Week 5
Memo to self: actors are not puppets.
Moving the actors around the stage, making sure they’re in the right place at the right time, is the director’s job. Exploring motivations, reactions and emotions is a partnership between actor and director. But when it comes to getting inside the character and becoming that person, the actor is all on his or her own.
Clare, who’s playing Mrs Erlynne, describes the process.
‘Having not trodden the boards for 18 months, I was more than a little nervous to be playing such a complex character. So I reverted back to the lessons I’d learnt at drama college too many years ago and started researching the part and writing a life history for Mrs E so I could bring her past to life more vividly in my head.
She’s not easy. Her methods and moods change by the second. One moment playful, the next confrontational, the next flirtatious, and so forth. But her façade is a constant until the second half when it begins to slip as, after 20 years, she begins to care again, to love again.
At the moment we’re working slowly to mark every moment, every change. I’m finding the moments when the mask is firmly in place and when to show her real feelings, and over the weeks I’m hoping these transitions will become smoother.
It’s great, I’m loving it. We work hard and intensely at rehearsals but there’s lots of laughter and silliness, and it’s certainly never dull! I shall have to start wearing a corset in the next few weeks to improve my rubbish posture - and I’m really not looking forward to that!’
It’s a joy working with this company, seeing how determined they all are to make every moment believable, to draw their audience deep into the world they’ve created.
Last year I interviewed Stephen Unwin, artistic director of English Touring Theatre, and he was complaining that the training of so many of his actors had been so sloppy, he had to give them acting lessons. With the sort of experience and dedication – and, let’s be frank, professionalism – I’ve got in this company, that’s something I don’t have to worry about!
Memo to self: actors are not puppets.
Moving the actors around the stage, making sure they’re in the right place at the right time, is the director’s job. Exploring motivations, reactions and emotions is a partnership between actor and director. But when it comes to getting inside the character and becoming that person, the actor is all on his or her own.
Clare, who’s playing Mrs Erlynne, describes the process.
‘Having not trodden the boards for 18 months, I was more than a little nervous to be playing such a complex character. So I reverted back to the lessons I’d learnt at drama college too many years ago and started researching the part and writing a life history for Mrs E so I could bring her past to life more vividly in my head.
She’s not easy. Her methods and moods change by the second. One moment playful, the next confrontational, the next flirtatious, and so forth. But her façade is a constant until the second half when it begins to slip as, after 20 years, she begins to care again, to love again.
At the moment we’re working slowly to mark every moment, every change. I’m finding the moments when the mask is firmly in place and when to show her real feelings, and over the weeks I’m hoping these transitions will become smoother.
It’s great, I’m loving it. We work hard and intensely at rehearsals but there’s lots of laughter and silliness, and it’s certainly never dull! I shall have to start wearing a corset in the next few weeks to improve my rubbish posture - and I’m really not looking forward to that!’
It’s a joy working with this company, seeing how determined they all are to make every moment believable, to draw their audience deep into the world they’ve created.
Last year I interviewed Stephen Unwin, artistic director of English Touring Theatre, and he was complaining that the training of so many of his actors had been so sloppy, he had to give them acting lessons. With the sort of experience and dedication – and, let’s be frank, professionalism – I’ve got in this company, that’s something I don’t have to worry about!
posted by oxford theatre guild at 1:00 PM
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