Rehearsal Process

I won't be able to write about my weekly class rehearsals as I wasn't able to attend them, but I made sure to do as much practising at home, so that I was ready for the performance. 

As soon as I found out what my scene was I learnt my lines, and it only took me two afternoons. I think I am a rather quick learner when it comes to line-learning and in no time I was able to recite it without my book. I don't really have a particular way to learn my lines, I just take the next sentence, remember it, and then add it on to the rest of what I have learnt. All I know is that no other way of line-learning can help me remember as fast as this really simple way.

Whilst rehearsing at home, I did my best to apply Stanislavski's ideas to my work. The given circumstances of my scene and situation are as follows:

Who - Arkadina, famous actress and mother of Konstantin
What - Persuading Trigorin to leave the estate at the same time as me, without thinking of Nina
When - Early evening
Where - The dining-room in Sorin's house
Why - I want Trigorin all for myself, I am jealous of Nina

I figured out that the tempo-rhythm of my scene is rather static on Arkadina's side as she really changes her emotions rapidly towards Trigorin constantly. First she is impatient, then shocked, angry, jealous, upset, hysterical and very possessive. Once Trigorin gives in to her, you can immediately see the pace slowing down as she calms down because she got her way, the tension is no more.

I really wanted to give affective memory a go (mainly emotion memory) during my rehearsing so I thought back to a time where I felt a very strong urge of jealousy and desperation, and I used all of those feelings to create Arkadina's strong sense of love for Trigorin, as she doesn't want him to leave her at all. I found this technique quite difficult because I had never done it before but it was a good challenge to discover and tackle slowly.

Arkadina and Trigorin at
the National Theatre

My rehearsal with Callum went really well in my opinion because we arrived knowing that we both knew our lines very well already so we were able to crack on with the staging and emotion of the scene. In my first run-through ever in front of the rest of the cast I was given two simple director's notes: use some levels in my staging and maybe a chair or two, and then make sure I am doing something extravagant to Trigorin when he says "someone may come in" so that it makes more sense for him to deliver that line. I made sure to fix these two problems straight away. I decided to sit on a chair at the start and end of my piece and when Callum delivers his line I make sure that I am draped all over him embarrassingly.