Week Ten: Evaluation

'Scaramouche Jones' Evaluation

Development

Progresses towards perfection in our performance lead to a number of developments in a number of actor’s performances, and chorus staging and movement.  When we began the assignment on Monday 30th September, reading through the script was difficult for many members of the group.  For reason concerning the fact that the character of ‘Scaramouche Jones’ uses very descriptive words in order to depict certain tragic events within his life, members of the group had trouble with those particular words.  In the sense of pronouncing them and understanding what they meant.  Not only were there struggles with the dialogue, but when reading it through understand the plot was quite tricky, however after having another read through independently and looking at it from others viewpoints we managed to understand the basics of the plot.

     In order ensure that the members of the group understand the dialogue they were to be saying aloud on stage we look deeper into the words and phrases of the script.  This resulted in us either looking up the words, on the internet, or seeing how we can break the syllables up and take notes on our own scripts.  Individually we managed to receive a decent understanding as to how we can pronounce Scaramouche’s dialogue.  Next was the concern of the use of accents.  When it came to Scaramouche describing other people, from abroad, accents were used to depict the fact he wasn’t describing himself but someone he met.  Again we looked up, on the internet, how to pronounce the accent based on real people from the country.  Although the actor’s version of the accent wasn’t perfect, in a way it sort of worked.  Because the script is written as one man onstage therefore Scaramouche the character is giving his own, imperfect, impression the character being described.  Therefore the actors impression was imperfect making it more convincing as being in character and the events actually happened to this character and how much of an impact it had on him and how much he remembers from his haunting past.

     After getting the pronunciation working a lot more improved than we did at the read through, the next step to work on was staging.  How were we to stage this?  To begin with we improvised our stage movement to see is it would work.  To begin with it didn’t work very well.

 

 

From the recording above as you can see there is very little movement in the performance.  To begin with a knew very little about how the character was going to move and present the dialogue, so to begin with I just read the lines out loud and improvised some movement.  Although the “Fear and Delight” actions, I borrowed from the actor Pete Porstlewaite’s portrayal of the character (from the movie adaptation of ‘Scaramouche Jones’).  Also our teacher suggested that I and the chorus should collapse on stage, on the line “God, what a day!” to show exhaustion after doing his last circus performance.  This worked well as the chorus represented Scaramouche’s past, therefore they know what he is feeling and thinking.  While this video may show what we started with in the end I developed towards making a slow walk towards the chair, then collapsing and standing in mid-sentence to get both the audiences and the chorus’ attention.  The chorus’ movement, in this scene was mostly improvised, especially with the use of hand gestures on the line “clucking round their kiddies”.  Hand gestures to show the clucking of a chicken.  However most of the chorus’ movements had a good purpose in other scenes such as interacting with the actor on stage to portray a prison cell, a gypsy camp or a court scene and many more.  The significance of all this was to see if we were capable to use our imagination to make the chorus and our own performances intriguing and entertain for a new audience.  Also with the development, from going to a very simple, rather boring, performance into an entertaining visual story told by this character.   

 

Character Study

The key strategy for the actor’s performance is to understand the character inside out.  Knowing the characters age, how the character would move and how the character would response to events and speeches.  This was another element of development in our performance as to begin with (as seen in the rehearsal video) the character is lifeless and boring.  Not giving the impression that this man on stage is ninety-nine years old, is a clown just came out of his last show, and has a really interesting story to tell the audience.  Therefore the development of the character began in our Physical Theatre lessons.

     In this lesson, we began with a meditation like session to get our brains in gear for our thoughts to wonder and spread for when our teacher would ask us question and tell us what we are and where we are.  Telling us how we are this character who has been in a lot of shows and is tired of a late night and how he has travelled far and wide.  Then once we opened our eyes we all stood up and began to walk around the class room showing our age, understanding how he would walk.  The way I thought it would have been the best way to portray Scaramouche’s walk was to have the top half of the body pointing partially to the flood, giving the impression he is old and tired of life.  Along with a walk that required the legs to be straight and the feet spread apart, to give an interpretation of a naive clown.  A naive clown is shy, awkward, cowardly, sensitive, cheerful and often happy.  This is how I felt it would be best to portray the clown of ‘Scaramouche Jones’ as he has been through all these tragic events and yet be able to make a clown to show that these events happened to him for a purpose.  Therefore a slow walk to show how long it took to end those events, a very tedious walk, along with a hint of sadness, shown in his negative facial expression and focusing the top half of the body towards the floor. 

     After getting a decent version of how the character would walk down the imaginary street, the next step was look at how you would react to objects and people.  Again this was all use of the imagination as our teacher was describing what scene the character was going through, and our job was to stay in character the whole time.  So our teacher described how our character was walking down the street and went into a shop and wanted to buy an object, this object we imagined ourselves, and wanted it desperately and unfortunately the character didn’t have enough money.  This was handy as we were to show how the character could facial express desperation and disappointment.  After this our teacher described how the character would react to an unexpected audience, as a group of people knew who he was and wanted to see him do a performance.  But all in all we improvised all these events in character; knowing full well all we needed to know about the characters thoughts and feelings to create our own portrayal.

     Once this lesson came to an end we knew how we would portray the character and when it came to another rehearsal we now knew most of the lines and how we would perform in character.

 

Performance Evaluation

The performance is over, but progression could be improved.  While the final performance from our own eyes was a success, after watching it from an audiences point of view (a video camera was placed at the back of the audience, recording the performance), we saw things a little differently.  While learning lines and staging wasn't a problem, there were many other problems that could have been improved in order to make the performance pitch perfect.

     So the story of the play titled ‘Scaramouche Jones’ is of an old man telling the story of his life, as it comes to an end.  Set back stage of his last performance at the circus, being the children clown entertainment, he breaks the forth wall in telling the audience of how he is only hours away from reaching one hundred years old.  Using very descriptive dialogue, he tells the story from the second he was born to the current moment where he is telling the tale.  Telling us all how becoming a clown was his destiny and a white clown mask would fuse onto his face in order to complete the incredible journey of his life.

     When reading through the script I thought it was well written and very interesting about this lonely and lost character.  Along with our teacher/directors plan to create our own interpretation of this play.   The idea was to have each member of the group to have at least two pages of dialogue to read aloud on stage, whilst having the rest of the group to be the characters chorus.  Presenting the characters thoughts and feeling throughout the play, which worked extremely well when the character describes the tragic events of his life.  While our version of the script had a number of scenes edited due to two members of the group leaving the course, we managed to get the basis of the plot down, so when each actor performs on stage they give important and relevant moments and events of the characters life.  My role in the play was to open the whole production and bring the play to an end.  The character that I was portraying was the old clown who just retired from his last show and begins to tell the story of his life.  Then transitioning to become a member of the chorus of clowns and having the next actor perform the next pages, I would sometimes interfere along with other members of the chorus to whisper key words or act out certain events and represent certain characters Scaramouche had met in his past.  Later returning to become a late fifty year old version of Scaramouche Jones and coming back to the ninety-nine year old version to conclude the story.  The way I used my character study was to give the obvious sense that this character if very old, but at the same time there was a hint of energy and enthusiasm as he is a professional entertainer.  As well as giving my own interpretation of my own clown, a naïve clown.  While the whole group had discovered their own clowns, performing them was used mainly in the chorus.  Because the chorus was of Scaramouche’s ghosts and thoughts, it was also representing an audience of clowns who knew exactly what he was going through; and are able to keep the audience entertained throughout this production.  I wanted to give a hint of my clown in my portrayal, with the walk as the clown was to be shy and happy, while Scaramouche himself was confident and positive about his current situation.  Combining all these elements and studies I managed to give a portrayal that was capable to open and close this production.

     Developing this play consisted of taking many Physical Theatre lessons in which we explored the characteristics of Scaramouche Jones and studied how we would present the origins within our individual characterisation.  Which linked into learning lines, because when an actor knows their lines and the plot they are capable to understand the characters origins and thoughts.  In a way this can assist the way they perform their own interpretation of the character.  Once I learnt my lines I understood what he is saying and why he was saying it, giving me a better chance to know how I would pronounce the lines on stage.

     Although if I was to evaluate my own performance skills, after watching the production on tape, I would note a few changes to be made.  When it came to vocal skills, I felt I needed to speak up at certain moments.  For example, the crossword moment, I was meant to thought track and question as to how to work out the answer.  The concern I had was to be a little louder for the audience, and I felt in the actual performance I wasn’t loud enough.  So that’s one target I’ll set for the next assignment.  This was one concern and also the timing for vocals was a key importance as it resulted in queues for the chorus to react with an action or repetition.  When it came to Physical skills I used up as much of the stage as I could, and had as much use of my own body to depict what I was saying in my dialogue.  Also interactions with other members of the group was important as we all had to know the script and know what transaction were to be put in place for us to switch roles.  As well as the group chorus scene.  Showing interaction with similar pronunciations to represent the same characters.  Therefore I felt the relationship between the other members of the group was a positive as we all work well and hard to get the whole storyline of the ‘Scaramouche Jones’ and understand our individual and group queues to give a decent performance.

     The mood and atmosphere of our production was to turn the stage into a back stage.  Dark coloured lighting was used to make it seem that there was a brighter light behind our curtains.  Set design consisted of a make-up stall for last minute preparations before Scaramouche went on stage for his last performance; as well as a mirror frame, which was used for transactions in changing actors onstage.  Sound effects were used to begin with to sound as if there was an audience, who had just watch Scaramouche perform, and announce when the play is set and who is onstage at the moment.  After the opening scene sound effects were used to support the chorus’ mimes of as ship at sea, a moving train and fireworks, giving the audience a better vision of what is happening in these descriptive flashbacks.  Although the key aspect that created the atmosphere was the fact that all our individual performances were linked.  Although the character of the old Scaramouche Jones was confident and positive, and each member of the group showed this within their performance, we also had to show and negative and sad emotion as he reflects on the tragic events of his life.  Creating a dark atmosphere, reflecting a haunting past, although the chorus made the play uplifting and kept the audience entertained, it was the actors who made the audience feel sorrow for this character and know what pain he has been through.

     The elements of the performance I thought were particularly successful were the chorus and the actor’s transactions.  The chorus because the audience could clearly see them on stage and understand that the character onstage couldn’t.  Also the chorus provided an entertaining role of providing a slight comedic interpretation of the events Scaramouche went through, all using the elements of a clown’s performance.  Along with the audience understanding that each member of the chorus was indeed an actor who was going to come onstage this is where the transactions come into the play.  The transactions in the audience’s point of view were when the actor changed with someone in the chorus, and they would take over the role of Scaramouche Jones.  These were very successful as there were different way in which they switched, the main one was the mirror frame used at least four times throughout the production, along with simply switched positions on stage, and even creating a position when one actor would move between a chorus members legs.  Showing the awkwardness of Scaramouche’s travels.  There were many successful elements in the production but these two stood out the most.

     Finally I would say if there were to be any final improvements to the next performance, I would say we would have to improve on timing for lines and chorus queues.  As well as improving on vocal work.  But all in all with some misfires I would say this performance of ‘Scaramouche Jones’ was quite successful in our group.

 

A Chorus of Clowns

Whilst the performance was well decorated and colourful, the main element on stage was the chorus.  The main purpose of the chorus was to present the characters, onstage, thoughts and feelings.  However our chorus blended many elements.  So the chorus was created with nine members of our tutor group whilst one was to be performing their part of the dialogue, therefore showing that the chorus was in fact a part of Scaramouche himself.  This was interesting because the chorus was representing a part of Scaramouche so that when the performer on stage shows emotion the chorus can react, knowing full well what he is feeling as they too have been through these emotions.  Another key feature of the chorus is to entertain the audience, because one worry about doing a performance of this play is the fact that there is only one man on stage, while we may of divided the script for our performance amongst ten people, there was the fear of the audience drifting away from the play and no longer being interested.  However that wasn’t the case.  Because the chorus was based around clowns we thought it would be best if we made the chorus entirely out of our own clowns.  By our own clowns I refer to the lesson which we discovered what type of clown we were.

     In a previous Physical Theatre lesson our teacher gave us a simple task to stand in front of the class and tell a joke.  Now when we told this joke our teacher looked carefully at how we would tell the joke and how we would stand, then afterwards our teacher would tell us what type of clown we are.  When it came to my joke I stood on stage and told the joke a number of times in which I got the words mixed up a couple of times a panicked a little by going silent.  This resulted in the teacher telling me that I was a naive clown.  This was because I went all quiet and shy when on stage showing what type of clown I was without even knowing the purpose of the exercise.  So after all of us knowing what type of clown we are it came in handy a lot because we used it in the chorus so that all of us would be representing a version of Scaramouche life and clown.  Combining all these elements to create a visionary group which are like the elephant in the room, the audience can see them but the character knows only them to be his thoughts and feelings, the ghosts of his past and ghost of many clowns like himself.  Keeping the audience entertained and interested throughout the whole performance.