Tuesday, 1 October 2013

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.

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