the other four trying to pull me back (picture a rugby game!!) Whilst doing this, I needed to be shouting out my lines (I ended up just repeating the odd few but it still had the same effect.) This was to wind me up, make me more determined and to frustrate me which were all things that you could suddenly start hearing in my voice.
I must admit it was a very weird exercise, however it strangely worked! It pumped me up enough to want to get my words out and want to get my body to the other side of the room, and all the energy I was putting into fighting against the four that were holding me back gave my voice the anger I needed!
Set:
William Hogarth
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| William Hogarth's work |
This painting here, for example, from a distances looks like an ordinary painting, however if you look closely you begin to see the precision and detail that's gone into it all. I find when looking slightly closer to the painting, the scene in the image becomes a lot more busy; which is perhaps one of Hogarths method in order to improve his work. Due to his work being around in this 17th century era, like this painting, everything that features in his work is relevant for his time. For example, at the front of the image we have a lady putting her shoes on, but half of her dress has fallen down exposing her breast. With that said, we can only assume that she is a prostitute! All the men in the image are clearly well off, and so this would be a very good place for her, as no doubt she would make a lot of money. Saying that, I think, probably all the female characters are prostitutes, with the way in which Hogarth has drawn them all close to the men, with one dress on the floor.
Another thing I noticed about his work is that some of it is all very natural and like the picture frames are perfectly constructed to make the shape, its not a free handed job etc. However, the only bit that doesn't fit into that style is the mirror you can see to the right of the image. To me it looks as though the gentleman entering the scene is carrying it, which is odd. However, where it sits in the scene makes it look out of place, and actually it would'nt be hanging in its place as its right in front of the door way. We can also clearly see it is a mirror because of the reflection of the candle.
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| The Rake's Project |
You can see that their set is very detailed with perfect lines to create the similar busy effect that Hogarth perfected. I want our stage to be just as busy, because I feel like it would tell more of a story for the audience, and it will also help us alot with scenes such as The Mall, which are busy scenes anyways.
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| Final set design |
In the image here, you can see our final set design! On the left hand side we have four odd little sketches, one of a fruit bowl, a portrait and then a little scenic image. These were all lined out just like' The Rake's Project'. Although our design was no where neat Hogarths, ours became a lot more 'wonky' which actually made it better because it meant the audience could see it was clearly 'not ordinary'. At the back of the stage, we had a projector screen which told the audience which setting the scene was in, for example it would tell you if we were in 'Dorimant's Lodgings.' The left side of the stage was decorated with a large drawing of a naked lady, again all sketched up in the style of Hogarth. I think this was the most sucsessful drawing purely because of its size. It looked the most effective as it was surrounded by plain white walls, which made it stand out! The banner running at the front of the stage, read: "Tis by your follies that we players thrive". This is a line I say from the prologue, a line, like I said is something that defines restoration and plays in general.
Obstacles/Challenges
As I am sure you are all aware, I struggled with this project a lot more than I had expected to. From word go, I was nervous to be casted As Mrs Loveit; a big character who spends the entire play over-reacting and being fiesty towards anyone she has a scene with. I think I had set my hopes on getting Emilia so getting casted as Loveit really threw me off. Rehearsals began to start and I hated them. I understand that I don't have the confidence for a character like Loveit and I felt so far out of my comfort zone. During rehearsals, Sally would spend a lot of time on me, desperately trying to help me become this loud character; which is the complete opposite to my personality. My other cast members were really supportive and I think that's because they know that I don't really have the confidence to portray this kind of character. Getting angry in these scenes was the worst. Obviously I've been angry before, but its bringing this to the stage without making myself look stupid as well as actually allowing myself to do this on stage in the first place!
Annoyingly, I can't pin down what holds me back so much, but I think it's the immediateness of it all. Like when starting a show you have to dive straight into a character, obviously you develop it as you go, but I think it takes me a while to slip into this new character. Come the performance dates, I have pretty much nailed it but this makes my rehearsals look weak.
However, saying all of this, I'd like to think I improved to a reasonable level come the performances of Man Of Mode. From a personal view, it felt like I had brought more anger to Loveit, which is something I've not been able to do in rehearsals. I think this is the only thing that brought my confidence up a bit, because once our first proper show had passed, I felt more confident doing it with the heightened anger I needed back in Feburary. Looking back on the performances, I'm pleased with how I did and I think I overcame whatever was holding me back, and with the knowledge of being pleased of my performances; I also feel as though my confidence in me has grown-which can only mean I start to grow as an actor!
Research:
An Ideal Husband: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsiHngckJdQ
As part of my research, I looked into An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde. An Ideal Husband is the story about Sir Robert Chiltern, a successful Government minister. His wife, also just as well-off, is damned of a previous 'misdeed', their marriage is on the line at this point and Chiltern reconciles in his friend. The story continues with a lot more detail, however I didn't choose this for research due to its story-line, I chose it for the manners of the characters in order to assist me with my reactions and voice as Mrs Loveit:
At the very beginning of the film, we see a woman sneak out of bed with a man. This is so Dorimant! The character is a bachelor and just like how Dorimant is portrayed, he gets a lot of woman and sleeps with every single one of them.
The guy we meet at the beginning is visibly lazy but has a very good relationship with his servant. This reminds me of Mrs Loveit and Pert. Pert is a very out-spoken maid but because of this, the relationship between her and her Lady got stronger because of all their disagreements. The servant in An Ideal Husband is the very opposite to Pert, however we can see the friendship between the master and his servant, they have friendly banter and the servant takes it well like friends would. "Not entirely your fault Phipps, not this time anyway."
After this opening scene, we then begin to meet some of the female characters. The camera pans around and shows all the women walking around with their umbrellas and fans keeping them from the sun and the heat. They all wave their fans in a fast but controlled manner which still makes them look feminine and attractive. Their walks, slow and elegant. Definitely not heavy footed and no ankles can be seen.
"Good Morning Tommy" this is said in a very cheerful way from one of the two ladies riding the horse through the scene. The emphasis falls on the end of each word, in order to make her articulation immaculate. For example, for the word 'good' you would hear the sound of the 'd' over any other sound. The 't' for 'Tommy' is well pronounced with enough emphasis to make the sound audible but not overly done in fear of making it too harsh. The cheerful way in which she says this allows us to notice that the relationship between these two characters must be well, its a friendly greeting from both parts.
However we see a sudden change in moods when 'Tommy' talks to the other lady on the horse. Immedietly we see his tone of voice drop and change into a more reserved manner; it's definitely not as cheerful as his greeting to the lady before. Her smile drops at the first sight of him interacting with her, which tells us that there is clearly some past history between these two characters. Her posture and feminity doesn't change at all, whereas it might've changed in something more contemporary as we tend to over react our emotions and actions when coming along someone we dislike.
She has no response after he explains he wants to talk to her this evening, and this is exactly how I need to portray Loveit because from the outside she looks extremely calm and collected, however we may see her in a later scene absolutely fuming at this Tommy guy. Loveit is the exact same, in the final scene she has a very civilised conversation with Dorimant but any time out of the public eye, she completely kicks off!! However we do see this female character treating Tommy with a lot of reservations, again like I expect Loveit would treat Dorimant if we had more scenes with them together out in public.
Her sly comment as soon as the move away from Tommy has the quietness to it to show shes keeping her voice down from Tommy, but the perfect pronounciation of the sounds like 't' and 'd' make it sound a lot more bitchy...again something Loveit would do!
Her posture stays perfect throughout even just this tiny clip, her neck perfectly aligned with her spine and her chin not sticking out too far forward. Her smile, although possibly very cross at Tommy at this time, is subtle and pretty. It's not an over exaggerated teethy smile, just a simple raise of either side of the lips. And her wave, an elegant and flattering constant flick of the wrists, all fingers straight and relatively rigid in their place.
From the little bit of research that I have done under this film, I have found so many little things that I will definitely use in my creation of Mrs Loveit, and its both been really helpful and interesting for me to take the time to research other characters like Loveit in order to help me with my characterisations; even if it is just down to the the smile and wave I could do as Loveit.
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| An Ideal Husband: Notes |
Pride and Prejudice:
Mrs Bennet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM1ILgNsPsg
Both my mum and sister are huge Jane Austen fans, and I must admit its not really my thing however as I was working on Mrs Loveit today in class, Sally was explaining how I need to play her and it reminded me of what I'd seen of Jane Austen, specifically Mrs Bennet.
So before we even meet Mrs Bennet in this little clip, we hear her screaming, awfully dramatically. "Oh I am so distressed" her anger and emotions through speech come out quite sarcastic. I think this is just because of the era and the way in which people spoke back then. But I have found this with some of Loveit's lines, for example, '"You make me mad" To me this sounds really sarcastic and at the moment I am struggling with how to say it without making it sound too sarcastic.
Mrs Bennet shouts just as much as how Sally wants Mrs Loveit too, but she makes it funny which is something I am worried about not achieving because obviously the play is a comedy. Bennets shouting isn't too much of her ruining her voice as such, but it's more her raising the intensity of how she says every word, and adding much harsher sounds and emphasis to hers words. I think this is something I would rather do as Mrs Loveit instead of shouting, which is what Sally wants me to do. I think I could access a more heightened way of speaking to show my anger better than shouting and actually being angry...again a confidence issue!
My main note after watching Mrs Bennet is that SHE IS SO DRAMATIC! Everything is about her and her drama and her nerves etc etc !! And again this is exactly like Mrs Loveit. Everything she does, is overexaggerated! Even the way she flaps her hand in her little flurries! She lets her hands flay loosely making it look like a completely over the top and out of control action but its funny because its so exaggerated. I want to be doing something this exaggerated with the fan that I'll be using as Loveit! From watching Bennet, I've noticed the faster she flaps her hands, the funnier it becomes but also the more of her character oozes out! There is so much room for me to make Loveit into a character like Bennet but I've just held back on even trying, but something simple like the way she uses her fan in the most frantic and outrageously fast pace will help with pumping me up and making me act just as silly!
"I am sick of Mr Bingley" Again, here she doesn't actually shout she just makes everything she says sound much harsher in terms of tone and articulation.
"I've had no rest" Another very dramatic line from Bennett but it reminded me closely of Loveit's line: "Death and eternal darkness, I shall never sleep again" They are both as obsecure and over dramatic as it each other!!
Researching Mrs Bennet has given me so many little characteristics that I want to include in the making of Mrs Loveit, I also want to use these clips of Bennett as direct sources of help for me before the odd rehearsal or so, so that way I can copy what it is she does more directly!
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Catastrophe:
Again, as further research into creating Loveit, Sally showed myself and Matt some scenes from the TV series 'Catastrophe.' (I've tried finding the link, but I can't find the correct episode to the one we watched in class.) She wanted to show us the relationship the two main characters in the series. They are a married couple who always, always argue! The arguments are so real, and in the clip we watched, about petty things. The clip we saw, was them arguging and basically what Sally wanted to show us is the speed at which this argument happens. It was almost like a tennis match, the speed at which they were responding to one anothers previous comment meant that the tension of the argument built up so much quicker! I can see exactly why she showed it to us, because even watching it, although it is comical, I felt tense as though I was there in the argument. Nothing dramatic particularly happened in the scene but it was just the speed in which they responded which made it both real and more tense for the audience.
This is something I really need to work on to make sure this is how we do our arguing scenes as Loveit and Dorimant, although at the moment its proving really hard as neither me or Matt know our lines.
Now that I have learnt my lines, me and Matt worked on just racing through each line almost to see how quickly we could do it. I found that not every line I would have to react to as quickly, but some of the lines I needed to respond just as quickly to where the shorted, more punchy lines:
"You make me mad"
"Base and scurrilous"
"Do go, exquisite fiend"
But also lines that were written as a form of Loveit holding her side, and proving her points:
"I would die to satisfy that, but not to save you from a thousand racks do a shameless thing to please your vanity!"
"And therefore ought they not to be bind. Oh impious"Trying to keep as little gap between lines in which Dorimant said became quite hard for me, and there were so many times during the show in which I cut off his line or I'd go to start my line, but he carried on talking, which meant I had to wait until he finished. These were all happy accidents, as such! It made the argument feel so much more real, and in a sense all the little things such as the many interuptions I made to pretty much all the character Loveit talks to, made it so much more believable. The scene became a lot quicker and tense and as long as I reacted big enough to perhaps cover up the fact I've just messed his line up, it would work more in my favour as it's something I never thought of including in the making of Loveit, despite the fact that interrupting is so her!!
Character relationships:
Mrs Loveit, like you now know, a fiesty and angry character aged 56 living alone in Hampshire, London. She has a lover, Dorimant, however he constantly cheats, which is a bit of a giveaway if you don't know the play! From as far as the play goes, we don't ever come across parents for her however with the backstory that I have created for her, she did have parents and they are still alive but they disowned her earlier on in her life! Dorimant and her are always arguing, we see one very brief scene in which they are not arguing but that's probably only because they are out in public. Dorimant cheats on Loveit by taking another woman to the play. So any interaction between her and Dorimant during the play is all plotted and planned by Loveit to firstly have a go at him and then secondly to make him jealous as she goes off and flirts with Sir Fopling Flutter.
Her best friend comes in the form of Belinda, a nasty character who is Dorimant's lover, all without Loveit's knowing!! Belinda is a very fake character in terms of friendliness! She's nice enough to Loveit and even remains pleasant after Dorimant calls it off with her as he moves onto Harriet.
Loveit and Pert are the plays little duo, Pert is the maid of Loveit and is somewhat nothing like a maid-she is fiesty, back-chats Loveit constantly and butts into conversation whatever the subject, which makes her comedic! They have a really lovely friendship and Pert strikes me as the character that knows all. We don't hear much about Pert during the play seeing as she is only a maid but where she is so nosy, she probably knows a lot more than any other character in the play.
Loveit and Sir Fopling's relationship is as simple as: Loveit flirts with him to make Dorimant jealous for one night, and then for the entire rest of the play, Fopling is busy trying to continue the flirting; which just makes their final scene really awkward but comedic.
Apart from all the characters above, Loveit is a very lonely character. Yes she has her footman and her maid but we never see any other character interact with her during the play. There is no mention of other friends of parents, whereas we see characters such as Harriet with her mother etc.
Loveit was married at the age of 12, the legal age to marry back then, to a guy she had no choice in marrying! Divorce was not an option back then either so after the marriage got boring for Loveit, she paid expenses to get out of the marriage, a 'divorce from bed and board', which meant neither of them could re-marry. So we meet her as a married woman in the play, but not 'properly' married, which is why we see her with Dorimant and then flirting with the fop. After the marriage broke away, I have a feeling her parents then wanted nothing to do with her! They had arranged this marriage and Loveit had gone against their wishes and so therefore they didn't want anything more to do with her.
I thinnk this lonliness makes her the way she is, she acts very independent in situations in which she realises she doesn't have Dorimant to rely on, this may be because Dorimant has been unreliable towards her before but it shows that she can cope, and although she's very dramatic about it all, she would do just fine without anyone in her life but her and Pert perhaps. This is also why she is such an attention seeker, because she has noone to pay attention to her in the first place! So whenever we see her, these become her only oppertunities to show off and get her name back in the hat and for people to discuss her etc. Her marriage breaking up is another thing to suggest she doesn't trust men. Although I haven't stated a reason as to why her marriage broke up, I had pictured it to be because they didn't love each other. Which is why I think Loveit is both extremely protective and also so much of an over-exaggerated; she's never loved before now and the guy before Dorimant never loved her, and she doesn't want this to happen again for her.
Extra work:
Why is she called Mrs Loveit? Because she loves everything about the attention she is so constantly getting!
Mrs Lovett is a character from the story of Sweeney Todd, wonderfully played by Helena Bonham Carter. Sweeney Todd is a lot more contemporary in comparison to Man Of Mode, but I had some character similarities between Loveit and Lovett which I wanted to briefly talk about. We have clearly established that our Loveit is fiesty etc, but so is the Sweeney Todd character. Lovett is a lot more vile in terms of character but there both as loud as one another. Whether this was something done on purpose by Stephen Sondhiem.
Other people who have played Mrs Loveit are:
Katherine Jack: Trained at LAMDA. Recently playing Shelia Birling in An Inspector Calls, which I went and saw a couple weeks back.
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| A modern Dorimant and Loveit |
Una Byrne
Jennie Eggleton
What is a Vagabond? Someone with an unsettled home, who wonders from place to place without a job. For the life of me I can't work out why one of casts are called the 'Vagabonds.' To me it seems to have no relevance to the play. Although I suppose we could call Sir Fopling a 'vagabond'. He appears from France, still English speaking. Which tells us he's British and so therefore he wasn't born in France. The characters all know him before he arrives back to Hampshire which means that he is very much here and there, sometimes in France for a few years and then he'll pop back home. Making him a 'vagabond', someone who 'wonders'.
Vagabond by Misterwives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHc56wjHYGg
The lyrics kind of talk you through a 'vagabond': 'wandering far disapearing' Then the lyrics say how 'feet stuck in place not moving' which could reflect the feeling a vagabond has when he has nowhere else to wonder to at the time. 'Pretending to not feel alone' Perhaps Sir Fopling is a lot more reserved and lonely that we can all see?
What is a Vizard? A mask or disguise. I think most of the characters are hiding behind a mask or disguise' in some way. Loveit hides behind her loud and attention-seeking personality to hide any reservations she has as a character, and Sir Fopling does the same thing. Dorimant perhaps hides his true personality behind this evil little character who perhaps pretends to enjoy messing woman around because perhaps the woman he loved once messed him around? So to cover the heart ache, he does the same thing.
Conclusion:
Madly enough, when I first started this blog post, I was so cross to have been casted as Mrs Loveit. And now, looking back on the project, I realise I was so wrong about challenging myself! I didn't want Loveit because she was way out of my comfort in every aspect of her character, and I did'nt think I could push myself far enough to actually make her a sucsessful character. However I feel like I've overcome this reasonably well. Loveit has really come along way and playing her has really boosted my confidence! Its fair to say this project has been a huge challenge for me, and no, I didn't enjoy the majority of it, but I am now enjoying the confidence I have in myself because I did it; I made my own little Mrs Bennet with a lot of self work to build me up to the standard in which I was quietly very pleased with!! So thank you Sally Barlow...
"Tis not likely a man should be fond of seeing a damned old play when there is a new one acted" ~ Dorimant, Man Of Mode.
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