Measure for Measure: Performance and Evaulation

Despite enjoying the rehearsal process and watching my peers succeed in performing an admirable Shakespeare production, I was not happy with my performance in Measure. I could not get my head around the language of the play, and this meant, despite discovering an interesting and nuanced character in the duke due to very useful physical exploration, I fell at the first hurdle. In both performances I choked my words, and I am disappointed in myself because of this.

I think, in terms of my own character development, as this is what this blog focusses on, I was actually pretty successful. I found using a combination of the newly acquired Laban efforts and the Head Heart Gut Groin exercise I was able to build a more exciting physical character than I ever had before. I was more confident in my choices, and this lead to moments of comedy throughout the play, such as dancing to the raver's music, or my combination of the friar's blessing and a raving hand. I also found that I often knew exactly what how the Duke would react in certain situations, as my physical presence and my thoughts on what aspects of his personality were most prominent because of this presence showed me the way forward.

However, the part of the character I failed to nail was the connection of this understanding of the character to the circumstances given by the text. I did not focus on this early enough in rehearsals, as in previous productions learning my lines has always come simultaneously with rehearsing the scenes and the movement. Although this is often a perfectly adequate way of learning lines, it was arrogant to assume this would work with such a complicated and wordy text. I should have identified this earlier and put more effort into learning these lines when under no pressure. When I did eventually identify this problem, I felt pressure by the fact that it was taking me far longer than usual and this scared me. This pushed me into a cycle of panicking about the words and therefore forgetting them, which lead me to believe I did not know them even more. I found that, after a few weeks of this, I was struggling to regain my composure after any sort of stumble at all. This showed itself in the performance, and meant I lost much of my physical embodiment as I struggled to get myself back on track.  Had I worked on the two aspects of my character simultaneously, I would have provided a far stronger performance.