DOLLS HOUSE PT.1

AIMS: TO EXPLORE NATURALISTC ACTING TECHNIQUES

STANISLAVSKI'S METHOD
A DOLL’S HOUSE
Playing the role ‘Helmer’

I really enjoyed doing this task and exploring naturalism through my character. Unlike last time, I was able to thoroughly analyse the script and I was able to understand the role I was playing and get into character.

WWW: I played the role Helmer and he was a really interesting character to work with. To me, it felt that his feelings and emotions towards his wife, Nora, had many layers. I wanted to try and show that he wasn’t just seen as a typical ‘bad guy’ but that there was some sense of uncertainty to his personality because of the different ways he acted towards Nora, causing the audience to question what he truly felt towards his wife and his intentions. I wanted to portray different sides to him, not just for the audience to be immersed into the scene but to also question the relationship he had with Nora and to want to know what his next actions or attitude will be. 

To show the different sides to him, I used a variety of different tones in my voice, sometimes having a quiet and calm voice when talking closely to Nora to show the affection I had towards her and other times raising it and having a more sharper tone to it in contrast to the softness to show who has more authority, status and power. This also showed how manipulative he was with her and the confusing behavior towards her, each action contradicting the previous one.  Expressing different facial expressions, gestures and use of levels towards her was also a good way show the difference between the character. 

Adding notes to my script

EBI and WWW from my classmates

When Nora was sitting on the chair, I walked around her and put my arms on her shoulders to show dominance and control I had over her and that my status was higher than hers. I later bent down to her, showing that as a male in the Victorian era, I was stooping to her lower level and I placed my hand on her chin to turn her face towards me, portraying a sense of ownership over her. 

Later, at the end of the scene, when I had pulled Lydia to her feet and stroked her hair, she flinched at the touch of my hand and pulled away from me. This was a great depiction of what both characters felt about each other and it also showed that sense of same control and ownership over Nora, constantly touching her and moving her, whether it was taking her hand and leading her to the chair to sit down or puling her up again, the power and leadership was there again.

EBI: I think I should have made my facial expressions a little more clearer, sharper and my the tone in my voice a little more stronger. There were also some things I picked up while watching my classmates perform. I really liked Sophie’s illustration of Helmer. She emphasised certain words, such as ‘womanly’, ‘helpless’, ‘forgiven’, showing the distinction between both characters and what a Victorian male would see deemed, fragile, frail and weak. I feel like if I had applied that to my character, the audience will see Helmer’s true feelings of what he thinks of women, despite showing the ‘affectionate’ side of him.

AIMS: TO EXPLORE non-NATURALISTC ACTING TECHNIQUES

BRECHT'S METHOD
A DOLL’S HOUSE
Playing the roles ‘Helmer’ and narrator (multi-roling)

Unlike last time, using Brechtian style to act out the same script again definitely gave a different look to everything and had created a completely 

different play and mood to the scene as a whole. 

WWW: This time we worked in groups of five, using Brecht’s techniques of multi-rolling, split-roles, multimedia and placards and instead of realistic acting, we went over the top and tried to exaggerate as much as possible. 

We decided to change it up a bit. We had two narrators who played as the childish ‘puppet-masters’ and 2 people who played Helmer and Nora. Throughout the scene, the objectives of the narrators was that one of them wanted a toxic relationship between Helmer and Nora, while the other wanted a happy and loving relationship. As the scene progress, the narrators begin to lose control of their ‘puppets’ and Helmer and Nora call out to the audience (using direct address) and whisper to them loudly and says things like 

[“Help us! We’re trapped!”, “They won’t listen to us!”, “We don’t want this!” etc. ]

Towards the end, all 4 character begin to argue with each other until and audience member who is ‘watching’ this stops the everything and gives their theory of what they think the relationship should be like. This created a drastic effect and change and leaves the audience intrigued on what’s going to happen next, as well as using Brecht’s alienation effect to make sure that the audience isn’t immersed in the scene and still have a place to think, judge and have an opinion on the current events. At then end, we used creepy music to finish our scene after the ‘puppet masters’ decided to take the audience in and turn them into puppets as well.


EBI: It would have been great if we could have a added a pause in our performance when Brittany’s moment came on, it would have been really suspenseful. I also feel like our actions and physical theatre would have been much better if they were more sharp and clear instead of improvised and running all over the place. I think what the big issue for all of us was timing. If we had enough time to think our work through and rehearse it instead of rushing through, it would have been a lot better. 


I did manage to emphasise some of the words that I felt were important such as “agony”, “awful”, “it’s all over” etc. and I think it really helped since using Brecht’s Epic Theatre, everything is over top and non-naturalistic so those key words really helped me to exaggerate the acting. I also feel like, if we had enough time, we could have applied more music and spoken stage directions to truly achieve that alienation effect that Brecht wanted.