Oliver Grimshaws Solo Blog

 

This is my final post.  I talk about the journey from my initial idea to the performance day, as well as describing my rehearsal process and how my work developed over the weeks and months. I also reflect on what I gained from the module and from performing my piece and I also talk about what I think the audience got from watching my performance.

 

I undertook the same rehearsal process for the two characters. But I found that creating Plath was the easier of the two. For instance, there was more information out here, that I could use to create the character of Sylvia. As I used interviews, poems, readings, as well as my own imagination to create a living breathing character. I found that because her writing was so rich, most of the inspiration was there  for me to understand her as a person. After reading her poems such as, Daddy, Lady Lazarus, Tulips, Deer Island and also her novel The Bell Jar, I was able to get into the mind of thew writer, to understand what she must have felt like and to understand what was going through her head.

Rehearsal Process. 

.This consisted of weeks and months of playing around with different physicality and experimenting with my voice. As i knew if I wanted to portray Plath convincing then I would have to appear more feminine. Furthermore, i spent time studying how she spoke and listened to the tone, pitch and inflection of her voice.

.Reading her poems became a good source of inspiration for me, as I was able to understand the pain she was going through and I came to understand that she in a way used her poems as a kind of therapy.

. Wearing the dress during rehearsals helped me to get into character. As it physically changed how I stood, how I walked and sat. It saw it as a way of literally steeping into character.

. I found that music was really helpful whilst creating my performance. As a certain song or a piece of music can often evoke emotions and take us to places away from this world.

 

Playing Virginia proved to be at times quite challenging, as I had to think about how I was going to portray her. The things I had to think about whilst playing her was how she would sound, how would she walk, and how she would sit and stand. But because she died in 1941 and due to the fact that for the last 20 years of her life she was suffering mental health issues, their wasn’t any interviews of her out there that I could find to help me create a more believable character. So I practically created a character from scratch, and with the help of a few pictures and some of her poems I then started to bring her to life.

Rehearsal Process. 

Over the weeks and months prior to the performance I started to quite intensively develop the character of Virginia. The things I worked on was

. Making my physicality more feminine.

. Changing the tone, pitch and texture of voice/ as well as applying a R.P accent. There were many accounts from people and various interviews with people online that knew Virginia and they all said that she speak in a quite rich and deep voice. So it was quite hard to create a voice which resembled that of a women, but more importantly a voice that was rich in texture and one that had a sense of pain to it.

. I also worked on her physicality, taking into account how she would sit and stand. For this I simply took a more feminine stance whilst I performed, and I decided that I would stoop more whilst stood. I thought that this would work well  as I wanted to portray a women who appeared to have the wait of the world on her shoulders, and a women who was waited down by her unhappiness and dissatisfaction with her life.

. I also worked on harnessing the relevant emotions for the performance. This was at times hard as Virginia was an extremely troubled women, who’s mental state was deteriorating fast. However, I didn’t want to portray her as a women who was emotionally unstable, as her suicide was described as by many scholars as  been “Spiritual” which is probably the reason why many writers have used her as inspiration for their characters.

I feel that my performance went extremely well, as I think that I told the stories of the two women in a dynamic way. My main goal was to try and make the monologues not cliche. I would say that that main obstacle concerning my performance would have been acting the roles of the two women convincingly. For instance, I was worried that the audience may have found the performance amusing as I was playing two females. However, this proved not to be the case at all, as the response I got was extremely positive and many people seemed to be emotionally moved by the subject matter of the piece. I believe that this was due to the fact that  I just let go and completely immersed myself in the two roles, as I knew that I couldn’t get away with performing this piece half hardheartedly.

Spalding Gray was a huge influence on me. His  autobiographical monologues helped me to create the monologues for Virginia and Sylvia. After researching some of his Gray’s performances, such as Swimming to Cambodia, Terrors of Pleasure and Monster in a Box , I was able to  examine his specific style of theatre which consisted  of direct address to the audience, and playing fictional characters. My main go for the performance was to tell the stories of the two women, and I thought to myself what way could have I have told their stories better than to actually be the women themselves and tell them. The autobiographical root I followed seemed to serve the performance well, as the speech at the start of my performance gave the audience an insight into maybe why the women were unhappy. Furthermore, I wanted the speech at the start of my performance  to touch upon the fears and wants of the audience and to make them ask some tough questions about themselves and their own lives. I wanted the monologues to have a melancholy  effect to them and to make the audience sympathize with Plath and Woolf. Although, one could argue that my performance was about the lives of the two famous writers, and in a way it definitely  was but I would also say it was about life and death and happiness and unhappiness. I wanted this to be the main thread throughout my piece, as I felt that happiness was something that the two women could never achieve.

                                          

 

 

 

 

I knew that costume would play a big part in my performance, this was do to the fact that I was play characters and the two characters were women. The two dress’s which I wore not only made me aesthetically look more feminine, but they also allowed me to feel more like a woman. They changed the way I stood and sat and walked. All this helped me to create more of a believable character. Furthermore, they allowed me to go in and out of character, this was especially evident at the start of the performance where I was addressing the audience. At this point the audience could see me, Oliver, and then as I turned around and put on the dress and entered the spotlight I then became Virginia and then Sylvia.