Rehersals and Performing Antigone

For my piece I am playing the part of Ismene whose objective in the play is to persuade and stop her sister Antigone from burying their brother against their uncle Creon's demand. I enjoy playing the part of Ismene as I find her very powerful, however in a non aggressive manner.

My partner and I went through our script and practised our lines, trying different approaches such as writing on our script the emotion linked to each line to help us portray this in our piece. We both struggled with knowing how to react when we were not speaking, and found it difficult to stand still as we felt as we should be constantly reacting with our facial expressions. We then asked for some advice from Rob who went through the Uta Hagen technique of acting truthfully. I learnt that the emotion status starts in the head and the mind and then shows in your body and actions as a secondary response. Also, I learnt to avoid showing exaggerated emotion on my face as this is not realistic.

My partner (Jess) and I found each others energy levels were high and we could feed off of each other. As we learnt to stay still and listen to each others lines rather than worry about what to do with our facial expressions, the piece felt more natural and made the scene much more realistic.

We then performed to the second year Drama students and got feedback from them. The feedback I received was that I had good projection and played a good contrast to Antigone's overpowering, demanding character. I was also told to analyse the language into modern terms to react in a realistic way as I would in real life. I also got feedback from Rob which was that I had good listening skills whilst Antigone spoke and a good stillness which shows I was comfortable in the character and didn't over react. I was told to look for the subtleness in the my lines and play with the text, which links to what the second year Drama students said about analysing the language to gain more understanding of what I am saying. I was told to practise an exercise of playing my part and lines by picking an emotion out of a hat such as sad or excited and seeing how this can completely change the way the scene evolves.

My skills are being developed by memorising long pieces of speech and by learning to react in a way I would in real life. I am also learning that stillness whilst the other character is speaking is more powerful at times then moving around to feel 'in character', which can make the audience feel uncomfortable and I could appear less confident. Performing to a bigger audience also helped my projection as I had to be louder for the whole class to be able to gage what I was saying.