In the plays we previously performed, as a class each of us done one of Harold Pinter’s plays and my one was “Victoria Station”. My character was the driver which was called (274), I had to play quite a confused and dumb down man who didn’t ever really know what was going on. So even though as myself I couldn’t relate to him, personally I think I portrayed the character well and people believed I was that man driving around not knowing what was going on at anytime of the whole piece.
I feel like in this play being partnered with someone different and someone I’ve never worked with before, I got to be a different person and perform in a way I hadn’t before, my partner was Tieyler. I think we both worked well together and never really had problems during our process, most time we was both in college, and there never really a time we wasn’t, and that was a good start to our process, we continuously read over and over our lines before we decided to get up and start rehearsing them which for me was better, because that way I got to learn and be comftable with what I’m saying before trying to do something and not being able to understand the text being read. Also we both annotated our scripts, where there was long pauses and silences we would go through them and try to make them as awkward as possible because that’s what most of Pinter’s work is about.
After about a week to a week and a half me and Tieyler new our script off by heart and that’s when it started to come together. We both had ideas of staging and kept it very simple because “Victoria station” was a simple and easily understood play so we didn’t want too much of a fuss with props. So on stage facing the audience was a table, chair and a microphone on the table which she was speaking into as the controller, at the front right of the stage was the car door facing the right wing of the audience and what I think was so nice about our staging is that at any point there was no eye contact at all with each other so it was as if we we’re in two different places, and that’s exactly what we wanted it to be like, I was in my car driving about, cruising through London and Tieyler was sitting in her office talking into something an being frustrated which she really played well. As for costumes I Wore just a shirt that wasn’t fully buttoned and sensible because a bit dopy and you could only see my top half through the car door & Tieyler wore a blazer and tie to show her status was higher than mine and that she was the professional one. What I could have done better was made myself look a bit more comftable on stage because I times I found myself fidgeting and not knowing what to do with myself during the long speeches Tieyler had to play and pauses. Also I forgot a couple of my lines but that was due to learning other lines from “Victoria station 1” which was the play before ours. Sadly I lost my partner a day before we had to perform and from “Victoria station 1”, Chelsea & Carliie were partnered and Chelsea lost her partner too so therefore me and Chelsea partnered and played each other’s part that were missing. This knocked us down a bit but we used it to our best advantage to boost our grades even more and I think although there wasn’t our original full plan of how we wanted it to turn out, we worked well together and pulled though. In drama you have to always be ready for the best and worsted scenario’s and this experience proved it, we got put in the position to read and unknown script to us and look like were comftable with it and perform it the following Monday and although it wasn’t allot to learn it put pressure on us and I think that’s why I forgot a couple of my lines in the second bit which was my bit, having said that Chelsea was a good partner and carried on knowing I had forgot my lines, the pauses in this play made it less obvious so it looked rather professional.
I feel like in this play being partnered with someone different and someone I’ve never worked with before, I got to be a different person and perform in a way I hadn’t before, my partner was Tieyler. I think we both worked well together and never really had problems during our process, most time we was both in college, and there never really a time we wasn’t, and that was a good start to our process, we continuously read over and over our lines before we decided to get up and start rehearsing them which for me was better, because that way I got to learn and be comftable with what I’m saying before trying to do something and not being able to understand the text being read. Also we both annotated our scripts, where there was long pauses and silences we would go through them and try to make them as awkward as possible because that’s what most of Pinter’s work is about.
After about a week to a week and a half me and Tieyler new our script off by heart and that’s when it started to come together. We both had ideas of staging and kept it very simple because “Victoria station” was a simple and easily understood play so we didn’t want too much of a fuss with props. So on stage facing the audience was a table, chair and a microphone on the table which she was speaking into as the controller, at the front right of the stage was the car door facing the right wing of the audience and what I think was so nice about our staging is that at any point there was no eye contact at all with each other so it was as if we we’re in two different places, and that’s exactly what we wanted it to be like, I was in my car driving about, cruising through London and Tieyler was sitting in her office talking into something an being frustrated which she really played well. As for costumes I Wore just a shirt that wasn’t fully buttoned and sensible because a bit dopy and you could only see my top half through the car door & Tieyler wore a blazer and tie to show her status was higher than mine and that she was the professional one. What I could have done better was made myself look a bit more comftable on stage because I times I found myself fidgeting and not knowing what to do with myself during the long speeches Tieyler had to play and pauses. Also I forgot a couple of my lines but that was due to learning other lines from “Victoria station 1” which was the play before ours. Sadly I lost my partner a day before we had to perform and from “Victoria station 1”, Chelsea & Carliie were partnered and Chelsea lost her partner too so therefore me and Chelsea partnered and played each other’s part that were missing. This knocked us down a bit but we used it to our best advantage to boost our grades even more and I think although there wasn’t our original full plan of how we wanted it to turn out, we worked well together and pulled though. In drama you have to always be ready for the best and worsted scenario’s and this experience proved it, we got put in the position to read and unknown script to us and look like were comftable with it and perform it the following Monday and although it wasn’t allot to learn it put pressure on us and I think that’s why I forgot a couple of my lines in the second bit which was my bit, having said that Chelsea was a good partner and carried on knowing I had forgot my lines, the pauses in this play made it less obvious so it looked rather professional.
Coming to my conclusions now: I think this was one of the best performances and although it wasn't perfect, i enjoyed the process of it and the story line because it was absoloutly pointless but most of all it was a different experience to previous plays and that's what made it interesting.
