Acting #4 - Tick Tock On The Clock...

With a week left until the assessment, we still had a lot of work to do. Our script, unlike everyone else’s was only five minutes long which was clearly very short and we were in desperate need of adding to the script so it was longer. It was a bit of a panic, I will honestly admit that by this point I had started to worry about timing, I felt like we had no time compared to everyone else even though we were being told we had heaps of time, although we managed to fill in bits of conversation and add snippets to each section of the script to make it a few minutes longer. After timing it a second time after doing this, it came to just under seven minutes, meaning we had added another minute on just by creating conversation fillers.

Repeating the exercise we did for the first lesson with Shakespeare, we had to scan over the lines and make sure we understood them and make sure they made sense. As we wrote the script, I felt like this was much easier because not only did we know the storyline inside out, each of us had a hand at writing the lines and adding to the story’s narrative; therefore it was quicker to read and understand, and you were able to keep up. We had to mark where the end of one conversation was, and where another began, so it flowed like regular conversation. I felt like this again was easy for us, because we had put the punctuation and the cut-off already in, and hence we didn’t need to add them on as part of our exercise.

I found through doing this exercise, there were a couple of lines that didn’t make sense when said on their own, and I found that I would say them differently if it were a real life conversation. That really helped me with getting the rhythm and the flow of my words down so I could learn my lines much easier than I originally intended to.

Our main exercise of this lesson was to pick a specific part of the script to work on and repeat to one another until we learnt the lines as best we could. This really helped not only me, but Faye and Saskia too, as we got to rehearse one of the most important parts of the script - going from ‘do you really believe every word that comes out of her mouth?’ to ‘we all get ourselves into sticky situations, caroline, this is just yours to get out of’.

This part is one of the key moments of tension between the three sisters, as this is where we find out that Hayley was having an affair with Tom, the victim of the murder. Kimberly was clueless to the fact, but Caroline had always known. It was an interesting thing to create, as we had to still keep it realistic all the while bringing it to a high point of drama. Our approach was to create as much noise as possible, with me shouting my lines over to Saskia, and both Saskia and Faye trying to interject me. I think for me, it made it more exhilarating to perform it like that, because we were all facing one another and able to really let off steam - especially for me, considering Caroline knew about the affair for so long and never decided to pick Hayley up on it until now due to her denial of what actually happened the day Tom was killed.

As far as feedback went, I was pretty impressed. People seemed to enjoy it, the high point of tension really worked, as did the way we were looking at one another. It added to the tension and kept the audience on their toes.