Anatomy of a Suicide - Part 18

Lesson: Monday 11th and Thursday 14th December 2017

In these sessions, we worked on Scene 4 which we had discussed and read through in the lesson previously as highlighted in my previous AOAS blog post. In each section of the scene, awkwardness seems to transcend throughout the conversations that people are having. Both Carol's and Bonnie's scenes appear to be comical in their awkwardness whereas Anna's scene is more serious and the awkwardness is caused by the previous actions of Anna whereby she began to hit on her father, John.

In the beginning of Anna's scene, she is the only character who is talking, leaving John stood, staring at her whilst holding a balloon - the balloon is a sad attempt at John trying to connect once again with Anna, something it seems he hasn't been able to do for a very long time, and could suggest that John wants to see her as a small child again so that he doesn't have to think about what has transpired before. John appears to be trying to overcome his emotions during this scene due to seeing Anna look like her 'normal' self again. John doesn't say anything due to this which leaves Anna to try and take control of the conversation, and as there is silence when she doesn't speak in her section, makes the scene vastly awkward.

In the stage directions for the scene, there are no clues as to who is standing/sitting. We decided to have Anna sitting down and John standing throughout the whole scene. This could show that Anna is slightly more comfortable in this situation because she has been in the rehab centre for 78 days up to this point. John may be standing because he feels less comfortable than Anna, but also may be so overcome with emotion that he cannot physically sit as he is frozen in place, simply staring at his daughter.

A word that confused me when we began working on this scene was "facetious" and how it related to what Anna means/is saying. As it seemed to be a complicated word, it came as no surprise that Anna knew this because she has a degree and can also say the word "veracity" whilst drunk/high. The word facetious means treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humour and as Anna wasn't being facetious, this means that she wasn't trying to be funny (in which the line could be changed to "I wasn't being funny"). This means that she was being sincere when she asks John is he was happy now.

In this scene, Anna is trying to make the most of the situation (as is John) as thy haven't seen each other for a long time which is why she is trying to keep the tone of the situation light to keep some of the awkwardness at bay - which just makes it more awkward to some extent, because she brings up the last time they had seen each other. When I first read the scene, I wasn't as light with my tone as I should have been, instead making Anna's tone more serious which made the overall tone of the scene heavy. The scene is meant to be quite heavy emotionally, but this comes later in the scene and mainly from John which is why I would need to change it at the beginning of the scene.

During this rehearsal, we played around with the speech in the scene, whereby the two Johns (Marlon and Peter) only spoke the consonants in a sentence and the two Anna's (myself and Bella) only spoke the vowels in a sentence. By using consonants, it makes John's speech stuttered which shows how emotional he feels he is in this scene and also shows how he can't get words out properly which is needed for his speech in the scene.  By using vowels, it makes Anna's speech more earthy and calm which is what she appears to be earlier in the scene, which also links to how she is trying to make the tone of the scene light.

Below is a video of a section of the scene with all three generations, as performed by Cast B. The majority of the action and tone within the scene is the same so what Bella is doing in the scene is largely what I would also be doing in the scene and how I'd be reacting.




We worked more on this scene in Thursday's lesson where we took the time to analyse part of the script and choose where we should keep pauses within the scene or remove them if the script didn't allow this to work. For example we added some pauses when Carol says "I don't" (which is then echoed by Anna and Bonnie as it is said at the same time) to when Dave says "Sorry?". We added this here to show confusion for Dave as to what Carol is saying, especially as she doesn't finish the sentence and her speech comes after a long period of silence from her end of the stage. On Anna's section, after she says "I don't" at the same time as Carol, she says "It's a process" at the same time as Dave. The pause here for Anna allows her to think about the process she has gone through to be speaking to John again after so long. After Dave's "Sorry?" we again added a pause here before Carol says "Nothing". This could show that either Carol doesn't want to share what she was thinking with Dave (which is entirely understandable because he is an estate agent and Carol doesn't know him well at all) or that she doesn't realise that she's spoken at all as she was thinking about the house so intently. Her "I don't" could signify how she doesn't feel as though the house will fit into her idea of what her family home should look like, possibly because she doesn't want a family to begin with as she'd rather be dead.

We do need to work on this scene more to make it a lot more smoother so that the lines said at the same time are said accurately. To do this, we would need to work out what the cues are for our lines. In my opinion, I think that having cues from a separate scene makes it harder as an actor to respond to my own situation as Anna. For example, during a run through, I responded to Carol's
"Can I have a minute?" as though I was talking to her, so made my tone quite snappy and harsh, whereas it should have been softer because I was responding to John.