You're a mean one, Mr. Helmer
Last night Marie and I worked on blocking.
An interesting element we added: sexual tension. The "elf in the moonlight" seems to work well as some sort of...well, sex-type thing. Instead of making Torvald suspicious right from the beginning, it shows weakness--and he almost falls into her trap until he realizes what she might be asking.
We're getting a better grasp on how to use space between us--there's a nice elastic quality to our connection that stretches for tense moments.
One concern I have, though, is that Marie's finding it easier to play off a more menacing Torvald. It's easy to make this guy unlikeable and almost as easy to make him intimidating. So we need to decide whether the good but misguided Torvald's there at all, because at this rate he'll die soon...
Scene as melodrama
We performed our scene in class as a "bipolar melodrama". Which drew some laughs in unexpected places--Torvald really is getting worked up over nothing it seems, and it's true that some of his complaints seem especially ludicrous. Now we have to see where the melodrama is appropriate and tone down other parts so it doesn't all look ludicrous...
Stylizing the scene
So Marie and I tried a few different motifs for our scene. Some of the most interesting:
Melodrama: Plays remarkably well for Nora, since she's freaking out throughout much of the scene. But she loses a little credibility as the calculating schemer I thought she'd be. We decided Torvald is too "stoic" to really get melodramatic about these moments, which either really anger him or he nonchalantly writes off.
Drunk: Interesting because some of the lines don't make a whole lot of sense. Like Torvald getting worked up over the use of his Christian name. Also it justifies some of the interplay between them by suggesting this is not the way they normally treat each other.
Angry: This was my favorite. It really makes the exchange feel like part of an ongoing fight between them that just keeps escalating over time. Some parts--like where Torvald's consoling Nora--turn utterly sarcastic. But I think that also steals from the genuineness of the soft and tender moments between them.
We decided we could play with melodrama and make things really big at first, then scale them down.
