4/10/18 Trojan Women rehearsals cont.

Today we continued with our Greek Theatre rehearsals as our exam is next week. Before we started we did a group vocal warm up. Vocal warm ups are important as an actor because if you don’t warm up your voice you could damage your vocal cords and not be able to perform. These exercises are also important for enunciation. Good diction and enunciation is crucial because if your audience cannot understand what you are saying, you will lose their attention.

After thoroughly warming up our voices, we started the rehearsal process. I thought our scene was far too static as we stay stationary for the majority of the scene. We added two chairs so we could play with levels and scenery we can interact with. This helped our scene instantly become less static, as we were able to move between the chairs and sit down. We also finally decided where our scene was set: Andromache’s house. This meant we can have Anakin enter the scene which again added some more movement. Our scene now started with Anakin knocking on my front door and me letting him in.

I wanted some physical interaction between Andromache and Talthybius. This is a very emotionally intense scene and I wanted the movement between the characters to reflect this. The events in motion are every mother's worst nightmare, her baby is being taken away from her and is to be killed. To exacerbate the situation her city has been invaded, her and all the women have been taken into slavery. Obviously Andromache would be in a fragile, agitated state and I want her movements to reflect that. Towards the end of the scene Andromache has a monologue where she says goodbye to her baby. It is a very tender moment. I wanted the way I delivered her next lines to heavily contrast this. We added in me pushing Anakin violently on the line: “So take him, do what you must with him” to show than Andromache has accepted the fate of her baby, as she cannot do anything to prevent it, but is furious and wants Talthybius to know this. This is the end of her being formal and polite with him.  It also shows a slight power change as Andromache is pushing Talthybius out of her house, forcibly removing him from a safe space to her. In this one moment she has a small amount of control over the situation she is being faced with.

After playing around with the changes we added, I still felt like Andromache should lose her composure more. So, I wanted her to attempt hitting Talthybius. On the line “Why can’t you save this single child from this cruel death?” We added me attempting to slap Talthybius but him grabbing my wrist at the last second. He continues to hold my arm whilst he says his line so he has my full, undivided attention. At the end of his line he drops my arm and leaves my house.

Towards the end of the lesson each group performed for the class and received feedback from Rob. Here is our feedback:

• Listened well to each other
• Underplay ‘my child’ monologue to show loss of hope
• See what you’re saying

We also got general feedback as a class:

• Get involved with your course more
  (stay engaged and push yourself)
• Learn your lines, quickly
• Eye lines up, connect with the audience and don’t act at the floor
• Watch the performance don’t be on your phones
• Sustain a thought process like you would in a normal conversation
• Add a modern feel, play around and have fun with it
• Let the words do the work, don’t overact