After the first showcase of our piece, we had received feedback on what has been done, what can be improved and what could be changed to allow the piece to be more effective of sending the awareness of suicide across toward the audience. Some of the points included were to slow down at certain points as the purpose of what is being said may be lost as words were mixed out and articulation was not met. However, at some points, articulation was good at the subtle points of the monologue. Adding on to that, articulation should only be applied to when increasing pace and raising volume. This can also refer to the next point where I should not always go explosive as the monologue may result in just a rant rather than an exploration of the emotional state of my character. Only some parts explosive to hit the heart of the audience and an effective way of portraying this is through levels, 1 being lowest and 10 being highest, 6 is the neutral in the scene. For example, when I state about my friend Percy, I increase my anger after explaining what I did for him especially at the part when I say 'it just pisses me the fuck off', where I raise my voice and kick or punch an object for emphasis. In addition, relating to the rant aspect, I need to shout a lot less, otherwise the intention of the monologue is lost. In other words, to have a vocal variety rather than sticking to one level of voice in the scene.
I have to also make sure that there is purpose to every word I say, otherwise it may result in it sounding like I am just saying words for saying words. I have to make sure that every word has a purpose to have being said and how it can be delivered in a manner where the audience can understand the pain that my character is going through. Other than the points that I need to work on, I had a good emotional state according to my peers however the piece could work better if Stephanie's and my scene were not next to each other as the audience said that they could be seen as the same scene and may turn out boring as they both have similar scenarios. So in result, I had a discussion with the director (Chris), so he had decided to switch Marion's and Stephanie's scene around.
Aims to look around to help character development was to build more substance on the purpose of the scene. Methods on doing this were to explore why the character is there at that specific time and what made them decide to come to the conclusion of committing suicide. In addition, specific events that led to the characters being in the state they are in the scene. For example, days before that scene, questions that can be answered in scenes that are explored beforehand and so on and so forth. Prince's scene (which is my first character) I can explore the reasons why he is annoyed at his friends, what did they do that which had such a huge impact on him. This activity may especially be useful for my two characters as it allows me to build a clear differentiation between them and help add a different type of atmosphere to both of their scenes without having to seem the same.
Other pieces of feedback were to maybe re-order the scenes are some of our peers felt that Marion and Stephanie's scenes were incredibly similar and did not want our play resulting in being static. This point may be considered as we wanted there to be clear different emotions for each character - which mainly revolved of being angry, sad and depressed fro each of our characters. However, the feedback given ha\d included that I had a good emotional state that was sustained throughout the scene.
Afterward, our group had another discussion on where our research could go on from there to help fuel our scenes. Watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' was put to the table as it may help with our characters development in the sense of how the choices we made ended up being in that room where we finally take our lives. We also covered the point of the name of the play as it was already a written established play and to avoid copyright we need to change the name, one of which was 'Im Just Fine.'
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