Company

Drama Centre London Rehearsal exercises focuses on the development of the actor, as opposed to a directorial vision. Georgina Sowerby (the director) decided the world of this play would be Moliere and his company putting on a play. The house of in a mess because they had the builders in. We created Molieres company by watching Ariane Mnouchkine's film Moliere. WATCH IT

The actors were asked to put all their lines into their own language. This was so they could say it in their words and then note the gestures they made and transfer that into their character. This also helped the actors fully understand their characters words, and break down the verse.  Personalisation was used for Tartuffe. Every actor had an image of someone in their life that could be Tartuffe, as well as the other characters. Actors playing Orgon were asked to focus on their fathers as a way of getting into an older mindset.

DO IT YOURSELF if you are struggling with the verse form, try putting the whole thing into your own words, it helps the whole thing to make sense!
Drama centre's training is extremely physical and intense, as were early rehearsals. Each character created an improvisation based on their characters life before the play. They also created relationship improvisations. Early rehearsals were physically based.



Actors would work on an animal for their character. They would start by playing fully as the animal, exploring the space and their objects. Then they would be 70% animal, 30% human, then 50/50 and slowly work their way up too 100% human. They would explore lust, hunger, speed, tempo and mood in both animal and human, and see how it develops. The idea is that the animal can inform the characters gestures and reactions. It was extremely important for the actors to find the right animal, so they often scrapped the first one they brought in.

These exercises allowed the actors to play with their character before delving into the text.

Character loops -

The actors made lists of what their characters said about others and what others said about them. They would read these lists to the rest of the cast and they would act it out physically. Then the director would read the list and the actor would join the group and copy the ones they liked. Then they would have the list read to them and they would do what they remembered. This is a way of finding gestures, without the actor having to think of them for themselves. Below is some footage of the character loops

TRY IT your teacher could read out quotes from the play and you could try making your own loops for the entire play