Thursday, March 2, 2017

My Challenges

Starting on Our Antigone was a new challenge. There is always something to work on or fix
in every play, and my challenge for this play was and is learning how to communicate clearly the
difference from my modern character, Claire, to my Greek character, Antigone. In this adaption
by Charissa Menefee the script continually changes from modern, where they are kids in a
rehearsal, to the Greek tragedy Antigone. At first I thought this switch wouldn’t be that difficult
because it seemed like a drastic change. But as I continued to work with the script and
rehearsed my blocking I realized that Antigone and Claire aren’t that different from each other.
We’ve talked about body centers and worked with them in our first couple of rehearsals. There
is head, chest, hips, and stomach. Claire has a head center with a secondary chest center. She
is always thinking, observing, and encouraging. She is trying to keep the play moving since their
director left so it can be successful, and this puts responsibility on her. Claire is a nerd and
throughout the play she loves giving information to her fellow actors about Greek drama to help
inspire them because it inspires her. It’s also been interesting to figure out how to distinguish
Claire from myself since I’ve found that I have the same center as well as secondary center.
Antigone leads with her chest and has a secondary head center. We’ve learned a lot about
Greek theater and how they hold themselves. The space around them is concrete and they
never move without a purpose. So when playing Antigone I have to stay grounded and focused
on my objectives. Antigone is constantly thinking about her brother and how she needs to do
what is right. Even if that means going against the king, Creon, and his authority. Expressing
this slight difference from leading mainly from my head to leading from my chest has been
difficult. But I’ve also found that if you take that point of change and not only use it in your body
but also in your mind it helps you to express the difference between your characters. So I can’t
just change how I stand but also how Claire thinks verses how Antigone thinks.

A couple of rehearsals ago, we did parts of the script double time, which means we say our
lines and do our cues twice as fast. I had never done this as an actress and I found that it
helped me more than I thought it would. Vivian has told us over and over that we need to know
our lines backwards and forwards so we can have fun with the play and explore. This exercise
helped me to know where in the script I’m having trouble spots with my lines so I can go back
and work on them.

As we head into tech week the stakes get higher but also there’s the excitement and
adrenaline of performances. I can’t wait to see the final results and I hope everyone can come
see this intriguing play of family, power, friendship, and courage in Our Antigone!

Lauryn Berger
Claire/Antigone and props person

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