Week 4 - 7th to 8th February

This was our first lesson back from the trip to the Moors and were able to reflect on the trip and how we found it useful. All my information and research from the trip can be found here. Then we did some further script work, in preparation to continuously block through the play in detail going through lines. Writing objectives, actions and notes on scenes before blocking through makes the process much more easier with less stopping and starting figuring out choices that are made through table work. Tomorrow we are starting the introduction of Nelly in scene three so I did a thorough scene analysis exploring all the different pathways. Also as I am telling the story I need to have a really thorough understanding of the story so I also established where we are in the timeline of things, as the story can become rather confusing at times. I am also starting to distinguish whether my lines come from head or heart because Nelly is a constant fusion of opinion and fact- the line is very blurred.

In today's rehearsal we began Scene 3 which is my first entrance as Nelly. I have also started giving the accent a go, it is quite difficult to pin point the accent to Yorkshire as it currently just fades to a general Northern accent, but the more I try it in rehearsal the more used to the vowel sounds and then it will be easier to tailor to a Yorkshire accent when working with a dialect coach. There is a lot to juggle whilst being on stage, as Nelly is always doing something whilst talking to Lockwood, whether that be bringing him food, blankets and crocheting/knitting also. I am struggling to juggle this with the accent and movement - as it hasn't become second nature yet. I needed to play Nelly's excitement to tell the story more and really use Lockwood, as I played her more servant like. So I need to work on absorbing and indulging in the story telling gossip aspect of Nelly. I also need to focus more on punctuation as all the lines blur into one. As April De Angelis put punctuation there for a reason, to solve this I am putting 'mini units' in my lines with multiple sentences to break it up and really use the full stops and question marks. I also need to play off Lockwood's comments and really inhibit how a servant would react to these questionable remarks made by Lockwood. We are also experimenting with using all three Nelly's and how we hand a lot of props to each other and setting all the scenes. This really depicts us as the housekeeper/maid and enhances the fact that she is always in the room listening whilst cleaning, helping cook, serving food. Moving forward from this rehearsal I need to learn lines, and work on inhabiting the physicality more as I kind of lose it as I get too caught up in the text. The text can be quite hard to work with as it is so rich, written in old English and Yorkshire dialect and it's important each word is heard and hit.