Tuesday 6 December 2016

Single - Applying Acting Styles - Blog 27 - 06/12/16

Today, I worked a considerable amount with Rob on our sections from Advice For The Young At Heart, especially on the fight scene. Rob wanted to make sure that although we want to establish the key relationship between Sam and Kenny, we didn't want the audience to become too attached to this as we're playing this scene in the style of Epic Theatre. 

Despite us performing this scene with Brecht in mind, I'd feel it's fair to say that Hope, Rob and I are very naturalistic actors which makes this scene very difficult to keep Brecht. However, to make our acting more Brechtian, we'll be more distant from each other to show a contrast to some of the heated discussions we have, speak out to the audience a great deal to further enforce the Verfremdungseffekt (defamiliarisation) and use placards within the performance.

With mine and Rob's sections, I feel for our very first few runthroughs we were quite good but these are the things I want to work on next lesson:

  • I feel that, although I want our scene to remain Brechtian, mine and Rob's characters' relationship needs to be established better in the beginning for the fight scene at the end to be all that more impactful.
  • We could either approach this note in two different ways:
    • Make sure our acting in this scene is very Brechtian macthes the style of acting we're wishing to portray.
    • Or, we don't worry too much about how Brechtian/Nauralistic/Absurd etc our actual acting and focus more on the stagecraft to fully showcase the conventions of Brecht.
Although it would be simpler to rely on stagecraft, I felt that this wouldn't do the style of Epic Theatre any justice so I feel we should stay traditional to the styles of Brecht and display Epic Theatre fully.

To be sure of what acting and characterisation techniques Brecht favoured, I referred back to my research from my Special Subject Investigation and looked at the techniques I studied (http://lewisfisherra.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/triple-special-subject-investigation_6.html) ; these included:
  • Mix of forceful and graceful movement
  • Over exaggerative gestures
  • Simplified and stereotyped characters (including accents)
  • Direct audience address
  • Representational props/placards
Reviewing these different conventions will aid me in my task to make our scene more Brechtian.

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