Star Chamber.

Fourth Rehearsal.

Due to illness this was my final rehearsal i did before the dress rehearsal. We ran the whole show again but stopped quite a lot to take notes about improving out characterisation. I felt by this point i had learnt my lines well enough but my character still wasn't as developed as i had hoped. Some of the lines i was unsure of how Xenia would be saying them and the relationship between her and some of the other characters.

After this run through i was told a few things to improve my performance. The first was right at the start when Sophie and I were saying the line "It's the sweetest house I've ever seen you know, i went there last year". It needed to be said much louder than the rest of the people talking so the audience could hear it clearly and understand that the change of character was happening.

Another weak point that i think a lot of us struggled with was reacting to other peoples lines. As a lot of the speech was said over the top of one another it was difficult to hear the things we needed to react too. And even when people had lines by themselves people still weren't reacting. The two main points where when Mrs Farmer was reading the letter we all needed to be doing something. This may be listening to her and reacting by using facial expressions or completely ignoring her. But either way we needed to be doing something here. Another point was when Hester says the line "I think we ought to hear everything, don't you?", this was a vital part we needed to react too. No body wanted to hear all the details so we need to look as if this is true. For example pull a face, look away from Mrs Farmer or speak to somebody else as if your not listening.

The final point i got given during this rehearsal was that my first few lines needed to be said quite quietly because this gives people a reason to ignore me. When i finally say "order order, we ought to get on with the meeting" i need to stand up and make a big deal of it trying to get peoples attention and getting slightly annoyed that people aren't listening.