Week 6 Blog ( Week 3 For Scaramouche Jones )

Week 6, Monday 14th-Wednesday 16th Of October 2013

The third week of preparation for our 'Scaramouche Jones' assignment began with the main focus on each tutor group members lines in the script, and to looking in more detail as to how we were to do the staging for the performance. This was to help us in the understanding and meanings of certain words in the play, and the purpose of Scaramouche Jones saying them and how the chorus should react to these words said. As well as starting to learn our individual lines, off by heart, so in upcoming rehearsals we would be able to speak aloud rather than read off a script with hesitation. 

Our first session began with a simple run through of what we had done and learnt on the previous week, as we had the actors read their lines and also to take notes in our own scripts as to how we could present the characters thoughts and feelings, or even mime out the event they're describing with the chorus. We all came up with different ideas that required many different use of speech repetition and staging for each member of the chorus, but in the end we came up with a good use of staging in the each actors part of the performance.

For the next days rehearsal, we began with taking more notes in our note book given to us in our first week as well as the script. We also watched a video of a chorus at work on screen in a real performance. In the footage we watched, the chorus consisted of about twelve people, much the same to the amount we have in our performance, and their performance used more speech than Scaramouche Jones, the actor and chorus were speaking lines at the same time a lot during their performance, also the chorus we watched had less physicality with the character on stage and kept their distance more than us, as we were at certain points within Scaramouche Jones, required to go near the actor on certain lines spoken. This all gave us the idea that the chorus in a performance is not always the same, but they always have the same purpose, to portray the characters feelings and emotions as well as painting a picture for an audience.

The next half of this lesson consisted of us rehearsing on our group monologue which was near the middle of the play.  The group monologue was added in by our teacher, who thought it would be interesting to have every member of the group on stage performing one monologue together, and then returning to their individual roles in the performance. It was a scene where there was two characters being described on stage, and having the whole group come up stage to perform this was to represent more than one person in the descriptive monologue. We staged this monologue by splitting the cast members into two sections where one represented Scaramouche and the other represented the extra characters being described by the actor playing Scaramouche at the time of the performance.  And we were to stage this to have the two groups on both halves of the stage but meet in back centre stage, so we made a massive 'V' shape.  This was to show us staying in contact, just like a chorus should do.


I think it was very well done, as each member of the group had a good amount of lines to say and there was a fair amount of movement on stage also, and in the real performance I think the audience shall receive a good image of the described event.

For our Physical Theatre lesson we started looking a little more at our own individual lines and came up with a plan as to how we could learn them off by heart in time for the real performance, as well as to highlight certain words we didn't understand and had to look them up on the internet to find out their meaning and how to pronounce them. This lesson allowed us to look in a little more detail for the next rehearsal lesson next week.

We ended our lesson with some Physical Theatre practical work to get a much better knowledge of Scaramouche Jones. The task our teacher gave us was to close our eyes and look at the characters origins story, and think of what the character would say, how he would walk around the stage, and also how he would breathe. Our teacher then asked us to act out an improvised scene, in which our teacher made up on the spot for us to act out for our character in the play, Scaramouche Jones. This was helpful as we managed to get a real physicality to how this old man, who has been through a lot in his life, is still a famous and still performing clown. We all came up with different uses of Movement, Speech, and Physicality for Scaramouche Jones, and all of this will come in handy for when it comes to the rehearsals and the main performance in November, as we will all be able to portray the character in many different ways to keep the audience entertained.