Getting the ball rolling...it's a big ball

Over the spring break, we rehearsed several times… because time is becoming short before we have to perform in front of an audience, and even shorter before we have to perform in front of Maggan - I'm not sure which one is more terrifying!
We started rehearsing the first scene of the first act (where else?), this involved trying to remember what we did two weeks ago with Maggan, and trying to bring some new ideas to what we already had. The key point to this rehearsal was characterisation. We needed to start developing the characters much more. This was causing some difficulties for the Inspector character and the Fool character, who are speaking most of the dialogue in this scene. It also didn't help that the script was fresh, and the words were not yet learnt. So, a lot of work was done on the basic personality of the characters. What were they like generally, and their personality. When this was found, the actors would be able expand, and understand how their characters would behave in any given circumstance, and their relationship between each other. We looked at the script for help, seeing what was written to give us a clue about how the characters behaved. How someone speaks gives away a lot about their personality, and fortunately the script has distinctive types of speech for the Fool, and the Inspector. The Fool speaks more theatrically, with a lot of emotion, and verbosity. He also speaks with a lot of energy, and more diverse vocabulary. He also speaks very much, and seems to know everything about anything. The character is able to change his persona very convicingly, and as so is erratic in his behaviour, and dramatic. This is shown by his often whimiscal, and passionate speeches about the court system, and other political issues, where he goes into detail, and uses emotive language.
The Investigator speaks less than the Fool, and is often sarcastic. He does not believe this 'act' that the Fool has been so many different occupations, and does not take him quite seriously, at least, early on in the scene. Like the Sergeant (more on this later), his character comes across as cycnical. This is quite the opposite to the energetic, chaotic, persistenly positive Fool, who does not take anything at all seriously (except regarding political issues).
The Fool is obviously slightly mad. Not completely insane, but he does not follow conventional rules of behaviour. This is shown in how he likes to make a big joke out his arrest and the questioning at the Police headquarters; mocking the Inspectors questions, getting up from his seat, having fun at the expense of the officers. The Fool, is, in a way, an anarchist. His behaviour is anarchic, and creates chaos and anarchy by his disregard for the rules/ regulations of the interrogation and of everything else.
On top of this, he is an actor essentially, we determined. The language he uses is oratory, it is almost as if he is talking to audience, who he is trying to rouse, and listen He enjoys acting, and enthusiastically describes acting, and theatre, and is so much of an actor he suffers from 'Histromania' - obsessive acting. He can't help himself but to play roles, and different characters (as shown at the end of the scene where he tries out different characters for the Judge he is going to play). He uses this as his main alibi, his excuse to not be arrested, because it means he is, technically, insane. In sum, he is an anarchic, manic actor. So, to show this, he should be an actor in his behaviour, one of the stereotypical actors, who find it difficult to tell the theatre from real life. He is always acting in other words. We decided to make him outside of the play's reality, this means he knows that he is in a play, and can talk to the audience and have fun within the play, and with the other characters, because of this knowledge that he is just performing. He has this confidence of someone who can do whatever he likes, whenever he want to because he can. So his behaviour reflect this, he is flamboyant and melodramatic - that of the actor. This combined with his anarchic behaviour (which shows he also has a lot of confidence - disregard for the rules) eventually drives the Inspector mad, and makes him increasingly angrier throughout the scene.
The Inspector, we decided is a proper, professional policeman, he does it job, and he does it for the money, and he does it by the rules. This is how he is at the beginning, he's just doing his job, and treats the fool like countless others he has had to question, and so on. He thinks he knows the sort of 'criminal' the Fool apparently is, that us the cocky, and arrogant type. So he acts sarcastically to the mocking jibes the Fool gives him at first, thinking that Fool can laugh now, because he is going to be arrested soon enough, or so he thinks. He ignores the Fool's attempts to mock him at first, and also believes that the Fool is guilty, because of the evidence showing the Fool was pretending to be a professional psychiatrist (among other things). The Fool manages to twist the evidence into proving that he is, in fact, innocent, and as the Inspector tries to find some guilty evidence, the Fool keeps finding excuses, and reasons why he is innocent. This frustrates the Inspector more and more until he threatens to kick the Fool out of the office because he has had enough. The Inspector is the Fools victim throughout this scene, and the Fool only wants to make the Inspector angrier and angrier. At first the Inspector is being sarcastic because he is in the higher status, but when the Fool threatens to jump out the window, and perhaps even before this, the status is reversed, the Fool becomes higher status because the Inspector doesn't want any more trouble after the incident with the last anarchist he had to deal with (who, as the title may suggest, died). Now the Inspector is behaving sarcastically in self-defence from the Fool's onslaught of manic behaviour and begins trying to get the Anarchist out of his office in anyway possible. We decided that the character at this point is angry, and frustrated, and desperate in trying to get the Fool out, as he does not want to deal with another 'accident'. This sort of behaviour shows that the Inspector is lower status, but also that compared with the Fool, he is just a normal person who follows the rules, of his job, and also of society. When these rules are broken or removed from an environment, by the Fool here (who is the opposite of a 'normal' person), the Inspector is no longer confident, his safe, and structures environment is being broken down, and he is only confident because it is a safe structured environment in the first place.
I'm sorry if this doesn't make any sense.
The Sergeant in this scene is much more simple, he hardly as any lines, but the character we have made acts as a more physical comedy. He is very overweight, and like the Inspector is just a cop doing his job, however because he is a lower rank to Inspector Bertozzo, and so he takes orders from higher-ups, and barely thinks for himself as a result. He has do a lot of chasing after the quick and energetic Fool, while he struggles to catch him, while following a lot of orders, who, as it happens, the Fool likes giving to the poor Sergeant too. The Sergeant, of course, automatically responds to these orders because he is so use to taking them. He is a quite defeated man, tired of his job, and only does it for the money. This shows in his lack of enthusiasm for anything, and his cynical outlook on things.
The play is funny, and it has to be kept comic and entertaining because the play is very dialogue based - there are a lot of words! Another key thing was to make sure that the comedy inherent, and within the play already was brought out and that the comedy worked within the script, so that it did not seem as if it was added on for the sake of a cheap laugh. This will be what we will try to do for the rest of the play as well.
As I said before, because the play is very dialogue heavy, and so the energy has to kept up. If the actors get tired of what is being said, then so will the audience. We have to keep the audience interested, and engaged to what is happening. We have to do this without relying on cheap jokes as well. One thing that all us actors have to do, is bear in mind that the audience is Swedish, so their first language is not English as the play is. So when speaking a lot of dialogue, we have to be very clear, and speak slowly. This, of course, applies to any play in whatever language, but it is especially important for ours. And we have been working on that in these early stages of rehearsal to get into the habit. If we start off with this then, eventually, we should not need to think about being 'clear' and 'energetic' all the time when acting This way we will learn our lines that way, clearly, and learn to do the play, and the lines with energy and enthusiasm.
The first three-quarters of the script has been edited and re-written, but the final section of the script has not been touched yet. This is because there are too many characters on stage at any one times. We are only three actors (arguably), and there are five characters all on stage at the same time. The solution is to completely remove two characters, the Captain and the Chief. These character, if they say anything or do anything important to the plot, can be worked into the returning Inspector Bertozzo. This leaves the Fool, the Inspector and the Reporter who are more diverse characters than the Chief and Captain, who could be easily removed without too much trouble, and have very simplistic characters.
We have to learn our lines, once we do that, the acting can be better focused on during rehearsal, and therefore we will have a better performance in the end. So the quicker we learn our lines, the more time we can have on really rehearsing the acting. This is our homework before Wednesday!
In review of the rehearsals, the first rehearsal was a step in the right direction, we got the basics down, and the characters outlined, as well as an idea for the promotional poster (it will be posted another time here). We also did our set diagram, which is very simplistic. This is for the simple reason that we do need a complicated set, and that when performing in other locations, we can easily transport all of props and costumes in relative ease.
The second rehearsal was less hands on. We did not rehearse the scene, but, instead, went over our lines in detail, discussing how they should be said, and why, adding ideas, changing things. We also started doing the second scene of the first act as well by reading the dialogue, discussing, and acting, by reading only (not the actual acting of the scene).
The third rehearsal we went over the first act again, refining it, and making sure we got everything we discussed the previous rehearsal in the scene, as well trying to talk less, and do the scene.
Fortunately, I am glad to say there was already a massive improvement from the first rehearsal, in the third. The actors were starting to understand the characters, and begin to act as them, instead of trying to act like them. If we are already progressing at such a speed, I'm sure we will have a very good performance on our hands come March.
Sorry for the really big post, but I haven't contributed on the Blog in a while, so!

---Hadleigh

Now in the right direction!

Last Wednesday at nine in the morning, we in the "TADoaA" group had our first rehearsal with the drama teacher and director; Maggan.
Well, Hadleigh will take over from now, but it gave us a hint of what this play can actually become with some action.
It was sweaty. And wonderful.

We also realised that with this much fysical stuff happening throughout the play, we probably have to a bit more dialogue from it, although it is going to be hilarious.

I am a bit tired right now, so my vocablulary and sentence structure is not what it should be...
Bye!

/Emelie