The Government Inspector
22/02/18
Beginning the lesson we were instructed to identify a word a word that related to our characters. For me I settled on the word 'powerful'. The reason I chose this word was because the governor holds himself highly and it resonated with his role in the play controlling the town. After we got our words together we were then told to walk around the space representing that word through the image of our character. I feel like this start up to the lesson was useful and deeper than it seems as for me it allows a deeper connection and understanding with the character, going as far as to sympathize with the character.
After a while of going through this for a while going through the various levels we could take this too, for example with the 1-10 technique with one being the lowest and ten being the highest my tutor said to us to show a level 1 variation of the word i.e being slow and careful almost like you were stuck in a slow motion loop. We went higher and higher until reaching the tenth level and for me utilizing the word powerful I found that even though I still looked down on the other characters from level 1 and 10 my shoulders were raised, I moved with more conviction and purpose showing everyone around who was the real leader.
Moving on we started on taking something someone says to our character or what we call ourselves and put that to practice, mine was paranoia as I was called paranoid by the Judge in the script. The drastic transition from powerful to paranoia was interesting to take up and turned me down from the large power bearer to a shivering paranoid symbol, this had me looking at places and watching other characters with uncertainty. Again this helped me ground my character physically and crack through the powerful leadership on the outside and the wary individual inside which not many would identify with. It was our personal script interpretation used for our characters that helped with the process of acting it out, there were an abundance of different wordings used for other characters and was explicit as we interacted with each other bouncing off one another's emotions/labels.
Another task we went through was the use of gestures, taking a hold of the governor I had decided on using a gesture where I'm hitting my palm with my fist in a sense to enact order akin to how a judge uses her hammer. The second gesture was me shaking my hands across my person a few times in an act of being sorrowful, the reason I chose these two were because they were opposing actions where one would be in power and high authority and the other being of low status
There was an obvious dynamic created for each character and an inner response rather than an outwardly response via speech which was intricate and something different to experience. At times it felt I was controlling two separate bodies, a) my own and watching my movements b) the governors movements and feelings. We also had a moment where we used music which we believed related to our specific character's energy/status. For me in my head I heard the sweet subtle sounds of classical music, each string plucked from the violin or key from the piano soothed my character from all the stress and wrong doings he kept up with, it was a sort of safe haven for him which I incorporated.
Continuing on the day we got into groups and were told to discuss how each character would use their chosen words and gestures in a scene, at first I was a tad confused as to how we would properly utilize each person's specific text in order and make sense. After our quick discussion we eventually found where to place each and everyone's different text into one scene. Firstly, we performed the whole scene in complete silence with only gestures being involved, I believed that this was especially challenging as we were always used to powering our voices for scenes however taking the task to start out with just movement to give the audience some tidbit of story despite it at first feeling tricky it sharpened our instincts and also our reactions to each others movements which in turn heightened the expectations for our next performance.
I discovered that in the play we are more than capable of using a natural style to the text as well as using an upbeat exaggeration. For this we looked at Brecht. Bertolt Brecht utilized a lot of physical theatre in his practices which we put into the performance of gestures and whatnot. His goal was to make sure his set audience were fully knowing they were watching a production, to get a clearer picture in what I mean Brecht meant that things were often increased and not played in the most naturalistic way. This can bring a different approach to the production, by using Brecht in the Government Inspector, it can give us a chance to push the characters to the extreme, creating more of an exaggerated picture. This can also give us the opportunity to involve the audience and break the fourth wall.
Beginning the lesson we were instructed to identify a word a word that related to our characters. For me I settled on the word 'powerful'. The reason I chose this word was because the governor holds himself highly and it resonated with his role in the play controlling the town. After we got our words together we were then told to walk around the space representing that word through the image of our character. I feel like this start up to the lesson was useful and deeper than it seems as for me it allows a deeper connection and understanding with the character, going as far as to sympathize with the character.
After a while of going through this for a while going through the various levels we could take this too, for example with the 1-10 technique with one being the lowest and ten being the highest my tutor said to us to show a level 1 variation of the word i.e being slow and careful almost like you were stuck in a slow motion loop. We went higher and higher until reaching the tenth level and for me utilizing the word powerful I found that even though I still looked down on the other characters from level 1 and 10 my shoulders were raised, I moved with more conviction and purpose showing everyone around who was the real leader.
Moving on we started on taking something someone says to our character or what we call ourselves and put that to practice, mine was paranoia as I was called paranoid by the Judge in the script. The drastic transition from powerful to paranoia was interesting to take up and turned me down from the large power bearer to a shivering paranoid symbol, this had me looking at places and watching other characters with uncertainty. Again this helped me ground my character physically and crack through the powerful leadership on the outside and the wary individual inside which not many would identify with. It was our personal script interpretation used for our characters that helped with the process of acting it out, there were an abundance of different wordings used for other characters and was explicit as we interacted with each other bouncing off one another's emotions/labels.
Another task we went through was the use of gestures, taking a hold of the governor I had decided on using a gesture where I'm hitting my palm with my fist in a sense to enact order akin to how a judge uses her hammer. The second gesture was me shaking my hands across my person a few times in an act of being sorrowful, the reason I chose these two were because they were opposing actions where one would be in power and high authority and the other being of low status
There was an obvious dynamic created for each character and an inner response rather than an outwardly response via speech which was intricate and something different to experience. At times it felt I was controlling two separate bodies, a) my own and watching my movements b) the governors movements and feelings. We also had a moment where we used music which we believed related to our specific character's energy/status. For me in my head I heard the sweet subtle sounds of classical music, each string plucked from the violin or key from the piano soothed my character from all the stress and wrong doings he kept up with, it was a sort of safe haven for him which I incorporated.
Continuing on the day we got into groups and were told to discuss how each character would use their chosen words and gestures in a scene, at first I was a tad confused as to how we would properly utilize each person's specific text in order and make sense. After our quick discussion we eventually found where to place each and everyone's different text into one scene. Firstly, we performed the whole scene in complete silence with only gestures being involved, I believed that this was especially challenging as we were always used to powering our voices for scenes however taking the task to start out with just movement to give the audience some tidbit of story despite it at first feeling tricky it sharpened our instincts and also our reactions to each others movements which in turn heightened the expectations for our next performance.
An example of what I mentioned up there being with my character, I say the phrase "A government inspector, with secret orders traveling incognito" I slammed my fist into my hand thrice whilst jumping in the air to further concrete the seriousness of what was actually going on in the scene. Layers. We focused on layers. In the sense that learning lines is one layer, gestures is another and performing is another. Stacking these all onto each other this allowed us to create a piece layer upon layer as we worked out what exactly to do with our gestures then moving through to our lines. Due to our closeness with Stanislavsky we had to adapt to the satire genre of the play which involved being over dramatic, abstract and really animated which was something we weren't incredibly used to.
I discovered that in the play we are more than capable of using a natural style to the text as well as using an upbeat exaggeration. For this we looked at Brecht. Bertolt Brecht utilized a lot of physical theatre in his practices which we put into the performance of gestures and whatnot. His goal was to make sure his set audience were fully knowing they were watching a production, to get a clearer picture in what I mean Brecht meant that things were often increased and not played in the most naturalistic way. This can bring a different approach to the production, by using Brecht in the Government Inspector, it can give us a chance to push the characters to the extreme, creating more of an exaggerated picture. This can also give us the opportunity to involve the audience and break the fourth wall.
Moving on with the next lesson we progressed further to looking at our character's journey within the play and pinpointing what actually went on, taking the reigns of the Governor his plot began from the first scene in which he converses with the superintendent, judge and the doctor. It was clear he was going through a stressful situation and needed it to be quelled immediately, his wrong doings finally catching up to him once he heard that the inspector was coming. Being the opener for the play I knew the emotion would have to come off clear and concise and really bring out a uneasy feeling when addressing the others in the room. Using the plot line I believe was tremendously helpful from an actors viewpoint as it allowed me to delve deeper into the character and properly analyze why my character felt a certain way or acted a certain way.
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