Essential questions

   • In terms of your piece, how has any background research assisted your development of the piece?            This could include both research into the play, its themes, the world of Greek society at the time, the playwrights and their plays or general/specific acting techniques.
         
            - My piece is a scene from the play “Antigone”, but it is a little bit adapted to our time and society, so we, the actors, don’t have to worry about a big difference between the play’s world and our reality. I have read the play two years ago and although I didn’t remember the details, the story is familiar to me and I already had its universe created in my head. All I had to do now was to talk with Elena, because she is my co-actor and find out what vision she had about it. After that we could build up a whole world in where we were going to live every time the word “Antigone” came out through Rob’s mouth.
            A constant thing that helped me with my development was the acting techniques that were written on the board most of the times. “Acting is merely reacting.” is probably a quote that will stay on my mind for a long time; or the questions we have to ask ourselves before entering the scene, that help us remember who we are and what objective do we have. The “What If” technique is an important one for an actor, it basically gives you the power of imagination to be whoever you want or whoever your script “says”.  There are many others things and techniques Rob constantly told us about, but one that I had to work on more was “taking my time”. Every time I am playing in front of other people I am full of emotions and I tend to rush myself and sometimes I forget all the things I had in mind to do on the scene and, this way, I ruin all my work. I feel like I managed to get over this and when I am performing I always remember that I need to take my time.
           I did some research about the world of Greek society at that time. I felt like it was important to know more about the world Antigone lives in so I could build up my character. This thing helped my development of the piece, because I had questions like: “Why is she acting this way?”, “What made her hate Creon so much?”, “Why is she ready to give her life to bury her brother?”. After finding out details about the world she was living in (her father Oedipus died and the tyrant Creon was now the new king of Thebes, killing anyone who will disobey him), about her family (she and her three brothers were born from an incest between their father Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta), how her two brothers died (fighting against each other) and how much she honored the gods’ laws, then I could assume what I was saying and justify Antigone’s actions.
           There’s a lot of research and analyzing behind a performance.

   • In relation to an “actor’s skills set”, what have been the interesting challenges that you’ve set yourself and what have you noticed about other’s work in the rehearsal room?
           
                - I’ll start with the challenges I set myself in general: speak louder, be confident, take your time, “you know what you’ re doing, just show it”.
                Being with the others in the rehearsal room made me see how different we are and still, appreciated for our own and unique characteristics. In this kind of situations, you may feel that someone is better than you and forget to believe in your talent, so you’ll not focus on what’s making you unique and end up in blocking your evolution, but this is not happening here. I feel that the energy in the rehearsal room is good and perfect for improvement, even though we have bad days too. What’s important is that we are kind and supportive.

   • In relation to vocal techniques, why is it important that an actor should “warm up”? What exercises have you carried out, looked at on Youtube?
         
            -The voice of an actor is used almost as much as a singer’s. And the breath exercises for an actor are as important as for a singer. Sometimes on the stage there is a lot of screaming, you have to speak loud and clear and know how to make yourself heard till the last row of seats.
            It is important to warm up your voice before any rehearsal or performance, because you don’t want to wrong use your voice or abuse it. If you do not take care of the vocal cords, next time you may not could use them again. Also, the warm up help you reach the maximum potential of your voice. For the warm up, you can use also tongue twisters; they are very helpful for your diction. I have these kind of exercises at home and when I have time, I always practice, because I  want to improve my speaking clarity.
             Rob sent us a link on Youtube with a video from an warm up at the National Theatre. I watched that and the exercises a warm up should start with are the physical ones; prepare your body by relaxing the muscles. After this, there are the breathing exercises and then, the vocal exercises. There is process you have to go through for a complete warm up.
            At home I search these kind of exercises and diction exercises too, and I practice every time I can.