Rehearsal 3

Overview

• Complete rough block of Act 2
• Three facts exercise, the world of the play.
• Emotions and movement

The rehearsal started by completing the rough block of Act 2. This is a great place to have reached as it beens every actor has been able to physical move through their own scenes and has a vary basic physical framework of the whole play which can be used as foundation for all other work on character, relationships, voice and movement.

Once the rough block was complete the company undertook a research task in small groups. Each group had to take one of the years that the play takes place in and find out three facts about their allocated year. The years being 1526, 1533, 1536 and 1603.  

1533 and 1534

1526 and 153

1536 and 1603

The three facts exercise was way to really try to use research to gain an insight into the world that the characters in the play are inhabiting and how this may effect their choices, their behaviour, their relationships. 

The last exercise of the rehearsal was exploring emotion and how this impacts on physical choices for a character by exploring how we have responded physically to specific emotions in our own lives.

We started by discussing what the predominant emotion  the vast majority of the characters in the play seem to be experiencing. Very quickly 'Fear' was suggested and there seemed to be a general consensus about this. 

We discussed at length how this was the case for each character and the nature of the fear they were experiencing. The period in which the play is set meant that for most of the characters the stakes are very high. Their fear tended to relate to the possibility of losing ones life.

The next stage of the exercise was for each actor to choose a moment in their own life when they have experienced fear. 

The actors re-enacted this moment as truthfully as they could. The focus was on trying to recreate the moment with real physical accuracy.

Three actors shared their moments with the company. The rest of the actors observed carefully so that the physical choices and responses could be discussed, the cause of the fear and its psychological meaning was much less important.  

The company's observations and discussions highlighted how varied peoples responses can be. Now the actors have been asked to identify specific moments in the play when their characters are experiencing 'fear' most strongly so they can make useful and interesting choices in the playing of these moments.