This is a vigorous physical exercise that works well throughout the rehearsal process. It needs to be done within a group but can also be effective with three or four people. The aim is to find or release the words in a fresh or more spontaneous way, perhaps breaking through the control established once text is learned or prepared for reading. Berry (2001:121)) suggests using a speech that can be spoken together by the actors from the play being explored. The actors come together in a tight group, touching shoulders and sides of the body. All must jostle each other while speaking it through. It is meant to evoke feelings of irritation and being slightly off balance. The words and sounds cannot be smoothly uttered at the same tempo and often well-practiced intonation of phrases takes on a different quality. Another variation on the exercise is for one person to stand in the middle while speaking and the group surrounds him/her at close quarters. The actor in the middle is then “propelled round the ring” (Berry 2001:120–122). I used this exercise both on text and in improvisation and it certainly did have a freeing effect on the energy and firmness of a speech by a character. This idea of resistance between actors allowing for a certain energy and disruption
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in the speaking and finding responses, despite the physical distraction, was very effective. A simple exercise that can be repeated throughout the rehearsal period.
Application: In the early rehearsals I set up exercises and improvisations that would help
the actors discover a sense of connection to the past and places where these characters might have lived. The play looks back into their memories of the landscape they grew up in under Apartheid, both rural and urban. In one of the first three rehearsal sessions, we worked on the ‘tea-party’ scene where character Marta remembers the time when character Allison was introduced to the Olivier family as the new bride-to–be (Fugard 2002:8–11). This is discussed in the earlier exercise 4.2.3 Language fabric―listening, commenting. This improvisation was extended later into placing Marta at the centre of the family stinkwood table and the other characters of either side of her. Marta was asked to discuss her feelings in her own words (not using the text), as the young maid/domestic worker in the house and also how she felt about this new woman in his life. The other actors jostled her from side to side as she spoke and it ended up being a vigorous and honest moment. They also threw in comments from time to time to keep the conversation going. Marta’s insecurity and hopes and bitterness as well as her pride, started emerging in her speaking as she was ‘buffed’ into letting it out. Her emotions seemed to be released without effort. Her English sound also changed slightly to being a little more from the [‘platteland’] or countryside which assisted the actress in her vocal characterisation. This was an aspect she was reminded of by myself throughout the rehearsal process; to find the balance in Marta’s English sound between being honest, from the Karoo, yet also having been exposed to more education through her relationship with Dawid and his love of literature.
The scenario continued to develop as she moved to different spots at the table, standing at times, leaning against it and the actors followed her and wouldn’t allow her to leave. She was asked to talk about the two families: the Barends and the Oliviers, now in a standing position with the other actors pulling in two directions while holding onto her arms. One clearly had the sense of her being in the middle of complicated family matters and not knowing what to do; struggling with where her loyalties lay. These tensions highlighted the triangular set-up between her and Dawid and Allison and made the underlying tone more tangible. This was remembered in later stages of rehearsal during blocking (establishing movement patterns) on the text when more energy and tension between the characters was needed, as well as staying with her authentic character voice.
The ‘jostling’ action also worked effectively on the character Dawid in scene (2) (Fugard 2002:13–17) when he returns home to South Africa and his Karoo hometown after an absence of sixteen years. He is ill from cancer, exhausted from the long airplane flight yet excited and happy to be back in South Africa, even a bit confused about where to go in his
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recounting of the car trip from Johannesburg down to the Eastern Cape Karoo. The actresses followed him on his ‘journey’ and jostled and propelled him at certain points to deliberately disorientate him, and make him feel off-balance, perhaps energised as well as being tired! This helped him visualise the different aspects of the landscape he meets again after so many years and to feel both his fragility, strangeness and yet the welcome familiarity. Something of the disjointedness in this physical ‘jostling’ was transferred to Dawid’s speaking. For the actor it was good to remember and incorporate into other speeches where a similar mix of emotions and physicality was needed e.g. the drinking scene during his depressive time in London (Fugard 2002:30–34) and towards the end of the play, just before his death (Fugard 2002:42–45).