NOTES ON PLAYING NATASHA
During this devising process, I focused mostly on the performance of bodies. I wanted to accentuate the devices Natasha uses at her disposal to advance throughout the play, mainly her sex. Playing with her as an actress, performer, and sex worker, I’ve tried to have a consciousness of the duality, of my own self in the mix. Throughout the pieces, I wanted there to be an awareness of Emma playing Natasha and Natasha at times playing the role of her lover, Protopopov. As a performer, there is always the awareness of an audience. With the virtual theatre scene taking a rise and self-taping becoming the main mode of capturing, instead of in the theatre where seats are filled, there’s nothing but your own digitized reflection looking back. There’s also an underlying frustration with this reflection. Whether it be the consciousness of appearance, smudged makeup, sad vacancy, or the tripod falling during the middle of the monologue for the seventeenth time. Instead of fighting against this awareness, I leaned into it further and is something prominent in these pieces. Again, there are so many facets to Natasha that I didn’t touch on here -- her controlling relationship with Prozorov sisters, her motherhood, her relationship to language, the color green, the inefficiency of maids. The list goes on, as what I’ve created is just the tip of the trauma-iceberg. I’m not sure if I believe in the notion of finished or unfinished, but I will say all of these pieces are in some form of the development stage still -- I hope to continue to explore her life further even after this process ends.