Scaramouche Jones Assignment Evaluation

Development Of The Production

To lead towards the best performance possible, we ran into a number of developments in each actor’s performances, along with chorus staging and free movement whilst on stage.  When we began the assignment for the first time, reading through the script blindly was considered difficult for many members of the group. The reason partially was the fact that the character ‘Scaramouche Jones’ uses very descriptive words in order to depict dark and dull moments within his whole life, each member of the group admittedly, needed help in understanding the words he was saying, so we all knew how to pronounce them with emphasis and tone of voice, and also understanding what they meant. 

Other than trying to understand the descriptive words that Scaramouche Jones was saying, reading through the script and trying to understand the plot of the play at first hand was hard for most, however, having another read through of the whole script by ourselves whilst also discussing with other members on their opinion of the play, we managed to get a bigger understanding for the basics of the plot.

To ensure that each member of the group can understand the dialogue Scaramouche Jones was saying whilst they were to be talking aloud on stage, we began to look deeper into the more descriptive words and phrases in the script.  This resulted in us looking up the words using expert's knowledge, and also to take notes of each word's meaning in our own scripts. We all managed to get an understanding as to how we can pronounce the dialogue whilst on stage.   

 

Next on the agenda, was to look at the use's of accents we could use for other character's described by Scaramouche Jones in the play. When it came to describing other people which weren't from the same country as Scaramouche Jones, accents were used to paint an image for the audience for the fact he wasn’t describing himself, but another person he had met in his life.  Again we looked up how to pronounce the accent along with the dialogue written in the script using real people from these country's as Key Figure's. Although each member of the group's version of the accent wasn’t entirely perfect, it still worked, and also gave comedic value towards the performance since it's funny for people to mispronounce an accent.   

 

Because the script is written to only have one man onstage for the whole performance, so that the actor playing 'Scaramouche Jones' can give give his/her own impression to the different character's being described. This resulted in each actor in the group giving their own imperfect impression towards another character being described, making it more convincing to the audience that we are all being in character, and the events that were happening to Scaramouche Jones were real to both ourselves playing the character, and knowing how much of an impact it had on him for how much he remembers from his dark past.

After achieving the pronunciation of descriptive word's, we all began working more improved than we did on the first read through. Our next task to work on the staging. To begin with, we all improvised our stage movement's to see if it would work in the space we were given to perform in.  This task started off more downhill than we were all anticipating. To begin with, we knew very little about how our own version of Scaramouche Jones was going to move and present the dialogue whilst on stage. So to begin with, the first actor performing the lines had just read the lines out loud and improvised little movement's to keep the flow of the performance.  Although the section of the dialogue where he says “Fear and Delight”, I noticed that the movement's he used on this line was borrowed from the Pete Porstlewaite’s portrayal of Scaramouche Jones (which we had watched in a previous session). Our teacher suggested that the actor along with the chorus, should collapse on stage along with the opening line “God, what a day!”, to show exhaustion after doing Scaramouche Jones' last circus performance. This idea worked well, as the chorus was to be portrayed as younger version's of Scaramouche Jones leading up to the older one giving the first set of lines to introduce the character, therefore they will always know what he is feeling and thinking, resulting them in acting the same. When we performed the first section of lines, we began to develop towards making a slow walk, for the actor playing Scaramouche Jones at the time, towards a chair on the side of the stage, then having him collapsing and then standing up in mid-sentence to get the audiences' and chorus’ attention.  The chorus’ movement in this scene was mostly discussed before and improvised, especially with the use of hand gestures on the line “clucking round their kiddies”. These hand gestures were to show the clucking of a chicken, however most of the chorus’ other movements had a good purpose in the whole performance overall, such as interacting with the actor on stage to portray a prison cell, the gypsy camp that Scaramouche Jones grew up in, and many more other area's only just using our own bodies to imagine what would be happening and to show the area's that Scaramouche Jones had come across to the audience to show more realism and a sense of imagination. The significance of  doing all of this, was to see if we were all capable of using our own imagination to make the performance intriguing, interesting and also entertaining for a new audience. This also worked along with us starting with a very dull performance, to becoming one of the best performance's we have ever done in our career as a group.

 

The Character Study Of Scaramouche Jones

 

A key strategy for an actor’s performance, is to understand his/her's character inside out. This could range from knowing the age of the character being played, how the character would move on stage, and how the character would respond to certain events that had happened in his/her's life. This was another element in the development of our performance as to begin with, the character is both lifeless and boring to the audience. We weren't giving the impression that this man on stage was ninety-nine years old, but that he is a clown that just came out of his last show, and has a really interesting life story to tell the audience. The development of Scaramouche Jones' character began in our Physical Theatre lessons.

 

In these lesson's, we began meditating, to get our own thoughts to focus for when our teacher would ask us question to tell us who we are and where we are. He was telling us how we are this old clown, who has been in hundred's of shows, and is tired of his life, since he has traveled far and wide across the globe. When we finished meditating, we all stood up and began to walk around the class room showing the age of Scaramouche Jones, understanding how he would walk at different stages in his whole life. The best way to portray Scaramouche’s walk in my opinion, was to have the top half of the body pointing leaning towards the ground, giving the impression that he is old and tired, alongside this, the walk required the legs to be locked in place and to have the feet spread apart, to give an interpretation of an old clown. 

 

We next had to use our own depicted clown chosen by our Physical Theatre teacher in a previous exercise. My clown was a Naive mixed with Surreal.  A Naive-Surreal clown is partially shy, clumsy, sensitive, always considered happy, and try to make it look funny when they make mistake's (such as tripping over on the pavement and starting to do a dance to cover it up etc). I felt it would be best to have myself portray as my version of a clown for ‘Scaramouche Jones’, since he has been through all these tragic moments in his whole life, and yet he is able to still live on happily as a clown to show that these events had happened to him prposely. Alongside the movement of the character, the facial expression would be very sad to make the audience feel sorry for Scaramouche Jones as he tells his life stories before his hundredth birthday. 

 

After imagining how the character of Scaramouche Jones would walk, the next step was look at how you would react to objects and other people in the real world. Again, this was to use our own imagination as our teacher was describing what scene the character was going through whilst staying in character the whole time. Our teacher described how we were to be walking down a street and going into a random shop and wanting to buy a random object, the object could be anything we imagined at the time, our teacher said that we all wanted this object desperately, unfortunately not having enough money required to purchase the object. Our teacher then told us that we were to show our character facial expression after realizing he/she had no money to purchase the object, which resulted in desperation and disappointment. Our teacher then made us imagine how our character would react to an unexpected audience. This group of people would know who the character is and wanted to see him do a performance. We all managed to improvise all these events in character; knowing we all needed to show the characters thoughts and feelings using facial expression's to create our own portrayal of the character.

This lesson would help us in our rehearsal's for 'Scaramouche Jones', since we now knew how we could portray his character when it came to performing our lines also.

 

The Performance Evaluation

The performance's are finally over, but our idea's could still be improved. Since both performance's from our own eyes resulted in a success, watching it from an audiences point of view resulted in us seeing the whole performance in a whole new different way (a video camera was placed by our teacher at the back of the theatre behind the audience, recording the whole performance). Since learning all our individual lines and staging movement's wasn't a huge problem, there were many other moment's in both performance's that could have been improved in order to make it a perfect performance. ‘Scaramouche Jones’ is all about the life of an old man telling a story that made the audience use imagination to depict what he had went through his whole life, until the performance comes to an end by having the stage light's turn off whilst all variation's of Scaramouche Jones were standing next to each other. The Set used for the performance in the audience's eyes, was the back stage of his last performance in front of children at the circus, Scaramouche Jones also breaks the forth wall by telling the audience that he is only hours away from reaching 100 years of age, also telling the audience that when the clock strike's midnight, that is when he dies. Whilst using very descriptive dialogue to show imagery to the audience, he tells his life story from the second he was born to the current moment where he is standing in front of the present audience. He tells us all how he had become a clown, which was his destiny, and how a white clown mask had fused onto his face in order to complete his destiny of becoming the clown known as Scaramouche Jones.

 

Whilst reading through the script learning my lines and understanding the language used, I had realized that the play was well written, and very interesting to tell a fascinating tale of this old, lonely and dark character. Our director's plan was to have each member of the group to have at least two pages of the script to memorize off by heart, and to say the dialogue aloud whilst on stage in both rehearsal's and the real performance. Whilst the actor was announcing his/her part of the script, we had the rest of the group performing in the background as the characters chorus. The Chorus was to present the characters thoughts and feeling to different situations throughout the whole play, which worked extremely well when the character uses descriptive language to paint a tragic and dark picture in his life. Since our version of 'Scaramouche Jones' had a number of deleted scenes, partially due to the fact that two members of the group had left the Btec Level 2 Performing Arts Course, we still managed to get the basis of the plot to make sense, so when each actor performs on stage, they were to announce important moments and events in Scaramouche Jones' life. My role in the play was to perform as a younger Scaramouche Jones (about 10-15 years of age).  The character that I was portraying was just a young gypsy boy who is waiting for his father to return to him by the dock's, and he was to look out for an Elder Dempster (a large ship). Unfortunately, this Elder Dempster that Scaramouche Jones was looking out for, never appeared. I then went to talk about how Scaramouche was kidnapped by a slave trader, and was later sold off abroad. After this, I transitioned to become a member of the chorus, which resulted in the next member of the group to perform their segment of the script. Whilst the next actor was performing the next few pages of the script, I would partake along with other members of the chorus to whisper key words and/or act out certain events and to also represent certain characters Scaramouche Jones had met/seen in his past. Later in the performance, we came back to the ninety-nine year old version of Scaramouche Jones to conclude the story and performance. The way I used my character study was to give the impression that I was a sad, lonely character, I felt that my character didn't use too much energy, since the part I performed in the play was a very sad and tragic moment that had happened in Scaramouche Jones' life, and I expected the audience to understand that this was indeed a tragic moment and feel sorry for the character in a sense. As well as showing my own interpretation of a clown, which as I mentioned was a Naive-Surreal clown. Since the whole group had discovered and performed their own clowns, they were all mainly performing them in the chorus,  because the chorus were portrayed as the ghosts of Scaramouche’s past, also sharing his thoughts and feelings, resulting the chorus in representing an audience who knew exactly what he was going through; and are able to keep the audience entertained throughout the whole performance. Combining all the elements and techniques I had learnt in this assignment, I managed to give a portrayal of my own clown that was capable to tell the audience of a tragic story that had happened early on in Scaramouche Jones' life.

Whilst the whole group and the director were developing this play, we also had many Physical Theatre lessons, in which we explored the characteristics of Scaramouche Jones and discovered how we could present the origins of his clown within our own individual characterisation. This is impotent for an actor when learning lines, because when an actor knows their lines and the plot given they are to also understand the characters origins along with his/her thoughts and feelings to an event which has occurred. Once I had learnt my lines, I understood what Scaramouche Jones was saying and why he was saying it as he was, giving me a better understanding to know how I could pronounce my lines whilst on stage.

If I was to evaluate my own performance after watching the whole production on tape, I would like few changes to be made. When it came to my vocal skills, I was concerned that I needed to speak up at moments during my time on stage. I would of liked to to be a little louder for the audience (especially if there were older member's watching), and I felt in both of the actual performance's I wasn’t loud enough, this is mainly because I tend to be shy and hold myself back too much, I realize that I need to express myself more in the future, this is definitely one target I’ll set for the next assignment. When it came to vocal cue's to include the Chorus, it looked perfect on the video, which was good, it show's that when I was performing my lines, they were clear enough for the Chorus to understand and initiate their cue's on time. When it came to my Physical Ability, I, again, was holding myself back too much and standing in one place for a large period of time, but there were moment's    were I did step to the side of the stage as much as I could, since my director told me that I needed some movement for my time on stage, and I realized that when I wasent moving as much as I thought. I was also using both my arms and body to emphasize what I was saying to give it more meaning. Also I had an interaction with another member of the group which was when I went to join the Chorus after my part in the performance, it was good since we both knew when the transaction had to take place, the transaction resulted me in going through the other actor's legs whilst they were spread (each member of the group had different way's of joining the chorus once more). I felt the relationship as a whole between the whole group was positive, as we had all worked very well and hard together to get the whole storyline of ‘Scaramouche Jones’ to be entertaining to the best of our ability, and also understanding each of our individual/group cue's to give a better performance overall.

The mood and atmosphere of our production was to be both dark and dull to show the audience that we were to present a  dark tragic life story. We had Dark colored lighting as well as a brighter light behind our curtains to show that we are backstage. Set design consisted of a mirror with several make-up product's for the last minute preparations before the audience came in for the performance; as well as a mirror frame, which was used for several transactions in changing actors onstage from the chorus. Sound effects were used to begin with a sound as if there was an audience, who had just watched Scaramouche Jones perform as his clown, also announcing that the play is set and telling the backstage audience who is onstage at the time of the performance, which is obviously Scaramouche Jones. Sound effects were also used to support the chorus’ mimes for multiple scene's, a ship at sea, a moving train and a fireworks display on New Years Eve, which was the end of the play. This gave the audience a better picture of what is happening on stage in these descriptive flashbacks that Scaramouche Jones announces in his dialogue. The key aspect that created the dark/dull atmosphere of the performance as a whole, was the fact that all our individual performances were linked in with each other. Since the older variant of Scaramouche Jones was more confident and positive about his life at the moment, other member's of the group had to show negative and sad emotion's as he reflects on the more tragic and saddening events in his life. Having a dark atmosphere also created a terrifying image, although the chorus were trying to make the play as uplifting as possible to kept the audience entertained, it was the actor playing Scaramouche Jones who made the audience feel sorrow for this character and to know what pain he has been through his whole life.

The elements we included in the performance were used successful, especially during the          chorus/actor transaction's. One element we used for the chorus, which hopefully the audience understood, was that they could see all of the variant's of Scaramouche Jones behind him as he is telling his story, but in reality, Scaramouche Jones has no acknowledgement of them being there, since this is a one man play and we had to incorporate 10 people to perform in this production. Also the chorus had provided an entertaining role of providing a slight comedic interpretation of all the events that Scaramouche Jones had been through, using all the elements within a real clown’s performance. Along with the audience having to understanding that each member of the chorus was an actor who was going to come onstage at a certain point of time, this is when our director came up with the use of 'transactions'. The transactions used from the audience’s point of view, was when the actor changed with someone in the chorus to signify a flashback in Scaramouche Jones' life, and they would take over the role of the character. These Transactions were again pulled off successfully, as there were different ways in which each actor would switch from Chorus to the role of Scaramouche Jones, the main one was using the mirror frame on the right side of the stage, used at least four times throughout the whole production. Alongside the mirror frame, some actor's would simply switch positions on stage so one actor who is on the far side of the stage from the mirror frame dosent have to awkwardly walk around the back behind the chorus to reach the frame to go on stage, and as I have already mentioned, my transaction was to move between a chorus members legs. This was to also show that within the script written, Scaramouche Jones had some weird ways of traveling from place to place throughout his life. There were many other successful elements we had used in the production, but above all, these two elements stood out the most in my opinion.

If there was anything I would improve overall, I would say we have to improve on timing for both line giving and chorus cue's, and also have some dialogue spoken clearer by some other actor's. As well as improving on my own vocal and Physical work. But after all, I would say both performance's for ‘Scaramouche Jones’ were quite successful for the entire group.

Creating A Chorus of Clowns

 

Since the performance was well decorated with dark color's to represent a dull image, the main element we had on stage also was the chorus. The main purpose of the chorus was to present the character, Scaramouche Jones, whilst he was onstage, his thoughts and feelings to certain events that occurred in his life. Our chorus also blended in many other elements. Our chorus was created with nine members of the group whilst one member was to be performing their part of the script as Scaramouche Jones, the chorus showed they were a part of Scaramouche's inner thoughts and feelings by acting out descriptive words he would say throughout the performance. This was because the chorus was representing a part of Scaramouche so that when the performer on stage has to show emotion, the chorus can help by reacting to the line also, knowing full well what Scaramouche is feeling at the time as they too have been through these emotions before, since every member of the chorus is a ghost of Scaramouche's past. The other main purpose of the chorus, is to entertain the audience, because since 'Scaramouche Jones' was written to be a one man play, it can be very dull and boring to watch one acting student for the whole duration of the production, to counter this from happening, our director divided the whole script fairly amongst ten people. Because the chorus was to also be portrayed as a clown, our director thought it would be best if we made the chorus entirely out of our own individual clowns.  When I say "our own individual clowns" I refer back to the Physical Theatre lesson in which we discovered what type of clown we were.

    
In this previous Physical Theatre lesson, our teacher gave us a simple task to stand in front of the class and tell any joke we could think of off the spot. When we told our joke, our teacher looked very carefully at how we reacted by telling the joke and asked us if we thought it was a funny joke or not, whilst we gave a reply, he would examine any hesitation or anxiety whilst giving the reply. Then afterwards when everyone had told their joke, our teacher would tell us what type of clown we are by how we had told the joke, and if we found it funny. When it came to telling each of our joke's, we stood on stage and told the joke a number of times, in which resulted in some people mixing up the words a couple of times as panicked by trying to say the same thing over and over repeatedly. This exercise resulted in my teacher telling me that I was a Naive-Surreal clown. This was because after I told my joke, he asked me if I thought the joke was funny, and I told him that it was the funniest joke I know of, which resulted in the room going quiet and nerves start to kick in, which made me turn more shy whilst standing alone on stage, this moment is what helped our teacher depict what type of clown we were. Since our teacher didn't tell us why he was doing this, we couldn't make up our own clown off the spot. So after all of us knowing what type of clown we all were, I felt it would help me more with this assignment, because we used it in the chorus so that all of us would be representing a different variation of Scaramouche Jones throughout his life as a clown. Combining all these elements helped to create a vision for the audience which is called 'The Elephant In The Room', the audience can see the chorus of clowns, but the character of Scaramouche Jones knows them only to be his thoughts and feelings, and also the ghosts of his past. This is one main thing that was keeping the audience entertained and interested throughout the whole performance.