Script Analysis

As part of clearing up what my character wants in each scene, Devan and I gave each moment a title and a sub-heading, thus enabling us to see openly what our character got out of each scene:

Act One, Scene One
Wendla complaining about the length of her dress: not wanting to lose her childhood dress and therefore not wanting to grow up but has a need for knowledge and a want for maturity. 

Act One, Scene Three
Wendla and her friends meet in the forest and catch up:opening up about their feelings and finding out about Martha's beating and how it is done, sparking Wendla's interest.  

Act One, Scene Five
Wendla meeting Melchior in the Forest, starting a convocation and discovering new experiences: Wendla discovering her desires and testing Melchior, seeing his confusion and the effect Wendla has on him. 

Act Two, Scene Two
Wendla finding out how babies are made due to her becoming an auntie for the third time: finally feeling informed and knowledgeable. 

Act Two, Scene Four
Wendla testing her new found knowledge: feeling confused by her inner emotions and by what she thinks is right. 

Act Two, Scene Six
Wendla sorting out how she feels now: noticing that she has changed and realizing she has done something wrong. 

Act Three, Scene Five
Wendla expressing her feelings and concerns to her mother: trying to find out the truth from her mother and excepting her fate. 

As well as noting the titles of my scenes, I annotated and broke down each moment my character was in. Below are some pictures of some parts of the text which I found hard to find the truth of, so I focused more on them:

 This is my very first scene, and to begin with I was struggling with finding the truth of the language. I started to break down each line into different actions and worked on the scene with Maya, freeing ourselves up physically as both as agreed with Tim it was looking too stiff. Once I had worked out my characters underline objectives of what she was saying, her overall objective for the scene (wanting to mature but hold onto her childhood dress, firstly because it suits her better and secondly because there's a small part of her which doesn't want to throw away a childhood memory) became clearer. 'The dress is too long mother. Why did you make it so long?' is my characters first line and here her objective is to state/to complain/to question. Personally I think this summarizes up Wendla well, she is always questioning things she does not understand and somehow manages to convince people so she gets her way. 

 This is the end of the first scene and again I struggled with the language being presented. Even after I added in the objectives or targets, I was still finding the text tough. After reading through the scene a few times I realised I wasn't pausing at all and was just rushing through the lines, I wasn't allowing the lines to breathe within the scene, So, I broke up the text into pauses and moments and suddenly it sounded better. Tim told me to not let the lines restrict my physicality, so once I moved around and did what my body wanted to do, the lines flowed more naturally. 'Oh no.' is another line I was finding hard as it was so short, but after I found the objective, to protest, it became easy and I found myself saying it automatically. Maya and I developed a stronger mother-daughter relationship as rehearsals went on and I felt this scene getting stronger.


                                                                                                                                                              

This is the first scene I have with characters the same age as mine. All of us were finding it hard to find the truth of this and just 'freeing it up'. I think part of this block we had was because this scene takes place in the forest and as we were in rehearsal rooms we only had chairs to represents the tree and parts of the set. Although this shouldn't have affected our performance, it was difficult to feel free and allow the lines to flow. I particularly found the opening lines tricky 'How the wind sings around your ears'  and 'Let's go to the bridge. They say whole trees and bushes have been swept away by the flood. The boys have built a raft. I heard Melchi Gabor almost drowned last night'. as again I found them un-natural and  stiff. Tim said that the first line is more of a correction in respond the Martha's statement, so my objective became to correct. As for the next few lines, Lizzie, Humera and I all agreed that Wendla was trying to convince Thea and Martha to go to the bridge, as she knows that's where Melchior is going to be and she wants to ask him questions. Throughout this scene I also noted down which part of Wendla's lines were 'silly' and what were 'serious', as she often says a lot of things which are mature or not and this helped me to free up my physicality. 

This last page of this scene is the most crucial, as it is where the beating takes place. My objectives for this scene have always been clear; wanting to discover new experiences, such as being beaten, and knowing that I could get that from Melchior. At first, Josh and I were making the scene too preempting, and making it far too weighted for what it was,  After Tim spoke to us about the lightness and innocence of the scene, we immediately changed the way we said the lines and became our characters. Wendla and Melchior are attracted to each other and unknowingly flirt for the first half of the scene, this changed the dynamic completely and made the sudden change in Melchior at the end even more prominent. The problem with the end page was that Josh and I were pausing between the lines and again making them too heavy which resulted in the scene sounding melodramatic. After we noted our objectives and got the scene more pacey, it became more realistic and the lines didn't sound fake anymore.

I have found the language in this play quite tricky to get a hold of, and I think it maybe due to the fact that the language is classically written but sounds modern, and for a while I found that hard to get my head around. However, after focusing on my objectives and once my I'd learned my lines I found it easier to make the lines sound like I was saying them for the first time. I noticed that Ashleigh and Jackie's vocals throughout the rehearsals and the performance were brilliant and that they made the accent and complicated words sound easy and natural. Even though we didn't study Stanislavsky in depth this year, I still used his methods when getting into my character and relaxing before going on stage.