Performance Workshop - Melodrama 2/09/14

We began the lesson by understanding archetypes. We were given an archetype to be, analyse the key features of them then create them in a still image. We had to exaggerate each character which made the exercise fun to do. Understanding theatre people would've been experiencing during Stanislavsky's time was really interesting and enabled me to obtain a clear understanding of them. Melodramatic theatre's consisted of these characters; The Damsel in Distress, The Hero, The Mother, The Villain, The Henchman and The Prince. These characters are all overplayed to a dramatic extent. The reason Stanislavski wanted to introduce a change into the theatre is because it became quite repetitive and purely just for entertainment, where as theatre nowadays can be used for education. When performing melodrama we needed to portray loud voices, confidence, body language and characterisation at a level 10 standard. 

 

• The damsel in distress - A stereotypical princess or damsel. I portrayed her by using my hand to hold by my face portraying a sense of vulnerability. My facial expressions being shocked, representing that I may be in need of help.
• The villain - I found playing the villain really interesting as I enjoy being able to play somebody unlikeable. Bending over my back and making my hands crippled together portrayed how the character was planning something evil. I also scrunched up my face to make it look nasty and creepy.
• The henchman -  I found portraying this character was a little bit more difficult as he follows around the Villain. Some groups decided to create the henchmen to be a clueless follower who did as he was told, which added a comical edge when watching the performances.
• The hero - The hero was exciting to create. Standing tall and proud with my chest out and hands on my hips showing off and exaggerating my positivity.

 

 I found this exercise enjoyable and helped me to develop my understanding of melodramatic characters. Once we had done this exercise, we were put into small groups to create an act. I played the character of the 'hero'. I was excited to tackle this character because I find it exciting to be able to exaggerate somebody's personality. Once we had decided our storyline, acting as the hero was actually more difficult than I thought it would be. I had to be constantly proud and smiling which made it quite difficult to maintain focus, however I feel that I developed my acting skills because I was able to be bold and enthusiastic. In my opinion, my favourite group to perform was Haydn's group. I think him and Josh portrayed the villain and henchmen extremely well adding humour and creating the characters to the point, exaggerating their walk and voices. I think as a whole group we managed to prove a clear understanding of melodramatic characters.

 

To understand Naturalism, we got into small groups to create a totally natural scene from day to day life. My favourite scene was Chem's group, as they used a natural scenario (watching football with the lads) to show their understanding of Naturalism. The style used in The Cherry Orchard is Naturalism, therefore we developed our understanding of the play through learning about it. In our small groups, we made acts. In my group, we decided to have a scene where a brother and sister have an argument over who had the iPod last. We thought that this would be a comical and natural scene which a lot of people can relate too, especially if they have siblings.
Watching other groups scenes allowed me understand naturalistic scenes. This included analysing how the character your playing would sit, walk or stand.

After this we took our naturalistic scenes and used the idea of 'realism'. As a group we found this quite difficult because our act was already quite simple. Therefore, we cut out as much speech and made it faster and real as possible. One we had performed these scenes, we were put into different groups to create a short scene showing the main events in The Cherry Orchard. The main events are Ranevskaya returning home from Paris, the informing to the family that the Orchard has to be sold, thirdly the dance where the family are told about Lopakhin buying the Orchard and finally Fir's death. In my opinion, I felt that our group added in the essential key elements to display a clear understanding of each essential part. Many groups made Fir's death a comical scene however in the book it is an emotional and sad ending. Overall I developed a clear understanding of Melodrama, Naturalism and Realism in the lesson which I found extremely helpful. I particularly liked Naturalism because its a useful skill to have when performing for television.