Rehearsal 3rd Febuary 2013

During this rehearsal period I thought it best that we did not rush straight into blocking and rehearsing for the final performance. I told the group of the research that I had conducted prior to the rehearsal:

Naturalistic Theatre was helping equality between male and female worlds. Male playwrights were voicing the opinions of women who would not necessarily been able to speak out for themselves; women felt trapped and envied the world in which men lived. "What gives naturalistic plays historical status is not the number, or even the centrality of female characters, but the way female experience is presented." (A Source Book on Naturalistic Theatre: 2000: 18) Many women within the 1890's were writing plays however none were ever published or staged. This "reflects the reality of gender inequality in the period and even more ironically it is an illustration that men felt it right to speak for and define women." (A Source Book on Naturalistic Theatre: 2000: 19)

"The defining moment of naturalistic drama is the slamming of the door, as Nora leaves her husband at the end of 'A Doll's House.' (A Source Book on Naturalistic Theatre: 2000: 20)
Even though we are performing a scene from 'Hedda Gabler' we all knew the play 'A Doll's House' well and I wanted for us to remember throughout the rehearsal process of the importance of the Naturalistic Theatre movement, in terms of us being female students now and in terms of their individual characters within the scene.

After discussing our information we went onto adapting our script. As there is only two actors we wanted to cut Mr. Tesman's lines completely. This was in keeping with the idea of women being the stronger sex and being able to express their opinions without a man present. However, this task was quite difficult as Tesman breaks up the conversation. We wanted to use the information that Tesman gave within his lines so we then had to weave his lines into the lines of Hedda and Mrs Elvstead. After a long period of time we managed to create a cohesive script and I was confident in the fact that the actors could now part and begin to learn their lines.

Innes, C (2000). A Source Book on Naturalist Theatre. Oxon: Routledge. 18-20.