Since we were given feedback on our scenes yesterday, today we all decided that rather than starting to properly work on our second scenes, we should go over our feedback and adapt those comments to our existing scenes, so that the changes would come fresh from our minds, and then we could move on to the other scenes after finishing the first ones.
I worked first with my group with Bella, Jenny and Max in it. The main things we felt that should be worked on was the blocking, since we hadn't had the chance to work on it properly before. I felt that the blocking was too linear, everyone just sitting in a line, not using the stage to its full potential. So, we decided on a setting of something like this:
2. Extra chair with Monimia's dress on it(Doll is probably in the middle of fixing it)
3. Table with couple of chairs around it. This is where Mrs. Barry and Doll are counting the money.
This kind of setting gives then the middle of the stage to move around in and at the end, when Nell has her little moment with dancing with the dress, the focus of the audience is directed towards the centre and Nell. Also, keeping the sets more upstage gives the characters the focus in the scene and the possibility to play around with the blocking more. After figuring the set out, the blocking came to us quite naturally, and with a little help from our tutor, we were able to make sense to all of the moves our characters made and make it effectual.
After this I went to my other group, with Yunusa, Lucy, Greta, Chloe and Sophia in it, and started to fine tune our scene. Mostly what I, and the other members in our group needed to, was to be more in character, and so going trough the scene over and over helped to become more our characters, as there were no scripts on the way any longer. We also started to re-block the part where the women in the scene are teasing Otway about showing our breasts to the audience, Nell trying to get more jokes for her character. Before we felt that it was way too crowded, since all the girls were huddled around Otway. We decided that Sophie, Mrs. Marshall, should be a bit further away, reading the different parts of the play where Nell is needed to show her nude front to the audience. Then we tried to have the other women circling Otway, but it felt a bit awkward, and not getting tough the raunchy gestures the different women doing to annoy Otway. We ended up having Nell and Mrs. Farley being mainly around Otway, teasing him in different ways to get his attention, as we grab our breasts to confuse the poor fella.
I also tried to become Nell more than I have before. I focused on her movements and way of holding herself. Confidence is a big part of Nell's character, and I tried to show it by her body language. For example, when she is listening to Otway reading his play, she is clearly bored and tired of hearing this long play, but the way she sits on her chair, leaning fully on the back of the chair, on hand over it, and legs crossed, signals a hint of smugness. Even though Nell isn't necessarily a smug character, but unlike the other women, she isn't trying to be any more sophisticated than she is. She embraces the fact that she might act and be more 'common' than the other, because she knows it works for her. And I think this might be the core I need to start acting Nell from, the fact that she isn't ashamed of her background and what she does. This also comes across when she talks to Otway. She isn't taking no for an answer, but she doesn't argue about why she should get the jokes with Otway. She knows she deserves those jokes and the way she gets them is by showing Otway that exactly.
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