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The document discusses the 18th-century play 'The Rivals,' focusing on the romantic entanglements of Lydia Languish and Captain Jack Absolute, who pretends to be a poor ensign to win her love. It highlights themes of power dynamics and social status among characters, as well as the author's personal reflections on strengths and weaknesses during rehearsals, including body language, voice projection, and understanding the script. The author outlines strategies for improvement in various performance aspects, such as confidence, research, and character portrayal.

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chuksijeoma128
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2 views

.

The document discusses the 18th-century play 'The Rivals,' focusing on the romantic entanglements of Lydia Languish and Captain Jack Absolute, who pretends to be a poor ensign to win her love. It highlights themes of power dynamics and social status among characters, as well as the author's personal reflections on strengths and weaknesses during rehearsals, including body language, voice projection, and understanding the script. The author outlines strategies for improvement in various performance aspects, such as confidence, research, and character portrayal.

Uploaded by

chuksijeoma128
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The rivals

The rivals is an 18th century play first performed at


Covent Garden in 1775. The comedic play portrays the
romantic difficulties of miss Lydia languish who is
determined to marry for love into poverty. Realising this,
Captain jack absolute woos her into thinking he’s poor
Ensign Beverley. The play centres on two young lovers,
Lydia languish and Jack Absolute. Lydia who is in
desperate need of a romantic love affair, finds Jack who
pretends to be “Ensign Beverly” an unwealthy ensign
just so he can court her. Even though he lies about who
he is, she doesn’t care about how poor she is and she’s
still willing to marry into poverty. Seeing that different
characters have different society statuses, you can see
how this links to power as some characters have gained
lots of respect, more than other lower status characters.
Power can also be seen in scene 1 when Fag sees his old
friend Thomas. Seeing that Thomas has more power than
Fag, he wouldn’t dare to raise his voice at him when
Thomas got angry at him. Power can also be seen in the
plot as Lydia languish didn’t care that she was marrying
into poverty (lower status of power). Which was
specifically odd in those times because status meant
everything.

Like I stated in the previous paragraph, a detail of


transformation can be seen when Fag meets Thomas and
doesn’t raise his voice at him when Thomas gets
frustrated and aggravated towards him. Throughout this
part of the play, there are also quite a few times where
my character Fag turns his back on Thomas seeing that
he cant look him in the face while he lies to him. This
strongly contributes to the idea of how much respect Fag
actually has for Thomas, hinting onto how this links to
transformation. One reason why it could be linked to
transformation is because of the occupations of the
characters. For example, My character fag has a lower
status in the entirety of the play seeing that he works as
a servant for Captain Jack Absolute. Comparing to a
character like Thomas who has a higher status than Fag
viewing the fact that he works as a Servant to Sir
Anthony Absolute, one of the richest men in the play.
This strongly links to the ideology of transformation
owing to the fact that Thomas works for someone higher
than Fag, automatically meaning he has more power
than him. Therefore, the characters occupation is a
significant reason why power is a strong aspect when
watching about the play “the rivals”. One quote that
shows power is when Thomas is getting agitated towards
Fag and he says very sternly, “do tell me Mr Fag”. This
imperative quote shows how much power Thomas holds
as he can command Fag whenever he wants.

Strength and weaknesses

One strength from the first rehearsal was my ability to


match my body language to the tone of my characters
voice and emotion. This is evident when my character
admits to lying to Michael’s character about who he
works for, and his body language seems uncomfortable.
Another strength from the first rehearsal was my ability
to project my voice at the start of the scene. This is
evident at the start of the scene where my character
bumps into Michael’s character after a long time and I
state my line “sure tis he, Thomas, Thomas” with heavy
excitement. Another strength from my first rehearsal
was my ability to use levels in the scene. This is evident
throughout the whole seen where Michael is seen more
superior to me as my character is less richer than his. So
using this idea, my character is slouching down as his
character is more up straight.

One weakness from the first rehearsal was


understanding my script. As the play was written around
the 18th century, there were many words I didn’t
understand and this was hard to adapt to over time.
Another weakness from the first rehearsal was my ability
to use facial expressions. Facial expressions were hard to
portray as my character didn’t really show any emotions
other than when he was scared and uncomfortable.
Another weakness of mine from my first rehearsal was
my ability to pronounce my words correctly. This is
evident as the script mostly consisted of old words and
phrases so it was hard to pronounce most of them.

One Way I could improveth


my understanding of the script
is by reading more 18 century novels so I can
understand the words better. One way I could improve
my ability to use facial expressions is by adding emotion
to my characters lines so I could execute facial
expressions more effectively. One way I could improve
the pronunciation of my words is by revising my lines
over and over again so I get used to speaking in that
type of vocabulary.

Milestone 2
One strength after a few weeks of practice was my
ability to add actions into my scene so I can make sure
my character isn’t standing still. This is evident at the
start of the scene where my character is sweeping the
floor to depict his poorness and his slow class level.
Another strength after a few week of practice was my
ability to pronounce my lines properly. As the play was
written in the 18th century, some words are written
differently but as I revised my lines, after a few weeks I
was able to pronounce my lines properly. Another
strength after a few weeks of rehearsal was my ability to
work well with my partner. As Michael and I were friends
already, it was easy to work well with him as we both had
the same strengths and weaknesses.
One weakness was my ability to stay confident. For
example as we hadn’t performed in front of the audience,
I hadn’t grown any confidence in myself as I had never
acted out a script with that certain vocabulary before.
Another weakness was my research. As I had not heard
of the play before, it was hard to understand the concept
of the play and it was hard to understand the plot.
Another weakness was my spacial awareness. As we
were still learning all of the lines, it was hard to think
about the spacial part of the scene and where are
characters stood.
One way i could improve my confidence is to recite my
lines and get used to the stage so i dont feel nervous.
One way to improve my research is to take some hours
to understand the play and to revise more. One way to
improve my spacial awareness is to keep rehearsing the
scene and to go over spacing with my partner.

Final write up
One strength from rehearsal was my coordination skills.
For example, if something wasn’t working between
Michael and I, we would go over what went wrong in the
scenes and improve it the next time we rehearsed.
Another strength was my emotional outlet in certain
lines. For example, my ability to match my emotion to
the emotion of my lines were strong. Another strength
from rehearsal was my self confidence. As my partner
and i rehearsed alot, over time i felt confident acting it
out fully without a script.
One weakness was my eye contact. As my character is
seen as a low character in the play, i said most of my
lines looking down as his self-esteem was seen as low.
Another weakness was my abililty to use energy levels in
the scene. For example, as both characters are having a
conversation, there was a lack in energy levels apart
from the part where michael character starts getting
mad. Another weakness was the posture of my character.
For example, as my character is a weak, hard working
man, i believed his posture would be bad.
One way to improve the eye contact in the scene is to get
my character to say some of his lines looking up so im
not looking down the whole time, as it looks
unprofessional. One way to improve the energy levels in
the scene is to add more movement in the scene so it
looks more lively and so we arent just standing around in
the scene. One way to improve my posture in the scene
is to get my character to say some of his lines witth his
head up and with his back straight.

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