Rehearsal 5 - Pushing actions and objectives

In this weeks rehearsal we looked at pushing our objectives to the full in order to test wether our objective worked and if our objective could be made clear to the audience.

We did this by taking our first objective and acting it out using our whole body and all of our voice. The aim was to make the objective as bold and over the top as possible in order to make it clear the the audience what our objective was. 

My first objective was 'to clean' so i did as much as i possibly could to show that i was cleaning, getting down to scrub the floor, rushing around, moving objects and tiding this was the physical side to my objective. I then used my voice to display 'to clean' as much as possible. I would vary my pitch and strength so if i was scrubbing the floor i was make my voice deeper and slightly warned out and other times would be slightly high pitched. This was using my whole body and voice to display my objective and i was successful in doing so, as my fellow actors in my group agreed that my objective was clear.

There were other moments where my objective felt awkward and couldn't be made clear. Such as my objective to 'take the piss'. When rehearsing i felt like i could easily display this objective and felt like it didn't work when using it in conjunction with the text. Therefor i have learnt that pushing your objectives is a key part to understanding the intention and meaning behind your characters actions and allows you to explore the "best" way or most comfortable objective possible.

In addition  i have also learnt that by taking your actions to an extreme allows you to then pull it back in and create a more realistic moment that still however, is true to the objective. If you don't push your character to it's limits, you will never know the full spectrum of how far your character can go.

Here is a rough version of my script in which i have put 3 objectives. To reassure, to joke and to plead.

Throughout rehearsal i felt uncomfortable with my objective 'to joke' and began to feel like this wasn't coming from a natural instinct but was being forced. I then looked at the script for help and saw that the line after, in the stage directions it says Ranyevsaya is irritated by Yasha's comment. Therefore i decided to change my objective to 'to irritate' which worked much better.

I have learnt that often the answer to your problems is in the text itself, you just have to look.