Evaluation of the Performance

  With the play, Playhouse Creatures, written by April De Angelis, we tried to demonstrate the lives of the women during the restoration era, and the challenges they had to go trough just to survive. This comes of as a problem to all of the women in the play, since they were seen as objects to use for pleasure and amusement rather than human beings, deserving respect. Yet, De Angelis was able to write well constructed women with strong wills, without making their lives seem like fantasy in this naturalistic piece of feminist literature. During our performance, I believe we managed to interpret the text in a way that show'd respect towards these character's and their stories, by showing their strong emotions and determination to reach a better life.

   Throughout the play, using Stanislavski's technique of 'Through line of action' was extremely important for me, since I portrayed Nell in three different scenes, showing three different times in her life. The process of creating and researching Nell Gwyn, presented me an interesting challenge, and I feel that I stretched myself and my acting abilities with this particular character. Being aware of Nell's character development, affected the way I played Nell in each of these scenes, still trying to keep the whimsy nature of hers the same throughout. I believe to have done this quite well, and being able to show all of the different sides that Nell as a character had to offer to the audience, without making her seem like a different person in each scene.

Part of this was because I kept in mind her tempo-rhythm. Even if Nell changed between the scenes, starting out as a naive young girl with big dreams, then becoming a confident and vital part of the playhouse, ending with her being sick and near death, coming back to the tiring room of the playhouse to reminisce on her former acting days, her tempo stays the same, but the way she uses it changes. In the first scene, I play her in, the dance scene, her energy is kind all over the place because she is nervous and in a place with higher status than her. I made her movements quite quick and unsure, to show her youthfulness and naivety. This changes in the next scene, where she has been an actress for a while already, still not one of the biggest actresses, but already accepted as one of crew. Now, her fast tempo has gone from nervous and all over place, to more sure and confident. She is still quick with her movements, but now she uses it to her advantage. This can be especially seen in the part where Nell is demanding to have jokes for her part from Otway. She knows that her womanhood ans sexuality makes the young writer uncomfortable, and she is completely aware how to use it to get what she wants. Moving on to the last scene with Nell, she is dying and her fast tempo'd spirit is trapped inside this fragile and sick body. Also, this room that used to be hers, is now someone else's, and so she cannot just go around and reminisce as she'd like to, but rather she shows the respect to Mrs. Barry by asking permission first. Nell isn't the same youthful girl any longer, she has grown older and more experienced, but I felt that something inside her, perhaps something in that room makes her remember this lost part of her once again, which is why she dances.

   I did struggle with Nell's character for some time during the rehearsals, getting notes about my way of portrayal of the character and how I presented her. I found it extremely difficult to relate with Nell, as she was this confident optimistic person, who believed in change and making change happen to herself. I, on the other hand, am some what an opposite to this, founding difficulty in finding confidence in myself and so battling with getting that inner determination of Nell's to show on stage. As Stanislavski believed, the only psychology we really know is our own, and so all the emotions we mirror to our characters on the stage come from ourselves and our experiences. Trying to use the 'magic if' to help me with some of the scenes, especially the part where Nell comes on stage, not knowing her lines, ended up stabbing me in the back, rather than helping me. All I could think of was the fact, that I would never be brave enough to do something like that, to just make up a dance, not knowing what exactly would come out of it. But it was this that made me realize something; Nell was not me, and even if naturalism and using Stanislavski's techniques to aid with our performance was part of putting up this play, following guide lines blindly wasn't worth risking my mental stability. Either way, isn't the idea of learning and studying these different techniques to find out what individually fits with our mentality and way of acting? Even though I love Stanislavski's methods, they do not all fit with me, and I'd rather just learn from them and adapt them into my way of working, than let them change my acting into something I do not find enjoyment from. So, I decided to look into another acting teachers, Stella Adler's, methods to help me with getting the inner essence of Nell. I have studied Adler couple of years ago, and I like her idea that most of theatre comes from your imagination, and that having a lively imagination is a vital part of acting.

   I found help from the 'magic if' in different parts of the play, for example with the Abortion scene. Asking myself, what if I was in this situation, really helped me to come in touch with the seriousness of the scene and what Nell might have been feeling in that particular moment. I felt, that seeing a dangerous abortion been performed right in front of my own eyes would make me scared and out of place, since I am still young and have no previous experience with these sort of things, and neither does Nell. On stage, I tried my hardest to convey this uncomfortable situation in making Nell lose her optimistic and confident nature for that moment. When the other women start discussing about the abortion, Nell doesn't do much to be a part of the situation, but rather stays further away, not getting involved. It is only when Mrs. Farley asks someone to hold her hand, that Nell actually brings herself to middle of the action.

    With this scene, it really helped that we as a group discussed how we would feel about being in this kind of situation, and I feel that we gave an enormous amount of attention to this scene especially, since we wanted it to stand out within the play. This was easily our most rehearsed scene, since it's gruesome nature was some what a challenge for each and every one of us. In this scene, Mrs. Farley has let herself fall pregnant, threatening her's and everyone else's career at the playhouse. In those days, this sort of situation would have not been acceptable, and so Mrs. Farley is left with one option, aborting the child. The meaning of this scene is to really show the audience, how little choice the women had and how their stability could be taken away with not too much effort. Men did not care what happened to these women, but left them to deal with the problems they created alone.

   We decided that it would be most powerful to have the abortion be done Mrs.Farley faced away from the audience, to let her screams and shouts of pain create the uncomfortable raw mood for the scene, and leave the rest for the audiences imagination to create. It was important, that we took our time with this part of the scene, to let the tension rise and give a naturalistic representation of having an abortion in those days, and I do think we did it well. This was one of the most emotional scenes I have been in, and I have praise all of our performance, especially Lucy's disturbing representation, during the performance.

   Before the abortion scene, there was another part that worked particularly well in showing the objectives within the entire play and this particular scene. It is the part where the actresses are teasing Otway to get better lines for themselves, often referred to as 'the tit-part'. Nell's objectives trough out this scene is to get her talents to show, her soul of a comedian especially, and when she hears that her part doesn't have jokes, she takes the matters into to her own hands to get some. By teasing young Otway with their sexuality, the women of the playhouse are able to get what they want from the play write. This is a good part that shows the dynamics between the different actresses, first Nell waiting for higher status Mrs. Betterton to leave the room, before turning towards Otway to manipulate him to give her jokes. The women come together to help Nell, showing, that even though they are each other rivals, they do still share a bit of banter with one another. Running trough this scene over and over again helped us to be in sync with each other, making the elaborate tit-grabbing funnier and more effectual to the audience.

    Since I worked hard on my first scene as Nell, I need to bring it up in this evaluation. We struggled for a bit with my group t get the sense of humour in the stage scene, with all the characters trying to do their bit on saving the performance, before leaving Nell on stage alone. I think everyone had good reactions to Nell in her awe on the stage, Mrs. Farley knowing what was going to happen, Mrs. Betterton improvising her way out of the stage to save her own skin, and Mrs. Marshall in rage trying to get the words out of Nell's mouth. I am also quite proud of myself for being able to find the flirty humour in Nell's character and be able to show it in her dance. She knows that the men in the audience are looking to see some nudity, and so Nell shows her legs, but does in her own terms adding a dance to it. Even if for a moment she was overwhelmed by the audience, she does enjoy it and loves the attention which I feel I portrayed well in this scene. I need to thank my group members for this, since many of them helped me to create the right mood for the dance with their comments and criticism. Without them, I would have probably never been able to get the right balance of whimsical fun and flirtatiousness in the dance that I did.

   Throughout the rehearsals my last scene has always been strong, and I don't think this changed much during the performance. The scene is supposed to be slower paced, reflecting on the change that has happened during the years. Many of the actresses from previous scenes have already passed, leaving Mrs. Barry on the top, really being the only one who turned out successful on her own from all of the other women. This power and determination of hers was very visible in the scene, as she has now transformed from a young woman failing to be an actress, to have made it on her own. As a contrast to Mrs. Barry success, now we see Nell, once full of life and later on power, now weak and dying. Unlike Mrs. Barry, who gained stability on her own, Nell has always been dependent on the wealth and attention of Charles II, and now that he has died, Nell is surviving because of a promise from the King to keep her financial situation steady, but she is also dying because of an infection given to her by the King. The object of this scene was really to show the difference between the modern woman, represented by Mrs. Barry, and the women during the Restoration era, time before feminism. I think, what made this scene so strong right from the beginning, was the fact that we discussed this objective right at the start, when we first started working on these scenes. This way, we could create the emotions for our characters with this objective in mind and have be clear to the audience during the performance.

   Even if all of my scenes were quite strong, all of them had parts that still needed some work or things that went wrong during performance, and now it is time to address them. Over all, all of our performances were well done and I feel that our abilities in acting have evolved so much since we first started. Still, I feel that some basic things, that could have been avoided, happened during performance.

    In my first scene as Nell, when she comes off stage to share her successful dance with the other in the tiring room, I felt that the mood in the room could have been busier and perhaps more threatening towards Nell. After all, this all happened during a performance, so in reality the women would have probably been trying to get ready for their next scenes, but instead I felt that how we planned the blocking was just a lot of standing around. Making the scene busier, with the other actresses trying to get on with their business, as they scolded Nell, could have made the situation even more desperate for Nell to tell them how she basically saved the day(which she endangered in the first place). We actually talked about this during rehearsals, but rather than dicussing the different things the characters could be doing and the way the blocking could have been planned, we tried to improvise the business. This ended up us either upstaging each other, or simply not knowing what to do. This could have been fixed by making a detailed plan on each characters actions and movements, in a way choreographing the scene, to make it seem more busier. But rather than doing that, I feel that we just sort of forgot about it, trying to focus on other things, like the characterization, in the scene, especially after several run troughs not getting notes about the blocking. Also, I felt that even though the frustration of each character was played well, it could have gone even further, especially when comes to Mrs. Marshall and Mrs. Betterton. Not only being angry towards Nell, Mrs. Marshall could have shown disappointment in the other actresses as well, since they were the once who left her on that stage with Nell.

   Blocking was bit of a problem in another scene of mine as well, but not such a big of a problem as in first scene. In the scene with Otway talking about his play with Mrs. Betterton, Chloe is supposed to be sweeping as Doll around the stage. This is completely fine and has always been, but for some reason during the performance, she started sweeping right in front of me. Luckily I was able to improvise my way out of it, just changing my position on the stage. I am not sure did this look okay to the audience, since I myself felt a bit off about this move, but hopefully it wasn't noticeable.

   With this scene we also had some small slip ups throughout the scene. For example, it took a long time for us to start the scene, leaving the audience to wait in the darkness, because Otway wasn't on stage to start the scene. This is a clear sign of lack of focus from our group members, which has been a problem even during rehearsals and classes. Other mistakes that we made was skipping lines, which happened in couple of occasions, like when Mrs. Betterton offers Otway biscuits to eat. Before this Doll's character had quite a funny line for her to say about taking away acts from Otway's play to make it shorter. This could have been a nice moment for laughs, but also to show how the actresses have some kind of sense of banter and community that the actresses have with each other. This would have probably been fixed with more running trough the scenes, so that we would remember our lines correctly, but part of these mistakes might have also been simply our nerves when performing in front of an audience.

   These little mistakes weren't so dominating or visible in my last scene, but there is one big thing that could have been avoided, and had been addressed to us multiple times. For most of the scene, I was backstage, trying to listen for my cue to come on, and I have to honest and say, that I did not hear most of the lines the other people in my group were saying during the scene. I am afraid that the huge emotions that were coming from each of the characters in that scene might have not been heard by the audience. What could and should have been a powerful end to the play, might have slipped away from the audience, simply because we weren't loud and clear enough.

   So far, this performance has been the most fulfilling for me to do, and after the performance I am now able to look back and honestly say, that we have worked harder than we have before, but there is still so much room to grow on. I still have a good feeling about our future projects, as this one went better than I expected. As always, something do go wrong during performance, but when I discussed these mishaps with someone my friends who were in the audience, they said most of the slip-ups weren't at all noticeable. Still, we could have added a few more extra rehearsals under our belts.