Making changes.

5/06/2014

  When blocking in rehearsals, we decided that some things needed to be changed like when Alison tells Cliff that she is pregnant and our initial final idea was to have them both dancing around but then it crashing down in a fluster of the news, we thought that we should change this because it had already been done and we could go better. We thought that it might be better if we delay the reaction slowly, if there is an action for every line from the pair.

"Cliff-" (stand up)

"Um? What is it lovley?" (grabs her hand and pullls her closer to him to show the bond)

"Nothing." (pulling away from Cliff)

"I said: what is it?" (going behind her and holding her to show his real affections toward her)

"You see- I'm pregnant." (on the "you see" I would break away from his grasp and stand alone, then when I say "I'm pregnant" I would be stood sort of alone not being able to see Cliff's first reaction.)

  I think that this works well and a lot better than the other ideas because it does show the bond between the two and how close they both actually are. It also shows that they both are there for each other, they both clearly care for each other and will do anything to be around each other. The bond being broken by Alison twice also shows how she is the one not allowing this relationship, she breaks away from Cliff's help twice and really does try to be alone. Maybe these are her true feelings on the matter and she wants to show him. This is another reason of why I much prefer this idea to previous ideas, it goes into a lot more depth and in addition portrays to the audience the pain that they both are in just sometimes being around each other, knowing that they could have a better life this way

  Going back to the fall idea previous, we have actually been rehearsing without an iron just miming it (obviously we knew we couldn't do this in the final performance as it isn't naturalistic) but we finally got a real iron to work with. This was deffinatly a challenge for me because I had to workout how to fall with the real iron (not on for health and safety, just as a prop) and look like it really did burn me on the arm, and also to make sure that Cliff tends to the correct arm that the audience will see got burnt. I also have to try and make my burn reaction as real as I can and as I have never really been brutally burnt this will be hard. If I imagine it, the sound of pain would be like a screech, it would really hit the audience and make them truely believe that my character just got burnt by a hot, heavy object mallicously by her own supposodly caring husband. To make this all believable as it can have a great impact on the audience I am going to do some research into how to make this believable, try out some ideas and apply the best final idea to the scene.

  There was an idea of having the iron on to create steam as it would look real and be more natural we quickly realised that this wouldn't be possible, even if it was turned off straight away there would still be the fear of actually burning myself on the iron when I get pushed over (would be great for the 'real' reaction, not for my arm!) So finally we came to the conclusion of keeping it off but maybe when I fall I could really push it down on myself so that there is still real pain but not excrutiating. This would be a risk and we would have to try this out a few times but I am willing to do whatever it takes to make this section great because it is my favourite bit of the whole performance, it is so heated and shows for the first time this fiesty, real side of Alison and how she reacts to her husband and also Cliff in how he helps her out with her burn and also how he comforts her too.

  Again, progress is going really well with hardly any faults. I am really excited and confident in our piece, I expect that it will live upto our rehearsal standards and also push that making it ten times better! I know that when first rehearsing I shouted but when showing the director because of all the adrenaline everything came out much better, it looked more real and I was happy with the results that we had. Hopefully this will happen again but in the real performance and it all goes as smoothly as it has been going.