Web Diary
Show: Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
Role: Polonius (Minister to the King, Father of Ophelia and Laertes.)
Producer: Shady Shakespeare
Week Three: The Joy of Blocking!
Read-throughs now completed it is time for the rough blocking to begin. For those of you unfamiliar with the term "blocking" it is how the director lays out the movement of the actors on stage during the performance. Rough blocking or preliminary blocking is the first step in thsi process.
Each director has their own style while blocking a seen. Some have it planned down to the smallest gesture, others like it to develope organically out of the actors performance. When I direct I usually have a basic idea of where I want people to be and then let the actors fill in the blanks during the rehersal process.
Our director takes a similar approach giving us a good basic idea and the letting mor emovement flow from this. It is a given that anything we work on this week will naturally evolve during rehersals and will most certainly change when we get to the actual performance space. However, the basic movement will remain fairly constant. The Stage Manager takes down all the movement so we can refer to it as needed.
Over the week we blocked all of the first act. The process was: block the scene, run it, make adjustmenst , run it again. Once the director was satisfied we would move onto the next scene.
Several of the cast, myself included, were attempting to run off-book. However, a funny thing happens to me when I start mixing movement with lines. It sort of all goes to shit.
I can be sitting in my car reciting my lines word for word, but get me moving around? Forget it! However, what does happen when I get the movment is I can look at the script again and visulize the movment with the lines, since I now haver a basic sense of how the scene will look and flow.
But it can be pretty ugly. Especially when two people are trying it at once. Hamlet and I were trying to run the scene between Polonius and Hamlet where Hamlet plays with Polonius in his madness. When movment was mixed in you had both actors, several times, reciting Shakespeare like "How say you that? Still harping on my Daughter. But at first he.......shit!.......Line!"
Needless to say the Bard would be appalled!
However, at the end of the week we did a run through of the first act and I was able to get though it movement and all without the book and only calling for line on occassion. Not bad. This will last until we add props and costumes then I will go to shit again! But only briefly!
Next Week the blocking of Act 2!
TTFN,
Ross Arden Harkness