2 Pictures Assignment

On the Rockstar Performance and Old Sally...

To the right is a picture of me in the LPAC posing as Posh Spice next to a fellow "Spice-Girl" during our rock star performances at the beginning of the theatre course. On the left is a picture of me backstage striking a similar pose, jokingly of course, dressed in my Old Sally Costume. Both photos are representative of influential experiences I have had this year in IB theatre, and exemplify what I have learned about performing, acting, and about myself as a theatre student.

Something I learned from the rock star exercise is that performing is all about taking risks, and that without risk there is no growth. This experience we had in class depended upon taking risks for reaching any success. To perform I had to take a risk and get onstage, and trying to embody a character in front of an audience. Being Posh Spice is very different from being myself, so I had to make changes in the way I dressed, stood, spoke (or sang), and moved my face. The same was true in playing Old Sally, a character much older and a little crazier than I am, requiring me to use various tactics to play her better. These tactics included the tactics the character herself used in order to be heard and to get attention (her objective). For the part I would bang on the table, point, raise my voice, and try to make eye contact with the actors onstage in order to get them to listen to me. My tactics for the rock star performance were much less purposeful, and for a completely different character, bust essentially the same in that without them, there is no character. As Posh Spice, I wanted to dominate the other "Spice Girls", so I would turn around stand with my hands on my hips, and even sing louder in order to appear more important than them. For both the rock star performance and Old Sally I had to use tactics in order to become my character, part of the risks I took onstage. In both experiences I took risks with acting and used tools to try and play someone different.

Another significant element that contributed to playing both the part of Posh Spice and Old Sally was costuming. Without this, I may have found it very hard to physically portray either character. The rock star exercise underscored the importance of costume, especially since I had to pick out what to wear from my own closet for the exercise. This part was uncomfortable, since what Posh Spice and what I would wear are hardly similar, but stepping into costume helped me make the distinction between being myself and being a character. For the role I tried to stay true to the character, looking to You tube videos of the Spice Girls and Google-Imaging Posh Spice to lead me to my choice of a small black dress and black heels. This was part of my research, although less complete than my research of Old Sally, it was still very useful in the assignment. The costume was what really helped turn me from an actor to a character, as I used the heels to sashay around the room, like Posh Spice, and it helped me stand with very upright, exaggerated posture.

Similarly, the costuming of Old Sally helped me greatly in playing the character. The clothes were true to the time period; a long heavy skirt, blouse, and knit shawl. This affected my movement, weighing me down and therefore allowing me to play a very old person. Playing a very old woman was one of the challenges of this role, mainly because it required a completely altered physicality from who I am day to day. Instead of standing up quite straight, I had to hunch over, and rather than being purposefully steady on my feet, I became shaky and ill. Luckily the costume both helped disguise my natural tendencies to stand or walk the way I do, and to remind me to be more centered towards the floor.

I was also able to use the clothing as a tool to help play my tactics as the character. For example, I decided that Old Sally wanted attention in the scene, and she wanted to be heard. When I was trying to get the other characters in the room to listen to me, and they did not, I could yank my shawl out of frustration. Also, wearing the floppy hat changed my physicality a lot, requiring me to lift my head up in order for my face to be seen at all. This was another way in distinguishing the character I play in the chorus from Old Sally, as helped along by costuming.

Aside from costuming, the rock star assignment reminded me that acting is kind of like jumping off a cliff. I really think that the only way to perform well is to completely throw yourself into it, as I learned from both experiences. It was difficult to try and get away from my "socialized self" and to attempt transformation into a completely different person, especially in front of people. This is always the case with acting. However, I think that the reason it is possible to make that jump is that as an actor you have no other choice. Once you're onstage under the lights, being a character is something to hide behind, because being yourself is much more intimidating. I don't think I was able to throw myself into either character, especially Old Sally, without being put in this situation.

As well as having to throw myself out there, both of these experiences required me to do some research, especially playing Old Sally. My first task in preparing for the role was to read the script and research the plot to understand who exactly my character was supposed to be, and what her role was in the play. This part was strangely difficult, unlike any part I’ve had before, as the scene where Old Sally appears is very brief and does not seem to make much sense. In order to gain more understanding found a summary of the original book, and learned that Old Sally nursed Oliver’s mother as she died, which is implied in the script. I also had to research the time period, and found great information about women in Victorian England. I learned that women at that time had very little influence, and were much more restricted than they are now, as one can generally assume about women in past times. I also read about the harsh class divides in Victorian Society, and was able to determine that Old Sally would be very near the bottom of this stratosphere, which in turn affects the character’s accent and relationship with others onstage. From there I listened to the cockney accent tapes and tried to develop one for Old Sally, since that would probably be a significant indicator of her social status. Later, by the recommendation of the director, I looked at examples of crazy old ladies that I could try to emulate, to be more like the “psychotic women from a scary movie” character. This was very helpful to me, because it made me realize that I should try to push the character from relative normalcy to being more psychotic, and hopefully more interesting to watch. Doing all this research for Old Sally really helped me grow into the character, and it gave me a lot of ideas that connect very well to character development and acting. Another similar experience I had was with Rumors, where playing Claire, the snobby well-off housewife, was helped greatly from watching shows like The OC and The Real Housewives of New York. In these shows I saw very similar characters to Claire, and was able to adapt some of their mannerisms, like the way they walked, talked, and even smiled. From these experiences I learned that the research an actor does is fundamental to their understanding of the character, and very helpful in coming up with new ideas or ways to approach a scene.

Something that helped me greatly with developing a character in both the rock star and Oliver was Stanislavski’s acting theory that we learned about last year. This is where I got many of my ideas regarding tactics and objectives, which especially helped with playing Old Sally. Without understanding this theory, it would have been harder to fight for anything during that scene in Oliver, and as a result, the performance would have been weaker.

As well as Stanislavski’s System, the unit of physical theatre that we studied in class at the time we were rehearsing for Oliver influenced me a lot. It taught me how to use my body effectively to communicate meaning, and that actions often do speak louder than words. I was able to apply what I saw from Bill T. Jones, and also Dzieci in New York, through adapting their use of physicality for my character. While playing Old Sally was not spiritual like Dzieci’s practices, or dance-oriented like Bill T. Jones’s work, much of it was inspired by their purposeful use of movement. For example, I tried to make my footsteps purposeful for Old Sally, like I saw in the Bill T. Jones video. I also did my best to extend energy from my toes all the way through to my fingertips, and therefore create energized motions.

The experiences I had with the rock star performance and Oliver were great for testing out some of the theories and theatre practices we have learned about, and also for gaining experience with acting and performing.