Modern piece.

9/06/14

  I have evolved more into depth with my knowledge in 'emotion memory'. I have explored it in different ways and a lot more and added it into the piece too. If I had to put myself in the shoes of my character Alison I would be depressed, constantly wanting to shout out but knowing I can't and speak my mind but knowing that I would get shot down. It would be a very frustrating feeling overall and to relate to this using emotion memory I would think about a simple time of when I was younger and I wasn't aloud to 'back chat' to my dad. I know how frustrating it was because "one word and you'll go to bed"! So when I'm in my character it would still be natural because I would think about that and it would put me in the right mindset about who I am and what I am trying to portray too.

  Alison is trying to portray most of the time how annoyed she is at Jimmy (her husband). She is caught in a sort of love triangle with Jimmy and Cliff which obviously makes her more frustrated and more annoyed with her life. She is always bottling up her frustration and trying to keep her cool, this doesn't always go to plan however when she does shout at Jimmy and he see's a side to her that he hasn't experienced yet. I understand this sort of relationship, I have felt that frustration but then blown out at the person so I know how to apply this. I work hard on trying to show this, it is easy to do in a way but also can be quite tricky to still keep her content even when she is releasing the long bottled up anger because in reality she would still not shout too loud in case of the consequences. I know that it would be so annoying, it would drive you mad being in this situation! I would use a lot of the technique emotion memory for this because it would really help a lot in showing the audience how she is really feeling deep down.

  We watched a video of look back with Richard Burton playing Jimmy. I thought that he played the role great, but in my opinion he was too jokey with the other two and not harsh enough. I would of preferred it if he was not more 'shouty' but maybe more nasty. It's just not how I would of imagined Jimmy to act, this makes me think that it wasn't to natural. I didn't believe in the naturalism of it, the behavior description of Jimmy's character is not at all how he was portraying him. It wasn't very natural either in some things that they did, for example they moved around with no reason to and we all know that this wouldn't happen in real life. If it was me, I would have been a lot more stern but also would of not been so method in my acting. They were clearly trained in acting and you could see this, but it sort of ruined the naturalism so I didn't believe in their natural acting much.
  The good thing about this play is that it can be made played as a modern piece. I would say that the only thing that could be changed to make it more modern but be simple things like the paper being 'nine pence' to change it to 20p or something. But the majority of it is very modern so it could be played for a now a days performance. In class, the pieces that we have all selected don't have any of these olden day things in anyway, they are very modern and could be pulled off as if it were written last  week. I like this because it gives it more variety and in my opinion makes it a lot more interesting because it was written so long ago and could be used now.
  Also we shown the director what we had done so far and he helped us to improve some parts. We improved the fall (when Jimmy pushes Cliff into me) so that it looks more real and naturalistic. As a group we knew that this needed to be improved as it did look a bit too staged so we were looking for improvements. To make it better we simply decided that when I usually say "oh look out - it's more like a zoo everyday" that was too unrealistic, nobody would really say that so we just changed it to Alison walking and mumbling "it's more like a zoo everyday" which is good because it takes away the dramatic factor of the sentence and makes it more natural. We also made the push and fall better by deciding that it would be better if I made a scream when the iron falls on my arm and burns me. I am still perfecting this scream because I don't want it to be over dramatic but also not loud enough. I want the audience to hear the pain that I would be feeling so that they feel sorry for my character and the bond can continue with them. I will keep working on this and practicing so that I get it right! Hopefully this will work out right for the final performance and my efforts are shown.