29.5. Scene 12 & 14 at Pelham

To day was really about trying out the scenes we have created during the week at Pelham, where we could really see how much space do we have and what kind of effect does it have. Our focus was especially on scene 12 with the flower arrangements and scene 14 with its extravagant shadowing.

One problem that we noticed right away, after our first try with the flower, was that it took too long for us to come from the stage down on to the flower for the actual arrangements. We also had problems with coming down, it was very disorganized and casual, when we really wanted it to be more stylized. To solve this, we first changed our cue from the start of the poem to Givola's line "Of course he is." to start moving down, even before the characters move from the stage. To explore with the quality of movement, we used Michael Chekov's floating technique to create a more ethereal look to the flowers . I think this also brought a lot more life in to them and brings the focus from us moving the flower to the flower arrangements, since we are not the important part in this scene.
   Siou made us play this game where the two flower groups would have two sets of beats of eight to get down from the stage on to the floor. Our task was to do this by starting movement of the flowers together, but actually move of the stage one by one and stop the movement at the same time, after everyone would have taken their first positions. Then we would move in the same manner to our final positions on the floor to cover the actors. Another little tweak that we did was so change how and where we hold the flowers, so that we are more hiding the actors faces, so that they won't take the attention when the actors on the other side are talking.
   Some notes that the actors got, was to be very snappy with the poem, each line needs to come after another, to keep up the rhythm of the scene.



For scene 14 we really focused on trying out the different stages of the shadows and how they would look with the Tommy guns. Greta couldn't be in because of personal reasons, so I definitely think we should try this out again as soon as possible to get the scene done. I would also like to properly try out my idea of having me as Ui walking forward on the stage, as if I would actually be in the dream seeing Roma's ghost. We tried it very briefly, but as we had many people doing the shadows and operating the light backstage, we couldn't really get the opinion of everyone's whether or not it worked.

• What is my goal for the next lesson? What do I need to do to achieve this? What information do I need?
• I want to be memorized for scene 14, since I only have two lines, but more importantly have read through Roma's monologue and thought about how I am going to react on each line.