The Rivals Review

I very much enjoyed my experience rehearsing my scene for The Rivals with Jen and Nicole and it was great to see the movement that everybody came up with for their scenes.

For Christae and Sophia's scene, I really enjoyed Christae's physicality for Lydia and how she kept looking away longingly while fanning her face. I also enjoyed how Sophia responded to her with general disinterested confusion because Lydia's world is so ridiculous. It was also helpful to see a different take on the same scene I was doing and how they chose to set up the room and their use of props.

I thought Zack and Mallory's scene was the best for movement. They really embodied the physicality of their characters and used a lot of physical comedy. I thought the bit with the flower was classic and really added to the fun and frivolity of the scene. There were some times when they spoke really quickly and I couldn't quite catch what they were saying, but I could understand anyway based on the movement, which I think is really important when using period language.

Matt and Roberto's scene was hilarious but I think it could have been even funnier with some more movement. I thought the rhythm and expression in the speech, however, was flawless and I understood everything they said, as well as their characters' emotions and intent. I especially enjoyed Roberto's "sword-thrusting" I thought that was awesome, and Matt really did a great job of retaining the "man stance" that we were taught at the very beginning of this unit.

I really enjoyed Rachel and Taylor's take on the Lydia/Julia scene, because I was doing the same scene and they went about it very differently. I thought their physicality was great and the "languishing" and sighing and exclaiming was hilarious and completely made sense for the characters (I wish I had thought of it myself). I thought perhaps they showed a little too much "appetite" at times instead of maintaining the mask of "everything is alright even though it's not" facade but I quite liked it anyway, and I think that for the stage the "tension between mask and appetite" can be difficult to convey especially depending on the size of the house.

For my own scene, I felt like I almost forgot how to carry myself physically because, due to lack of corsets, I only wore one for half a class period and that was the first time I had ever wore one anyway and I sort of forgot the way it was supposed to affect my posture. I tried to keep my middle stiff and my arms "floaty" because Lydia was most likely wearing a frivolous gown that wouldn't allow her to put her  arms at her side. I sat the whole time and used a lot of "languishing" gestures but I think I definitely could have stood up and done something more with the physicality.

I thought that Jen and Nicole used their physicality a bit more than me because Jen (Lucie) was standing and curtsying the entire time and Nicole (Julia) entered, exited and sat, using the full range of her motion.  Also they seemed to have the corset business down. All of us had some trouble with the language at one line or another, or we had to figure out what our lines meant. We dove a little bit deeper into our scene when Jen (teacher Jen) told us that the line "press a few blonds" meant that Lucie was just pressing handkerchiefs in the book "The Whole Duty Of Man" so that Lydia shouldn't worry about that book, implying that Lydia was stupid and would only read romance novels. Even deciphering that one little joke helped us (or at least me) with character development.