Evaluation Of A Doll's House Performance

Task 1 

Stanislavski was a practitioner I was aware of from looking at him and his system at GCSE level, however we never put any of his techniques into practice so I was excited to use his system in a piece of theatre that came from the period in which he developed these techniques. In the beginning, I found it interesting to apply his techniques into the performance as I was finding activities that would aid me in using these; as a result I found out quite a lot of information in a short amount of time as I discovered splitting the script into smaller objectives allowed me to focus on his emotions in specific points in the piece instead of deciding on a single emotion for the entire scene. 

In addition I really loved the idea of inner and outer emotions, this was something that I built on throughout my rehearsals and was something that I became better at portraying. However, I do feel that there were moments where the inner emotions were shown too much and as a result brought down the characters emotions. 

To begin with, I found A Doll's House to be quite a slow burn piece that I sometimes struggled to stay interested in due to the mundane nature of many of the scenes, however as we went through the rehearsals and we explored the characters, emotions and themes I found the piece to be much more interesting as I was analysing every scene to try and identify these different emotions within the characters and how they linked into the themes and context of the play. 

I also found naturalism a challenge to work with at the beginning as I have been very used to being quite over dramatic in the shows that I have performed in; but after some rehearsals and learning to use improvisation to the scenes benefit to create more natural encounters, this has quickly become one of my favourite genres of theatre and something that I am incredibly interested in working on the future. 

Nils Krogstad is a character who has had many hardships in his life. I haven't experienced any of the problems that he has and as a result made using Emotional memory quite a difficult technique to develop the character, however as a contingency I used the Magic If to try and see what I would do in his situation. We used a couple of activities in order to do this including hot seating, which I found incredibly helpful to get into the mindset of character as cynical and negative as Krogstad.

I also found it quite difficult to portray him as a naturally threatening character as this was something that I didn't have much experience with especially in a naturalistic style, as a result I played with using levels to show the threatening nature of Krogstad during this scene. I decided to use the antithesis of the usual use of levels, showing Krogstad's willingness to make himself at home by sitting down without being welcomed in to highlight the power he has over Nora and the fact that he does not see her as a threat. 

Throughout the rehearsal process, we discussed many different techniques. During our first rehearsal, we decided to look at our characters' given circumstances and how they would affect their emotions in the scene. Next, we looked at the subtext and how they either differed or were similar to what was expected of men and women in society of the period. After that, we looked at our characters' super objective where we would then split our scene into smaller objectives and units which we would then discuss how these linked back to the super objective. 

Overall, I feel that my performance went very well. I feel that I made a good use of my voice during the performance, as I was able to capture the overall grating nature of Krogstad's character through making his voice incredibly whiny and condescending. I also think I was able to convey this in a few moments with my physicality, particularly during the points in my scene where Krogstad was sitting down as the comfortable seating position that I used shows Krogstad's confidence. 

However, I do feel that there are things that could have been improved upon particularly in my physicality when I stood up. I think that I lost much of the character that I had developed for Krogstad throughout the piece as it felt that he lost a lot of his power the moment I began moving around. I feel that this is due to the amount of travelling I did as it ended up feeling like nervous pacing instead of being a confident, smug movement. This could have been easily remedied by staying more stationary and I also think that I could have added to Krogstad's threatening outer emotions by playing more with proxemics but due to a lack of rehearsals this was something which had to be missed. 

All of Stanislavski's techniques in his system are incredibly useful for building a character, no matter the piece you are doing. I feel that I will use all of these in the future to further develop my relationship with my character, which is something that I feel is an absolute necessity if you wish to give a successful performance. 

Task 2 

Freddie and Chloe's Performance

I feel that they had a good performance, however it is incredibly clear that they did not have a full understanding of their script. Due to this lack of confidence in what they were performing I feel that this caused the piece to move quite far away from it's naturalistic roots as I felt that many of the actions didn't have purpose behind them. However, I do think that Freddie and Chloe used proxemics very effectively to show the close relationship between Doctor Rank and Nora with gestures aiding this to show how comfortable the two characters are meant to be in each others company. 

Melissa and Demi's Performance 

Overall, I think that Melissa and Demi had a successful performance. Although Melissa clearly forgot her lines and as a result had to stop the scene to grab her script, after this the scene flowed really well. It was clear that the two understood their characters and their script despite the lack of confidence in the lines. Melissa's constant movement added to Nora's erratic character while Demi's more stationary position highlighted Kristine's more grounded nature. However, I do feel the piece could have been improved by adding more gestures into their physicality although this was limited due to their reliance on the script. 

My favourite performance to watch was Melissa and Demi's. Once they were able to get into the rhythm of the piece, I think they portrayed the characters incredibly effectively and I think they had good chemistry while on stage. I also feel that Melissa's portrayal of Nora was very well done as she managed to convey her skittish nature without making it seem forced or over-dramatised.