13.1.15

We started the class by talking about our presentation on Friday, and how we can self-reflect on them to make them as good as possible. We talked about how the points of the presentation should be quite simple and clear and you should know the presentation, so that you can connect with the audience, rather than just reading the slides. I feel that from last year I can improve on the length of the presentation, since it was very long and got a bit boring after a while. I need to keep to the most important points, rather than going on into too much detail. This way, I also leave room for questions and do not overwhelm the audience.

Today's agenda was to really start working on our first scene and get some blocking done for it. With this scene, we especially wanted to focus on the relationship between Viola and Orsino, since Viola, pretending to be Cesario, is still Orsino's servant, but still as a closer connection with him. A lot of this will be shown by the characters kind of pulsing from each other, getting closer, but then going further away from each other, in the fright of their own emotions. So, the scene starts with Orsino laying on his chair, all blue and sad, and Viola standing with Curio more stage-right, a safe distance away from Orsino. But as Curio leaves, Viola start gradually moving closer to Orsino, highlighting when Feste comes to sing his song. But after realizing, what they have almost done, they both start avoiding each other. They share a connection again when Viola tells about her family, but Orsino soon forgets anyone else but Olivia and orders Cesario to go and visit her again.

A(very bad) diagram of the blocking in the scene.
V= Viola
O= Orsino
C= Curio
F= Feste

I think we still need to tweak this quite a lot, since a lot of the action at the moment it happening stage left around the sofa. We could use a lot more of the stage to our advantage, that we are not doing right now. I still like the fact that Viola keeps gravitating towards Orsino, or kind of hang around his favourite spot, since she is obviously in love and this shows her affection towards him.

What next?
Next, I feel I should be memorizing my lines for this scene since I do not have that many lines, but also to be able to sing the song when doing the scene, since it will affect the length of the scene. I need to figure out the melody for the song by researching the different versions and either find the right one, or choose the one I like the sound of and adapt it into our scene.