To start off with our second week on the ‘Scaramouche Jones’ assignment, we began with us having a rehearsal of the dialogue and the chorus preparation. Since on the previous week we acknowledged that the play of ‘Scaramouche Jones’ consists of only one man performing the whole script on stage telling the story of the events which have happened in his life, and there being twelve members of our tutor group which had to take part somehow in this performance, this lead our teacher to came up with a clever idea of being able to rip chunks of the script amongst the twelve of us so we all have a part to play as in the performance, which is Scaramouche Jones, but we all play different parts of his life, opening with the prologue of the performance, with him coming on as an old man and then going onto his childhood up to the present day again, we all had at least two pages to perform each.
As the whole group had learnt in the previous Physical Theatre lesson, we used the chorus for this lesson alongside the actor performing as Scaramouche Jones, over our weekend break, we all learned what the purpose of a chorus is and how they were to be presented on stage for the whole performance. But for this week we were having a proper rehearsal, for the chorus especially, on how we were to mime along with the dialogue spoken, our teacher was both giving advice and telling us what she thought from an audience’s perspective. We began with giving a good layout of the stage with the space we were working in, keeping in mind that we were to perform in a much larger space when it was to come to the real performance. Alongside the acting student reading through their opening lines, each of the chorus members analyzed each word and we then after discussed how we could present the characters thoughts and feelings as he was saying the dialogue; this was all to be presented through a series of mimes and quiet sounds, such as a whisper along with a certain word. For example, the opening line: “God, what a day! What a day,” was to be delivered with the tone of exhaustion and tiredness since we are telling the story of Scaramouche Jones' life after a huge performance as his clown to what we can guess was a bunch of little children. This was s perfect starting point for both the actor and the chorus, and will help us down the line with later rehearsals.
To start off with the opening line, we all walked on stage as though we are going backstage after the performance Scaramouche Jones did before the actual story telling. The student actor playing Scaramouche Jones would rest himself down onto a stall, whilst the chorus was to present the feeling of exhaustion and also resting down on a surface, which in the chorus' case was to be a set of tables pressed against each other. We then started to look at the next couple of lines which was: “Good crowd, quite a good crowd, not bad for a swansong.” This line is to complement and review overall on tonight’s circus audience that he performed as his clown in front of. We then started to wonder how we could present Scaramouche Jones' thoughts and feelings at this moment to the audience. After discussing this, the chorus group member who had suggested that we should nod in agreement and make silent comments about what Scaramouche Jones has just said came to be used. We thought of that, in this case, the chorus were to be Scaramouche Jones' thoughts and feelings, So the silent comments would represent what all the previous ages of Scaramouche would of thought about these comments, and how he would of responded alongside them.
As we went on we came up with many methods to have the chorus use more movement and also to use whispers to echo on key words to
highlight important things about Scaramouche Jones within the dialogue. But once we finished reading the first students part of the play, which was the first two pages of the script, we had to come up with a method as
to how we were to change actors on stage without it being awkward during performance to both the audience and cast members. This is where out teacher suggested that we use a mirror frame on stage. We were to then use our own imagination of this mirror frame so that the student playing Scaramouche Jones at first is looking at his reflection but then pulling his reflection out of the mirror frame and the audience realizing that Scaramouches' appearance has changed and clearly stating along with the lines given, that this appearance change was in fact him going to the earliest part of his life, his childhood. To switch the actors, we used a strategy that required the student actor to say his final lines and the next actor to perform was to say certain parts of their last lines, which would give the
audience the knowledge that they are playing the same person, alongside the two actors
reflecting each others actions. Then they
were to take each others hand and the first actor was to pull the second actor out from the mirror frame and switch places, resulting in the first actor to join the chorus whilst the second actor was to say their part of the script.
The next day we began performing the same as the previous rehearsal, but obviously now we had a different actor playing Scaramouches Jones. This time we
came up with more mimes and sounds to create an environment that Scaramouche Jones
is describing. As this dialogue was more
about telling the story of the characters birth, rather than an introduction to the character. This was to help us as we go along in our rehearsals until our real performance in November.
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