Acting #3 - Laughter is the Secret to a Dramatic Story, Right?

We began to flesh out the script for the most part of this session, using the snippets we’d chopped into one page from the previous devising session to create a piece of text that was able to be our starting point. As we did our first run-through, immediately we were told it was far too serious and too dramatic. This to me was a red flag, as that is a very easy recipe for people to get bored and switch off quickly, so it had to be adapted further. I was happy to do this, as it felt like we needed to add some humor to flesh out the characters and get to understand their relationship to one another a little better, but also so the audience will stay interested.

I’m not great at the comical side of acting when I’m performing in my own accent, but having to go out of my comfort zone in not only a completely different accent but to then try and become humorous is going to be a massive hurdle for me to overcome, however, with enough practice and the use of repetition and line learning, I think I’ll be able to overcome the worry.

Staging has emerged to be an issue, as it’s set in a prison visiting centre, and so we’re all sat on opposing ends of the table, with a possibility of me in handcuffs if we can find any, as that would be an interesting prop to use so I can’t use my hands when I talk, or when I’m listening which would be odd. I would be as far away from Faye’s character as possible in a silent attempt to show Caroline and Hayley’s relationship before the show had even started.

Our accents needed to be adapted to be more playful than believable now that we have the general consensus of them, as we have this huge over the top story arc that is something that is only ever really used for high drama like ours, and trying to balance ‘real’ accents with a ‘not-so-real’ story will prove confusing. It’s far easier to try and make the whole thing over the top and tone it down gradually through rehearsal and line learning than it is to build it up through the rehearsal, as it will be set in our muscle memory like that.