Greek Project Evaluation

In this blog entry I will be talking about the groups performance, and I shall be evaluating myself in both roles of Orestes and Chorus and my abilities to, deliver lines, acting styles, characterisation etc.

Basics

My first role was Orestes I played the first one and so my first entrance was after an announcement and then the lights would come up and then I took my place kneeling next to the block on the left, this looked more aesthetically pleasing compared to being straight on whilst the audience walk in as the lights gave a very cold atmosphere. My first line was "Hermes you who guide the soul" and this was to be said after Electra one said "Our warmth all mingling together", I didn't say this line straight after Electra's as we had a music que and it add more to what I was saying so I waited for the music listened to it a bit before preforming the lines. Through out the play I managed to get my ques for my lines correct, but on one of the nights I did slip up when moving, I was meant to walk backwards onto a block, but whilst I did it was still being moved, and so I just took a breath and carried on which helped immensely. My exit as Orestes went smoothly the role was taken over by Reece and went straight into a dumb play. The only thing that I thought the chorus struggled with when I was in it was the final scene in act 1 with the chairs, our timing and energy with the "shout for joy shout" was very poor on the first night but we practiced it and it sounded better after.

Stylistically

The main style of the way we preformed this play was it being contempry, and so what we did was use the chorus as journalists something that a modern day audience would understand. We also added a lot of movement into which looked great once we sorted out the lights for it, for instance the scene where Orestes is talking about how the people were yelling "stone them" we have the chorus in the background twisting and turning but when they faced the audience they were miming yelling and it looked weird when we rehearsed it but under the lights it looked better as it really highlighted each one of their faces. It was a very physical piece because if we hadn't added all of these different types of movements it would have looked naturalistic when what we were looking for was a very stylised piece because traditional Greek tragedy was very stylised. I think that this play was perfect for looking at different acting styles, as the parts were split into scenes, so it was easier to one, see the progression of Orestes and Electra and two, show how diverse the group is from one another it gave us a chance to show of what we could do or how we would take on our characters.

Actors Skills

Through out this project we have been working on our characterisation doing things like, character studies and workshops to help us understand not just our characters, but also what it was like in Ancient Greece. Before we preformed we were told to take the animal we associate with our characters, which was a previous workshop we had done, mine was a mouse and we would pretend to be this animal and slowly become our character using some of the features this animal had, then we were told to close our eyes and picture our characters walking towards us and then as they came in front we would merge with them and this helped me as during the performance I felt I took on Orestes, at the stage he was at in his journey, because even when I wasn't saying my lines I was always thinking like him, and when I did say my lines I took on a character who has a high statues but doesn't want anyone to know he is there and therefor pretends to be a lower statues, lower than he actually is. My vocal delivery during rehearsals was lax, and I put that down to being lazy, when it came to the show I felt that I pushed myself because there was an audience, I always looked up at the clock in the theatre, as it helped me raise my head to project more, and at home I went over my lines making sure that my diction was correct, so that people could understand what I was saying clearly. I used gestures in my scene as Orestes to not just show who I was but to also draw the audience's attention to the things that were happening onstage, my problem with my blocking on the first night was the fact I sometimes was not in the light, but for the next few shows I positioned myself correctly.

Ensemble

I was not in many chorus scenes, but my character Orestes was, one scene I had to work with the chorus to draw their attention in, as we had made out as if it was a press conference, but I had also needed to trust one of them to catch me as I fell backwards, which took some time. When I was in the chorus we worked together to create the chair scene which didn't look very good at the first performance because we weren't too sure what we were doing so it lacked energy like I have said previously, but we had eventually got round it. In another chorus scene we had to work as one, like a school of fish or flock of birds, which was also difficult as we had to get in close to each other, without falling over, but once we had figured it out it did look very effective and drew attention to us when we came on stage. During rehearsals we did whisper backstage to each other for ques etc. but eventually we had all learnt them the only time we spoke to one another was when someone needed help with costume, or some wasn't feeling very well but we made sure that it wasn't so loud that the audience would be drawn away from the stage. Overall I think we did preform the show very well, once we had gotten a hang of the roles and lines we smoothed it out and delivered the piece with as much energy as we could, a lot of us were worried about looking stupid, as it was a stylised piece, but we finally just got on with it and just put in everything and the end result went really well.