THE CHERRY ORCHARD
PROMOTIONAL POSTER
CHRISTMAS 2018
We have finally been cast into our roles. I play Yermolai Alexeievitch Lopakhin. He's a merchant. Lopakhin is by far the wealthiest character in the play, but comes from the lowest social class. This contrast defines his character: he enjoys living the high life, but at the same time is uncomfortably conscious of his low beginnings and obsession with business. He is often portrayed on stage as an unpleasant character because of his greedy tendencies and ultimate betrayal of the Gayev family, but there is nothing in the play to suggest this: he works strenuously to help the Gayevs, but to no avail. Lopakhin represents the new middle class in Russia, one of many threats to the old aristocratic way of doing things.
We learnt more about objectives/actions but what are they? Basically, it is what your character needs to achieve in a scene and how, ACTIONS, they go about achieving these. An objective is both psychological and physical. An action carries with it emotive scenarios that we cannot and indeed shouldn't ignore. Remember "Acting is behaving truthfully under imagined circumstances", so the objectives/actions give us a foundation to achieve this. The action MUST be a verb (doing word).
The objectives WILL ALWAYS meet a counter objective, usually other characters' objectives etc., so it becomes a truthful emotive "game" of working together in order to determine what these objectives are and to work as a group in order to tell the story of the play, especially when it comes down to just us actors. We also learnt about SUPER OBJECTIVES. It's what your character wants/needs overall in the play. Simple! We are performing two scenes.
The first scene we do is at pages 3-12 in Act 1
The businessman Lopakhin and young maid Dunyasha are in the nursery at Lubov Ranevskaya's house. They were waiting anxiously for Lubov to arrive from the train, but Lopakhin has fallen asleep. When he wakes up, he reminisces about Lubov showing him kindness as a little boy, though he was just a peasant. He's a rich man now. The clerk Epikhodov enters and gives a weather report: frost, though the cherry trees are in bloom. When he leaves, Dunyasha confesses to Lopakhin that the clerk has proposed to her. But he's accident-prone and has squeaky boots, so she's not sure she's into it. Anya asks Varya a question that will be repeated throughout the play: has Lopakhin proposed? No, says Varya, and she doubts he will. She wishes people would stop pushing it. Anya asks Varya a question that will be repeated throughout the play: has Lopakhin proposed? No, says Varya, and she doubts he will. She wishes people would stop pushing it.
The second scene we do is at pages 42-48 in Act 2
Anya and Varya enter with Trofimov. Lopakhin teases him for always being with the ladies. And still being a student. Trofimov has heard it before, but still gets riled. They make fun of him, but they enjoy hearing Trofimov's opinions. He believes in work and progress. He loathes the intellectuals who still treat their servants like animals. Lopakhin picks up on the thread, reflecting on how small and petty people are, when they should really be giants.
IRONY AND BLINDNESS - The opposite circumstances of Lopakhin, Firs, and Dunyasha point out the irony in the now supposedly free-moving class system; characters talk about and praise a system of economic mobility. Still, they cannot see the contradiction in the situations of those around them that have no opportunity to improve their standing or are criticized for attempting to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment