Rehearsal 1

We started of the session in partners doing a '1,2,3' exercise. We did this moving around the space. The idea of this was to get us used to working on three sides, without shutting off any of the audience. This is extremely challenging. It requires the actor to manipulate the shoulders, body and neck to work separately so the audience gets a good view of all your body. For example, if your head has to face stage left to speak to another character you need to alter your body to be facing the right, while turning your neck towards the left. This way every audience member should have an interesting and clear view of you. This exercise started off with everyone in the space. Then most of the class stood around the space along 3 sides like in the theatre and 2 people stayed in the middle and continued the exercise. We as an audience had to put our hand up whenever we weren't satisfied with the view we were getting onstage. I was part of the audience for this exercise. From observing the actors onstage it seemed to me they were really starting to understand how much of a challenge working on three sides successfully is. It required them to think about what their bodies were doing technically whilst at the same time trying to communicate with the other actor onstage. On top of that when it comes to applying the play text you will also have to focus on living freely as your character onstage at the same time.

We then developed this exercise on from the 1, 2, 3 to one partner saying 'tell me' and the other saying 'no'. This meant the audience saw more of a story develop between the characters and the actors onstage began to listen to each other. It was very clear to  me as an audience member when the person onstage had connected with the other person and was reacting of what they had said and how they had said it. It was an invisible connection which was easy to create when you really listened but just as easy to lose if an actor stopped listening.

We began rehearsing for our production of 13 today. At first I was struggling with my opening scene as I couldn't figure out the exact objectives of my character with her lines. After working this out some more and allowing myself to experiment onstage it became clearer and a more successful scene.

Over all the blocking process was too rushed. I think we needed to start with the dream sequence in scene 1 as opposed to skipping over it. The reason I feel this way is because the dream is such a big defining thing that happens to the main 12 characters, it seems odd too miss it out, when it is an important part of their character development throughout the play.

I think in order for future rehearsals to improve we need to be much more focused as a cast. It was much more productive when people came to rehearse their scenes having already learnt their lines. This allowed people to start speaking into the other person and passing energy between the characters onstage as opposed to just blocking it through with scripts.

This play is highly political and requires us to know a lot about middle eastern conflicts, and the issues in Iran. It also emphasis's the significance of America's involvement in the middle east and its influence on UK politics. In order for our audience to be able to understand this, we need to as well. To do this we need to research every issue that comes up from within our characters scenes. This way when we are speaking about them we can see what we say. When speaking about Iran and this world off stage, we need to be able to see it clearly in our minds, then the audience will also be able to. In terms of my character I need to develop an understanding of the christian faith, and unstable mothers. I also need to research what prison I would be likely to be sent to and what sentence I would be given.