The play we have been working on over the last number of weeks is Noises Off, a comedy play within a play written by English playwright and novelist Michael Frayn. Premièred in 1982 at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, Noises Off (which was derived from an earlier 1977 work of Frayn's; a short one act play named Exits) explores the hilarious and confusing backstage life of a performance company putting on a farce play which is all going terribly wrong.
The inspiration to write Noises Off first came to Frayn when he himself was watching a performance of a play he wrote named The Two of Us from the wings. He said "it was funnier from behind than in front and I thought that one day I must write a farce from behind"[1], which is most certainly what he's done with Noises Off.
Characters in Noises Off
Lloyd Dallas: The Director of the play Nothing On (the play within the play), a stressed and frustrated man who is in the middle of a love triangle with two other company members; Poppy Norton-Taylor and Brooke Ashton.
Dotty Otley: A middle aged actress who is past her peak and not the most reliable performer, but has invested money in the show and given herself a lead role. She is romantically interested in one of the actors, Gary Lejeune, who she attempts to make jealous by showing an interest in one of the other actors, Frederick Fellowes (Freddy). Dotty is who I play.
Garry Lejeune: An actor who stutters a lot, and often interrupts rehearsals with thoughts and problems. He is romantically interested in Dotty, and keeps attacking Freddy due to jealousy.
Brooke Ashton: A young actress whose thoughts are so often elsewhere that she barely pays any attention to the others around her. She is part of the love triangle between Lloyd, Poppy and herself, and is always losing her contact lenses.
Poppy Norton-Taylor: The Assistant Stage Manager, who is sensitive, jealous of Brooke, part of the afore mentioned love triangle, treated unfairly by Lloyd, and discovers that she is pregnant with Lloyd's child.
Frederick Fellowes (Freddy): A rather dimwitted actor, not very confident and often putting himself down and assuming he's doing something wrong.
Belinda Blair: The actress who is friendly and positive, trying to hold the company together and seeks solutions to the problems they encounter. She is rather fond of Freddy and displays quite protective tendencies towards him.
Selsdon Mowbray: An older actor with a drinking problem, who is always mishearing people and is often missing in action, to the great concern of the rest of the company.
Timothy Allgood: The Stage Manager who is overworked and exhausted for much of the play.
Characters in Nothing On (the play within the play)
Mrs. Clackett (played by Dotty): a housekeeper for the Brents.
Roger (played by Garry): an Estate Agent trying to let Flavia and Philip's house.
Vicki (played by Brooke): worker for the tax authorities who is trying to seduce Roger.
Philip Brent (played by Freddy): a home owner avoiding his taxes by living out of the country with his wife, who comes to visit the home secretly.
Flavia Brent (played by Belinda): Philip Brent's wife, who comes to secretly visit the house with him.
Burglar (played by Selsdon): elderly robber breaking into the house.
Sheikh (played by Freddy): a prospective tenant looking to rent the house.
Lloyd Dallas: The Director of the play Nothing On (the play within the play), a stressed and frustrated man who is in the middle of a love triangle with two other company members; Poppy Norton-Taylor and Brooke Ashton.
Dotty Otley: A middle aged actress who is past her peak and not the most reliable performer, but has invested money in the show and given herself a lead role. She is romantically interested in one of the actors, Gary Lejeune, who she attempts to make jealous by showing an interest in one of the other actors, Frederick Fellowes (Freddy). Dotty is who I play.
Garry Lejeune: An actor who stutters a lot, and often interrupts rehearsals with thoughts and problems. He is romantically interested in Dotty, and keeps attacking Freddy due to jealousy.
Brooke Ashton: A young actress whose thoughts are so often elsewhere that she barely pays any attention to the others around her. She is part of the love triangle between Lloyd, Poppy and herself, and is always losing her contact lenses.
Poppy Norton-Taylor: The Assistant Stage Manager, who is sensitive, jealous of Brooke, part of the afore mentioned love triangle, treated unfairly by Lloyd, and discovers that she is pregnant with Lloyd's child.
Frederick Fellowes (Freddy): A rather dimwitted actor, not very confident and often putting himself down and assuming he's doing something wrong.
Belinda Blair: The actress who is friendly and positive, trying to hold the company together and seeks solutions to the problems they encounter. She is rather fond of Freddy and displays quite protective tendencies towards him.
Selsdon Mowbray: An older actor with a drinking problem, who is always mishearing people and is often missing in action, to the great concern of the rest of the company.
Timothy Allgood: The Stage Manager who is overworked and exhausted for much of the play.
Plot of Noises Off
Noises Off is centred around several funny, stereotypical characters putting on a performance and the ways in which they are all linked together, through love triangles, arguments and all kinds of ridiculous drama.
The play is split into three acts, and from act to act we see the progression of the ten week run of the play Nothing On.
In act one we see the disastrous dress rehearsal for Nothing On in the fictional Weston-Super-Mare "Grand Theatre", during which the actors are missing cues, getting lines wrong, exiting and entering at the wrong times and constantly having mishaps with props and scenery such as doors, plates of sardines, a newspaper and a phone. We begin to see the personalities of the characters and the frustration with one another is already building as Lloyd and Garry find themselves butting heads, albeit as politely as they can possibly manage. As if the confusion with lines, cues, props and scenery isn't enough to handle, the company soon discover that Selsdon, known for drinking on the job, is nowhere to be found, and panic ensues as they try to find him and hope he hasn't been drinking. When he shows up, having been asleep at the back of the stalls the whole time, he is predictably drunk, giving the company yet another farcical problem to handle at the already messy dress rehearsal.
Act two takes place backstage at the Ashton-under-Lyne (fictional) "Theatre Royal", one month into the ten week run of Nothng On, on the afternoon of a matinee performance; a cause for much stress as the goings on problems backstage mean the show is going up late. In this act we see tensions rising even more and get to know the relationships between characters clearly. Lloyd is involved romantically with both Poppy and Brooke, and Poppy is pregnant with Lloyd's baby, Garry and Dotty are in an unhappy love affair, Selsdon keeps disappearing again, and all in all the production run is not going well; the shambles behind the scenes is having negative affects on stage as well, by this point the performance being absolute chaos. At the end of the act Poppy reveals her pregnancy, just another element of drama thrown into the bag.
Act three is set another month later, nearing the end of the whole run of Nothing On.
By this point the play is an absolute disaster of confusion, and everyone's personal problems have become exacerbated to the point where they are taking priority over the performance.
However, despite all of the difficulty and hilariously disastrous events occurring, the company just about manage to pull off the show successfully, and with a lot of effort on the part of Lloyd, everyone just about manages to have a happy ending.
Noises Off is centred around several funny, stereotypical characters putting on a performance and the ways in which they are all linked together, through love triangles, arguments and all kinds of ridiculous drama.
The play is split into three acts, and from act to act we see the progression of the ten week run of the play Nothing On.
In act one we see the disastrous dress rehearsal for Nothing On in the fictional Weston-Super-Mare "Grand Theatre", during which the actors are missing cues, getting lines wrong, exiting and entering at the wrong times and constantly having mishaps with props and scenery such as doors, plates of sardines, a newspaper and a phone. We begin to see the personalities of the characters and the frustration with one another is already building as Lloyd and Garry find themselves butting heads, albeit as politely as they can possibly manage. As if the confusion with lines, cues, props and scenery isn't enough to handle, the company soon discover that Selsdon, known for drinking on the job, is nowhere to be found, and panic ensues as they try to find him and hope he hasn't been drinking. When he shows up, having been asleep at the back of the stalls the whole time, he is predictably drunk, giving the company yet another farcical problem to handle at the already messy dress rehearsal.
Act two takes place backstage at the Ashton-under-Lyne (fictional) "Theatre Royal", one month into the ten week run of Nothng On, on the afternoon of a matinee performance; a cause for much stress as the goings on problems backstage mean the show is going up late. In this act we see tensions rising even more and get to know the relationships between characters clearly. Lloyd is involved romantically with both Poppy and Brooke, and Poppy is pregnant with Lloyd's baby, Garry and Dotty are in an unhappy love affair, Selsdon keeps disappearing again, and all in all the production run is not going well; the shambles behind the scenes is having negative affects on stage as well, by this point the performance being absolute chaos. At the end of the act Poppy reveals her pregnancy, just another element of drama thrown into the bag.
Act three is set another month later, nearing the end of the whole run of Nothing On.
By this point the play is an absolute disaster of confusion, and everyone's personal problems have become exacerbated to the point where they are taking priority over the performance.
However, despite all of the difficulty and hilariously disastrous events occurring, the company just about manage to pull off the show successfully, and with a lot of effort on the part of Lloyd, everyone just about manages to have a happy ending.
Noises Off and Farce
Noises Off is a farce; a type of comedy which uses crudely stereotyped characters, over exaggeration, absurd and implausible events, innuendos, horseplay, often an element of slapstick, and altogether hilariously unrealistic antics to create a ridiculous and funny plot which an audience can just get lost in enjoying.
Farce is thought by many to be less intellectual than other sorts of comedy, but despite the inferiority some believe it has to other styles within the comedy genre, it is a very popular and successful style of theatre, film and television. We see examples of farce in all these different forms of media, from more classic theatre examples such as William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, to more modern plays like Noises Off and television programmes such as Fawlty Towers.
An important difference between other comedic styles and farce is explained eloquently in this quote from playwright and novelist John Mortimer; "Comedy is to do with people saying funny lines. In farce, after the first ten minutes there's no time to make jokes because they're so busy running around; the laughs come from character and situation. The biggest laughs in farce are on lines like "what?""[2]
I find this quote really true in relation especially to Noises Off, a prime example of what Mortimer is discussing displayed in Act One, during which many of the laughs are gotten from the character of Brooke simply saying "sorry?". Her lines don't have to be witty or long, they simply serve as the perfect punchline as her absent mindedness and lack of understanding of the farcical situation ensuing is funny enough on its own.
Unlike the last play we looked at, Mother Courage and Her Children, in which Bertolt Brecht used stereotypes and one dimensional situations to serve as political commentary on real life, farce plays use things such as stereotypes for entertainment value to please their target audience, and there is no real weight or depth to the text, nor is there any real message or statement being made through it.
A lot of the time their purpose is quite simply to deliver the comedy and entertainment expected by the kind of upper middle class audience who farces are traditionally aimed at, and they unashamedly achieve this through cheap jokes, innuendos and double entendres, and even non-ironically offensive devices such as having scantily clad and objectified female characters on stage losing items of clothing as the play progresses.
A lot of the time their purpose is quite simply to deliver the comedy and entertainment expected by the kind of upper middle class audience who farces are traditionally aimed at, and they unashamedly achieve this through cheap jokes, innuendos and double entendres, and even non-ironically offensive devices such as having scantily clad and objectified female characters on stage losing items of clothing as the play progresses.
"Nothing On", the play within the play which we see the shambles of rehearsals and performances for in Noises Off, is a perfect example of classic farce; a play in which characters are bold and unforgiving stereotypes, situations are over exaggerated and unrealistic, and a series of hilariously absurd and nonsensical events transpire throughout.
With the actual play Noises Off however, it is a little more evolved than your basic farce, as interestingly Frayn chooses to critique some elements of the very style of plays he himself produces. By this I mean that, through Noises Off, though itself farcical in nature, Frayn is smartly almost poking fun at farce, parodying the whole style. He uses Nothing On and also farcical devices and techniques within Noises Off in a very ironic and tongue in cheek manner, to kind of make fun of classic farce and the kind of audiences who would normally go to see it.
This says to me that despite the fact Frayn himself writes farces, he didn't take himself too seriously and had no problem with light heartedly making fun of it; I find this very apparent through his work in Noises Off.
Personally I find Noises Off to be a perfect balance between critiquing the more problematic parts of farce and its target audience, and being a wittily ironic piece of farce itself.
Personally I find Noises Off to be a perfect balance between critiquing the more problematic parts of farce and its target audience, and being a wittily ironic piece of farce itself.
Working on Noises Off
Rehearsing Noises Off has been quite a challenging experience for me as an actor, and I think also for our whole class working as a performance company.
The text itself is so fast paced, witty, and reliant on cues being picked up really quickly and lines being delivered at just the right moment; timing is absolutely essential to the delivery of this play. This became apparent as soon as we lifted the text off the page, as soon as we started rehearsing and blocking through our scene we found that we immediately had to be engaged and focused to even just make our lines flow smoothly. In this sense it is a very demanding play, it requires us to work towards a place of harmony as a cast where we're all in tune with one another, and especially in the earlier stages of rehearsal where lines hadn't been learnt and we weren't yet familiar with the text, this was something we had to put a lot of both individual and group effort into working towards.
When we first began rehearsing our scene, even things as simple as where the emphasis should be on different lines was challenging to work on. This is because, in my opinion, it was difficult for us to execute the lines correctly without having a complete understanding of them. For this very reason, quite a lot of time in rehearsal is spent pausing and discussing different lines and exchanges to work out and analyse exactly what's meant by them. A good example of this is in the interaction between my role, Mrs. Clackett, and Roger and Vicki. In this exchange of lines, the joke is that Vicki and Roger were planning to have sex in the house, when Mrs. Clackett appeared from the service quarters and took them by surprise. So, Roger is having to cover for them and trying to act natural, but it is comedic because unknowingly, Mrs. Clackett keeps making innuendos, her lines unintentional double entendres such as "take the plunge" (by which she is meaning for Vicki to take a risk on renting the property, but which can also be taken to be a sexual innuendo).
When we worked on this part of the scene, we had a discussion about this to clarify how I should deliver those lines and how Klodian and Odinelsa should react. Once we got into the routine of being able to stop and discuss the scene like this, I feel my interpretation of the text began strengthening.
Part of this work on understanding these moments in the script is linked to learning about the style of farce as we've been rehearsing and researching over the last few weeks. To comprehend how Frayn intended for the text to be performed, especially but not exclusively the comedic moments and punchlines, I've had to delve into understanding how to perform farce.
Some of this understanding has come from watching examples of farce in class, such as classic scenes from Fawlty Towers and even other productions of Noises Off which were filmed and published online. Watching the Fawlty Towers scene in the episode Communication Problems, in
which Basil wishes to keep secret from Sybil money he won betting on a horse, and he has to try to instruct Manuel not to say anything about it, but Manuel keeps getting confused and Basil gets frustrated trying to explain himself, helped me see techniques you can use to enhance the humour in moments of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Part of what made that scene so funny was how well the two actors played the moment and reacted off one another so smoothly, and so that is what I have been trying to apply to our work in Noises Off, for example at the part where Dotty and Lloyd are discussing the stage directions and Dotty keeps getting it wrong.
I've also picked up on some ideas and inspiration for delivery of lines and how to play different moments from when a few of us in class decided to watch the afore mentioned other productions of Noises Off online.
I find that watching the work of professionals who are more experienced with farce helps me to understand what makes a farce successfully funny, so doing this research and getting inspiration from other works of theatre and television has been really useful to me.
For me it is really enjoyable working on this play because it's a comedy piece; it's meant it is enjoyable for us learning and developing it as well as it hopefully will be for the audience watching.
I think having such a bold style of comedy to work with, the play being a farce, is a really valuable learning experience for me as a performer, as it's giving me the opportunity to really jump into new acting styles and techniques which we haven't explored before.
One of the main differences I've found between working on Noises Off and some of the other work we've done recently really is that it is already of such a specific style that we really have to rise to the challenge of doing precisely what the text demands. With some pieces of theatre, there is more artistic license than with others, and although we are interpreting Noises Off in our own way to make it accessible to both us and our target audience, I'm finding that it is hard work (in a good way) as we have to keep alert and always questioning whether or not we've serving the intended purpose of the play, and if we are constantly staying true to its style. This however is as rewarding as it is demanding, because when I find we're successfully portraying our roles and the scene in the intended manner, it feels like we are doing strong work together on understanding this performance style which is new to us.
I'm also now discovering as we progress with our development of the piece, that the more I understand the foundation of it and the more familiar and comfortable I become with performing farcically, the more I become playful and experiment in the rehearsal space.
As we move through rehearsals, I'm constantly kept on my toes to keep up with the changes that we make as we go, because everything happens so quickly in this piece that as we run the scene there's a lot to remember and a lot suddenly changing to keep in mind, which I'm finding good for helping further develop my ability to stay completely focused on both my personal work and the progression of the other actors in the group at the same time.We all have to be really on the ball with this, because the moment someone drops it or lets the energy down, the flow of the comedy is interrupted, and we can't afford to have that happen when we perform in a couple of weeks time.
My roles in Noises Off, Dotty and Mrs. Clackett, are really interesting for me to work on. It's great because I get to try two such different parts within one assignment, and I think it is really pushing me and aiding my development in making clear physical and vocal differentiations between roles I play.
Mrs. Clackett, the character in Nothing On, is a very strong stereotype, she is quite an elderly, working class housekeeper, and that stereotype has to come through really clearly. The first thing I did to work on bringing her to life was think about my vocals and start developing her voice, how she speaks, her accent. For her I put on a quite casual, stereotypically middle England working class accent, I'm trying to develop a slightly nasal quality to my voice for her, and also add a little croaky sound to emphasise (again, stereotypically) her age. When we started rehearsing originally, I didn't feel particularly confident with this and I've found it a challenge, but the more we rehearse and the more I practice the voice and saying my lines in it, the more confident I'm becoming with it. I've been given feedback as we've gone to take it even further, make it bigger and over exaggerate it to the maximum, and pushing myself to do this is I think helping me get outside my comfort zone as a performer and experiment.
For physicality for Mrs. Clackett, I'm trying to have slightly hunched posture, a relatively slow pace, and quite bumbling and characteristics and movements. Again, we've all been told to take our Nothing On characterisations much further and even bigger, so now I'm feeling more confident with the voice I'm putting more work into focusing on making that physicality bigger too.
For Dotty, both vocals and movement have to change entirely. Her voice is much more "posh", soft and self assured, her posture straight and proper, her physicality all together more collected and confident, except for the moments when she is stressing or concerned, for example about the whereabouts of Selsdon.
We've discussed the total importance of the differentiation between our roles in the play being really bold to make it clear to the audience when we're being who, and I'm always trying to keep this in mind when we run the scene, particularly in the moments of transition from Dotty to Mrs. Clackett or visa versa. When playing Dotty going back into the role of Mrs. Clackett, Rob directed me to take a moment and do a stereotypical actor gathering them self together seriously and getting back into character through taking a deep breath or pausing and focusing for a moment. I'm finding this works really well, and I think it is successful in clarifying that Dotty is about to begin acting as Mrs. Clackett again.
This work on making my roles really contrasting is proving to be a real challenge, but I'm excited I have the opportunity to rise to it and do the best I can, and the further we're getting into rehearsals the more confident I'm feeling with both of my roles.
The text itself is so fast paced, witty, and reliant on cues being picked up really quickly and lines being delivered at just the right moment; timing is absolutely essential to the delivery of this play. This became apparent as soon as we lifted the text off the page, as soon as we started rehearsing and blocking through our scene we found that we immediately had to be engaged and focused to even just make our lines flow smoothly. In this sense it is a very demanding play, it requires us to work towards a place of harmony as a cast where we're all in tune with one another, and especially in the earlier stages of rehearsal where lines hadn't been learnt and we weren't yet familiar with the text, this was something we had to put a lot of both individual and group effort into working towards.
When we first began rehearsing our scene, even things as simple as where the emphasis should be on different lines was challenging to work on. This is because, in my opinion, it was difficult for us to execute the lines correctly without having a complete understanding of them. For this very reason, quite a lot of time in rehearsal is spent pausing and discussing different lines and exchanges to work out and analyse exactly what's meant by them. A good example of this is in the interaction between my role, Mrs. Clackett, and Roger and Vicki. In this exchange of lines, the joke is that Vicki and Roger were planning to have sex in the house, when Mrs. Clackett appeared from the service quarters and took them by surprise. So, Roger is having to cover for them and trying to act natural, but it is comedic because unknowingly, Mrs. Clackett keeps making innuendos, her lines unintentional double entendres such as "take the plunge" (by which she is meaning for Vicki to take a risk on renting the property, but which can also be taken to be a sexual innuendo).
When we worked on this part of the scene, we had a discussion about this to clarify how I should deliver those lines and how Klodian and Odinelsa should react. Once we got into the routine of being able to stop and discuss the scene like this, I feel my interpretation of the text began strengthening.
Part of this work on understanding these moments in the script is linked to learning about the style of farce as we've been rehearsing and researching over the last few weeks. To comprehend how Frayn intended for the text to be performed, especially but not exclusively the comedic moments and punchlines, I've had to delve into understanding how to perform farce.
Some of this understanding has come from watching examples of farce in class, such as classic scenes from Fawlty Towers and even other productions of Noises Off which were filmed and published online. Watching the Fawlty Towers scene in the episode Communication Problems, in
which Basil wishes to keep secret from Sybil money he won betting on a horse, and he has to try to instruct Manuel not to say anything about it, but Manuel keeps getting confused and Basil gets frustrated trying to explain himself, helped me see techniques you can use to enhance the humour in moments of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Part of what made that scene so funny was how well the two actors played the moment and reacted off one another so smoothly, and so that is what I have been trying to apply to our work in Noises Off, for example at the part where Dotty and Lloyd are discussing the stage directions and Dotty keeps getting it wrong.
I've also picked up on some ideas and inspiration for delivery of lines and how to play different moments from when a few of us in class decided to watch the afore mentioned other productions of Noises Off online.
I find that watching the work of professionals who are more experienced with farce helps me to understand what makes a farce successfully funny, so doing this research and getting inspiration from other works of theatre and television has been really useful to me.
For me it is really enjoyable working on this play because it's a comedy piece; it's meant it is enjoyable for us learning and developing it as well as it hopefully will be for the audience watching.
I think having such a bold style of comedy to work with, the play being a farce, is a really valuable learning experience for me as a performer, as it's giving me the opportunity to really jump into new acting styles and techniques which we haven't explored before.
One of the main differences I've found between working on Noises Off and some of the other work we've done recently really is that it is already of such a specific style that we really have to rise to the challenge of doing precisely what the text demands. With some pieces of theatre, there is more artistic license than with others, and although we are interpreting Noises Off in our own way to make it accessible to both us and our target audience, I'm finding that it is hard work (in a good way) as we have to keep alert and always questioning whether or not we've serving the intended purpose of the play, and if we are constantly staying true to its style. This however is as rewarding as it is demanding, because when I find we're successfully portraying our roles and the scene in the intended manner, it feels like we are doing strong work together on understanding this performance style which is new to us.
I'm also now discovering as we progress with our development of the piece, that the more I understand the foundation of it and the more familiar and comfortable I become with performing farcically, the more I become playful and experiment in the rehearsal space.
As we move through rehearsals, I'm constantly kept on my toes to keep up with the changes that we make as we go, because everything happens so quickly in this piece that as we run the scene there's a lot to remember and a lot suddenly changing to keep in mind, which I'm finding good for helping further develop my ability to stay completely focused on both my personal work and the progression of the other actors in the group at the same time.We all have to be really on the ball with this, because the moment someone drops it or lets the energy down, the flow of the comedy is interrupted, and we can't afford to have that happen when we perform in a couple of weeks time.
My roles in Noises Off, Dotty and Mrs. Clackett, are really interesting for me to work on. It's great because I get to try two such different parts within one assignment, and I think it is really pushing me and aiding my development in making clear physical and vocal differentiations between roles I play.
Mrs. Clackett, the character in Nothing On, is a very strong stereotype, she is quite an elderly, working class housekeeper, and that stereotype has to come through really clearly. The first thing I did to work on bringing her to life was think about my vocals and start developing her voice, how she speaks, her accent. For her I put on a quite casual, stereotypically middle England working class accent, I'm trying to develop a slightly nasal quality to my voice for her, and also add a little croaky sound to emphasise (again, stereotypically) her age. When we started rehearsing originally, I didn't feel particularly confident with this and I've found it a challenge, but the more we rehearse and the more I practice the voice and saying my lines in it, the more confident I'm becoming with it. I've been given feedback as we've gone to take it even further, make it bigger and over exaggerate it to the maximum, and pushing myself to do this is I think helping me get outside my comfort zone as a performer and experiment.
For physicality for Mrs. Clackett, I'm trying to have slightly hunched posture, a relatively slow pace, and quite bumbling and characteristics and movements. Again, we've all been told to take our Nothing On characterisations much further and even bigger, so now I'm feeling more confident with the voice I'm putting more work into focusing on making that physicality bigger too.
For Dotty, both vocals and movement have to change entirely. Her voice is much more "posh", soft and self assured, her posture straight and proper, her physicality all together more collected and confident, except for the moments when she is stressing or concerned, for example about the whereabouts of Selsdon.
We've discussed the total importance of the differentiation between our roles in the play being really bold to make it clear to the audience when we're being who, and I'm always trying to keep this in mind when we run the scene, particularly in the moments of transition from Dotty to Mrs. Clackett or visa versa. When playing Dotty going back into the role of Mrs. Clackett, Rob directed me to take a moment and do a stereotypical actor gathering them self together seriously and getting back into character through taking a deep breath or pausing and focusing for a moment. I'm finding this works really well, and I think it is successful in clarifying that Dotty is about to begin acting as Mrs. Clackett again.
This work on making my roles really contrasting is proving to be a real challenge, but I'm excited I have the opportunity to rise to it and do the best I can, and the further we're getting into rehearsals the more confident I'm feeling with both of my roles.
We're in our last week of rehearsals at the moment, and I feel the progress we're making is really good at the moment. A weakness in our process so far has definitely been that it has taken us too long to learn our lines, but today we did work on our scenes which for me has helped a lot with that. We did a speed run of our whole scene about five times, pushing ourselves by not allowing ourselves to even hold our scripts as prompts like we have been doing recently in rehearsal, and I think that has definitely strengthened our performance, because without the script there to check just in case you have to focus harder, and this I believe has helped us finally properly get our lines into our heads.
The cues have also been something we've struggled with, especially as it took us such a while to get off book that until recently we were relying on looking at our scripts to see where our lines were.
However, now we've done quite a few speed runs, I feel much more confident with my cues and now each time we run through our scene we seem to be much quicker and more on the ball than we were before.
I think this method of speed running our piece has done tons of help to the development of the scene. Something else positive I've noticed about the speed run is that doing it at a different pace has given us the opportunity to explore how the timing can be better faster, and I'm finding that because so much of the humour in this piece is so fast paced, the jokes are better timed now we've found a good mid point between normal speed and fast pace, as it's helping us to get our cues faster, which is important to making the jokes work.
The performance is soon now, and finally we've had a chance to rehearse in the actual theatre space.
This is really brilliant, because now we've moved the piece to a bigger space, the blocking and staging of the scene makes much more sense, and I'm finding it easier and less cramped than it was rehearsing in the drama studio. I think getting to rehearse in the space we'll be performing in is very helpful and it's brought the scene to life even more, somehow I feel I'm being much bigger and bolder now to fit this space and that is perfect because big and exaggerated is the style of farce.
I feel pleased with my progression, especially in fine tuning our piece over the last few days, and I'm looking forward to performing it to an audience now for our assessment.
The cues have also been something we've struggled with, especially as it took us such a while to get off book that until recently we were relying on looking at our scripts to see where our lines were.
However, now we've done quite a few speed runs, I feel much more confident with my cues and now each time we run through our scene we seem to be much quicker and more on the ball than we were before.
I think this method of speed running our piece has done tons of help to the development of the scene. Something else positive I've noticed about the speed run is that doing it at a different pace has given us the opportunity to explore how the timing can be better faster, and I'm finding that because so much of the humour in this piece is so fast paced, the jokes are better timed now we've found a good mid point between normal speed and fast pace, as it's helping us to get our cues faster, which is important to making the jokes work.
The performance is soon now, and finally we've had a chance to rehearse in the actual theatre space.
This is really brilliant, because now we've moved the piece to a bigger space, the blocking and staging of the scene makes much more sense, and I'm finding it easier and less cramped than it was rehearsing in the drama studio. I think getting to rehearse in the space we'll be performing in is very helpful and it's brought the scene to life even more, somehow I feel I'm being much bigger and bolder now to fit this space and that is perfect because big and exaggerated is the style of farce.
I feel pleased with my progression, especially in fine tuning our piece over the last few days, and I'm looking forward to performing it to an audience now for our assessment.
Performance Evaluation
Today we performed Noises Off to the student audience for our assessment.
I feel really pleased with how it went, I think we were successful in performing in a farcical style. Everything felt like it came together even better once we had an audience to perform to, I feel that we all stepped up our game and worked hard to be big and exaggerated.
I feel that I'm pleased with how I performed my two different roles, as I tried my best to make sure I kept the vocals and physicality strong throughout and I feel fairly confident that I was successful in doing so.
We got laughs from the audience at appropriate moments which was really great and rewarding, and makes me feel that we managed to make it accessible to them even though that demographic aren't the target audience for this play. That was something we had to really keep in mind and I think we were able to make them interested in the play even though it's something they mightn't ordinarily take an interest in.
I'm pleased with our work as a team and my personal commitment to my roles, and I also think that our timing was good which I'm really happy about. It has been a challenging play to work with because it's been so new to us all, and I feel proud as I think our performance did go well this afternoon.
If I could improve on anything personally, it would be that I would just make everything I did even bigger. I do feel happy with my portrayal of the roles, but I believe in there always being room for improvement, and so in evaluation if I were to have the chance to perform this again, I would want to amplify my performance even more, especially as Mrs. Clackett.
I feel that I'm pleased with how I performed my two different roles, as I tried my best to make sure I kept the vocals and physicality strong throughout and I feel fairly confident that I was successful in doing so.
We got laughs from the audience at appropriate moments which was really great and rewarding, and makes me feel that we managed to make it accessible to them even though that demographic aren't the target audience for this play. That was something we had to really keep in mind and I think we were able to make them interested in the play even though it's something they mightn't ordinarily take an interest in.
I'm pleased with our work as a team and my personal commitment to my roles, and I also think that our timing was good which I'm really happy about. It has been a challenging play to work with because it's been so new to us all, and I feel proud as I think our performance did go well this afternoon.
If I could improve on anything personally, it would be that I would just make everything I did even bigger. I do feel happy with my portrayal of the roles, but I believe in there always being room for improvement, and so in evaluation if I were to have the chance to perform this again, I would want to amplify my performance even more, especially as Mrs. Clackett.
Footnotes
1: http://www.curtainup.com/noisesoff.html
2: http://www.michaelarditti.com/non-fiction/an-anatomy-of-farce/
Bibliography
http://www.curtainup.com/noisesoff.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farce
http://www.bard.org/study-guides/synopsis-noises-off
http://www.pcpa.org/studyguide/noisesoff.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noises_Off
http://www.michaelarditti.com/non-fiction/an-anatomy-of-farce/
