'13' Blog 5 - Rehearsing, Blocking and Staging

‘13’: Rehearsing, Blocking and Staging

Monday 20^th, Wednesday 22^nd and Thursday 23^rd October 2014

Rehearsing Act One

     For our last week before we broke up for half term, we began our first full run through of Act One of our play ‘13’.  Having previously blocked and stage crafted our individual scenes for the entirety of Act One; it was now our chance to do a full run through, with plotting the lighting and sound effects, memorising our entrances and exits, and presenting our character’s costumes.  Once every cast member was in costume and ready, we began the rehearsal session.

     I took the liberty of bringing in my character’s, ‘John’s’, costume.  In another session, me and another cast member with the job role of taking over the role of ‘John’ for Acts Three and Four, discussed what ‘John’s’ wardrobe would be like.  We agreed that he should have a simple yet formal fashion sense.  So I brought in my options, including a dark coat, white shirt, black trousers, black shoes, and black tie.  Although my partner did not like the look of the long dark coat and he suggested I wore a thick dark green jacket.  I tried out his suggestion for today’s rehearsal, and I immediately felt comfortable.  Plus I gave a sense of travelling to the character, and it worked for his mysterious back story.  Therefore I removed the idea of the coat and kept the jacket. 

     But now it was time for us to begin the rehearsals.

     The opening scene sees the twelve followers of ‘John’, lying on the floor awakening from their nightmare visions.  Embracing the audience to their leading characters and opening with a shock and bang.  Now as stated in the script of Act One, Scene One “John enters”.  I and my lecturer/director decided to bring my character in but give him a movement to grab the audience’s attention.  So we came to the decision that ‘John’ must enter and kill the alarm sound effect.  What wakes the twelve up is a morning alarm stating the time “7:13 am”, enhancing the title of the play, and it is my job role to back centre stage and turn my digital watch alarm off.  This gave the lighting and sound technician time to take queue notes for the main performance.

     As we continued Act One we went through each scene, covering each actor stage presence and each scenes stage craft.  One scene in particular, which I enjoyed rehearsing was Act One, Scene Fifteen.  We had covered this scene in earlier sessions, but I liked working our circular stage craft in a wider space.  We also included the use of spot lights and atmospheric sound effects, to add that extra bit of realism.

 

     But what needs improving?  As we concluded the run through of Act One, we had covered every scene, with our director and technician taking notes for lighting, sound, actors, set and prop queues, I personally looked at what could be improved.

1)      More colouring in the lighting – When rehearsing Act One, Scene Ten me and my partner (playing the role of ‘Rachel’) inputted the colour green to emphasise that they were outside and at the park.  I think this is something we could include for various scenes throughout the play.  To emphasise the setting, the atmosphere, or the characters thoughts and feelings.

     Here is a photograph giving an example of the final lighting for the park scenes:

 

 

2)      More of a naturalistic flow to the scene changes – While we are still in the early stages of rehearsals and some cast members found it difficult to memorise their timing.  But I think with a little more time and note taking, in our scripts, I think we can pull off a naturalistic flow, in not just the scene changes but our performances as well.  Making our movement and dialogue seem more realistic and intriguing for our target audience of further education students.

3)      But my personal aim of improvement is to memorise my lines and stage calls – Linking back to the previous point, my personal goal is to learn my lines and stage calls inside out.  Therefore I can input my own sense of realism and a naturalistic flow to my character, and bring him to life, how I believed Mike Bartlett imagined ‘John’.

     But in conclusion of this rehearsal session, I felt extremely proud of what we had achieved and what goals we had set for future rehearsals.  With areas of improvement set I was eager to complete them and continue rehearsals without the need to use script prompt and stage call instructions.

     However there was one other area I needed to improve upon, my characters costume. 

     While throughout this rehearsal session I felt extremely comfortable in the clothing I had brought in but me, and my fellow cast member, who plays ‘John’ in the later acts, and our lecturer/director agreed that what I was wearing was too smart for ‘John’.  We knew that ‘John’ is a traveller and he has just returned home, and has had little time to worry about his fashion.  Therefore we decreased what we already had, and changed it to something more simple yet affective.  So the clothing we agreed on was:

·         Keep the dark green jacket

·         Include the red scarf

·         Jeans

·         Fashionable shoes (Converse All Stars)

·         and A blue t-shirt.

     Here is a photograph of the final costume at work:



     I personally saw this result of the costume as an excellent development towards my portrayal of the character.  As Dan Hutton’s review of ‘13’ depicts “an increasingly divided world, which sees everything as black or white,” and I saw ‘John’ as a figure showing all the supporting characters the light in their dark times.  Therefore this costume enhanced that factor, and gave true purpose to my character’s physical being.  As well as increasing our future audience’s attention to detail as it could show them ‘John’s’ political stance.  Having fallen from his previous, higher, status and has now become a metaphor (a beacon of hope) for all characters similar to his current living status.

     Plus the colouring within ‘John’s’ costume could support the use of lighting.   Linking back to Dan Hutton’s review, as he states this fictional world as seeing “everything as black or white”, as there are little use of colouring in certain scenes, and ‘John’ could provide that lighting and embrace the audience into this form of storytelling.

     I was extremely pleased with the end results of ‘John’s’ costume and I looked forward to bring the character to life for our future audience members in the main production.  

Blocking Act Two

     For our next day in our rehearsal week, our goal was to block the entirety of Act Two, but before we began covering the Act, our lecturer/director introduced to us another element of entertainment we could include for the play.  Choreographed dance movement.  Except we did not have a professional dancing choreographer come in to teach us how to dance and show us how we could bring our characters to life through movement.  It was our task to create our own choreography to open the play.

The Movement Montage

     Referring back to an exercise we were introduced to back at the beginning of term, our lecturer/director wanted us to create a movement montage using singular bodily movements that could tell a story concerning characters. 

     How does this exercise work?  This exercise is carried out with a group of people, whether in a group of five or in a pair (never alone), and they produce a series of singular movements with their body.  Whether it is to express emotions, give the movement of dancing, or interacting with a team member.  The idea of these movements was to tell a story of characters with little to no dialogue, yet a vast amount of exaggerated movements.  However the movements have to have a beat to them.  It cannot be at a random time, the movements have to have a beat which is in time with their given music.  This would make it all the more affective and intriguing for audience members.

     It was in our first experiences of the exercise, me and my partner created a series movement which we used to interact with one another to tell the story of two friends comforting one another as they struggle.  To begin with, I did find this exercise interesting, but not very affective as I thought there could be a larger storyline to back up the movements, instead of the one song we all shared.  But it was in this rehearsal session where our lecturer/director brought the exercise back where we could open ‘13’ with a meaningful movement montage.

     Being organised into groups of four or five, our lecturer/director wanted us to create a series of movements that moved at two beats (both four by four).  Also the movements had to work in a loop where we could return to the beginning and give it a natural flow.  The theme for our movements was: a modern day party/club atmosphere.

     In our group the series of movements I was assigned to do were:

1)      Pick up a glass of imaginary alcohol.

2)      Drink the glass of alcohol.

3)      Put the glass back on the table.

4)      Show off a particular dance movement (I inputted “jazz-hands”).

5)      High five with another member of the group.

6)      Give a friendship hand shake with that member of the group.

7)      Hold hands with two members of the group.

8)      and Move our arms in a wave affect and return to original positions to begin again.

     I assigned these movements to myself and I wanted to give an affect that tells a story of how this group of people are really close friends and are there, in this fantasy club, simply to have a good time.  The other members within my group liked my interactions with them, and they came up with their own movements to bring this club visually to life for our audience.  All of our movements showed us being out of place with one another so we weren’t synchronised until the wave effect at the end.

     To conclude on this exercise, every group came up with their own movement montage and every group came together in a circular formation.  Through this we created the opening dance montage for ‘13’.  Designed to immediately bring audience members into the play, and get a rough understanding of what they’re in for.  As we keep dark lighting to symbolise the dark and mysterious atmosphere of the play.  Plus the dancing was to emphasise the element of modern society and the youth age within the storytelling.

Returning to Act Two

     Now just like our early stages of rehearsals for Act One, we covered the majority of the scenes in Act Two.  But it was just a question of whether we could bring certain stage elements to life and if there was anything we could change or include for certain scenes in Act Two.

     In a brief summary we managed to block the majority of the act, covering ideas for any lighting and sound effect queues.  But what stood out for me in the blocking session were the ideas behind keeping the audience intrigued.  Particularly for Act Two, Scene Eight.

     The plan was to include more movement, as this scene particularly required a fair bit of the characters on stage (‘John’, ‘Rachel’, and ‘Amir’) sitting.  Therefore our lecturer/director suggested ideas of including props that my character ‘John’ could organise.  As we discovered my character to be very tidy around the house, so we agreed that it would be fair to have ‘John’ tidy up slightly throughout this scene.  We had suggestions of including props, such as a lamp, for me to look at and remove for the end of the scene.  But in the end, we came up with my job role bring to organise the shoes and pillows left on the floor to keep the movement alive, and intrigue the audience for this heart-warming scene between the characters.  

 

     As the blocking session concluded, I wanted to begin a full run through of the act including lighting and sound effects and exploring the naturalism within our performances, in time for the main show.

Staging Act Three and Four

     For my exit call for Act Two, Scene Ten I wanted to really symbolise the fact that I will not be portraying the character ‘John’ in the later Acts.  So I thought it would be good to input that I should take the exit of the theatre doors.  This could deliver the moral message to the audience that this incarnation of ‘John’ is over and now the new one takes over.  Or in this case my job role of portraying ‘John’ in Acts One and Two is over and my fellow cast member has the job role of taking over for the last scene in Act Two, and staying for Acts Three and Four.  Concluding with the lines “Bye Sarah” I was to leave and that line alone assisted in my exit for my performing role in ‘13’.  I was extremely happy to input this idea and was now desperate to see where we could go with the future scenes of this play.

     So as I had no performing roles within Acts Three and Four, it was my job now to take over in handling the technical within the play.  But whist we were in the early stages of working towards the technical sides of the play, I was allowed to work on my character and learn more about his development later in the play.

     Watching the rehearsals and staging ideas for Acts Three and Four I found extremely interesting.  I liked the way they decided to place certain characters in various places around the stage, to add the sense of disorganisation with the characters and the current state of the society.  But in particular the movement and speech patterns for certain scenes all to add he sense of natural and realism for those scenes, making the conclusion of the play all the more interesting and intriguing for our upcoming audience.

     But for my character work I began to think of more research ideas I could make towards how I can create a detailed character profile which explores his characteristics, and his origins.  As well as exploring ‘John’s’ objectives throughout his many scenes and the entirety of the play, in further detail.  So I can bring this character to life on stage to an extent that I believe Mike Bartlett would have been impressed to see.  

Research Areas: Dan Hutton's Review of '13' - http://dan-hutton.co.uk/2012/01/11/13-by-mike-bartlett/