The scene is much more playful now, and we are really playing around with the scene, and have tried out different things. An example of something we tried today...
- Follow the leader game: as I have mentioned before in my blogs, we have tried out lots of exercises and games in order to create more play and humour in the scene. Playing follow the leader really works for this scene, and it is Sav who is following me. As Olivia's interest in Viola grows, she begins to be touchy feely with Viola and starts to move closer to her on every line, and as she does this, I move further away from her, as I have sussed that she might be attracted to me. Further to this, we performed our scene to our class and we were told we need to make it more clear as to when Viola realises Olivia has feelings for her, and we have taken on board this feedback and we both said today that this game makes it much more clear at what point the flirting begins, and it has made the scene much stronger. So we definitely intend to keep the follow the lead game incorporated into this scene.
We have blocked the scene throughout, and all we need to do now is to keep rehearsing it, and acting on the feedback we receive. I feel every time we rehearse the scene it gets better and better, and I feel more confident about my abilities to play Viola. At first it was quite a daunting thought to be playing a woman pretending to be a man and I did not know if I was happy with the casting, but I have really come to enjoy Viola's character and I love playing her, especially in my scene with Sav. The scene on the whole is mainly comical, and I feel this is the best way for us to portray the scene, as Twelfth Night is a comedy anyway.
The moment in this scene where Viola realises Olivia is flirting with her, and also when Olivia realises she has feelings for her, is when Olivia takes off her veil to reveal her face to Viola and Viola responds to her beauty...
"Excellently done, if god did all"Again this line is very comical as she is complimenting Olivia as her face is excellent, but then he retracts this compliment by saying, your face is only beautiful if it is natural and made by god only, this I am going to portray as a joke shared with the audience, when I say "if god did all" I will direct it to the audience, as if Olivia cannot hear what I am saying. This will be funny for the audience, but will also build a relationship between Viola and the audience as I want to get the audience involved on this joke.
After this line, this is when Sav and I have decided to change our dynamics, and Olivia will come very close to Viola when speaking to her, and will be touching Viola on her arms, and will generally just be BLATANTLY flirting with Viola, and Viola will be very uncomfortable about this, and the audience will definitely notice, which will add to the comedy of the scene. As Viola is not interested in Olivia, but I feel she plays with her a lot and sees how far she can push Olivia. Viola is teasing Olivia in a way, which I find very amusing and I will portray this to the audience.
The line I really like from Viola is after Olivia expresses how she cannot love Orsino and he should of taken her answer long ago....Viola replies with;
"If I did love you.....in my masters flame"This line is so teasing to Olivia as for a brief moment when I say If I did love you, Sav comes very close to my face, almost hoping for Viola's love, and then I retract this by pausing for a few seconds and saying "in my masters flame" so I am leading Olivia to believe that I could love her, then I include Orsino again, to remind her that I am there to woo her for Orsino, and NOT for myself.
I just really enjoy this scene as I am having fun playing around with the different behaviours Viola has, as at the beginning she is quite serious and confused as she wants to know who the lady of the house is, and then after she finds out who it is, she is very polite and witty with Olivia, and then when Maria leaves the scene, Viola then becomes very flirtatious with Olivia and begins to tease her, and then at the end of the scene Viola is uncomfortable and shocked as she realises Olivia has feelings for her. So for me this scene is a journey for Viola as she feels lots of different emotions and has different physicality's throughout so my goal for myself is to develop her gestures and the way she walks even further by practising how she moves over and over and also observing the way other actresses do this in Twelfth Night performances which I have been watching online.
This video here I really like the scene between Olivia and Viola(about 20 minutes in) the characters work really well together and it is so funny to watch, particularly Olivia as she hangs on every single word that comes out of Viola's mouth and you can see she is completely obsessed with her! This is what Sav and I have discussed and will be going for in our scene, as it is very funny and comical.
At the end of our scene, when I say "Farewell, fare cruelty" I hold Sav's face as I say Farewell, and then hold for a few seconds, and let go and retract what i said with, "fare cruelty" and as I exit the scene, Sav followed me off and had her mouth open and her eyes wide, showing how obsessed Olivia is, and it was SO funny. It was completely improvised but it works so well and we are definitely going to use this in our scene!
I really want to start rehearsing my ending scene, which is the final scene with all the second years. We have spoken about this with Andy and will begin to rehearse on Wednesday morning. I am already learning my lines quickly, so when it comes to rehearsals I will already be able to freely act without holding my book to my face.
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