1 on 1 with Ellie - 25th April

This was to be our final rehearsal before the performance on 29th April. I was confident with what Chess was doing but made Ellie come to university for an hour so we could work on her diction and stage voice.

At first I recorded her normally saying the lines and then I played it back to her. This way she spotted for herself what we meant about losing the end of her lines and how soft her voice was.

I asked her if she had ever done singing lessons before and she said that she had, therefore I told her to use her diaphragm to help support her voice when she is performing. We did a few breathing exercises to get her working her diaphragm and then I asked her to warm her face up with stretches. Through this process I could immediately see how telling her to use her diaphragm to project had helped and I made her over enunciate her words so that the ends of them were not lost.

I filmed her once again and it was amazing how in just half an hour she had changed her diction and tone completely. It was then that I noticed we had to have a vocal warm up before both of them perform. Therefore I said that I wanted them to be both in an hour before the performances started to have a warm up and run the scene through a few times.

I made sure that both Ellie and Chess were confident in what they were doing as we were not going to be able to rehearse again all together until the day.

Performance in Class Time 22nd April

Unfortunately due to other commitments I had not been able to meet up with the girls prior to their performance in front of the class before their exam the next week. I bought in a variety of props for them so that the class could see how the scene runs and how naturalistic the scene is.

During the performance I noted that Ellie's stage voice was very quiet and especially quiet if in the following week we were to perform in the university theatre. Compared to Chess I could not hear what Ellie was saying and realised that we had to work on her diction as well as her tone and pitch.

I think that the actors were fairly nervous when performing but they did not need to be as we had rehearsed so many times before. The blocking needed to be looked over as it was quite clumsy and the moments in which they drink their tea to highlight the awkward silences needed to be changed.

As a general viewpoint though I still felt that the actors could really give more to their characters so I told them that I really want to see jealousy from Hedda and I want to see the desperation when Mrs Elvstead is talking about her husband and her admiration for Lovbourg.

Once again due to timetable clashes I would only be able to work 1 on 1 with Ellie to perfect her stage voice. I told Chess that I want her to go back over the character parallels and re visit the lines with it again.

Rehearsal Sunday 14th April

This was our first rehearsal since the Easter break however, I could tell that both girls had really worked on their lines and built their characters further. They were a lot more comfortable in the role so I felt confident when they were performing it.

I still felt as though their gestures were a little lazy and the scene was dull without them so I stopped them whenever I felt this and made them start again. This was a good technique as I began to see the evil intent in Hedda's eyes and the vulnerability and desperation in Mrs Elvstead. To highlight Hedda's malicious mind set I decided to make Ellie stir the tea whilst she was asking Mrs Elvstead questions; it was a metaphor for stirring trouble up.

Overall I felt that the actors had really progressed over the Easter break and I felt confident with them performing. However, in the class the next day they wanted to perform the week after to give themselves an extra advantage and find out what we had to work on in the following week.