We began this lesson with a long discussion about how we shall go about our show in a couple of weeks. We had this discussion as if we were directors, and spoke about spacing, costumes and how to show time.
Staging: We had decided from the beginning that we wanted to perform our play in proscenium arch as it doesn't have enough movement to justify using thrust, traverse or in-the-round (as audience members wouldn't see everyone's expressions. Having a proscenium arch setting would enable us to do our set changes more easily, as we have two exits and can leave discreetly for costume changes. Having decided before staging our play how we wanted our audience to be positioned, today we debated whether to perform our play in C5, C6 or the hall. Performing in C6 would make our exits harder, as there are no wings or exits from the room that we could use. Therefore, we debated between the hall and C5. The point that made this decision for us was lighting: both rooms have exit places for us, but we all agreed we wanted the play to have naturalistic lighting (as Pinter has written the play with a naturalistic dialogue), and the only room where this would be possible is the hall. We said we shall not perform on the stage as this distances the audience and takes away the naturalistic form. We will use the section of floor just in front of the stage and shall use the stage itself as the bar to lean on and put drinks on. This is the most practical way to show him being at the bar - although we don't have someone behind the bar, it is realistic as Lewis (in scene one) shall lean on the stage as he would at a bar.
Costumes: We shall wear costumes that suit our characters. We have decided that Ollie shall wear a three-piece suit to show Robert is professional and all business, Lewis shall wear an ordinary suit to show that he is in a good profession but not as official as Robert, and I shall wear jeans, shirt, belt and boots to show I am comfortable but smart. In an ideal world we would change costumes throughout as the play goes across nine years - however, we can't do this as we are in consecutive scenes. Therefore we shall adjust our costume to make it work for scenes - as Ollie has time he shall change his costume for the holiday scene, whilst I shall just take my boots and belt off. To show time passing I shall wear glasses for the first four scenes, wear them now and again for scene five (as if they were reading glasses), but not at all for the last four scenes. This will show time passing as it will make it seem like Emma didn't need them when she was younger, but as time progressed her eye-sight deteriorated.
Set Changes: We can't work out how we are going to do our set changes until we have worked out exactly what set we are using and until we rehearse in the space (with the set).
How to show time passing: As stated earlier, one of the ways we shall show time passing is by giving Emma glasses in her later years. We mentioned the use of placards but decided against this instantly as it is rather Brechtian. Therefore we thought about using projection with the dates on (as we are in the hall and have the use of a projector without interfering with our performance space). To stick to our naturalistic style, we thought about having a projection of different newspapers for each year - so the projection would show the front of a newspaper from that year, with the date showing and an event that made a front page in that year.
After having our directors discussion, we moved on to doing a couple of scenes. Lewis and I did our first scene. Everything we did in this scene stayed the same, apart from Ollie directed me to change my intention slightly for my line "we have the occasional drink", when talking about Casey. I initially said the line as if I didn't really want to talk about Casey, but also hinting that Casey and Jerry are in the same boat - she is currently having a drink with Jerry. Ollie then directed me to say the line as if she is quoting Jerry - she is only given the information to Jerry that he knows.
The boys then ran scene two. This went okay but I gave them a lot of notes on movement. I felt that Lewis was sitting far too still, so an audience might struggle to connect with him and see how he is feeling - therefore I asked him to really focus on how he is sitting, how he uses his hands and how he moves. Ollie is in a similar position with how he holds his arms. After working on their movement this scene really improved. However, I did ask Lewis to change his intention slightly - with the section where Jerry says to Robert that him and Emma spent "very long" afternoons together, I felt that Jerry should get a bit angry - Jerry is being very brave at this point and I felt he would be fuming with Robert for saying that he hit Emma. After adapting this intention, I got the Ollie and Lewis to swap parts to see how they would play it. This helped them both as they could see how the other would embody their character, but it helped me as a director as I had a chance to see how they would interpret certain parts, which gave me ideas on what I should do to improve this scene. I felt that Lewis' stillness gave Robert a quite unpredictable but refined manner so I have asked Ollie to adapt an aspect of this in his characterisation. I also liked Ollie's complete naturalism - he was comfortable with his hands and touched his face and hair a lot to show how uncomfortable he was - this gave Lewis ideas on what to do with his hands.
The three of us then watched a clip online of Janie Dee and Michael Sheen performing scene five - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfqrI5E-ICg. We liked the way that Robert came across as quite nice during this and has opened our minds as to how we can present him - although we shan't change the way this scene was directed / how we shall perform it as we are happy with our version. What I have learned as an actress and as a director is to not be scared of pauses; silences can be really powerful in a piece and can be more meaningful than words.
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