Medea

Week 1- An introduction to the text

Our first week we were introduced to Sharon and had a wider space for practical and unlike before, as we are in a dance studio we are able to see what we were doing, which helped me as an actress be aware of the audience and helps us all see our body language when acting and how we present yourself when performing, which helps us perfect our performance pieces. We were taught with a similar approach to acting, Like with every practical lesson we start with warm ups and games that have benefits to us as actors/stores see. This lesson we were told to walk around the space with no expression, telling no story to the audience, walking in neutral, hands side by side, head up, letting go of our habits.
Sometimes Sharon would tell us to greet one another using our bodies, in this lesson we had to use the edges of our feet to greet our fellow students, I felt a bit uncomfortable with this exercises as I despise feet, although I understood the concept of this exercise, to get comfortable with everyone.
Another exercise we done using the space of the dance studio involved taking instructions from Sharon. For example she would call out a number I,e 3,we would then get into random groups of three and then create a freeze frame relating to a word she says. She called out the word "Marriage", I was in a group of four, as we had 30 seconds to create the freeze-frame we decided to create a love story with that word, we wanted to be unique. I was the bride and my husband was running away,escaping from me, the other two students acted in shock and terror as a bridesmaid and best man. we were the only group who created a tragedy with this word, the activity was very interesting and got my brain  flowing creatively and fast, making us quickly come up with ideas furthering our improvisational skills. Sometimes we found it difficult to come up with ideas as a group and it was confusing to Sharon when she came over to look, we would find it difficult to settle with one idea however it helped develop us as young actors learning from our mistakes.We were then told by Sharon we had stop moving as a class in sync with all our classes.We all found this challenging as there was no one to stop us and we didn't know when to stop,we tried many times with Sharon as an observer,we had to read other people's body language this way we could all stop in sync,this helps us as actors and actresses with spacial awareness and helps us read the body language of our fellow actors

As we all were new to the environment (dance studio) and our fellow students Sharon wanted us to all learn each other's names.We began by creating a circle,making sure it's perfect,with the same qual space between each student(equidistant from one another).Sharon also made sure gender is mixed so we are all comfortable around each other,away from our friends so we could focus on the excersise objective.She then picked one student to walk in neutral to another student whilst saying the other students name aloud,then that chosen student(by Sharon) takes another students place,this is then continued by the next student and so on.This is a really good excersise,doc using on concentration,being able to communicate with other students and memory.
After this excersise,we would do the same thing but without saying the students name out
loud,instead In this excersise we had to make obvious eye contact with the other student,then move
into there space.Sometimes we would do the the excersise with 2 pairs going at the same time,whilst doing this we still had to maintain the perfect circle.This got confusing at times and we usually lost a pairs,if this happened Sharon would make us start again,maintaining full concentration o the objective of the excersise.
After our warm ups Sharon explained to us we were going to be studying the text "Medea".
She wanted the groups to be random so she told us to get into groups of 5 and stand in a line,she then gave each person in that group a number.All the number 1s created a group,and 2s and so on.
This way we were working with people we don't usually work with.
I was working with Jessica,William and Pele.
She introduced us to the play and explained it is a Greek theatre piece.
We were then given a section of the play,my group was given the first section.on page 1
We read through it as a group first and We decided to work as an ensemble for physical
theatre,working off each others energy,we noticed this speach was all said by one person,so instead of
making things complicated as a group we descided to all speak as if. We were the same character.
We all decided to speak line by line individually to the audience.
This was really effective and worked really well,this technique helped engage the audience the audience,evolving them in the text.the aggressive body language showcases our emotions,shocking the audience.My first line was "move yourself" I said this with aggressive body language and a loud voice to show the audience my frustration.My whole group said there first line in the same voice tone,this was so the speach flowed well and it also gave a clear indication to the audience that we all played the same character.
We said lines together as a chorus in our group,showing the audience we are one and the same character.
Sharon also asked my group to practice without the script,helping us get used to the text,learning the lines quickly.
After practicing and getting comfortable to the text,we were all asked to perform a section of our introduction to the class,I was quite nervous to perform in the sense that it is a new play and it was our first day of practicing,however it is good practice for us as actors to work in a small amount of time.
We were sat like a Greek theatre audience,this helped set the atmosphere of our performances,watching the performances allowed us to understand the character of Madea in more deph,allowing us to make sense of the play.
Whilst reading thought the text we understood that the character of Nedea is a protagonist,reading the lines helped us understand the context of the play.
Whilst observing other people's work I noticed narration worked well but only when the voice projection of the students was immaculate,we didn't include narration as it wouldn't go well with the piece we were performing and we are speaking directly to the audience anyway.
From watching the other groups I also noticed that accents also engage the audience however it was not messesary in the pieces and sometimes it didn't fit with the message/context of the text.
A lot of movement was shown in the introduction pieces,showing me how physical theatre is
important in acting .
There were some pauses in between text but we carried on and it helped us understand that we were
unaware of the transition cues,which we can all focus on.
As individual actors we all showed confidence and good body language,showing good diction whilst performing.
After performing to the class And watching other people's pieces we decided we could improve our movement on the stage,by taking advantage of the space we have for example our first lines are said individually,maybe we could involve travelling and movement as a group.
We also thought we would change the pitch in our voice in some areas of the text for example William says the line "her old man Jason's gone off" and I carry on the sentence saying "with another woman",we both say this aggressively,maintains the same emotion through the whole text,however I
realised saying this sentence with a soft tone will let us introduce a new emotion to the audience,portraying sadness,making them feel sorry for Madeas character.


Week 2: Working on the Medea text
Our homework from the week before was to learn the lines of the text we were given.Luckily all the students in my group including me,learnt there lines,this made it easier for us to focus on the text and the things we need to work on from last week.
We went through our piece as a group and noticed it was different without our scripts as we didn't know what to do with our hands.We knew we had to involve more actions in our piece.
Going through the text a week later created a few challenges like remembering different movements.
This week we focused on perfecting the piece and improving the timing in our group,making sure we don't say lines to fast which was challenging for us as in order to show we were all the same character we had to make the piece flow.
After working on the play for the first part of the lesson we were told we had to bring section one and
 two together by combining our group and group two together.
We were all confused on how we were going to combine the two groups together and struggled to
figure out what we were going to do,we had to do it so the audience makes sense of both texts.
We sat down as a large group and read through both texts together,we noticed how both texts flow together with a similarity of Medea as the main character.
Our group still wanted to keep the idea that we are all the same character but were struggling as we had to have everyone on stage at the same time.
Our first idea was to simply just have a clear transition between both pieces but we them realised that wasn't creative and we wouldn't be able to fit both groups on stage if we were to do it like that.
Group two text was mostly a speach,speaking directly to Medea.
My group decided instead of speaking to the audience,we would speak directly to group 2 which was a very clever idea as the text that they say is them trying to speak to Medea and our text is directly to an audience,telling them to speak to Medea.
As Medea is the main character we wanted to focus the audiences attention on her.Rose played the character of Medea so we wanted her upstage,in front of everyone.
We then decided to have group two in a circle centre stage with the backs facing each other,however we figured out a way to incoperate that with the first lines of my groups text.As we had the idea of us saying our lines to them instead of directly to the audience,we decided to show aggression towards them,pushing them centre stage to that position whilst saying our lines one by one.inpushed Toby whilst saying my line "Move yourself ".
This was really effective and helped us show the story on Medea in more detail.
For group twos text we decided my group was going to show the story of what they are saying through actions,we didn't want to take the attention from there group so we acted in the background.We fir gourde out a clear,swift transition from our text to there's: on the line Toby says
"come to the door" our group turn around with our backs to the audience in a neat line,this in a way is
a metaphor,showing the opening of the door.
On the lines Yasmin's says"there will always be masses of food on the table" we tried to have our
group from back stage come and join group two but we realised that wouldn't work as the attention from group two would have been drawn away due to my group travelling to centre stage.
We were the asked to perform,as everyone's group was joined together we had to perform as if we were actually performing to an audience.Groups 3 and 4 were positioned right stage,groups 5 and 6 right and my group and group 2 were positioned centre stage as were were the opening of the performance.It was interesting to see all our groups together and it felt like we were all about. To perform on stage.
Our performance was not perfect and it was clear we needed to get used to the new staging of the performance.
We received feedback on on our performance,we got very positive feedback on the staging of both groups and Sharon was able to outline the clear drawbacks of our performance which were the movements that some of my group done whic didn't fit well with the performance ad the timing the of piece.
After this lesson I felt more comfortable with performing the piece and I learnt more about the movement and transitioning.
I also learnt what ideas work well with different text,I thought more about the audiences prospective and what they will think when we perform.


Week 3- Combining the sections into a while piece of drama
Like every lesson we started with a simple warmup.This lesson we played grandmas footsteps.This game involves one person with there back to the class whilst the other students have to run up to the person and tap them,to become the next "grandma".It sounds easy but the twist in this game is that
the one student is allowed to turn around at anytime and the other students have to freeze.this game
teaches us as actors to maintain stillness,helps us become alert and aware,it's good in the morning as
it wakes you up.Lately we have changed the game slitly by letting the person who is
"grandma"telling us how to freeze.Tgis week I played as grandma,into,d everyone to freeze as a
tree.This twist on the excersise helps us maintain our balance,developing our awareness.it works on your controll and it can also be a trust excersises in which the students i who play grandma put trust in the students as there backs are turned away.
Another game we played this week was called "yes let's".This involved two students completing actions suggested by both students and they take it in turns replying with "yes let's".
My partner to start with was Rose,she suggested we go swimming,I replied with the words "yes let's" and we completed the action,pretending we were swimming overexadurationover the action of swimming,moving our arms.This excersises shows our confidence as actors,we swapped partners after a few sets of completed actions,getting more comfortable with the people in our class.This excersises put us out of our comfort zone which is important as sometimes as actors we are given
roles we maybe dislike.We were able to take risks with each other,energising us for practical work.
We began practical work,going over lines and had many run through so if the play however Will was not in so we had to split his lines,me and Pele took charge in learning his lines,with our team working skills we overcame that obstacle,maintaing full concentration on our objective to perform the piece using physical theatre.
We had a quick run through of each section as a class using the mirror in the dance studio to show our reflection.This really helped us as we could pick up every detail of our piece and we were able to see it from the audiences prospective,however as we could see everything,small movements from students whilst performing was distracting and took away the attention from the performers.This made me think about why it's important when I'm on stage to keep still whilst other people are performing,the audience can pick up tiny details and movements that you do.
Our performance seemed slow and many people forgot lines,I.e  Pele forgot to say Wills line and we had a long silence in our performance.we all had the energy but not the right state of mind.
We had a break,ate some food and instantly I felt energised.Will was back and we got straight into practice.it was confusing at first because now I was used to saying his lines,but got into the flow
quickly.This helped me discover the hard role of acting,anything could happen and unexpected
changes could cause distrust ion in a group,luckily our group had a good connection with one another,we were able to figure out solutions quickly.unlike Georgia's group which I noticed had a lot of tension in there group.Chuef was absent this week and they seemed to struggle without him,they were not working well as a team unable to work on their own initiative and as a team.
Our group had to perfect our spacing as me will Pele and Jess were not visible in the second section of  the play.I took the role of sorting out the staging and told my group to spread out so that we are on the sides of the other group,making us visible to the audience.
Sharon gave our group  the choice of learning a second piece of text,she mentioned that it is not compulsory to learn it and if we were not able to we didn't have to.
We read over the text and immediately thought of heart break.
The staging for this was quite rough as we didn't have enough time to perfect it.We worked as an ensemble,playing different characters whilst reading each line.


Week 4 -Rehursals for performance
Our tutor wasn't in today so Rob left us in charge of getting on with our own work.Most groups were unfocused talking to there friends but my group showed good responsibility and we went over our piece a few times,working on the small details.
Our main objective was figuring out were Laueren and Ruby would come in as they were late joining this term.We decided as a class to go through a quick run through of the piece,so that Ruby and Lauren can see the staging and figure out where to come in.we were faced away from the mirror so that we had full concentration of what we were doing and not get distracted from the movements of other students.
I was surprised at how swiftly we worked and how mature we were as a class.We developed our ability to work together as an ensemble,tuning in to each other.
I'm our section we took on board the things we messed up on in the week before and worked as a group for example,confusion of lines due to Wills absence.we went through it and got used to the lines we learnt.
Because our tutor was absent there was less focus in the class which was a drawback for all of us as our performance was so close.
People lost focus and. Became very irritating at times.

3rd october

On the 3rd of October we were taught the difference between showing a telling in acting,the difference between being truthful and being fake in the way u present yr characterisation as an actor.this links to last weeks lesson of reciving and responding,how u take in information from another character & think about it,without overexadurating for the audience.
This lesson highlighting the importance of "reading yr fellow actor",there body language and speech,this will help u responed to them in way tht it relevant to yr characterisation.
Improvisation can help actors in the way they approach a script,it helps actors be aware of other actors and allows them to have clarity in their communication between them and there fellow actor/audience,improvisation enhansises an actors state of mind,allows them to branch out with their creativity which forces them to act on the spot without thinking about lines,this will help an actor build confidence on stage.this links to last weak lesson of acting in response to your fellow actor,acting in response to them,thinking instead of overreacting a response

In this lesson our main focus was improvisation,using real life situations and acting them out,creating our own setting and environment.
Our first improvisation task involved us individualy packing a suitcase,my first thought was tht I had to actually imagine myself packing the suitcase in real life,I'm a very clumsy person and forgetful,so I acted in a fustrated manor,packing things in a rush,this helped me think about uta Hagen technique "An actor needs: talent, imagination, a grip on reality, desire to communicate, character and ethics, point of view, understanding of human behavior, total discipline.".the idea that an actor may have talent but an actor needs to be able to feed off of his/her fellow actor/actress understanding there behaviour and responding in a correct way.
In our first improvisation task we were told to speak aloud out inner thoughts,expressing our emotions through speech.As I acted in a fustrated manor I was grunting a lot and speaking to myself getting annoyed,forgetting things,this would probably happen in real life and as an actress it is important to relate to real life situations when put yrself in a make believe environment to truthfully show the audience yr character.
Our next improvisation was putting a needle in a thread,I started after everyone else as I wanted to observe wat everyone was doing,I noticed everyone looked the same,concentrating on getting the needle in the thread so Iike before I decided to actually put myself I. The situation.this improvisation lesson was very important because it's teaches us how to act alone rather than reacting then responding,it also helps me because In my Odiepus piece I have to react a lot in response to my fellow actor,taking In the the information he says and acting upon it,I did struggle on that because sometimes I am unsure of what todo with my body and how to present myself in front of an audience but I remenered that "Acting is behaving truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
Our last improvisational setting involved us pretending to be at a post office
In this lesson,one of our classmates came late and she was told by rob to complete one of the improvisation games she missed out on and perform it to the class.
She was told to pretend to hold a present in a busy line.
like most people she done the obvious,look at watch action, she acted in a frustrated manor,over exadurating her facial expression and body language.
Rob taught us that the audience pick up the smallest things,they can pick up tiny details so its not nessesary for us to over exadurate

Glasgow girls trip September 29th

On the 29th of September me and my classmates went on a trip to watch Glasgow girls.My first impression before watching the play for some unusual reason was that it was going to be a cabaret/burlesque musical,this was because the title of the play.
I done a bit of research on the play on the website "nationaltheatreofscotland.com",I watched the trailer,skipping the summary of the play as I didn't want to spoil it for myself,
after a bit of research  before watching the playi found out it does not involve carabet But gives a serious message to the audience about asylum seeking.After researching this I was quite disappointed and was not looking forward to watching the play although I was interested in what message it was going to convey to me as an audience member.
We travelled the the royal Stratford east theatre by public transport(tube the. dlr).It was fun traveling with everyone and luckily no one got lost.After arriving at the theatre we were given our tickets,most people sat with their friends.Whilst entering the theatre the first thing I noticed was the was the stage,it was a normal flat stage,unlike the swan theatre it had no facinating compartments,although there was unusual apparatus on the stage.We were told our seats were at the very top of the theatre,I was quite worried to weather we were going to be able to see what was going on from so high up but satisfied that we had a birds eye view of the stage,meaning that we were able to see what people below us couldn't and maybe catch up on tiny details in the play meaning we could understand it more.When I was up there I struggled to find my seat and then I noticed the audiences seats was shaped in a U shoe shape,this is probably so the audience where I was sitting was able to view the play and more seats could be fitted in,it probably also helps the cast when there singing so that everyone can hear
Them and their voice projection can travel to everyone in the audience.
This helped me realise that as an actor in theatre it is important that your voice is loud and projected at all times because usually the audience you perform to is big and not everyone will be able to hear you if you were just having a normal conversation on stage
It helps me understand why it is important to excercise your mouth and throat before performances,if
you don't your throat will probably be sore and your projection and pronousiation of words wouldn't be to a high standard.
The stage was set up as a playground.At first I was confused as to why because my research said that this play was about asylum seeking,but then I remembered it involved school girls and I understood the setting.inthought that it was quite risky to have a playground as the setting throughout the whole play and was thinking about how how they will use the same setting in different scene.This made me think about staging and spacial awareness.As an actress it is important to use the whole performing stage,it helps me understand how the games we do in our "acting techniques" lessons contribute to this,so I must make sure that I put the things I learn into action.
We got in our seats and I could hear "Scottish music",this was probably to set the mood of the play and set the scene before it started.
The first thing I remember was 3 bright dashes of light on the stage accompanied with 3 loud banging noises,I believe this was for effect,it really shocked the audience,some people even jumped,it drew the audiences attention and engaged me in the play,enhancing the atmosphere.This helps me as an actress understand that with any play or production piece im involved in the begginging needs to be strong and engage the audience otherwise the audience will be bored an uninterested from the beggining and may show off putting bodylanguage,making you feel nervous when performing.
The characters introduced there selfies one by one through a song,I noticed all characters showed a high level on enthusiasm when performing.This made me think about an excercise we did involving three questions: "what am I doing right now",what do I want now?"and what did I just do?".We were taught to involve these three questions and think about them as we are performing,developing our characterisation,I link these three questions to the enthusiasm of the actors in the performance because there enthusiasm helped me understand how alert actors are and aware they are of there surroundings,involving those three questions would help the audience understand an actors characterization more,enabling the actor to act truthfully when performing for example if I were to
show sadness as an actor my initial thought proses would lead me straight to showing
an overexadurated forlorn facial expression and maybe even a fake cry,but if I were to involve those three questions and act truthfully,I would have a different approach and maybe show what I would do in real life,holding in my emotions but making it clear to the audience that I'm sad.This also links back to a lesson with rob where we were taught the difference between showing and telling in acting.
However I thought that as I watched the play sometimes the actors were a bit to enthusiastic and went onto showing and not acting truthfully but in some parts of the play it worked well.This made me think about  the difference in commercial acring  and theatre,with commercial acting your in front of a camera so the camera can easily pic up your facial expressions,whereas with theatre,it's live acting infront of a large audience,so most likely small expressions and body small body language. Would
not be suitable for a large audience as they may not be able to see or understand everything,but when acting for film ect it would be easy for the camera to pick up the tiny details you do.This links to a book I'm reading called "Acting techniques"-Michael Powell,it helps me as a young think about what pathway and career I want to go in with my acting and if I really dedicated.
Back to the play,as well as the characterization in the actors,the accents also stood out to me.Most of the characters showed a clear Scottish accent but(being critical)in some parts of the play some of the
actors  in my opinion didn't have a strong accent and to me it was confusing and a drawback in the piece from this I learnt that it is important to maintain a strong characterization throughout the role
your playing so you don't loose the story and confuse the audience.
The voices of the actors were always loud and even with the accents very clear,which was shocking to me as I'm sure not all the actors were from Glasgow and had to learn the accent,which is very impressive especially when they sang.
At times I thought there was to many songs and it took away the serious side of the piece and the message became unclear to me.In any piece you do it's hard to give a serious message to the audience whilst entertaining them.I don't beleive this was the directors intentions and as I read the dersciption of the play on "Nationaltheatrescotland.com"   It was clear the directors intentions were to raise ]