The Brown Noise

We listened to a recording named the brown noise. It's purpose is to access the subconscious. At first I found it hard not to laugh but as it continued I started to relax and my face went numb and I felt like I was about to faint. It's an atavistic sound, a coersion technique. It could play during the nightmare, whenever the man dressed in black appears to enhance particular moments. When we woke up we couldn't remember what had happened during.

We invited some year 12's to come in and listen to the brown noise with the song "Someone else's dream" by Laurie Anderson (the song used within the play). They all said they felt numb, sacred and paranoid. This is what we want from the audience and this how we all felt. We got the same reaction from a different group of people. Their heart beat sped up, they felt fear and anxious.

Listening to the brown noise has given me a bigger insight into what 13 is trying to do to the audience. 

Audience's subconscious

To heighten the feeling of the unknown shown throughout the play we thought of ways we could access the audience's subconscious, to make them open to everything and for them to not know what was about to happen.

Having a man in all black appearing throught the play would make the audience think about the meanings behind the play in more depth and put them out of their comfort zone. Other suggestions were to have the audience write down their biggest fear on a peice if paper and have to someone read these out. 

A suggestion of a certain movement or a twitch throughout the play is a good idea to represent our idea that the whole play is the nightmare. Using darkness within the nightmare scene could also heighten the dark atmosphere.

All the ideas suggested today would be effective as long as we all commit to them.

Meisner within a scene

With the people in scene 4 we did the Meisner method within a scene. We realised how crucial the hoover is to the scene. We asked someone to create the sound of a hoove. Doing this created more urgency within the scene, and helped us with our relationships with each other. We started to develop our relationships with each other. For example when Ruth says "I'd get some coffee" Katie and I backed up her up and we ganged up on Rachel. 

I also found out things about my character. For example with my line "Haven't we all?" when Ruth says "They've started early" I found myself saying it in a sarcastic manner. This was a really helpful exercise as I found myself unconsciously releasing myself into my character. The hoover is a metaphor for the politicians not listening to each other.

I think something that would help me in the future would be to have some kind of costume with me, to help me get into character. 

We started to talk about the nightmare and what we perceive the truisms of nightmare to be:

1. Danger

2. Isolation

3. Fear of loss

4. Elements of reality

5. Real people

6. Darkness

7. Potential for death

All these things we could include throughout the play and have an element of them all in our performances.

My feelings on the play so far are that it will be more of an experience than a performance, the audience will talk about it when they leave and they will relate it to their own lives. We will take the audience on their own personal emotional journey. One thing we need to do is to keep the audience's focus, especially with the political heavy scenes. We also need to portray the sense of the unknown and the sense of an "other" throughout the play. 

Sanford Meisner

The Meisner method is designed to help you get into character and to have an unconscious release of character. You have to say what you can see and accept what your partner says, breathing in what they say and allowing yourself to have intense emotions. You have to work with your instinct for this method to work. It allows you to establish deep connections with others. To do this method well you need to have:

1. Trust
2. Honesty
3. Intelligence
4. Body
5. Voice
6. Flexibility

The Meisner method involves you and your partner sitting opposite each other keeping eye contact. You breathe in and comment on what you can see, the partner breathes in this line and repeats back. This carries on with the comments switching seamlessly between each person in the pair. An example is:

"You have blue eyes"

"I have blue eyes"

As you get used to it you start to put opinions to what you're saying:

"You're closed off"

"I am closed off"

"You like to be alone"

The Meisner method brings the actor back to their instincts and works them through the instinctual emotional journey. The goal of this method is to "eliminate the actor on stage, leaving a character that exists completely on stage"

Using Meisner within a scene was interesting  It was helpful as it expands your emotional and physical capacity within the scene, prepared you for every situation, develops relationships with characters, brings lines to life, freshens the text and opens up possibilities for where the scene could go.

I found this method useful as it gets rid of stale acting, helps to develop relationships and releases the natural energy of the lines, makes a scene more realistic, helps you to not waste a line, or waste a line if that's needed, and it fills out any silences within the scene and makes them natural. However I did find it challenging as I found it difficult to get into, and I felt very vulnerable. I also feel you could easily overwork a scene.

Some quotes from Meisner that heightens his thoughts on theatre making:

"There's no such thing as doing nothing on stage"

"Silence has a myriad of meaning. In theatre silence is an absence of words but never an absence of meaning"

First rehearsal

1,2,3 exercise:

• In partners we had to count to three together, as in one person says "one" then the other says "two" etc, and keep on repeating it

• Whilst doing this we walked around the room with our posture like this:

• This posture meant that everyone in the audience was getting something (your face or your body)
• After we were comfortable with that we changed the counting to "Tell me" and "No"
• The people around the edges of the space put up their hands if they were not satisfied with what they could see and the pair in the middle had to respond to this and change it
• It worked when the pair let what they were saying bounce of each other, as it flowed, and when they played they're objectives, as a story started to emerge
• This was a useful exercise to help us to work the whole stage and how we can satisfy the audience

We devised from Scene 2 to Scene 9 today. 

The scene that stood out for me the most today was the first scene. It's set in an airport. To create the atmosphere of an airport some of us walk on stage and simply play an objective. I play the objective to search, Nora and Jack play the objective to wait, this means that our objectives cross paths, and the situation turned into Nora and Jack waiting for me to give them their car back. The division of the first scene ran smoothly because everyone involved knew their lines. Watching the scene be created made me realise how important objectives are, because if the actors were simply playing their objectives the whole scene looked more believable. I've also realised that asking questions helps you to get deeper into your character.

Scene 4 is my first speaking scene. Whilst this scene is taking place the protest carries on silently. This creates an obvious link between the two scenes, help the audience to understand the situation and is visually interesting and effective. During the scene I tried to remember the three sides. Getting the scene up on it's feet helped me to understand my character more. For example seeing Katie's natural reaction to my line "Haven't we all?" showed me how our characters may have a deeper relationship than I thought. The fact that the whole scene is on a block made the dynamics of the scene feel more closed in and also helped to enhance the feeling of being inside an office. Finding something to use as prop helped to get me into the character and, again, to understand what my character is like. I found myself writing in a notebook. This showed that my character is hard working and knows how to do their job. I found it difficult to remember the 3 sides of the stage whilst doing my scene, and this is something that I need to work on.

We worked hard this lesson and we have a good starting base for the rest of the rehearsal process. Everyone needs to do more character work. We all need to explore our characters and find out what their:

1. Status
2. Objective
3. Energy level
4. Voice
5. Physicality

There needs to be higher stakes throughout and we need to listen to each other and be more aware of one another more. We need to find a balance with the pace of the piece and find the different paces throughout the play. The energy need to be sustained and we all need to do research on the play and each of our characters

Actors Process and Breakdown of Acts

We started off by discussing our actors process with each other. Discussing it with Rachel was helpful as we gave each other some tips that we hadn’t thought of using before, and it was useful to see what her acting process was like and how different it was from mine.

We created a whole class Acting Process, which was useful as we'll all be at the same level and we'll know what we’re doing and when:

1. Initial Research
2. Learn Lines
3. Given Circumstances
4. Facts and Opinions with page numbers
5. Research: Internet, Books, Articles, Interview real people
6. Approaching Script: Preliminary Objectives, Super objectives, Text rides on the action, Tactics, Metaphor
7. Text Defamiliarsation
8. Laban efforts
9. Preparing of rehearsal
10. Making offers
11. Coming with ideas
12. Rehearsal
13. Warm up
14. Costume

We went on to look at the script itself. We worked out the location, time of day, props, scenery and any opportunities for the scene for every scene of 13. This was useful as I got a better understanding of the whole play and what is involved throughout.

This is what we've got so far:

First read through of 13

We started off our 13 rehearsal with a read through. To do a good read through you have to remember to:

• Listen to each other; when you listen to each other you start to get a deeper understanding of the narrative, the relationships between everyone and yourself and the play starts to come to life from an early stage
• Be confident in first character choices; doing this will ensure that you can get into your character early on and, again, you get an understanding of the play and what it is about
• Clear voice; this helps your cast members to understand you
• Pump life into it, eg. talk to each other; this creates relationships and helps you to connect to the text and what you are saying, and also helps you to get an understanding of the scene and where you are in it

The read through of 13 showed us that there will be a lot of ensemble work involved. We made a list of things we believe make a good ensemble:

• Trust each other; this way you can try new things without being wary of your safety or others
• Listen to each other; this creates a good atmosphere, shows respect, can help with your safety and the safety of others and could also give you idea for 13 and your character
• Be emotionally available; forget everything else, connect with your breathe, stretch before class, this gets you ready to work hard and focus and makes the process easier
• Focus; energy and concentration, makes the process easier and helps to create good, interesting, inventive work
• Respect one another; again, makes the process easier and ensures that everyone is happy
• Look after each other; emotionally and physically, creates a good atmosphere and helps everyone trust one another

The thing that struck me the most about 13 was how dark it was. I think that the darkness stems from the conflicts between each character and the fact that the questions that are asked within the play are still asked in today's society. It left you quite confused as nothing was solved completely, it was very thought provoking and made you think about it when it was finished, it had a lasting impression, which I thought was brilliant. It was very engaging play, it draws you in and makes you want to know more, why these people are asking these questions or how they are in that situation. It’s a very political play and the fact that the political views are contemporary really excited me, as we can relate to it more during the performance and rehearsal and the audience can relate to it more as well. There are a lot of diverse characters and they all represent different views of society, I found this really interesting and exciting to explore. It's also a very realistic play, which I think is what makes it so hard hitting, because you can imagine yourself in those situations or you've seen those situations play put before. The politicians within 13 are "powerfully inept", they talk about doing great things but they are never done, which I feel is a reflection of the politicians in our society now. The play is a comment on how we live our own personal lives. As a class we came up with a sentence that we felt summed up 13, The play is the nightmare.