The Cherry Orchard

Rehearsal Blog 2

Character Development

In week 2 I had developed my character more but there was still along way too go before I reached my objectives. I was really struggling with the truth behind my character. I understood that he was a business man and his objective was to buy the cherry orchard but I also new that his objective was that he was trying to help Lyubov and that he cared about what was happening. I found it hard during  rehearsals to link these two objectives together to form the character. An example of these two objectives are: "I've got a idea that will mean you can keep... all of it" and "your as precious to me as you always have been". At the time I found it hard to be truthful and express the correct emotions naturalistically. In order to find truth in my characters personality during this weeks rehearsals and to improve on the point above, I used a person from reality such as Peter Jones from Dragons Den, to base my characters objectives on. I chose Peter Jones as an example because he is a successful business man which relates to Alexander. "Can you see this product on the shelves? So can I, and that's where it will stay" This is a quote by Peter Jones that I thought showed the way a business man would speak. By knowing this I feel that I now have the basis on top of which I can build the rest of my characters personality. I feel that by doing this, it made my character objectives stronger and more obvious and allowed the objectives to be naturalistic.

Our class watched Platonov by Chekhov at Chichester Festival Theatre. Platonov has a similar subplot as The Cherry Orchard but is mainly focused around a man called Platonov and his love affairs which brings I'm down a dark path of regret and depression, eventually leading to his death. It was both a comedy and a tragedy so it related to our play because in The Cherry Orchard their are the same aspects. For example; Simeon is a character that adds comedy as he is clumsy; "He drops the bouquet". I feel if this Jack A can naturally and realistically use these actions, the audience will react as Chekhov intended. Also, by watching individual characters in Platonov, I studied the actors stage presence. This helped me figure out where my character would be on set, and how id interact with the set itself and the other characters. The line "time passes" is an example of where I used the stage presence I learned. I walked to the front of the stage, right up to the audience, looking over their to the "Cherry Orchard", whilst keeping the fourth wall. I feel this showed the audience my character had the objective of buying the cherry orchard. https://www.cft.org.uk/whats-on/event/platonov - A link to The Chichester Festival Theatre, Platonov.

I feel in this weeks rehearsals there has been more group interaction and characters interacting with each other on set to show the audience the smaller, hidden objectives and how the characters have relationships with each other. Me and Chloe Smith had a creative moment where as she walked on from the line "Two letters have arrived..." where we both made eye contact and looked away. I was taken direction from Karen in order to make a decision of weather Alexander loves Varya or not. I believe this un intentional moment between our two characters on set looked really naturalistic and powerful, therefore making me go with the objective that Alexander likes Varya but in an awkward way. I feel that this showed how I have achieved some growth and development all pushing towards the realms of naturalism and realism.