Blocking and Experimenting

Staging
For our play, we are going to have a hill/mound at the back of the stage that leads to the front of the stage. This will represent the downs itself as the whole floor including the hill will be covered in astro turf. This will put a setting of a country scene and with the back flat as a white sheet that will change colour to resemble the sunny Sumer sky to the late afternoon. Other then that there is no stable set for our play. There is a beer tent that comes on but only for one scene in act 2. To represent the barrier of the racetrack itself there is a pole that the actors hold and can move around with the resemble a different corner of the race track.

Enterances and Exits
For this play there is 6 spaces at which the actor can enter and exit from. At the back of the stage there are two on both the left and right side. They are called SR1 and SL1. Then there are two enterances in the front of the stage on bothe left and right. They are called SR2 and SL2. And finally there are two in the audience that lead onto the stage from both right and left. They are called SR3 and SL3.

For Minty, I enter SR2 and I Exit SL2
For Dorothy, I enter SL3 and I exit SR3
For Loud Voice, I enter SR1 and I exit SL3
For The Course, I enter SR2 and I exit SR2
For Lunatic 3, I enter SL1 and I don't exit as it. Is the end of the play.

Experimenting
I have now started to experiment with some of my characters. Firstly I know that Dorothy Delaune is a very posh, loud and snobbish woman so I thought that I would start to experiment with some of her voices. For one take I tried to take inspiration from the character Janice from friends TV show. I push my voice to a very high, sharp and nasal quality. I thought that this voice was very effective as people seemed to laugh at the voice, which she is meant to be rediculous. However after doing that rehearsal I went home and I imediantly noticed that my throat was hurt. I now know that voice, while it may be effective for the character, it would not be able to be sustained for the whole production as I would have a damaged voice by the first show. Therefore I have had to look at other voice. I have tried a voice that is in the same high pitch however this time it's more snotty then sharp. I feel that this voice is more effective than the first one as it doesn't hurt my voice and it still has a redicoulous quality to it that may even be more grotesque than the first one.

I have also been experimenting with voice for the character Minty. We decided that we should make the gypsy travellers Irish. This is because at this time there was the IRA attacks which meant that many people were scared or looked down on the Irish and in this play both the gypsies (Minty and Primrose) are not overly welcomed by people. So I have been experimenting on a southern Irish accent. I think I have it pretty much nailed however since I did not know my lines, I noticed that every thing I said in the rehearsal was on one tone and it very boring. I think I was trying so hard to focus on the accent that I forgot about tonality. To improve this I had a one to one with one of our teacher who was Irish. She went through each line with me highlighting on some of the tonalities and even pronouciation of words.

I now know:
. Irish people speak very fast and they sometimes slur over their words
. Some of their words join together, for example "lead in you" would become "lednya"
. The letter T sound more like SH. They make this noise be placing their tongue as if the were going to say L but instead they push their breath through whilst the tongue remains up against the hard palet of their mouth.
. Irish people also don't say ING instead they just say N, for example "going to" becomes "gont"

One of the tonalities I do is when I say "won't he give you a wallop". When I say "you" I go up in my voice and then I let my voice descend natural with the rest of the sentence.