Tuesday 24th march- act 2

Today, we did two full runs of act 2 which we have only properly done once before. This was mutually agreed to be the scene that needed to be focused on the most as it was the scene, before our rehearsal today that we had done the least work on.

I learnt today from Rachel’s guidance that in this scene especially towards the beginning, I need to play Lisa in a very unresponsive and dull manner. The message I need to feed across to the audience is that she is angry, depressed and frustrated that she is in the hospital in the first place however even more annoyed at the fact she can’t get out at the moment.

One thing I like about act two is that it is broken down in to twelve scenes which all show how Lisa is progressing towards getting better. I feel each character that appears in this scene to help and guide Lisa is an extremely important part of the play as they directly link to the first act. Act 2 will be the focal point in Dissocia for the audience to see actually how ill Lisa as they will hopefully work out that Dissocia was in fact created by her in her mind.

My major criticism to myself today was that I got my lines mixed up during the vince and Lisa interaction scene with in act 2. This is something I should know by now and only have myself to blame for, Therefore taking this on board, between now, Tuesday evening and Thursday morning, I will ensure I am line perfect because that is where I should technically be at this stage in the rehearsal process.

Overall from today I can see that things are coming together well all in all. The target I have set myself for next lesson is to tone down how I play Lisa in act 2 so she is less enthusiastic about being in the hospital. I am finding this challenging because the whole energy of the previous act is fast paced and witty, resulting in everyone having to be alert and energy full for the duration which brings up the atmospheric feeling. There is such a bug transition between acts and I need to work on showing this transition through my tone of voice, facial expressions and characterisation skills.