THAT scene

Today's rehearsal's main focus for myself and Sam was Act 1 Scene 2 aka. the sex scene. Although the sex lasts for a matter of seconds and does not carry with it any romantic weight, for both myself and Sam taking the leap of faith and getting inside Jeff and Claudia's heads instead of our own was a little daunting.

Ever since reading the play we all knew that if we were successful in obtaining the roles we wanted, we would have to do this scene and at the time the prospect of a new challenge was enticing. However when you get told that your partner in said scene is your best friend, pros and cons start to appear. The pros; that I am comfortable with Sam and am able to be both physically and emotionally vulnerable with him, the cons; are self explanatory. Something like this divides the process and initiative of you as a student and as someone who wants to work professionally. Even recording this seems a little strange because in an ideal world it would be something that you could just get on with and wouldn't need to express any concern about and yet the reality was a little different. Our attempt at staging this scene today was fuelled less with professionalism and more with giggles. We decided with our director that this was something myself and Sam needed to work out for ourselves as admittedly it was an intimate, personal battle that we both had to conquer. This Friday we are going to try and stage it ourselves, get comfortable with the scene and then feed it back to Ben when it was at a stage in which we have overcome the initial barriers.

The rest of the scene was more successful in terms of our approach to the work. Similarly to last lesson, I was able to experience and experiment with the power Claudia holds at the start of the play and I think it is more enjoyable when a scene is one on one. When you are holding a whole group of people in the palm of our hand, of course you technically have "more" power and yet being able to focus all of your efforts on one person allows you to really hone in on what makes them squirm and therefore directly effect them and have more of an impact over all. When I wrote my first impressions of the play I talked about being complicit to the criminal actions as a reader or audience member throughout the play as we come to know and love the characters. I am starting to understand this concept at a more personal level. Although Claudia and I do not have much in common, I believe that we both enjoy exerting our power over others. There is an almost animalistic instinct to it, with power making you feel safe and untouchable, plus a basic human desire to be needed by someone or to control someone lies in the enjoyment I get out of these scenes. This scene is really fun to play around with because Jeff and Claudia seem to be in two very different states of mind; Jeff about to tell Claudia that he loves her and Claudia telling him (in not so many words) that this is just a bit of fun and doesn't really mean anything to her at all. Claudia seems to have a fundamental set of standards in her life, a scale in which she ranks everything in her life; power and control topping the list, adoration and sexuality possibly in the middle with sex and Jeff being at the bottom. Playing around with this mentality is so fun because as an actor she allows you to be bold onstage without the burden of emotional consequences- it's all just a game.

We also blocked Act 1 Scene 3 with Tatenda which was interesting to do directly after scene 2. In the space of a few paces across the stage I need to find a way to switch from playful, fun Claudia to the bitchy business women we see appear in the next scene. I think the change comes with the necessity of the power play; in Scene 2 she asserts power because she can, in Scene 3 she does it because she needs to. Ben wants me and Sam to start playing with our onstage 'battle' physically; actually pushing each other out off the way and stepping forward to make our point. This is a method which give us an initial grip on the intentions of the scene and we will then go on to find the subtleties later on. Something I'm loving in rehearsals is that with Claudia I can play a scene which is alluring and playful and then go straight into a scene of aggression and raw energy which keeps me on my toes and doesn't let me stop working. She is presenting me with a character which offers a spectrum of personal and extended relations and for me to work with, is proving it be immense fun. Although having fun isn't necessarily the priority in a rehearsal room I think for a play which requires such concentration and energy, the moment you loose fun, you've lost the magic of the whole piece.