thomasalfreddalton

[thomasalfreddalton]

Bibliography

Cliffsnotes.com. (2017). Dale Harding. [online] Available at: https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/o/one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest/character-analysis/dale-harding [Accessed 4 Nov. 2017].

Sparknotes.com. (2017). SparkNotes: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Themes, Motifs & Symbols. [online] Available at: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/cuckoo/themes.html [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017].

Study.com. (2017). Nurse Ratched Character Analysis & Symbolism | Study.com. [online] Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/nurse-ratched-character-analysis-symbolism.html [Accessed 13 Nov. 2017].

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 8.

Week 8 was full runs and dress rehearsals, i had my gown, my slippers and my institute whites and it was time to take everything a had been told and learned to keep improving his relationships and drill him into my head.

Take after take we ran the show and gradually now im able to allow him into my mind without any thought of who he is, that’s where wanted to be when i started and now that’s where i am.

Time to not stop improving.

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 7 notes

Hold hands when we’re singing with Cheswick

Dont fall out of your accent

Build up the party so that it can all be crashed when the nurses enter

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 7 rehearsals.

This week was by far the hardest week i had done. we spent the entirety of the two days working the party scene at the end. 

I had big chunks off text in this scene so it was vital that i knew my lines, which i did. however i learned that when i was up and performing i could tend to slip out of accent, so the night before we came back to do it again i sat in my room for it must have been about 4 hours just talking as Harding and it worked when i came back people had noticed a clear change in the way he was speaking, and i wasn’t losing the accent or vocal clarity anymore. another thing about the wedding speech, which was the big chunk of text was that i had to find a way to let the married couple go with a bang, so when they are making their vows and i’m delivering my final words i slip tablets that i got from the nurses stash into their drinks. it was a clever and devilish move but its something Harding would do to make them have a good time.

Another thing we had to do was as a team keep the volume going for long enough and to make it loud enough that we would make it look like a believable party. we spent the whole afternoon blocking where everyone was gonna be standing and how exactly they were going to be delivering the noise when the party starts. then before we finished it came to me again, this is when i was greeting Mac goodbye, i wanted to make it sincere so what i did was hold his gaze for a few seconds before i held my hand out and wished him well and goodbye. which is when all hell broke loose.

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 6. rehearsals.

i didn’t have a lot to do this week. this week we have been working on scenes that haven’t been finished yet. for example the entrances of Sandra and Candy, and the song with Martini. however having nothing to do in particular gave me chance to run my lines and go deeper into my character.

i was sat at the table trying to set my self a challenge to react to everything that is happening, even if i am not meant to be. i was doing this as Harding just to see if i could bring him out and get his emotions right no matter what was happening. and it worked, when Martini was being hugged i was still stone cold either reading or not being able to care.

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 5. Rehearsals.

This week we have done lots of minute detailed blocking of previous scenes, for example things like slamming my hand on the table when i address the patients in the opening. this gave me a new route to take because i can now see that i am basically the guy who is in charge, Until Macmurphy shows up.

This week we added some more new content in the form of, group therapy. This was the scene in which both the nurses are questioning people to speak up about their expeirences so they may talk them out. whilst i don’t have any lines in this section we needed the scene to be a believable, we needed it do be a bubble of people laughing and talking about the other whilst they try to talk with the nurses. for me this was the scene that brought my experimental side out, i was usually just sitting there listening to the others talk but now i have given myself some ablibbing, i randomly talk to Scanlon about the things that are going on in the scene, i talk to him about the other dale talking about his wife. when he says “she preferred other men” i say to Scanlon “yeah me”.

[thomasalfreddalton]

This is the leg cross, i had one over the other with the one planted on the floor inverted the other way. It just seemed really odd and abstract that it would be something Dale would do to stand out from the rest. I also almost always have a Cigarette in my mouth because he has nothing else to do on the ward but smoke.

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 4. Rehearsals.

This week we worked on the dream sequence. this was a sequence of abstract movements to depict the minds of the patients given drugs by the system. after just coming back from half term we hadn't done any of the play for two weeks, so before we started devising we had some time to re rehearse and catch up with parts that may have not been back to there previous level. personally i needed this because i was having difficulty getting back into my accent. i manage to fix this straight away however after i watched a clip of #OneflewovertheCuckoosnest.

After we had gotten to grips with our work again, got warmed up and focused it was time to start devising. we came up with the idea of creating very different but mirror imagine of the opening “medication time” this was us lining up for our medication when the eerie music started and symbolized the start of our dream world. id really gotten to grips with the physicality of my character after this week, i had the stance, the walk and the mannerisms, i was using my hands like Harding does, i was holding on to my housecoat up towards its top and with a pompous and mighty grip. i also had the legs crossed in a very specific way i had devised by myself. all in all this week coupled with the physicality of the dream sequence Dale really started to come to life. 

[thomasalfreddalton]

Sinead O’connor 

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 3. Rehersals.

This week we came back and we had let what we done last week slip, it lacked energy and it lacked pace. so we once again spent this week working on the opening. Absences had been notable and we had to re run what we did for the benefit of those people.

When it comes to the opening mike said he now wants all of the patients being semi in character, this means when the show is started that we are animated in the ward doing what we would be doing day in and day out, so what we, the patients at the main table decided was to play some card games, this showed our relationships with each other because we got to argue or laugh whilst we was playing. it also gave us something physical to do.

Week 3 was the week that i personally started to experiment with costume, i had brought my housecoat in and was wearing it whilst we was rehearsing, this helped me greatly. it allowed me to feel the weight of it on my back and work on my posture and walk for Harding.

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 2 Notes.

Find a comfortable accent.

Keep getting annoyed at the patients.

Show that at any moment i could snap and kill ‘em all.

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 2. Rehearsals.

This week of rehearsals saw us doing another full read through of the script in our proper characters. 

We also added more to our Sinead O’conner piece. what we did was start with my idea of waking up whilst everyone was going about their day, this is when i’d deliver my line and sit at the front when i am finished. one by one each of the other actors would deliver a line and come out from their business as if out of knowhere they’d been struck with an illnesss too. eventually we would all been sitting down in a clump at the front ready too deliver the last line in canon. “we are millions”

As well as finishing the finale, we started work on the script. It saw us working on the opening, this is the section were we first meet all the patients and see there day to day lives in the institue. As Harding i was asked to keep that soberish feel whereas the other patients had all been on drugs for so long that they couldnt help but be a little out of there minds. i was the president because i was only one with enough brain power to actually be able to do it, so i was keeping that sense of “he doesnt look crazy” but has deep down emotional issues kind of feel, i also had to keep the feel that these patients, whilst crazy and annoying was the only family i had right now.

[thomasalfreddalton]

Dale Harding.

An intelligent, educated, and effeminate man, Harding is initially set up as McMurphy's foil. He exists totally within the realm of his mind whereas McMurphy represents a natural man. Harding chooses to lead his life as an individual repressing his homosexual urges while suffering the humiliation of never fully pleasing his promiscuously unfaithful wife. Nurse Ratched seems pleased to remind the group that "his wife's ample bosom at times gives him a feeling of inferiority," while Chief describes him as "a wild, jerky puppet doing a high-strung dance."

Despite his weakness, Harding is the first patient to acknowledge to McMurphy that the patients "are victims of a matriarchy." He also becomes McMurphy's most ardent supporter, defending him against Ratched's assertion that McMurphy acts only out of self-interest. In McMurphy's absence, Harding takes over leadership responsibilities by adopting McMurphy's mannerisms and behavior. After the party, Harding is among the first patients to leave the hospital. (Cliffsnotes.com, 2017)

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 2. Cast List.

Now we have a proper cast list, we can start rehearsals for good and we all have a good idea of who we’re playing now.

Macmurphy: Harvey Fitzpatrick

Nurse Ratched: Goergia Wills

Narrators: Goergia Rooney/Kieth Rice

Harding: Thomas Dalton/Andrew 

Cheswick: Anthony Devine/Sam Westwell

Martini: Nadine Cullen

Candy: Olivia Grace

Sandra: Amy Dalton

Aid Warren: Joe Mcghee

Aid Wllliams: Joe “geeves” Head

Ruckley: Josh Ogrady

Man 1: John Dixon  

[thomasalfreddalton]

Nurse Ratched.

“Nurse Ratched is the cold, implacable head nurse of the psychiatric ward. she enters the novel on a gust of cold air, as Chief Bromden describes in her arrival for morning shift: 'She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I see her fingers trail across the polished steel - tip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can't tell which.” (Study.com, 2017)

“Bromden, who is presumably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, believes the nurse is part of the Combine. The Combine is a machine, Bromden believes, that controls all aspects of life both on and off the ward. Nurse Ratched, a former Army nurse, prides herself on order and efficiency. She quickly extinguishes any behavior on the ward that deviates from her mechanized regime.” (Study.com, 2017)

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 2. Auditions.

Audition week was the most relaxing week we’ll get, everyone was in their own world. initially i audition for Nurse Ratched. i done this on the basis that we could switch and makes roles gender neutral. i believe this is also innovative because gender is clearly a big thing in our industry today and it would be smart and new to cast people in roles not based on their gender.

[thomasalfreddalton]

Week 1

This was in my opinion going to be the hardest week we’d do, We done two days of trying to get traction on the show. it was always going to be fast paced and hard working until we settle into it. now Week by Week i will take you through how I’m going to develop until Show Day. We started by developing some ideas that can be incorporated into the finale we’re working on. I came up with a thought that i could wake up on the floor whilst everyone is still already up and moving about their day, the idea came to me because i know full well that people with mental illness usually struggle to get out of bed in the morning, that is the main task for someone with anxiety. simply getting out of bed.

Mike decided that he thought we should show the life of someone with mental illness compared to someone that does not, in his words “i want to show the life of someone who may have had bad experiences cause and trigger their illness, like say they got fired from work, which leads to them becoming homeless, losing their lover, getting into a real bad place, whilst everyone else in their world gets by”