Final Scene Progress

Our final scene that we chose to do is a comedic drama. In this scene, Julia plays Lisa, Jenna plays Sara, and I play Beth.The plot of the scene is that two sisters, Beth and Lisa, and their mother, Sara, meet at a café to discuss Lisa’s wedding. Lisa and Sara, have a really close mother-daughter relationship; she’s the favorite. But Beth has the opposite relationship with her mother. Beth is always overlooked and thinks that both her mother and sister are naïve and not reality based at all. So, this “lunch date” is pretty awkward and gets a little intense. 

After becoming familiar with the relationships between the characters, we made lists and descriptions of who we thought our characters were as people. We listed adjectives to describe them, their appearance, age, positive and negative memories to show what the character likes to/doesn’t like to do, and what they did before the scene and also after the scene to develop emotions. What really helped me was thinking about what Beth wants in life and also what she wants in the scene. It gave me some good ideas as to how Beth should react in this scene considering all that she’s been through and what really matters to her.

When we initially tried blocking the scene, it was very simple and basic. Most of the time, the three characters are at the table in the café, so it was just hand motions for the most part. As we kept repeatedly doing the scene, almost every time we would add on one or two blocking actions. For example, originally when Lisa gets mad at Beth for telling their mom her secret, we just had Lisa stand up in the middle of the restaurant and yell at Beth. But made it even more intense by having Lisa “throw” the water from the flower vase all over Beth. I also think we all improved in getting our characters’ emotions right. At first, I didn’t have a clear image in my mind of how to show the progression of frustration for Beth in this scene. But after running it a bunch of times I found ways through blocking and facial expressions to make clear transitions from frustration, to anger, to exploding at the end of the scene. By the end of the week , we had gone from a very basic blocking sequence, to a sequence where each move had a purpose.

For this last week of class, there are some minor improvements to be made. I think that if we emphasize the pauses in this scene even more, that it would make a big difference in building drama and tension. Also, for the middle of the scene, I think I specifically should think about my voice when saying that lisa should tell Sara her secret, because I really think that my line, “Dan is cheating on her!” is important, and sets up the play of the rest of the scene. Once we finalize our pauses and voice techniques, then we will have a really solid scene.