The love affair of Claudia Roe and Mike Alfreds

A lot of the advice I have been given in this process and a lot of the approaches we have taken in rehearsal have reflected the work of Mike Alfreds and thus Claudia's character got a second love affair.

From the start of our process I adopted a Mike Alfred's technique to begin my text work. Alfreds asks his actors to action their scripts so as to bring the text to life This is a page from my last scene in which Claudia sees Jeff for the first time since he fired her; obviously a little awkward. Therefore employing Alfreds' technique of actioning, I came up with 4 objectives for the lines. When working on this scene Charlie and I have been able to work with Alfreds theory of developing the actions into physical gestures. The 4 objectives for this scene all seem to centre around Claudia belittling Skilling and metaphorically saying 'I told you so.' To do this I started playing with these objectives in their extreme forms; with my voice, by pushing it's patronising tone and with my physicality by invading Charlie's personal space, with the confidence that he is so broken that he couldn't push me away. Obviously to an audience these actions look very childish, which to an extent Claudia is in this scene, but with Claudia being Claudia her voice and physicality wouldn't show this so blatantly. However playing with the extremes means I can find a happy medium. Knowing my purpose onstage means I can carry it out better and playing around with my actions and intentions allows me to breath new life into this scene.

Alfreds looks for truthfulness in his work; he does't want his actors to pretend to be he just wants them to be- to live, become and be true to the character to the extent that the line between fiction and non fiction should become blurred. With someone like Claudia, me pretending to be her wouldn't work- I am too different to just make an educated guess. Therefore I need to research and dedicate myself to coming to know and understand her so it is not just a stab in the dark, but a well informed, mature response to the character and the stimulus it produces. For a women that is so self assured, if my portrayal doesn't match her on that level, it will just be unconvincing. For someone of my age and experience to have any hope of playing this character well, I will have to be unrecognisable as myself onstage. 

If you ask someone who Mike Alfreds is, the work they are most likely to know is his book 'Different Every Night'. The title of said book is a fundamental aim for our cast. This play has the potential to be playful and fresh every time we perform- whether in a rehearsal room or for one of our shows in the New Theatre. Being able to be playful with this piece will bring a dimension to the performance that a clean cut show wouldn't- it brings raw energy and excitement which means we could have the same audience every night and they would see a different show. If we can have a mixture of Alfreds ideas about structure, rules, playfulness and truth and we can create a dynamic performance which takes an admittedly messy play and make it into something magical.