Jennie Fox as Nina and Gregory A Smith as Trigorin in The Seagull On Monday we began standing the scenes up in the right order and by the end of the day got through the whole play, with detailed work on some scenes which pose special challenges. Chekhov writes characters of great depth and complexity and, just as with understanding real people, it isn’talways a simple matter to ‘read’ them correctly first time round.
A drama teacher I once had used to say, when we were struggling to prise out what a character was really about, “No one said it was going to be easy!” From today’s experience, both as watcher and participant, that was borne out with some force. A shortcut to ‘finding’ your character can be to decide in advance what kind of person you maintain he or she is from what you believe the script to mean, from what the character says and does, or from your own tastes, your own imagination or your own knowledge and experience of human nature. At least then you can have the comfort of saying you don’t think he or she is the kind of person who would do this or that, thuslimiting the options confronting you as an actor to a manageable number.
But that is only part of the battle, and the easy part. In real life, never mind on stage, most of us are different things at different times, depending on the circumstances at any given moment, the people we are with and, most especially, on what we get from those people, or what we think we are getting from them. In a play like this, where the characters are painted so vividly, the very plot can come adrift unless the acting of character is absolutely specific, and unless observing and listening to others in turn is meticulous and accurate. The more people there are involved, and the more complicated the situations and relationships are, the harder it gets. Sometimes today the going got heavy. But with any piece of dramatic writing which is anything like life, it will happen. Chekhov is tough: sometimes it feels simple and light, other times heavy and tragic - often both at once. The challenge and the joy for us lies in not getting lost, in finding the right way through the jungle. We have good will and a spirit of cooperation and we still have time.
A drama teacher I once had used to say, when we were struggling to prise out what a character was really about, “No one said it was going to be easy!” From today’s experience, both as watcher and participant, that was borne out with some force. A shortcut to ‘finding’ your character can be to decide in advance what kind of person you maintain he or she is from what you believe the script to mean, from what the character says and does, or from your own tastes, your own imagination or your own knowledge and experience of human nature. At least then you can have the comfort of saying you don’t think he or she is the kind of person who would do this or that, thuslimiting the options confronting you as an actor to a manageable number.
But that is only part of the battle, and the easy part. In real life, never mind on stage, most of us are different things at different times, depending on the circumstances at any given moment, the people we are with and, most especially, on what we get from those people, or what we think we are getting from them. In a play like this, where the characters are painted so vividly, the very plot can come adrift unless the acting of character is absolutely specific, and unless observing and listening to others in turn is meticulous and accurate. The more people there are involved, and the more complicated the situations and relationships are, the harder it gets. Sometimes today the going got heavy. But with any piece of dramatic writing which is anything like life, it will happen. Chekhov is tough: sometimes it feels simple and light, other times heavy and tragic - often both at once. The challenge and the joy for us lies in not getting lost, in finding the right way through the jungle. We have good will and a spirit of cooperation and we still have time.
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