SHOW ONE and SHOW TWO EVALUATION - 4:30 + 7:00

Hamlet

The 4:30 show was really strong. Not only because we were all excited to perform, but also because the audience was really supportive because they were our peers. I had to be careful of not performing for the audience as I had noticed in the other Shakespeare shows, people would make a slight funny twist on a line and realise it got the audience laughing, and so they continued doing so just to keep getting that reaction again - as if laughs warrant a good performance. For me I felt it was critical that the emotion and the stakes were high throughout the entire play; like there was always something to lose as any moment. Overall, I think we achieved that. As an actor I could feel the intensity on stage. It was really addictive.

My voice during the show was strong. My projection was perfect, a lot better than I have performed in the last six months. That being said I was conscious the entire time of shouting. Of course Hamlet is very upset about seeing his dad again, but I didn't want to shout because it's edgy for an actor to do so. I wanted it to feel like Hamlet is on the verge of jumping across the theatre and killing Claudius right then and there. I wanted people to see the anger towards his actions. My articulation wasn't as strong as I wanted it to be. Because I spent the first half of the show watching a slideshow of my dad, I was balling my eyes out. And when I turned around to say the first soliloquy, my nose and eyes were runny, meaning I was sniffing and it's not very easy to articulate through tears. In hind sight maybe I should of taken more breaths to calm myself down before beginning the monologue?

My breath control was a lot better than what I'd hoped, for someone like me who's asthmatic sometimes I can have period where for years I don't have breathing altercations, but they could spring up again out of nowhere. I was cautious of losing breathe when doing 'too too solid flesh' as the monologue is quite lengthy. Luckily I had rehearsed whereto breathe, and practised timing of lines. So this felt really natural to me during the show. I was very proud of myself.  

My monologue was definitely emotionally connected, and felt rooted. But I ruined my lines. I know it's little but I feel that with Shakespeare you can't afford to fluff a line. As Morecombe and Wise would say, 'I played all the right notes, just not in the right order', for me I said all the right lines, just not necessarily in the right order. This kind of bugged me throughout the rest of the show. I was sitting on the bed and I was trying to stay in the mental place I was when watching the slideshow but I couldn't stop kicking myself about the lines. I had to just say, 'worry about it after the show, you have a job to do' to get back into it.

My second scene was definitely my favourite part of this performance. My voice and physicality felt connected and I was nimble with my movement and said every line with purpose. I felt really in role. It was nice to have the privilege of having the three non depressing lines in our production as it meant it shows a more light hearted side to Hamlet. Hamlet is a teenager, I certainly don't spend my days in a state of anger, I have moments where I'm great and moments where I'm bad and this is the same with Hamlet. I think since the audience were majority teens themselves, this interpretation was so relevant. The way Nirvana, Joy Division and Jeff Buckley were integrated - my god did it work.

During the intermission between show one and two, I felt something was wrong as well as everyone else. We had all pushed our voices to the extreme. Our voices were breaking, dry, and fading. We theorised this was because of how much we screamed and went for it in the Teen Spirit section. I for one went for it. Luckily we had brought a jar of honey which Sarah had suggested in case this situation happened to occur. We used a teaspoon each and coated our throats with it. Needless to say, despite the high from show one, there was an anticipation from myself that made me on edge.

During the second run of my monologues, I felt so much more emotionally connected. I must admit, performing that scene to the audience is probably the most rewarding thing I've done so far as an actor. I managed to not fluff my lines up this time, learning from the time before and tried to breathe before delivering the lines to avoid the sniffle crying. My second scene however was a complete disaster. My voice was gone, and it was restricting me from injecting character in the lines. My vocal pitch register had shrunk and I couldn't speak above a certain pitch otherwise it would break. I knew my voice was strained when I said the first line of this scene, I could feel it slowly withering.

Both drowning sequences were difficult as Tilly had to be covered in water. Making it really hard to lift her as she was so slippy. This being said, it somehow manages to be rather beautifully tragic each time with the blue lighting and all the Hamlets together, something felt powerful from that image. In rehearsal I would always look at this famous painting of Ophelia drowning to remind me of the effect we were going for.

Ophelia by John Everett Millais

Overall, I felt like this production of Hamlet was really powerful, achieving it's goal. Hamlet was the most creatively satisfying projects I have worked on thus far and I hope to delve back into Hamlet further on in my life. This play is so beautiful and so tragic that it's hard to stay away from. That's why its so relevant. The performance from the entire cast was so strong and I'm unbelievably proud of everyone for pulling off such a vision.

STANISLAVSKY SENSE MEMORY

Sense memory is a form of emotional recall theorised by Konstantin Stanislavsky in which actors are able to access emotions from their memory. Hamlet is distraught over the pain of his fathers death, causing him to relapse into a depressive spiral, reminiscing on him. This is Hamlets way of grieving for his father.

An actor will experience an emotionally traumatic experience like finding out they've lost their brother, but they will remember the feeling of being that sad to use later. They will remember this through emotional recall and then reuse it at a later time.

My experience with emotional recall and sense memory....

For  Hamlet, as I've mentioned before, I will use my own Grandfathers death as a stimulus for the grieving for King Hamlet as I am still grieving for my granddad, but perhaps I'm in stage stage four with my granddad. My dad will be my actual stimulus for my fathers death. During the beginning of the play I will play a projection of my own dad. My stimulus for Ophelia will be my girlfriend.

If we break down the grieving process into five stages it would look something like this:

1. Denial and isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance. 

One (Denial and Anger)

Hamlet during his Denial and Isolation stage of mourning would be during the opening section of the play in which Hamlet doesn't attend his fathers funeral, instead opting to review his family films on a projector to ope with the intense loss he's feeling.

Two (Anger)

Anger. Hamlet is most certainly angry. During scene two, after meeting with the dead King Hamlets ghost, he is told the revelation that his father was poisoned in his ear by Claudius, the now king of Denmark. Hamlets grieving is forced to stage two by the ghost, leaving Hamlet unable to grieve properly for his father. This means that the only way for Hamlet to reach stage five, is by inevitably killing King Claudius.

Three (Bargaining)

In this stage, bargaining, people usually tend to try to turn to religion or some higher power. In our case, Hamlet swears to God that he will kill Claudius. "I have sworn't". Hamlet often references time and God in his speeches. Hamlet is constantly infatuated with the concept of death and the passage of time. It is in this stage that he truly realises time, and that he makes that self agreement with God that he will kill his fathers usurper.

Four (Depression)

The second Hamlet leaves the stage of scene two to go and play Something in the Way, this is an acknowledgement that he's upset about the whole situation. I would say this is a mixture of  stage two and four in one. He's acknowledging that he's angry but he's too depressed to make the move.

Five (Acceptance)

The only time we see Hamlets acceptance is in the finale, and it's only for about twenty seconds if that. The second Claudius takes his last breathe from under Hamlets arm, does he enter stage five. But he only truly enters it the second we see his fathers ghost walk on stage and hug Hamlet. It is at the point that order is restored for Hamlet. He has a moment of serenity before he commits suicide (up to the audience to interpret) Hamlet experiences stage five for only a few minutes, but the look on the Hamlets faces says a thousand words, like this is a high from heroin, peace, time ticking, never ending.

MUSIC STIMULUS 

This week I spent a rather large time looking at character inspiration and stimulus' for me to use for Hamlet whether it be music, images or people - I used it all. I feel it is important create mood boards as a way to establish the world you're going to perform in. Hamlet is a rather existential crisis sort of play. It deals with death, love and hate, anger and murder. For this interpretation, Hamlet is a teenager dealing with teen angst. This is a very hard thing to play as it can just come across as angry, which can easily bore the audience.

Usually I will create a playlist of music to play before the show to help me get into the mind of the character and feel grounded in the world of the play. I feel this is really important as music can really create emotion from nowhere, and can get your mind into a place that's needed and somewhat hard to get to.

Hallelujah (Live in Chicago) - Jeff Buckley

Territorial Pissings - Nirvana

Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana

Something in the Way - Nirvana

Sappy (Sad Version of Outcesticide) - Kurt Cobain Solo Home Demo

And I Love Her - Kurt Cobain Home Demo

Babe I'm Gonna Leave you - Led Zeppelin 

Moby Dick - Led Zeppelins John Bonham Drum Solo (Stimulus for my father)

Into Dust (Live at MTV) - Mazzy Star 

Bullet with Butterfly Wings - The Smashing Pumpkins

Truth Is A Beautiful Thing - London Grammar

Stay Awake - London Grammar

Hey Now - London Grammar

OPHELIA DROWNING SEQUENCE AND ATMOSPHERE

In the rehearsal for this sequence, Sarah taught us a routine that included rolls on the floor and arm reaches with a few lifts that will eventually become the drowning sequence.  As a collective force, all the Hamlets must support Tilly (Ophelia) to create a graceful scene of movement that feels like she is being engulfed yet controlled chaos. It must feel like she is against a force that she's fighting with, but eventually lets go; unable to win. The music will be very poetic as it a piece created with the stimulus of Virginia Woolf.  Virginia Woolf committed suicide by walking into a river with stones in her pocket in Sussex. That sort of tragic feel has to be present. We cannot in anyway glorify it or we're glorifying the likes of Kurt and Viriginias death.

Below are a few stimulus I have been using to get myself into the concept and head space of the piece. The first video being that of a clip from a film about Virginia Woolf committing suicide, while it is rather sad and in many ways perverse to watch these adaptations, it does however provide that feeling of 'I shouldn't be watching this personal moment' feel to it, which is exactly what is important to create. Another clip I'd like to feature is a news report about Jeff Buckley's accidental drowning. There is something so tragic about losing people who could've gone on to do much more like Ophelia, but these people who die young are often seen as martyrs. Ophelia isn't however, she's a victim of the world she's in.

Virginia Woolf Suicide (Film Recreation)

News Report of Buckley's Death

River that Jeff accidentally drowned in.

Similarly with Atmosphere, it has a very. very morbid tone to it. Death is literally watching on during this scene and the audience can visibly see it. Below is the scene from the Ian Curtis biopic 'Control, in which it shows Ians struggle to cope and inevitable plan to kill himself. It shows how heartbreaking life is when you feel worthless. These values are something Hamlet is feeling at this point in the play. It is only when he is greeted by his dads ghost that this changes.

Ian Curtis Control Final Moments Scene

SCENE ELEVEN REHEARSAL

Hamlet embarrasses Laertes and Polonius 

This week we worked on scene 11 with Simeon and Callum. Stuart said that this scene was exceptionally important as it is the only scene that contained some light hearted humour, which is critical to not make the audience too tense.

In our rehearsal, Simeon and I weren't feeling a connection between each other. Hamlet had just made a mockery out of Claudius by embarrassing him at the game, so Hamlet is high on life happy. Leartes enters to meet Hamlet, but Hamlet sees this as an opportunity to embarrass Laertes as he knows he has the upper hand in this situation.

Simeon and myself felt that there wasn't enough tension between us, so we played around with how to say lines and how to play the characters physically. Originally, I was very stiff and uptight, almost pompous and Simeon was loose and comfortable. In the end we flipped this, Hamlet was loose and nimble since he's happy and Laertes is stiff and uptight because he's embarrassed. This change made our physical relationship to each other more natural and real; genuine. This also, in turn, flipped how we delivered our lines. I became more fluent with my vocal range, not being afraid of searing off into weirder registers whereas Simeon maintained that stiffened, closed fist of a voice - to retain Laertes' anger. This left the scene feeling human and truthful.

One thing I noticed from last weeks rehearsals is that my voice isn't strong enough to project across the new theatre. My lung capacity because of my Asthma has made it hard to project. This meant that I struggled a lot when finding the breath control to deliver the monologue. To work around this, for the past week I have been focusing solely on my lung capacity, going over and over the monologue with my dad as the audience, but at different distances. This week, after all the hard work, I can say that I am proud of how far my lung capacity has come. For the first time I felt as though that wasn't the weak point in my performance.

Another thing I had difficulty was my characters journey throughout the space. I would just sort of enter, then exit with no clear path or motive. To stop this I actioned my script with objectives and physical objectives. I set the objectives of the scene into three stages.

Attract - When I first enter, Hamlet wants to get close to Laertes to embarrass him. 

Detract - When Hamlet turns on Laertes at his refusal, Hamlet forces Laertes to detract himself away.

Retract - After turning on Laertes, Hamlet because more introverted, yet still embarrassed Laertes. 

WEEK THREE

Today we performed an improvised run through of the entire play. This was with our scripts in our hands as we hadn't learnt the lines yet so the piece was very make shift.

With this rehearsal I figured out a few things for my character. I need to figure out Hamlets physical demeanor. I need to work out how Hamlet would stand in a room full of people as opposed to on his own.

Hamlet is a very different person when on his own than when with others. With others he is  physically stilted in a way that screams 'get away from me' or that he is exceptionally cautious of other individuals. His relationship with every other character is all distrusting except the ghost of his father.

Relationships:

King Hamlets Ghost: During scene two he has a whirlwind of emotion rushing through him. His memories of his childhood flood back to him as the physical embodiment of his grief stands before him.  Throughout the entire play I will use Jake (King Hamlet) as my reference for grief.

Laertes: I never truly trusted Laertes. Hamlet always knew he was easily deceived. When Hamlet confronts Laertes about playing a pipe, it is in effort of physically intimidating him, knowing full well he cannot play.

Polonius: Hamlet seems Polonius as rather annoying and a bit of an inconvenience. He is a bit of idiotic person in his view. When Polonius meets Hamlet in scene 11, Hamlet takes great delight in teasing him about a cloud, knowing fully that he would go along with it because he is the Prince of Denmark. This is particularly brutal and embarrassing as he decides  to do it in front of Polonius' son.

Claudius: Hamlet feels absolute hate towards Claudius. That and pity. Pity in the fact that how can someone become such a beast and lose all humanity. Most of all he feels a sense of vengeance.

With Characters I don't Act With

Ophelia: I love Ophelia with all my heart despite mistreating her. She is the one thing Hamlet never truly meant to hurt. Her death destroys Hamlet and pushes him over the edge - the final straw.

Gertrude: I loved her once, maybe there is  a slight hint at me still loving her but I'm so rife with anger that she's almost dead to me. I can't stand what she did and it causes me to act in a rather nonhuman, animalistic way.

Gravediggers: The gravediggers will the be the physical personification of death. Throughout the play, when I notice them, Hamlet will feel very on edge. But towards the end, I become gradually more comfortable with their presence.

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Host Of Heaven Iambic

O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else? 11 beats
And shall I couple hell? Oh, fie! Hold, my heart, 11 beats

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, 10 beats

But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! 10 beats

Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat  11

In this distracted globe. Remember thee! 11

Yea, from the table of my memory 10

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, 11

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past 10

That youth and observation copied there, 10

And thy commandment all alone shall live 10

Within the book and volume of my brain, 10

Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven! 11

O most pernicious woman! 7

O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain! 11

My tables!—Meet it is I set it down 10

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. 11

At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark. 11 (writes)

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word. 10
It is adieu! Remember me. 8
I have sworn't. 3