Monday 26th September 2016

We started the day with improvisation activities and games to build our confidence.
Normally,before we begin practical sessions,we gather together as a class and stand in a circle and perform excersises useful to us as an actor.
Rob normally tells us to stand in "neutral",with our arms side to side,and legs shoulder width apart,imagining a string holding our head up,creating good posture,this is important because as an actor it is important to be able to take the shape of a character.I found that in secondary school i had a bad habit or foul posture,unaware of the way I'm presenting myself to the people around me,the position neautral helps me become aware of my posture and helps me come out of that habit,maintaining a dominant posture.Sharon also tells us to do this with no expression,showing no emotion to the people around us,this helps us as actors with our concentration and focus.
From Neautral Rob then told us to Roll our shoulders forwards and backwards,this helps us increase the range of motion in our shoulders and upper back,improve our posture and release tension in our muscles,allowing us to have control over our body.Rob then told us to roll each shoulder in a different direction to the other,I find this excersises challenging as i struggle multitasking,however after my muscles feel relaxed.Rob then told us to roll our body forward,allowing our heads to fall in front of us,still maintaini g a good balance,with our arms to the ground,reaching out to our feet.He then tells us to move from side to side,swaying our arms.we done this for about 15 seconds,Rob the. Told us to come up slowly,as a lot of blood as just rushed to our heads,after this excersise I felt relaxed and more loose in my body,I already felt ready for practicle.
We then worked on our voices,focusing on different parts of our mouth,tongue,throat and diaphragm creating different sounds consonants and vowels,pronouncing letters with over exaduration,working on the different muscles,helping us as actors with projection and pronousiatiin of words.
An example of an excersise using the tounge would be saying aloud the letters "L" & "N",using the tounge we would flick the tip upon our palate working the tounge muscles,
We then done a few tounge twisters,this to me is like speech therapy,challenging me out of my comfort zone,repeating similar sounds,words and syllables.
Tongue twisters can be used to treat speach problems but as an actoress  they help the brain connect tongue movements to sounds.Correct pronousiatiin allows an actor to clearly show their characterisation through speach,helping the audience understand what's going on.
My favourite one is : "Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers from a pickle tree.",probably because I can pronounce this the best out of all the rest.Tongue twisters are a great way of training our voices,which is important for me rasped jalopy as I want to get into drama school,I have to be unique from everyone else being able to pronounce letters and words correctly.
In our acting technique lessons we usually play a few games,these games help us build confidence and help us become melodramatic.my favourite game involved one of our class mates standing outside the class room whilat the rest of us stand scattered around the room,Rob chooses a leader and we have to follow their movements.The key to this game is not following the leader but the people around him/her,this way it's almost impossible for the person to find out who the leader is,it's a fun game where everyone is involved,it helps us as actors/actresses become aware of our surroundings and people around us.
Warms up and excersises like this help me as a actress get more into and involved in what we're doing,it helps me concentrate and get in the mood for practical work,teaching us to be willing and creative in our work.
After excersisig our bodies and mouths we then got into our scripts,the night before I watched the scene from the play and analysed it,also watching different inerpretarions of the play,helping me explore my character(Jokasta).research helped support my development in the script(understanding my character and different emotions that she may be thinking in the scene) and it developed me as an qctoress(helping me understand the depth of research needed to clearly understand a character)I thought thoroughly about stage directions and thought about how I can adapt speach.
I enjoyed the play more and got more comfortable with my characterisation after my reaserch
However I faced a few challenges which were: learning lines,stage directions,body language and my biggest challenge was pronounsinf different poetic terms,as I was unsure of some the the words and phrases from that era I wasn't quite sure about the context of them or how to pronounce them correctly,Me and my fellow partners overcame this challenge by asking Rob what context different words were in,from here we understood how to approach the text as a team,helping us get better diction.I didn't really find learning lines a challenge as I've had a lot of experience learning lines,normally I would record myself reading the other limes and respond,that way I am able to imagine myself speaking to another character.
I felt as I worked well with Emily and Dijarn and we all connected well,none took complete control of the group which was good as in secondary school I was used to having someone leading the group,but in my group we all show  an equal level of dominance,which made me confortable in my group,we all have freedom and show no signs of hesitation when sharing our ideas,which is good for me as an actress as I haven't worked with them before,it's good to work with different people and see
how they interpretate the text.Also if I disliked anyone and disliked them it would challenge me as an actress,putting aside differences and getting on with work.