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 ]
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