Evaluation of Closing Night

Here we are then; end of the road. I've taken my final bow as a member of the Enron cast and am very sad to say goodbye. This has been a roller coaster of a production. As a company we have had our ups and downs but I know in my heart that it all paid off on the final night. We came together as a collective and delivered a strong, entertaining and fun production. The whole process is finally completed and I must say I have come out the other side of it understanding myself as a performer a whole lot more than I did. From the moment I knew I was going to be taking on this role I had a lot of excitement for it but also a whole lot of fear. I am glad that I could come to the end of it knowing that we produced a high quality show that will stay with not only me but a lot of people for a very long time.

However the show was not without it's fault. This time round the first thing that went wrong was the light up logo was broken and we had to stamp on a specific area to get it to work. After last performance I was so used to things going wrong I was ready and equipped to handle this sort of situation. During the preset I just added it into the way my mouse moved. This wasn't a huge issue but I couldn't get it turn back on for the "I'm Enron" moment but in the grand scheme of things I'm sure it didn't matter that much. I've realised how important is to sometimes just let things happen instead of trying to solve problems all the times. In this performance I allowed myself to be affect by my surroundings instead of trying to fix them. I felt really in the moment this time around because what the worst possible things could happen and was now fully aware of that sometimes things going wrong doesn't matter that much. 

As I knew it was the last time I would be ever saying these words on that stage I allowed myself to have even more fun. Every moment on stage I just felt like I was happy to be there. Scene 3 has always been my favourite scene to play and tonight was no exception. I felt like I was able to up the stakes even more and that every single word I was saying had importance. This in turn affected my vocal and physical choices. I felt more open as I was trying to hammer home the win and like I was able to share it with the audience more than I had on previous nights. Playing to three sides can be hard but it felt like during that scene I was giving equal energy to all 3 blocks of the theatre and that everyone was getting there moneys worth. Throughout this process Ben's always told me I can afford to be bigger. As someone who was constantly told to tonne stuff down in my early days when I first started at BRIT I really struggled with knowing where the line is. However tonight I believe I found just the right level and even when I was doing more subtle acting it wasn't missed by the audience. 

During the destruction of LJM for the third time the gun didn't go off. At this point I kind of expected it. Instead of just dying from my pre-exisistent Raptor illness, Will decided he was going to strangle me instead. Luckily he had mentioned at before so I was ready for this to happen. I believe this way the right move to make in the moment. It was less anti-climatic and very emotional actually. I may not have invested as much into my Raptor character as I did with Skilling but I was still really connected to being a Raptor. So having my creator literally choke the life out of me was a really moving for me. I think this translated across to the audience as well especially the ones who had seen it before. 

One thing I kept hearing from people that saw it multiple times is that it felt like a different play every night. This means we did a really good job at keeping all the scenes fresh and reactive every single performance. The way the play was blocked allowed for a lot of freedom and the ability to make decisions that could affect the whole dynamic of a scene. For example the office scene with Olivia I had the option to keep my cool when Claudia raises her voices or sink to her level. I differed every performance but this time I decided to be playful and just let me arrogance flow. I raised my voice, I withheld I contact. I just really felt in control of the whole scene. It's nice that I could still find new things even in the last performance. At the end of the office physical theatre sequence I accidentally made eye contact with my daughter up on the balcony and didn't look away until the end of the scene. I know it was a little detailed but it really fuelled the guilt complex I had towards her character. This may have gone unnoticed by every one but it didn't matter because I used it to charge my imagined inner life and relationship moreover adding another layer to my performance. 

In conclusion this process has been a difficult but rewarding one. As a company we have come together again and again tell this amazing story and I feel honoured to have been a part of it. I know that we made something truly special over these last few months, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

Evaluation of the 4:30 Matinee

This performance was definitely not what I thought it would be. So many things went wrong for me from the start of the play and I found the whole performance really difficult to get through. After the first performance I felt great about it until I got a barrage of negative criticism about some elements that really affected my confidence in the show. So a lot was riding on this performance to make sure it went even better than the first night. This was not a good mentality to go into the performance with as I had an unrealistic expectation I was putting on myself; nevertheless above all else I just wanted it to be well received.

For starters my shirt went missing and I was given a new one just before we went on. As I was dressing myself in the pre-set I discovered it was too small and that I couldn't do the top button up meaning I couldn't wear a tie. This was setting off alarms in my head as I knew I needed to be wearing it for the scene 2 because we'd decided to keep in the improvised tie moment. So all throughout the first scene I was worrying about how I was going to solve this problem. This meant that I couldn't be truly present in the moment and just living through the role like I could do on the first night. I felt messy and like I couldn't deliver a polished performance because I was focusing so much on everything that was going wrong.

Another thing that went wrong was my mic was nowhere to be found for the party scene. I only a few seconds before I needed to be back on stage so I was scrambling around panicking to trying find out. This meant I didn't have any time to get back into a calm head space. I could feel all this erratic energy firing around inside of me and I just had to put it into the performance. However in the back of my mind I couldn't stop hearing this negative inner monologue saying "You're messing it up, everyone's going to think you are awful, You've let Ben down". It was so difficult to switch it off and just keep acting. I really thought this was going to effect my performance however after the show I was met with amazing feedback and comments from the audience members. I was genuinely so shocked.

This lead me to do some critical thinking about acting in general. I came to the conclusion that internal experience doesn't always equal to external action. I honestly felt like I was having a panic attack on the inside for the duration of the performance however I believe it wasn't translated into my performance. Charlie also made a point that my character has that kind of inner life anyway and because I didn't have to try find that constant trying to solve problems and change the world mentality it just already existed in how I was actually feeling. Obviously it would've been nicer for things to go right but as long as the story was communicated and the audience had a good experience does it really matter if I didn't enjoy it? This experience really reminded me that the play is about the audience not about how I feel at the end of the day. At least I get one more chance to rectify these problems before I go on stage next time.

Evaluation of Opening Night

Well after 6 months since we first found out what plays we would doing for our Common Ground season opening night came upon us. It was a very emotional experience for me to be honest. The culmination of three and a half years of hard work and the realisation of how far we've all come as a company was very overwhelming. During the moment where we stand and just radiate energy during side stretch I just felt very connected everyone around me and that we were going to have a really strong performance. So with mouse head on and the pre-set ready to start it was time to let the world finally see Enron.

Strangely I felt very calm before we started the show. I always thought I would be in absolute hysteria in fear that if I didn't deliver a strong enough performance I'd be letting so many people down. However I just knew I could rely on the all the work we'd put in rehearsal and as long as I just allowed myself to live through the role nothing could go wrong. Well as we predicted things did go wrong but our problem solving skills have been finely honed over this process. For instance I knew I set the kleenex in my pocket however during the scene I just couldn't find it. In hind sight I could've spent a little longer looking for it but instead I just said "no". I did this because I had complete faith in Olivia and her improvisation skills to be able to remain reactive to the situation. I was correct as in a moment of brilliance she took off my tie and used that instead. My jaw dropped as I couldn't believe that Claudia had really done this. This in turn gave me such fuel for the next scene as I had been so disrespected and this raw anger could just genuinely come out of me. This happy accident can only really happen if we can really trust in each other and I was so happy to be able to make a mistake and not ruin the play but rather add a greater moment to it. From the audiences reaction it definitely tightened the grasp we had on them.

In the running scene I felt like I was at my most playful. One specific moment I can remember is when I began to run backwards while I spoke to Andy. I'd never done this in rehearsals and didn't pre-plan this move I just felt in the moment like I wanted to show off and intimidate him a little more. I believe I must've been subconsciously following my objective. From audience feedback a lot of people really enjoyed this scene and thought the energy and pace was electrifying. I was very happy with this and would like to hopefully replicate it for all  performances.

As I wrote about in a previous post backstage discipline needed to be perfect however it was not and it came back to bite us in the butt. One of the mics was left on backstage and for a good time you could hear people talking. At this point I was on stage as a Raptor but I just remember the feeling of my blood turning cold and trying to desperately to keep in character. At one point I was tempted to wander off stage to go find the source but I knew that my death scene was about to come and couldn't risk. Honestly I was a little disappointed in this as it really had an effect on the way the audience would've seen the play. It was a real shame that it had to happen but at least now we can learn from our mistakes a let it never happen again.

In conclusion I was mostly happy with my opening night performance, I felt connected to the role I was playing throughout the performance and found parts to be playful in. For next show though I want to take the playfulness up even further and I want to be genuinely surprised by some of the choices I make. Onward and upwards!

Psychological Gesture

Today I had a massive break through. In this session we did work around finding a psychological gesture for our characters. I'd studied PG before but never found a point of practical application. However today after we did the exercise I now understand why it's such a useful tool.

To create a psychological gesture (Ben's adapted method) you need to answer 3 questions:

1. What does my character want in the play? 
2. How does my character get what they want? 
3. How does my character interact with the world? 

In relation to these questions you create and refine a gesture. So for the first one I know my super objective is to change the world. So I played around with finding a movement that encompassed this. This eventually evolved into me making the circle of the globe with my hands and arms then feeling the weight of it when I reached the bottom. Then for how does my character get what they want I imagined Skilling climbing the corporate ladder so I placed my hands on the individual rungs. Then finally for the third question even if I don't want to believe it I know Skilling manipulates the world around him. So I came up with a gesture that encompassed that. The final element was to put all three of these gestures together and find away of flowing one into the other. This would eventually created one strong gesture that embodied all of these questions. There was suddenly a point where it just clicked and the gesture was born. 

I just felt such a strong connection to Skillings inner life in my centre when I started doing the gesture and I would start to feel all most instantly in character. As someone who is so far away from the character in real life it can sometimes take a little but of warming up before I feel completely in character. However now as soon as I do the gesture I just feel 100% there. It's like it instantaneously kick starts my engine and I'm ready to go. I can connect with the given circumstances, my physicality and my imagined landscape all in one gesture. 

This session has been so important to my development. I can now do this PG before I go on stage, during the warm up or whenever I need to feel a little more connected to Skilling in my rehearsals. During the section just before we start doing side stretch and we are repeating "flat back and wide" I will employ this psychological gesture so I'm ready to go straight into being Skilling from the jump. The only fear I have is the more I use it the weaker it might be come; I must make sure it remains to be as an effective of tool as the first time I truly discovered the gesture. 

Laban Effort Work

In today's session we did a mini-workshop on Laban efforts in order to increase the depth of our characterisations. This work aided to connect our bodies with our interpretations of our characters through tapping in to their physical traits. As an actor who works through the body a lot I really find Laban efforts useful and use them with nearly every character I create. However with Jeffrey Skilling at the beginning of the process I could never really find the right effort to match. In this session though I believe by combing a few efforts I started to find where I embody these throughout my journey through the play. I had already worked with Laban efforts before so here's a link to a post I made my I first started using them:

http://samjohnsonexperimental.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/laban-efforts.html

We were taken through all the different efforts one by one blending them into each other by playing with the different "rules". It was really useful instead of stopping to intellectualise and attempt the effort to just move through it.  This meant I didn't have time to stop and thinking about how the effort should look or feel I just did it. This is what allowed me to be truly exploitative and discover uninhibited by my own brain.

In this session I discovered that during the parts where my mind wanders i.e. when I'm counting money I can use flick. It's a physical way to embody Skilling's slight skatter brain. He's always thinking of the next big thing, the next investment the latest million dollar idea so his attention is sometimes yanked away from what he is doing. Through exploring flick I found that those qualities are definitely present within this Laban effort. To take this to the next level I can now play with this scene going extreme with flick so I get it into my body and then turning down when I do it for real. That way my muscle memory will take me to the place my impulse wants me to go moreover creating further depth to this scene.

There were lot's of other moments I could use Laban efforts in. The moment when I'm walking across the moving tables I should think about gliding instead of slow motion walking. When I'm delivering my testimony to win the battle of Enron I should be thinking about the physicality I found through punch. However the most important discovery I could apply is using wring for when I'm admitting to Andy that Enron is not making any money. I don't even have to do anything physically it's just what's happening in my inner life. It's physically painful and embarrassing for Skilling to ask for help in that scene and to have that imagined wringing going on inside of myself with help me root to his emotions.

Overall this session yielded some great results when it came to deepening my level of characterisation. At this point in the process I feel nearly 99% connected to Skilling and just finding these little extra details to add on to making him a three dimensional person is what is going that 1% up.

Dry Run

Today we got to run the entire play in the  new theatre with all our props! (minus the set and lighting). We had a lot of ups and downs; more successes than failures but it wasn't perfect. It was a very fruitful experience to run through our whole show in the space it will actually be performed in. The most surprising thing for me was navigating the new dimension. For instance on the marked out platform there was way less space than I had originally thought. This meant I had to adjust to moving around Kai when he was at his desk or when I needed to come over and talk to Lay. It was important for me to problem solve in the moment as stopping was not an option.

This was a great opportunity to figure out my entrances and exits for the whole show. Instead of just standing off at the side I could finally know exactly where I was coming on and off from. This changed a few things. During the street scene I now know that all the walking and running must be done on the diagonal as we didn't account for the 3 sided audience when we were choreographing the sequence. I either have to run towards A,B,C or D when running and go as far into the exit as possible. If we just walk in straight lines then we will be blocking the audience off from the action and the sequence will not be as effective.

Vocally the space absolutely sucks the sound away. This was really apparent as after the run was over my voice felt a little fatigued. I need to make sure I sustain a well projected voice throughout the whole performance otherwise not only will the audience not be able to hear me but if I'm not constantly hitting them with strong vocal energy they will switch off. Everything about the play is super high energy, from the music to the physical sequences. I must make sure my voice matches this on every single level. I must also be careful of damaging my voice however. I got a note in a previous session about how I was slamming my vocal cords. I was unaware that I was doing this and know that this can be very bad for my overall vocal health. I need to unsure I take part in my own intensive vocal warm up before every single session to avoid this happening again.

As a whole the show felt really strong in the space. We played to three sides very well opening up the performance for every imaginary audience member and not closing ourselves off. We had a lot of zip and pace to most of the scenes meaning our run time was not as high as we thought. I believe this was down to us really driving all the way through the play. In nearly all of the sections people were taking command of the action and hammering it home. It's so important that this far into the process we are now starting to all be in charge of the show and taking equal responsibility to how it runs.

In conclusion this was a good session and we discovered a lot about what real performance conditions will be like. Although we still need to work on discipline as there was a lot of talking going on back stage which obviously cannot happen in the real production. I think it's a case of just really tapping into what's going on around us and focusing on being in the world of the play.

Session Analysis- Going back over and polishing

We've officially fully blocked through the whole play! Getting to that final moment took a lot of energy, effort and whole lot of side stretches however we did it. Now that we have completed staging all the action that will take place we now begin to polish the whole thing. In this session I started to really believe in the play we'd made to be honest. This was an opportunity to return to where we began all those weeks/months ago with a in depth knowledge about what this show really is.

At this point in the process I know I have a real understanding of who Jeff Skilling is as a character. All his motivations, objectives and tactics are deeply embedded with in myself and I don't feel like I'm just presenting him; I'm really embodying him. This has allowed me to be way more playful. However I still feel like I can only be playful in the places I feel confident on. For example when we were polishing scene 8 I felt really inhibited as an actor. I felt like I was just trying to get through the scene. I wasn't able to be powerful and assertive as Skilling because I felt exposed and frightened as Sam. Both me and Kai struggle with the superfluous financial lingo at some points. I've done all my research and fully grasp what a special purpose entity is and the concepts itself don't confuse me however it's the actual language and communicating it all. I am very aware that all of the jargon will more than likely go straight over the audience's heads. This means I need to work ten times harder to ensure that they "feel" like the understand it through the way I present the scene. There can not be a moment where I break the facade. I can achieve this by going back to the text and make sure I understand my objectives and actions for each section.

When we went over scene 3 it was difficult to kick start the raw passion and energy I had before. The scene is literally the battle for a Enron. When we went back over it in some parts it still had that raw element that I found before however for the most part it lacked in energy. This scene really benefited from the polishing as it not only reawakened the action but reinvigorated too. I got a really good note about seeing in my thoughts this immaculate beautiful dream that I wanted to build and having moments of just purely seeing that when I'm pleading my case. This in turn raised the stakes of the scene for me allowing this controlled ferocity to come out. If I was to refer to a practitioner at this point it felt like a Declan Donnelan unblocking moment. I felt liberated in the scene and moreover gave a more believable and connected to performance.

Some notes to work on for next session are:

Mice - Work on the anthropomorphic states of putting on the clothes
Work out a movement sequence with daughter before office scene
Scene 8 - Simplify and edit
More sparkle!
Cut off Olivia on "Son of a bitch" faster
Feel like my manhood has been hurt more during the argument about how many times
Let the thoughts move me and not vice versa
Be more physically violent with people
Office scene needs more zip: don't drop sparkle for arrogance
Don't go British with Fastow
Bigger pause before "Problem"
Get quieter quicker during swap over