saraahchadwick

[saraahchadwick]

Bibliography

Chubbuck, I (2004). The power of the actor. New york: Penguin. P2-3

Chubbuck, I (2004). The power of the actor. New york: Penguin. P60

Chubbuck, I (2004). The power of the actor. New york: Penguin.p103

Festen (1998) (Denmark)

Everest Crunch (2018)Dolores and Bernard Crazy Opening Conversation | Westworld Season 2x01.Available at :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHr3M-1hOsA

Game of thrones (2011) HBO

Juddery,M. (2015). How any actor (even a really nice one) can play a truly evil villain like King Joffrey. Available: https://theweek.com/articles/447799/how-actor-even-really-nice-play-truly-evil-villain-like-king-joffrey.

Meisner, S (1987). Sanford Meisner on Acting. New york: vintage books.

Once upon a time (2011) ABC studios

Preston, NI. (2016). 10 signs of a narcissistic parent. Available: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/communication-success/201602/10-signs-narcissistic-parent .

Quora. (2016). What is the reason behind Cersei's evil?. Available: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-reason-behind-Cerseis-evil.

Rousseau. (2018) Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata (1st Movement) Available at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbTVZMJ9Z2I

[saraahchadwick]

Personal struggles.

Something I still continue to struggle with is my pace, confidence and volume. I feel I am naturally quiet anyway and struggle to project. This requires a conscious effort on my part to be louder as if addressing 100 people not just a table of guests. I must take more risks and stop playing so safe. I need to play her cruelty more stop being so conscious. There are definitely moment I am in my own head and need to learn to let it all go! I am excited to see how this character will continue to develop and what the end result will be.

[saraahchadwick]

Running in heels !

So taking on board my director's notes and with a whole new Else, I returned more positive and confident with the role I was playing. We were given our costumes, donned our heels and were ready to give it our all. I feel it was evident. I was finally starting to lose the self-doubt and inhibitions that held me back. I enjoyed the bitch in her! After receiving Scots notes I breathed a sigh of relief that he had noticed these changes. Especially in the fight scene. One of his notes was for me to absolutely lose it and I did just that! I had my substitution in Helge and was a woman possessed trying to pull Michael (Liam) away. I lost my voice a shoe and really hurt my knees but my god was it worth it! I felt so present in that moment and relied purely on my instincts to protect the man I love. I was finally taking risks!

Also after the decision was made that else and Helmut had a longstanding affair I made a decision that as a final stand of defiance toward Helge at the end of the play else would sit next to Helmut. I feel with my new objectives I am winning now.

[saraahchadwick]

Else's backstory

Else grew up in a middle-class home, her father left when she was young for a younger prettier woman. Her mother became resentful and bitter. She was away from the home all the time leaving else to be brought up by her nanny. Else’s mother became ever more resentful as else became a young, pretty teenager. Her mother stressed the importance of finding a rich husband and maintaining a high social stature. 

When her mother finally died else was left with nothing other than the knowledge of how to appear wealthy even when money was dwindling. It was then she met Helge. A young, wealthy entrepreneur who owned a few restaurants. He wasn’t the best looking man she had ever met, but he was kind to her and showered her in affection. They rose to the top of the social ladder and soon owned property, threw lavish parties and enjoyed all the perks that came with such. The became a powerful couple and she liked that she was surrounded by people who seemingly adored her, they would laugh at her jokes and hang on to every word she said. She became untouchable, but it was not enough. 

Helge was starting to become distant, working all the time and his behaviour towards else was becoming controlling. When she had the children everything changed. Helge was happy again she had given him an heir, everything was brilliant until the children grew older. As they reached around 7 he shut himself away in his study and hardly spoke to her. 

He was no longer intimate and compensated with lavish gifts. She was too busy arranging lunches and socialising to notice what was going on around her. Her children were sent to afterschool activities. She wanted her children to be the best of the best as she saw them of an extension of herself. Bored and feeling unloved she started an affair with Helmut, now managing director of Helge's restaurants. Helge knew about the affair but they live separate lives in a stale loveless relationship. It became a marriage of convenience. They paint the image of the perfect couple and family in order to maintain their power and status.

[saraahchadwick]

The new Else and her evil inspo! (Character revelations)

I don’t believe people are born inherently evil. Good people can sometimes do evil things. People have conditions that can stunt them emotionally, whilst some people are most definitely a product of their environment. Although my character in some way needs to get her win, I didn't know how to do that without her becoming good at the end. After weeks of toying with scene objectives and overall objectives that were always just missing a little something, I did a complete 180 on everything I thought I knew about Else and took it right back to basics and in another direction. I’d explored the avenue of her having noble motivations and really loving her husband and children so much and tried to make the character likeable when the reality is as much as I want it to be so she really just isn’t. After revisiting research into sociopathy and narcissistic parenting, which had previously been mentioned as possibly, a component to Elses' character. I settled on the conclusion that she is a classic narcissist. 

Up until this point, my characters scene objection was to protect her family but I fear in trying hard to chase an o.o that wasn’t there I lost the essence of who she is. I then tried to put myself in the mind of a narcissist. Her main drive throughout the play would be self-preservation. A narcissist will always put themselves first no matter what. I feel she loves her children but not in a healthy maternal way, demonstrating compassion, caregiving and understanding. She loves them merely because they are an extension of herself. She sees herself as unflawed and feels like her children should live up to her standards ( the ones she has set for herself) in her quest to create ‘perfect children’ she exhibits a form of emotional abuse by setting her children up simply to fail. As is demonstrated in her speech when she refers to Micheals shortcomings ‘catering college in Switzerland, it’s a shame you never did become a chef but I suppose there's still time.’ Although he owns his own cafe and is living comfortably to her it will never be good enough.

She is completely dissatisfied by everything and everyone around her but is also motivated by fear of losing the lifestyle and power she has become accustomed to. But I had to make a decision is this just the way she’s wired or is she a victim of circumstance? In order to create a life for a Else and reasoning behind her evil I began to look at famous villainesses such as Cersei Lannister ( game of thrones) and Regina, the evil queen ( once upon a time) they are the characters you love to hate. They are also extremely strong women. Cersei was unloved by her father and her mother died whilst giving birth to her youngest brother Tyrian so she had no strong female influence in the male-dominated world she grew up in. she was told to shut up and look pretty, whilst her brothers were being trained to one day rule the seven kingdoms. Cersei had an inclination towards cruel behaviour as was demonstrated when she killed Melarea as a child. She was then given the prophecy that she would lose all of her children and would be overthrown by another queen. She was subjected to emotional abuse from an unloving husband who raped her and slept with other women. He never wanted to be with her, his heart belonged to Leyana Stark who died. It was during her marriage to Robert she became queen and tasted true power and would do anything to cling onto it. The only people she loves are her children ‘Even with her children, her love is more of an obsession over their survival and not their actual well being. She is an overprotective manipulative megalomaniacal control freak, and this is how she governs all her relationship with people.’ (Quora,2016)

Reggina the evil queen, however, was evil because her one true love Daniel was murdered by her wicked mother as he was a stable boy and not a king. She then set out to destroy snow white as it was she who exposed the two and became extremely bitter living without her love. Her mother also never showed her any love or kindness she was raised to become a queen and taught to kill anyone who stood in her way.

I believe both women however inclined to cruel behaviour they may have been, were never shown the fundamental basics of love and compassion which are crucial for healthy childhood emotional development. This seems to be the general consensus between villainess characters, that and the need for power. Both of these women are scared of someone or something, whether it is losing their throne, children or their parents.

[saraahchadwick]

Run notes

We starting running the play from start to finish and were given very extensive notes!

After the first run, I just didn’t feel right. Something was missing. I felt like I’d done all this preparation and got nowhere. Something just still wasn't jelling for me. I felt wrong to play the bitch in my character. I was still inside my head. This was when something clicked in my mind after studying scots notes. Some things were silly mistakes that I knew I had made. I knew something had to give with else and that was when I decided to do a complete overhaul of my character and revaluate everything I thought I knew about what made her tick. Unfortunately, i had been absent when a rehearsal for Micheal and Helge's fight scene took place so I was unaware of the staging. I feel this really held me back, I jumped into it with both feet but was hesitant. This was evident in the run.

[saraahchadwick]

Rehearsals

When we began to rehearse I hadn’t worked out who else was, she is very different today let me assure you! At first, I was still playing her quite nice instead of the condescending, evil woman she is. It just didn't seem to click in the beginning and I couldn’t make any kind of connection with the character. My week 1 notes were, that I am guilty of indicating and don’t have self-confidence. I need to emote a performance from my fellow actor. ( it’s should be like a boxing match to watch ) never memorize a way of being. Take risks.

Confidence has always been a big issue for me I don’t feel I’m a very confident person although I may appear to be. I tried to play it very safe and didn't really take risks at first but I feel that would come with time and being more comfortable with the scene. However safe choices make for a boring watch.

After staging else’s opening, we incorporated the use of the mask. We wanted else to be almost robotic and took reference from the character of Dolores in Westworld. Her movements are rigid and to be honest it’s pretty creepy! From the word go the audience should be unnerved by her presence and behaviour.

I was playing else’s speech quite closed off and to the actor on a 1-2-1 level, it is evident from her mockery and coldness that she is trying to publically shame her children so the speech should be addressing and playing to the entire room.

[saraahchadwick]

Doings. (Tool 9)

We have decided in order to make the characters real we will be eating real food on stage as if we were at a dinner party. Initially, for me, this was daunting as I hate eating in front of people, but as rehearsal went on I have learned not to be self-conscious and really eating and drinking has given me a constant activity that adds another layer to my character. Else is rarely found without a drink in her hand. I feel she drinks a lot to deal with the issues in her life and separate her from reality but I find in moments of extreme stress throughout the play I am downing my drink. With the amount of tense moment and revelations in the play else would be drunk about 10 minutes in! Doings help to allow the actor to forget about the lines and behave as a person would and stops the actor from being wooden.

[saraahchadwick]

Beats and actions. (Tool 6)

Go after your actions boldly and without fear. Push the envelope. And don't be afraid to boldly realize your beats and actions, the more risks you take and the more fearless you are, the more exciting the end result will be ( Chubbuck.I. The power of the actor pg, 103) Beats are thought changes and actions are the mini objectives attached to the beats that help you to win your scene objective. Using beats and actions allow you to work moment to moment allowing the actor to be present and authentic.

We broke down Mikey's first Kim speech into beats and actions as an example. Lines with brackets round are scripted which are beats or thoughts and the sentences that follow are the mini-objectives that are not scripted.

(how are you)  ( well done, congratulations ) * to get you to know I’m proud of you. (you’ve made your speech and now you're going home.) * To get you to stay. (you’ve lost nothing happened) * to get you to know it hasn’t worked.

By using beats and actions you are using your behaviour other than just words in order to win.

[saraahchadwick]

Substitutions and emotional diaries  (tool 4)

We worked on the use of substitutions to help us personalize our obstacles, who from our real lives could help us win our objective? Chubbuck says that ‘not all scenes require a substitution, a substitution is a tool that's there if you need it.’ (Chubbuck,2004,pg 60).

 It is a tool that can help us create an emotional connection by visualising the actor we need something from as someone from our real lives who gives us an emotionally charged response.

This was a particularly hard task for a few of us. We were asked to create an emotional diary. A letter to someone from our real lives that could help us with our objective. At this point in time, I was still working from my o.o ‘ to protect my family’. If this person wouldn’t help us achieve our o.o it was basically life or death. In the beginning, your conscious mind kicks in and the first part of the letter is neatly written and the questions and emotions are tame. As the letter goes on that’s when the subconscious mind kicks in, the handwriting becomes automatic and scruffy and demons are unlocked and you get to the raw emotion. It was evident a lot of us had tapped into something painful. I was an emotional mess, sobbing my heart out after admitting a few things to myself. Josh who plays Christian got straight up to do a scene with luke who plays Helge, having both done emotional diaries the moment before were both visibly moved by what they had written. For both of them picturing their substitute instead of each other brought raw emotion and anger to the scene and created a more layered, heartbreaking performance to watch.

[saraahchadwick]

It’s Daddy's Birthday!

This dance shows the creepiness of these people they are a borderline cult and we wanted to make them look as eerie as possible. We decided that we would use a mask and incorporate old Venetian style crossing over the room dancing, hand to hand and circling with your partner. One of the most notable parts of this dance is when everyone is circling Helge and he pulls Helene into the centre and tries to dance with her in a somewhat inappropriate manner. Else immediately pulls her daughter from the circle and Christian is thrown in and laughed at. This dance will only work if we all give it everything we have and transform into these Rumplestiltskin-esque characters.

[saraahchadwick]

Scene objective ( tool 2 )

My original scene objective for Else's entrance towards Christian was ‘ To get you away from your father.’ This was to compliment the wrong overall objective ‘ to protect my family’. The fact that Christian didn't leave him and stayed with his father, also Else being sent away meant she had lost. When my o.o changed so did my scene objective and it brought such a different dynamic to the scene.

My s.o ( scene objective ) for Else’s speech is aimed at Christian ‘To make you look insane.’ She is trying to gaslight him which is a form of emotional abuse. Making the victim doubt their own memory, perception and sanity. She belittles him in front of the room telling the other guests he made it up in the cruellest way.

I also had to work with the idea had else been gaslighted by Helge when she saw the abuse of her son to believe that she hadn’t actually seen anything ? does she genuinely think Christian is insane or is she trying to save her own skin?

[saraahchadwick]

Finding my Overall objective ( Tool 1)

Initially it was discussed that Else’s O.o ( Overall objective) would be to not be afraid of my husband, but at first, I didn't agree with that and wanted to find something I could relate to. The objective I chose was ‘To protect my family’ as a mother myself that calls upon my most primal of instincts, my fundamental need to protect my child. After tirelessly trying to create scene objectives and finding a substitute that would help me win my objective I came to the conclusion that it isn’t love that drives Else, it is fear. My new O.o was changed to ‘ to not be afraid’ this I feel is broader but it’s strange how close narcissism and insecurity correlate. Fear of losing everything, her family, reputation, lifestyle, power and possibly her life.  I found with choosing the wrong objective it was hindering me as a performer and I was in my own head. If the overall objective is wrong the scene simply won't work and I can honestly say this is so true. With the wrong objective, I was stuck in a rut and struggling to find scene objectives. By changing my O.o my character wins at the end when she defies Helge and stays at the breakfast table. She is no longer afraid, she has everything and he has nothing.

[saraahchadwick]

Making a hero of a monster.

How in gods name could I relate to such a monster?! Christian exposes the fact that his mother has walked in on her child being abused and done nothing! As a mother to a 1-year-old, to me the thought of any mother being able to witness their child be hurt and do nothing is unfathomable. It angers me and chills me to the very core.

When people play a villain you need to try to find some kind of humanity within them. To me this was always going to be very hard I was constantly trying to make her a hero, a note throughout the rehearsal process was for me to stop doing this. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that someone could be like this and certainly could not relate to her on a personal level. I created a motivation that she knew but Helge would do anything to protect his secret even ‘get rid of her’ then who would be there to protect her children from him? Could this be why the other children were sent away and always away from the home? 

Scot made me realise that Elses' winning moment comes with the final line of the play when she defies Helge and stays at the breakfast table and that I didn’t need to make her a hero because she isn’t.

[saraahchadwick]

Chubbuck's’ 12 tools.

1.Overall objective (tool 1 )

A Characters overall objective is usually a primal need that drives your character forward. Something they must achieve by the end of the play or they will die.

2. Scene objective (tool 2)

What do I need to achieve in the scene to win my overall objective?

3. Obstacles (tool 3)

What obstacles must I overcome, be they physical, emotional or mental?

4.substitutions ( tool 4 )

Using someone from your life helping to create an emotional complexity. ( More on this to follow !!!! )

5. Inner objects

What you see in your mind's eye when talking about a picture, place or event.

6. Beats and actions

beats are thought changes and actions are the mini objectives attached to the beats that help you to win your scene objective.

7. Moment before

The moment directly before you enter a scene, giving you somewhere to enter from both physically and emotionally (E.g when Else appears in her first scene she emerges playing the piano. She has been playing this beautiful music the entire time observing her son.

8. Place and fourth wall

By immersing yourself in the character's world, a set of location with attributes from your real life you create privacy, history and meaning.

9. Doing

The handling of props which produces behaviour.

10. Inner monologue

The dialogue that is going on inside your head when you are not speaking - ( e.g Helge is finally exposed through Lind’s letter and is admitting what he has done. I stare at luke and all that is going through my mind is ‘ you are the reason my baby daughter is dead, you took my child I hate you.’ this triggers an emotional response every time as it makes me feel genuine pain.

11. Previous circumstances ( tool 11 )

Your characters history. Why they are the way they are and what makes them operate. This helps to personalize the character.

12. Let it go!

‘ In order for you to duplicate the natural flow of life and be spontaneous, you have to get out of your head. To achieve this you have to trust the work you have done with the previous 11 steps and LET IT GO.’ (Chubbuck,2004)

Scot helped us understand how to utilise these tools effectively by breaking the stages down. 

[saraahchadwick]

Pre-rehearsal exercises

Every rehearsal has started with a minute or so of mindfulness. The opportunity to escape everything going on in your head and just be present in the moment. Although it was only for a moment it helped alleviate the pressure of life that lay beyond the studio door. Another exercise consisted of staring into another actor's eyes for at least 30 seconds, the other actor would think of a memory. It may be said or happy and while they tell the story in their mind, they live it on their face and in their eyes. This can create a commonality of pain or joy when no words are spoken. Showing us how astounding human behaviour can be. Something you simply cannot manufacture.

[saraahchadwick]

Creating a character

As well as creating the character is what she says and does it is important to look at the other elements that make her real i.e the way she looks, dresses, what perfume she wears and how she walks and talks.

Outfit

Else is an older woman but is extremely classy and elegant. I began looking into dresses that else would wear and thought a long black evening gown was the look for her. We had discussed that we would all be wearing black or white and I feel that else would be in black as she is far from innocent and white represents virtue and innocence. I need either a glove or something with long sleeves as I have tattoos which else most certainly wouldn't!

The way she walks

She needs to walk tall, almost floating. This became so much easier to correct my posture when wearing heels. I find I tend to slump forward when I walk ( a terrible habit I know ). Else carries herself with grace and floats making her almost ethereal.

Perfume

I believe she would wear Coco Chanel.

Jewellery

She would be dripping in diamonds and definitely dressing to impress.

Hair

In order to make myself appear older, I will have my hair up. I have taken inspiration from Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's with her famous bouffant. Perhaps a bouffant braid and chignon would be right for else. This look is preferential amongst brides and stars on the red carpet.

Mask

We discussed the use of masks as the representation of secret keeping and decided the masks should represent our characters. The mask I have chosen for else although dark has a butterfly on it which signifies rebirth ( Elses redemption at the end of the play)

Voice

We toyed about with a few accents during rehearsals. Originally all characters had an r.p dilect, apart from the staff. It was a bit hit and miss so we decided it would be better in scouse. well not broad scouse as I am naturally, but with a softer, more rounded tone to it. Look at accents from places like Formby or old generation Liverpool. As the years have gone by our accent has become harsher. Playing a scouse character always feels harder to me as I suddenly become very conscious of the tone of my accent. In order to round off my accent, I’ve spent some time talking with older relatives and friends with a softer accent and tried to imitate the way they speak.