As it was very difficult to find time to rehearse, I had been working on an idea for set and blocking over the week so that I was prepared when going into the rehearsal room and I knew what I wanted.
I decided the set would be a naturalistic lounge setting, with an armchair, sofa, coffee table and sideboard behind the chairs. Whilst reading through the play I kept highlighting this sense of tension so therefore I felt that to cover the awkward silences we needed to introduce something for the characters to do instead of just talk to one another. Therefore I suggested that they drink tea during the conversation, with Hedda almost forcing the tea on Mrs Elvstead to make her stay and tell her all of the gossip.
When we all got into the rehearsal room I noticed Ellie and Chess had both been working on their character parallels as they appeared much more comfortable than they had last week. As they both felt confident with their parallels we began to block, it is a very difficult scene to stage due to the fact that neither character moves a lot. Yet, I kept reminding the actors of the tension between the characters within the scenes so that the movements on stage and the proximity could represent that.
I told the actors of my ideas towards them drinking tea throughout the scene. At first they seemed a little bit reluctant to it however, I told them that when they get to know the script more these added stage directions would come naturally. With this in mind we went through the script a few more times so that they could write down stage directions and get to know the play further.
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