The first thing we needed to do was depict the text to gain a greater understanding of the scene, and we did this because the language that Shakespeare was harder to understand the thoughts and feelings of the characters. After reading it through a couple of times me and Dan came to the conclusion that the scene was an argument between both characters because Brutus asked for money to pay for his army, they were in the middle of a civil war with Rome after the murder of Caesar, and Cassius did not send these certain sums of gold, so Brutus ignored Cassius, he didn't reply to his letters. But the argument gets heated as they bring up problems that have nothing to do with the main problem at hand.
The scene begins with Cassius storming in aggravated, and this then embarrasses Brutus as he is in front of his commanders, so Brutus diffuses the situation by calming Cassius down explaining that this is not the place for such a talk, he says "then in my tent Cassius, enlarge your griefs and I will give audience." Although the play doesn't say that Brutus is embarrassed by this, I believe that Brutus would react this way as it shows weakness to his commanders, and that he cannot handle the situation, which equally will become a dent in moral for his army.
The way I play the argument is that Brutus doesn't explode, until matters are made personal, for him it's a show of power and he hopes that it will make Cassius, who at this point is mad with anger, understand what he has done and why he did it. The video that inspired me to do this was a clip from Coriolanus where Caius and Tullus are arguing about Caius's traitors act, Ralph Fiennes, the actor who played Caius, plays the argument in a internal sort of way, he is totally calm and the anger only comes from the way he says the lines, sometimes spitting the line at Tullus.
Coriolanus Scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJL6nmdSLmk
My posture for the character I based on a manager I work for, he walks with a very proud tone to his walk, stood straight, chin up looking down on others, his arms are either behind his back or straight by his sides, when he speaks his right arm is used to explain what he is saying. When he is angered or annoyed he doesn't show it with his whole body, but instead grips his fist by his side and you can tell because it that side of his body is tense.
His voice for me wasn't based on a person, I played around with pitch and tone. I was looking for a voice of a leader and a friend at the same time because Brutus is a humble man, he only does what he believes is right and will never jump to a situation. The voice I came up with had a deep tone to it, which sounded dull when the lines were said internally, but when he projected it had a strong leadership feel to it, at the same time as having a soft calm tone, the type that if your parents used, you would know that your in more trouble than when they were yelling at you.
For me music is key for getting me into character, for each character I find a song that suits them, which eventually allows me to get into character before a performance. For Brutus I wanted something that was calm, but had a fiery element to it. I finally found that Joy Division "Love will tear us apart" worked well for me, the reasoning for me choosing this absurdly fitting song was because I thought of the scene in modern times as a night out with two lads that were drunk and one of them said something that spiralled out of control. All so the lyric of "Love will tear us apart" fits perfectly with the previous events, as Brutus loved, in a more appreciative way, Caesar and the problems that they are facing at this point were the backfire of murdering Caesar.
Joy Division "Love Will Tear us Apart"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuuObGsB0No
The character image I saw in my head was a 32 year old man, who's life experiences had aged his face more. He has a sort of overgrown hair look about him. We did an exercise in class where Adam led us through a scenario where we came across situations that we as our characters had to decide what happened. I came to the conclusion that Brutus is a man who is very humble, he looks after the people around him and only does bad things with a just cause, he thinks very fondly of his wife and his friend Brutus.
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| A brief image of how I see Brutus. |
