Evaluation of a rehearsal

This rehearsal I felt like I was pushing myself to get into my role even more so. We were rehearsing the scenes after my character kills her daughter. This meant the emotional state of my character changes and develops. I was really getting into how she must feel and her logic behind her actions with me and Dennis. I felt like we were communicating a relationship across which we haven't done in previous scenes.

Overall it wasn't as successful as our previous rehearsal. The energy between scenes wasn't working, this is partly to do with the box. The energy betweens scenes is dropping, because of people not working around the fact that we don't have the box. It is a challenge and it is worrying not having the box. It means there is an element of the play which is outside our control. However, we need to ignore it for now and focus on building the pressure within scenes and raising the stakes.

There are still some scenes where is feels like people do not know the significance and true meaning of what they are saying. This is clear in some of the government scenes.  When discussing factually based content it is even more important to know what your saying and to 'see what you say'. If you can't fully visualise it for yourself then you can't expect the audience to.

I need to work on some scenes between me and Dennis. It is a really difficult issue we are dealing with and I don't think any of us have fully realised how twisted the home life situation had to be in order for my character to commit such an awful crime. I think we need to focus on the situation more and realise the severity of it, because the stakes aren't high enough for it to be believable. I don't feel like you can tell how much Sarah has to lose and how much Dennis loses. This is something we can research and learn about over the Christmas break. I hope when we all come back we will have realised given circumstances more. 

How to spot a liar

In 13 after my character kills her daughter she then lies about it to her husband, and to the police. We see her lying and pretending to not know where her daughter is. She is found out eventually, but we don't see how this happens. I have struggled with this scene where I am lying because I can't work out how she would be in that situation. Is she feeling guilt or remorse? Or is she just relishing in the fact that she has nearly gotten away with it? Or is she just petrified of being found out? I researched mothers who kill and made the decision that Sarah must have some sort of psychotic disorder. This means to me that she doesn't feel guilty straight away, she honestly believes she did the right thing. She is only upset because she has lost Dennis. Towards the end of the play when we have the split scene and everyone says a few lines, that's when she is feeling guilt. I see that as when she is in prison probably on medication and realising what she has done. So for a short section of the play she is lying. I decided to do some research into the science of lying. I found this video:

This was particularly useful because of the examples of guilty and innocent mothers. An actual women grieving and someone lying to save themselves. I have considered using this to inform my performance decisions. Maybe I am not as upset as I have been making myself in previous rehearsals, there should be more reservations in my character. The audience should see the performance and my behaviour and know that I'm guilty, even if my character wouldn't. I can't force any of this behaviour and I do not want to fall into a pattern of mimicking the guilty women I have seen videos of, but I want to try and develop my own version of guilt and lying that Sarah would portray as well as linking this to the research I have on mothers who kill and psychotic disorders.