Friday 21/02

We continued to devise scenes around the basis of the story of Hamlet. During the morning I found myself sitting around while other scenes were being created and so I wrote up my scene (Scene 3) and then went away to further work on it. The first change we made to the scene was to introduce a Zanni for my character and this meant that I was able to interact with both Zannis and allowed more humour to be included. Within the scene Zan Polo and Angelica get caught up in a back and forth of whether Laertes does in fact love Angelica and Graham suggested that we experimented with the delivery of the words “love” and “loathe” so that they sound similar enough for Angelica to get confused. I found this back and forth was quite effective as it allowed me to look at my movement as well. For example, I was able to include quick side-to-side movements to display the sorrow and excitement that Angelica would switch between as she misheard what Zan Polo said.

Another joke we found was effective was Angelica telling Dave that they had a dress fitting to attend to before she exited and then Dave would speak out to the audience “But I don’t need a new dress” before turning and doing the tired run while crying as he exited. We found that the run emphasised Dave’s reluctance at going with Angelica and found that the joke was receptive to audiences.

Another scene I was sent away to devise was a scene that would show how Laertes is persuaded by Claudius to fight Hamlet and Claudius uses Angelica as his persuasion. As in my first scene I had to ensure that my posture remained the same and that I didn’t slip out of it during the scene. The one difficulty I struggled with was facing out towards the audience rather than facing Chris. It took several run-throughs for the staging to really drill in to my head. My first entrance in the scene Laertes and Angelica are looking longingly at one another but once I re-entered after Claudius’ sets his plan in motion to set Angelica up I got to explore the vexed side of Angelica. Although Lovers are quite graceful and beautiful in their movements if they have been scorned in love they can turn murderous. When Laertes refers to Angelica as a “harlot” I got to explore the more aggressive side of my character and was given the opportunity to take part in a sword fight which resulted in Laertes being beaten by an angry Angelica.

I was slightly nervous when sword fighting as I hadn’t felt particularly knowledgeable on what we had learnt Wednesday but I found that once I had learnt a routine I was much more confident and found myself enjoying the fight.

We also included some dialogue into the fight to emphasise the argument between Laertes and Angelica:

Angelica: “I never loved you” (Advance towards Laertes)

Laertes: “Well, you have a voice like grating metal” (Retreat from L)

Angelica: “Well, your breath smells” (Advance towards L)

Laertes: “Well, you look fat in that dress” (Retreat from L)

This final line results as the last straw for Angelica and so Chris and I did a bind with our swords that ended with me taking his sword and kicking him to the floor before Angelica leaves having beaten Laertes. I spent most of Friday afternoon going over the choreography to ensure that neither Chris nor I got injured.

Laertes and Angelica sword fight