This lesson, we were given scenes from the "After Troy" script. The girls were put in one group, whilst the boys split off into pairs. Once given our scripts, we sat down and picked a character each - we did a read-through as our chosen characters. The aim of this first read through was to get an idea of what is going on and who each character was. We then did a second read through, but as different characters this time. On this read through we established what each character was like and what the characters relationships were like. We read through the script twice more, so we could all have a chance of playing every character. After doing this, we picked which role we enjoyed playing the most: Hope played Cassandra, Katya played Polyxena, Rhiannon played Andromache, and I was Hecuba. When it came to staging this scene, the first thing we did was look at the stage directions again. We soon discovered that Cassandra (the old woman) tends to wander off randomly, due to Polyxena's line "where were you, what's happened?". We decided to have a chair for Cassandra when she enters, as she is an elderly character and is looked after by the other women, so we thought she should be seated (this would also give her a lower level so would suggest her lower status). The script also mentions a bed (which we formed out of two chairs), so we had Andromache sit on this for the majority of the scene, as she is the sister who keeps herself to herself a bit more and is quite disrespectful so keeps her distance. We had another chair, in between Cassandra's chair and Andromache's bed, for Hecuba. We put this chair in the centre to further imply that Hecuba is the one who tries to build bridges and keep everyone at peace with each other.
Our performance of this scene to the rest of the class went fairly well. Our character interactions were fairly strong and our body language was mostly convincing. We gave our scene as much movement as we could - what with it being set in a cave! I tried to show how confused and delirious my character is when she keeps mentioning her son, Palidorus, by staring off into the distance and keep going to stand up and sit down. I think my facial expressions showed my characters inner feelings at this point, but I feel like I could have done more with my body language to portray this. Although Hecuba is Andromache's mother, I think I should have acted more uncomfortable and more weary around Andromache. I enjoyed looking at this scene, as it was a bit of a challenge to work out the characters relationships, and I look forward to learning more about this play as we look at different parts of the script.
