Preparing for The Cherry Orchard - The Rehearsals and Performance

Week one

Myself, Leonie, Laura and Lauren all got back into our group when we officially started our rehearsing period. As a team we made it our objective to just read through the lines and make sure our remembrance skills were enhancing, it was at that moment when Rob told us to find out the objective of our respective characters. From previous understanding I took to it that Trofimov's main objective was to highlight Mother Russia and the negative aspects of their country due to many reasons. Upon deeper readings Rob made it our goal within ourself to know the objective for our character in every page.
When we were reading our lines it became clear to me how critical of a man Trofimov was yet there were times where he'd have a small comedic side to him when in an argument, this was a little hard for me to portray as I had never gotten a role such as this and at times I felt as if I was doing things wrong which worried me a little about the upcoming performance. However, I did get to using emotional recall into his backstory and it became easier for me bit by bit as I continued to focus and pour out my essence into him. After our rehearsing in groups Rob called it to our attention that we would be doing a warm-up performance for each other. Naturally I wasn't scared nor was I anxious, I was just curious as to how others displayed Trofimov, yet when watching them perform I saw how different each of our portrayals were which in turn really showed how we individually viewed Petya.

When our names were called up I got into my mode and calmed myself and began getting into character, ready and raring to go. Our presentation went off without a hitch and so begun Rob's feedback talk. Rob had told Leonie to play along with the stillness and steadiness of her character, and related to me and Lauren arguing more to give Leonie something to feed off of. Rob had told me that "to not get stuck in the room playing it very similarly to Oedipus" He went on to say that I needed to play the argument as that of a 5-year old. Be petty and annoying. Rob said that all three of us performed really well and he mentioned the "what if" technique towards us which gave us something to think about in our next rehearsals. Living in the moment is also what he told us to do and really imagine ourselves in that moment to visually see what the cherry orchard is like.

Week Two

For this week's rehearsal we sat down and spoke on our staging and what we wanted to do action-wise, to do this we done multiple run throughs with each of our characters stationed in different areas around the room. In our final decision we decided that it was best to have both Trofimov and Varya sit on the chairs and have Ranevskya come into the room and pace about whilst answering questions. And as our individual group we spoke about what the story meant to us all and what we caught from this rendition. And once more we were to perform our pieces to the class, and again I felt as if our render of our scene went well and I wasn't able to spot any flaws (probably because I was preventing myself from doing so). When we finished Rob's feedback was superb and it really stuck with the group. He said that I had really good thought processes as well as saying that the line "both of you please" said by Leonie needed something to bounce off of which was where the argument from both mine and Lauren's characters came into play. Leonie was to get at the two characters as she was agitated slightly, she needed a genuine antagonism between both characters. Rob told me that I needed to push it more with my character when Ranevskya's son was brought into the equation. After the feedback was given we had one last rehearsal and went with it off book. Some falterings but we fought through it and gave it our best albeit with us all messing up a few lines or improvising. It was an interesting and fun experience this time around.

Week Three 

The last day we had to prepare. The day of our performance. This was a nail-biting time for some of the class as they were having stage jitters and anxiousness flowed in them. Yes...I was one of them. Throughout the weeks we worked exceptionally hard and the chemistry in the group was wonderful, I believe this did have a part to play when we were going over lines and performing to the class for warmups etc. I had a sit down with my allies and said that they had nothing to fear as I believed in them and their abilities, honestly and truthfully. After we all said our words to each other and had one final read through without the scripts I could tell that this group would be the group of winners and no doubters. And lo and behold when it came to our time to perform to the class in the assessment, we nailed it! There were times when we had forgotten a line or said something out of turn but we immediately bounced back as if it never happened in the first place (unless Rob is now reading this and found out our secret...blast!) the team absorbed emotions and actions and listening incredibly well to one another and this was without a doubt THE best play I have down with my drama class, we finished the day will smiles and all out happiness. Rob gave us each handouts relating to what we were to learn in the following weeks and new challenges for us all. 

Team Champions: Dijarn x Leonie x Laura x Lauren