The Cherry Orchard

-
Our first assignment after half term is  to be split in to groups of around ten people, then study and perform a play. The play my group was given is 'The Cherry Orchard'.





Background:

The Cherry Orchard is a play written by a Russian playwright 'Anton Chekhov' in 1903. It is said to 'dramatise the socio-economic forces in Russia in the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class in the mid 19th century.' And the play does this through a story of a family who, due to financial issues, are forced to sell their large, well known cherry orchard.






My character:

I play Varya, the adopted daughter of the landowner. Varya manages the estate and keeps everything in order, therefore I should portray my character as responsible and intelligent.
Varya also adores her mother and sister, therefore I should also show more compassion and kindness towards those two characters.
We were encouraged to write our actions and objectives ext to our lines, this made rehearsals/playing the character a lot easier.

For example:
I wrote that my character 'turns to Anya and smiles' to show the difference between my characters relationship with Dunyasha, who she had just scolded, and Anya, her sister who she loves and missed very much.


I also had moments of listening and reacting, where I had no lines but still had to play my character as another character spoke to me. This became easy when i understood the story my character was being told and understood that it was supposed to be a 'sad story', therefore I showed worry and discomfort only through my gestures and facial expressions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Medea

-
Image
One of our first pieces to perform is ‘Medea’. We were given an extract in which Medea had locked herself in a house with her kids and we were all desperate for her to come out. As a group of five, we decided to make the piece comedic, this was our first time working and performing as a group. After performing our finished pieces to the class, we gave and received class feedback. I also noted one important aspect of acting that I learnt, “Continue portraying character even without lines or specific actions.” This is essential because it shows your determination in presenting your character, even if the attention is not necessarily or entirely on you.
Read more

Stanislavski

-
Konstantin Stanislavski was a Russian actor and theater director, his methods helped actors to be more natural and realistic in their acting to make it more believable.  The Stanislavski method is a set of techniques used by actors to portray emotions on stage by putting themselves in the place of the characters. He developed this method in the early 1900s. These are: 1. Who am I? 2. Where am I? 3. When is it? (Year, season, occasion, time of day) 4. What do I want? (My characters objective) 5. Why do I want it? 6. How will I get it? 7. What do I need to overcome? (Problems or obstacles the character is going to face) I incorporated Stanislavskis method of natural acting into my group performance of the Cherry Orchard. One of the ways I did this was through the use of nuances.  Nuances are the subtle ways we show who our characters are, the little moments that allude to aspects of the character that aren’t shown outright.
Read more