Ticketing and acting and blogging; oh my! (part 1)

Hello once again,

I would now like to begin my series of short reflections on the mammoth adventure that was Cloud 9. I realise that my absence of blogging over the final few weeks was not great, but I'd like to make up for it now... If that's ok.

:)

So, this reflection will be dedicated to acting during and after the production season. In my previous posts I focused a lot on acting and character work prior to the production season, so this is a continuation of that.

First of all, let's re-cap on my characters.

ACT 1:

Ellen

Ellen is governess to the children, and has journeyed to Africa with the family. She is madly in love with Betty (Mother to the children), however is unable to deal with these feelings. When she tells Betty of her love, she is patronised and made to feel insignificant. At the end of Act 1 she agrees to marry Harry Bagley, simply to escape her feelings of rejection from Betty.

ACT 2:

Lin

Lin is the complete opposite to Ellen. About the only thing they have in common is that they are both lesbians. Lin is a single Mother to Cathy, and doesn't care what anyone else thinks of her or her situation. She has a lot of anger towards the world, especially when she hears that her Brother has been killed in Belfast and her Father does not wish for her to attend the funeral. Lin falls in love with Victoria, who is trying to come to terms with her own sexuality, and unhappiness in her marriage.

During the production season, I feel like I came the closest I could to understanding my characters. Being on-stage and having an audience react to certain things, I could feel myself gaining a deeper understanding of what Caryl Churchill was thinking when she wrote the play. In rehearsing the first act, I often forgot how funny the idea of throwing Victoria around was, yet when the audience reacted so well to it, I was reminded of the fantastic comedy in Caryl Churchill's writing. In the second act I felt like the audience were asked to sit up and think about their own beliefs and values, and could feel this happening as I delivered each of Lin's angst-filled asides.

I also feel like as a group, we began to react more dynamically when we were faced with an audience. The action/reaction in the delivery of our lines quickened, and our focus improved out of site. As a whole, I think we've learned a lot from this experience about being in an ensemble; not only in the acting sense, but in the cooperation of actually getting the show together. It seemed that in those final days we were all there to help each other out, which was a great feeling!

All in all, I think it's safe to say that the acting in Cloud 9 was a huge hit. We all extended ourselves as actors and learned many things about acting. The journey from day 1 to closing night was epic, to say the least, and will be something that I remember for a long time. The only thing left now, is to apply these new skills I've learned to my monologue... Which we will be beginning very soon!

Thanks to all who came and watched us on the night - without the audience we wouldn't have learned nearly as much.

To end this post, here's a lovely photo of a few of us from the end of act 1.

"May you live in Peace, and Joy, and Bliss..."

Blackout.