The play we have been studying is
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, it tells the story of a man
called Julius Caesar and how he came to power and was assassinated by
his most trusted advisors because they felt that he had too much
power for one man. The scene that my group were involved in was where
Caesar is persuaded by his wife Calphurnia to stay at home after she
had a dream that he would die if he went to work, Decius whom I play
is sent to fetch Caesar to the senate house only to arrive and find
Caesar refusing to go to work and needing him to go so that the
assassination can happen Decius works his magic and convinces Caesar
that the dream Calphurnia had was actually a dream of good fortune
for Caesar's fortune which in turn convinces him to go to work and
complete Decius' part in the assassination plot.
During the first week we mostly spent
our time trying to connect with our characters, to embody them. This
included jumping into their shoes thinking how they would think and
finding their stature, how they walk, talk, eat and how their facial
expressions are displayed. This caused some tensions within my group
(as we were all separated into different scenes that would then be
compiled to create a birds eye view of the play) because we were all
quite on edge with finding the character and trying out their
emotions which can sometimes be difficult for an actor and as we only
had two weeks to learn, block and perform these scenes it was
somewhat harder and easier at the same time.
The challenges we faced in the first
week were mostly down to the lack of lines learnt and that made it
very hard to be able to animate a scene, as holding a script occupies
your hands and your face as you are reading the lines. We managed to
conquer this by learning a few lines at a time and then putting it
all together and having only one of us as a prompt so that we didn't
feel too much pressure over the lines and that made it all the more
comfortable to just be free and easy with the scene. We also started
to block scenes so that we could begin to associate certain movements
with particular lines.
In week two we were a lot more panicked
as it was all coming at us fast and we still had a lot to do, luckily
we had all learnt our lines and so now were working on our facial
expressions and our hand movements and figuring out how our character
would react to the other characters lines and looking at the
characters have to haves, what they need out of a scene. It was also
a time for looking at costume and seeing what they would wear,
because of the difference in status and the time period it meant we
could do a lot. I wore all blacks and then a leather jacket to give
the impression of an army style jacket, Joe wore a make-shift toga to
give off the typical Caesar vibe and Alicia as Calphurnia wore all
blacks to show how she is almost the mediator in the relationship and
situation between Decius and Caesar.
In the final few days of putting these
scenes together it was more or less just rehearsing and re-rehearsing
the scenes to make sure that the scene was in order. When the day of
the showcase came around we were all a little on edge which is fairly
normal, and were both excited and nervous creating a brilliant
atmosphere. The show was going well and then it was our turn and it
started off well, then one of the group forgot their lines and
skipped a big chunk of the scene, this was not a problem as we were
prepared and just went onto the next bit and it went un noticed by
the audience and turned out to be a good performance. I felt that my
specific performance went a lot better than I thought it would and
and was pleased with the outcome, I felt that I managed to convey the
jealousy of Decius and the intent of the assassination without having
that shown to Caesar and kept my agenda hidden. I wanted to work on
how you could look at Decius and see the good friend of Caesar and
then look at my eyes and see the dark plan behind the facade. Overall
I was very pleased with my performance and enjoyed working on Julius
Caesar with my group and learned a lot more about Shakespeare and the
history of the play as well.
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