Week Seventeen Part 1: Shakespeare

The Script Work

20th January 2014

The beginning of this week started with us developing our script work, mainly with learning lines and understanding the plots and characters.  At the end of last week, our teacher set us some homework to learn our lines, from our chosen scene from one of the three Shakespearean comedy plays.  Using a new method to learn our lines by adding no emotion or inflection.  I thought this was a very useful technique, as it helps vastly with your muscle memorises, as speaking with no emotion relies on lip movement not acting and tone of voice.  Therefore using this technique over the weekend helped vastly, because usually I would read the script repeatedly with my own tone of voice, and sometimes it could take up to a couple of weeks for me to learn my lines.  Whereas using this technique it took me just under an hour.  Because I simple had a low, emotionless, tone of voice and repeated each line after line, until I managed to learn the first section of my script.  So I would say learning a script using no emotional response, to begin with, and no inflection is extremely helpful and gives good results.

     After the lesson began and we demonstrated our improvement in learning our lines, another key factor in the Shakespeare assignment was to demonstrate our understanding of the plot.  The script being Shakespearean language it can be quite dificult for some members of the group to understand what the meaning is.  So the next task was to read the whole part of our own scripts, abnd take it bit by bit and see what we understand from what the script says.  Again some people struggled to understand it, however our teacher introduced us to a very useful website which assists in translating the scripts from Shakespearean language to modern day language.  The website had every Shakespeare play included, but we focused on our plays and our scenes.  This assisted us in getting a proper understanding of what is happening in our individual scenes.  It assisted me because it showed me what is the meaning of Valentine's and Proteus' conversation and what will it escilate to later in the play (Two Gentlemen of Verona).

     From this I have managed to understand my character of Valentine a lot more.  I have unstood that this character has a good and solid friendship with Proteus.  Which is shown through the lines in which  Valentine shows his true trust in Proteus to assist him in escaping with his true love.  Which then leads onto the fact that my character is deeply in love with a female character called Silvia, who was introduced before my selected scene.  Valentine also confesses in the script that he would never love again, although that has changed now he has met Silvia.

     Understanding the scenes script and the plot can assist and prepare us for when it come to rehearsals.  Because with our script learning being emotionless, we can add the emotion in  rehearsal judging on what we know of the character and the scene, giving an acurate reaction based on the characterisation.  Therefore I know that Valentine trusts Proteus and is in love with Silvia, then these facts may help me with creating the character.

     Finally as the lesson drew to an end, my imput was presenting what I had learnt from my script and showing what I understood in my script, before we were introduced to the modern day translation of the script.  But what I felt was most engaging was the understanding of the character for when it comes to our main rehearsal and we will begin to add characterisation to the script and our performance.