Punk Rock Rehearsal Period

Punk Rock: The Rehearsal Period!

Punk Rock, isn’t like anything our group has done before. It’s very different, exciting and full of surprises. I think this play suits our class members as it has a variety of different complex characters that give us all a chance to really have something to work with. The first week we read through the script and I really liked Tanya and Cissy and these characters seemed to be personalities that I was drawn too. I really liked the Idea of playing Tanya, particularly for the end scene and she has to portray quite a serious amount of emotion. I saw this as a challenge I was eager to do. I would have been happy playing any of the girls but It just so happened that I was casted as Tanya anyway which I was quite pleased about.

Scene One & Week One:

The first week of rehearsals we started from the beginning with scene one. In this scene we meet all of the characters including the new girl lily. My characters reaction to Lily are a little different just like how everyone reacts to something new in the room. It's as if everyone is curious. As soon as I knew what character I was playing I decided to look into her a bit more. Everyone was required to write down a list of things particular to the character. We were asked to fill out a table including facts about our characters that are mentioned in the script, things she said about others and what others said about her, stage directions, and what she said about herself. I saw Tanya as quite a motherly character straight away so I started to take this on a bit more when it came to delivering the lines. I found it worked for some situations but in others it didn’t work so well and therefore I resorted to delivering them across as if she were trying to impress. Lines where I found it worked were when Tanya was trying to stick up for Chadwick and when she was standing up for Bennett. This Idea back fired a little when I realised that Bennetts lines push Tanya’s status back down and so I felt when I was doing this it wasn’t working so well and I was having difficulty with delivering some of the lines and getting them to sound right.

Scene One Recap & Scene Two:

 Luckily on the second week we started to get introduced to actioning and objectives. This helped me a lot because although naturally I was trying to think and place my characters thoughts in the right place, I didn’t actually know what actioning and objectives were but they made life easier. Actioning is where the actor finds a transitive verb to accompany every individual line. So from then on I actioned my scenes to make it easier, starting from scene 3. The verb we choose is to get the right reaction from the other actor for example;

Tanya ‘Leave him alone it’s boring’- I warn you

I used this verb because this is what I wanted Tanya to do to Bennett I wanted her to provoke a warning, although this doesn’t stop Bennett I felt like this is how the line should be delivered. We were asked to research actioning and I found a document on it called Max Stafford-Clark who we were advised to search for. This researched helped clear up what Adam meant by actioning. It introduced me to Units and Actioning.

I didn’t block anything in scene two as I wasn’t in these scenes, however I quite liked being able to watch the direction happening because this was the scene that we first used actioning and so it was helpful to be seen played out. It also showed how having a characters objectives worked out and their appropriate transitive verbs, to see the difference in the delivery of the lines. Also it’s interesting to know the characters thought processes.

Scene Two Recap & Scene Three:

Scene three gave me a chance to try out my objectives and actions.

Objectives written more clearly from one of the pictures in scene three:

Tanya wants to Marry Mr Anderson.
 Tanya wants to have his children.
Tanya wants to impress the girls.

Other objectives used for Tanya:




Tanya wants to stick up for Chadwick (short term) (maybe even long term)

Tanya wants to belittle Bennett ( short term)
Tanya wants to exit the room (short term)
Tanya wants to get good grades (long term)
Tanya wants to see Mr Anderson (short term)
Tanya wants to be seen as the mature one (short term)
Tanya wants to stand up to Bennett (short term)

Scene Three Recap & Scene Four:

Scene three was a more challenging scene as it was hard to get the pace up as we were still on book when blocking the scene. This was challenging for everyone. I found it useful to go over lines when other casts were running scenes to get off book quicker in these situations. Being able to understand peoples thought processes in this scene helped a lot, but juggling this with trying to action, keep the pace, provoke a reaction from the other characters was definitely a challenge for me and most of the 

other cast.

Scene Six:

Scene six was a very intense scene to block and run. It required us actors to try and portray a realistic reaction for when William pulls out a gun in the middle of a classroom and is talking like a crazy person. Obviously and fortunately none of us have been in this situation before and so trying to create a naturalistic performance of this came as quite a challenge but one we were all eager to try. I loved creating this scene and I felt it really gave me a chance to go for it, it felt powerful and I could sense that what all of us were doing was creating the atmosphere we wanted to achieve. This scene did require some work with breathing, all about trying to trigger the tears with the breath and the tensing of the stomach. 

Summary:

I think the rehearsal period allowed me to pin point my strengths and weaknesses each week, showed me that trial and error was normal and it's all about practicing to make progress and it also opened my eyes to a new way of being able to relate to the character and becoming that character. I'm looking forward to playing the role of Tanya, as I'm eager to see what all of the in depth research in to her life will bring in a full run of the performance. I think things I'd like to work on are getting off book quicker in order for me to progress quicker, and understand the thoughts easier without the blockage of reading off a page. I was happy with my progress in class though as I feel like the work I have put in with the character really helped benefit my performance. 

Break A Leg !