When Natasha Enters in Act One she is wearing a Pink dress and a Green belt and appears flustered as she talks to herself about how she is late and reassures herself about her hair. She is clearly nervous about meeting everyone inside. She also gives of an insecurity and shyness about her in this first appearance. She is an outsider because she is the only one who does not have a form of history with any of the other characters. Her only relation to anyone is through her relationship with Andre. As soon as Natasha enters her insecurity and fear is realised with Olga saying how her green belt is ‘wrong’ and doesn’t go with the rest of her outfit. This shows a clear dominance in power by Olga and also shows how their fashion ideas are very different. Although Natasha somewhat nonchalantly proclaims ‘It’s not really Green, though, you see, its more sort of neutral’, This type of nonchalant speech is passively asserting power and control and is a trait which has to be held in importance when performing the role of Natasha successfully. In the next exchange Natasha says ‘they are very informal here’ I think she is speaking more to herself than anyone else which she also does earlier when she first enters. This is showin
Natasha is the first character seen in Act 2 and is seen prowling with a candle. She stops outside André’s room and asks him what he is doing and to remind him not to have a candle burning in there. This shows a huge change from the subdued Natasha of Act one. She is now seemingly fully in control of André even from this short exchange. She needs to be performed with confidence showing and power. In the next dialogue Natasha speaks she says ‘ there’s a candle burning. Who lit it? – I still haven’t got to the bottom of that’. This shows an even greater assertion of power. Not only is she telling André what he can do but she also seems in control of the rest of the house. Natasha then starts speaking about Bobik, the first mention of their child. This gives the audience an idea of how much time has passed. She is talking of Bobik being cold and maybe being ill. When performing this section she has to be very concerned about Bobik because it is the device she uses to try and stop the Mummers from coming and also remove the sisters out of their room. A key piece of dialogue to the whole way Natasha is played in act 2 is ‘He woke up this morning…he knew it was me! ‘Hello, Bobik!’ I said. ‘Hello, love!’…They understand perfectly well. So, anyway I’ll tell them not to let the mummers in’. This is a very clever idiosyncrasy employed by Natasha in this act. She will talk about something for nearly a whole piece of dialogue then very nonchalantly at the end she will make a decision or affirmation, which gives the opposition not a lot of chance to retaliate to. However in this instance Andrey ‘irresolutely’ says ‘Tts really up to my sisters. They’re in charge of the house. This not only shows Andreys place right at the bottom of the house but also makes a statement, which wouldn’t make Natasha very happy. Natasha twists what he said and replies with ‘they’re in charge, too. I’ll tell them’. This establishes her control and power over the house once again. When playing Natasha in these exchanges it is vital that the role is played so it appears that Natasha has miss-understood or misheard what Andrey has said but at the same time showing –passively- that she knows exactly what he said. This all needs to be done with the use of body language. She has to appear dominant of Andrey all of the time and her voice needs to be firm and clear but also confident and at times almost like she is speaking to herself to make it appear that she is not fully concentrating on other peoples speech. Being the wife of Andrey and the mother of Bobik this gives her 2 power cards to us
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