Fog

Fog
14th
Today we had anew introduction to the "Fog" concept.
Amongst the group we all discussed what direction we want the second part of the fog piece to be like
We came to a conclusion that  we wanted to have it directed and performed as an abstract piece and we didn't want it to be scripted,only the factual information.
We then decided to play a few games to get our heads in the right mind frame.
We started with a simple excersises which involved ourselves and a small ball, to play this game we had to stand in a equidistant circle and someone had to start by saying another persons name in the circle,the persons name who has been said would say another persons name we then continued this until everyone's name had been said and it would end with the first person. We went over the sequence of names a few times so we remembered the order.
The next part of the game was to walk towards someone in the circle but that person had to be different to the person who's name u said.We took this in turns and like before it ended on the first person.
The next part of the game was to say aloud the names in consecutive order and to walk towards your chosen person at the same time.
Our last and final step was to throw a ball at someone,following the same steps as before,ending on the first person.
this got very confusing but we realised the key to the game was to not laugh,or speak,but to concentrate on what we were doing.
As and actress concentration is important and this game helps me to get "in tune" to my fellow pupils.
We then went into an improvisation game where four pupils had to sit on a chair infront of everyone else and this pupils were given a dirty bottle of water.the scenario was that we were all thirsty but the water was really disgusting.
Me Toby Emily and Pele went up first.
Our reactions to the bottle we require similar we were all hesitant to "drink" it but we showed thirst through our actions I.e
I picked up the water,showing the audience my thirst,opened the lid,smelt it then put it back on the table.
All four of us then had different techniques of avoiding to drink it first,Tony explained to us that he will drink it second after someone else does.
We then all realised that the audience was frustrated that no one was drinking it,as to the audience they would want to know what it tasted like

18th
Today we started of with a few improvisation games we started off with the dirty water bottle we were introduced to on the 18th and our task was in small groups to show the effects on pollution on
People.
In my group we decided to devise a small piece in which two people came to a small experimental campaign.
The two people (Pheobe and pele) had to taste two different substances and in the end Pele realises they are contaminated and have a bad effect on your body.
The message behind this piece was that people may see things as normal,but the reality is that fog is very dangerous and it can effect society.
We tried to end it on a cliff hanger and in the style of Brecht "get the audience thinking about what they saw".

The next part of the lesson was very interesting.We were showed an advert and in groups we had to devise something to go along with the advert.
The advert was about a car and it had a strong narration describing the features of a car(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hE5iNOZfRrg)
Brian gave us ideas that we could show the "car" as a human and we could actually show the description of the car as a human.
My group decided to create the car.
We started in a square shape one person facing another in a four,we had our heads down and on the first few lines we would raise our heads.we then got into a formation with two people at the back and two people at the front me and Emily would then act out the speech for example when the narrator said "intelligent wipers)we would create the wondeipers with our hands and twist our heads when the narrator in the advert said oil.
This was a very abstract performance and was well constructed.
The other group decided to actually device a piece showing a car crash this was well thought out and it showed the hazards of drink driving,like me,Pheobe,Juan and peles groups decides campaign piece it got the audience thinking about the message behind the performance.




19th
Today we got into the historical side of fog
And we learnt about the great London fog in the 90's.i learnt that it affected Hunfrends and thousands of people and thousands lost there life's from the fog.
It's really interesting to learn about the historical background of the Fog itself and getting to and understanding of how dramatic it really was.
Brian then gave us a difficult task to do.
He showed us multiple pictures from a book and in groups of three we had to choose one of them a show every part of the picture,not missing out any detail.
My group chose a picture of a man on a carriage led by a horse in the fog stopped by a child with a light,
We didn't realise we had to show everything including the lamppost in the back ground
My group found this task challenging,we decided to get into character showing each person as they are in the picture
It was hard to get every detail.
The other group chose the picture of an arc and a man standing in the fog under the arc.They began with a freeze frame of the picture but then got into a story of there own.
Both groups began to tell a story and we realised it was put natural instinct to show and dramatise our pictures.
I feel as though we done this because we're used to acting and devising pieces Stanislavski style,instead of showing the audience something different and getting them thinking about the performance.

CPT Fog:

week 1
working in cpt created a ne environment for us,we got  feel of what it would be like in the theatre space
14th
Today we had anew introduction to the "Fog" concept.
Umongst the group we all discussed what direction we want the second part of the fog piece to be like
We came to a conclusion that  we wanted to have it directed and performed as an abstract piece and we didn't want it to be scripted,only the factual information.
We then decided to play a few games to get our heads in the right mind frame.
We started with a simple excersises which involved ourselves and a small ball,to play this game we had to stand in a equidistant circle and someone had to start by saying another persons name in the circle,the persons name who has been said would say another persons name we then continued this until everyone's name had been said and it would end with the first person.We went over the sequence of names a few times so we remembered the order.
The next part of the game was to walk towards someone in the circle but that person had to be different to the person who's name u said.We took this in turns and like before it ended on the first person.
The next part of the game was to say aloud the names in consecutive order and to walk towards your chosen person at the same time.
Our last and final step was to throw a ball at someone,following the same steps as before,ending on the first person.
this got very confusing but we realised the key to the game was to not laugh,or speak,but to concentrate on what we were doing.
As and actress concentration is important and this game helps me to get "in tune" to my fellow pupils.
We then went into an improvisation game where four pupils had to sit on a chair infront of everyone else and this pupils were given a dirty bottle of water.the scenario was that we were all thirsty but the water was really disgusting.
Me Toby Emily and Pele went up first.
Our reactions to the bottle we require similar we were all hesitant to "drink" it but we showed thirst through our actions I.e
I picked up the water,showing the audience my thirst,opened the lid,smelt it then put it back on the table.
All four of us then had different techniques of avoiding to drink it first,Tony explained to us that he will drink it second after someone else does.
We then all realised that the audience was frustrated that no one was drinking it,as to the audience they would want to know what it tasted like

18th
Today we started of with a few improvisation games we started off with the dirty water bottle we were introduced to on the 18th and our task was in small groups to show the effects on pollution on
People.
In my group we decided to devise a small piece in which two people came to a small experimental campaign.
The two people (Pheobe and pele) had to taste two different substances and in the end Pele realises they are contaminated and have a bad effect on your body.
The message behind this piece was that people may see things as normal,but the reality is that fog is very dangerous and it can effect society.
We tried to end it on a cliff hanger and in the style of Brecht "get the audience thinking about what they saw".

The next part of the lesson was very interesting. We were showed an advert and in groups we had to devise something to go along with the advert.
The advert was about a car and it had a strong narration describing the features of a car(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hE5iNOZfRrg) Brian gave us ideas that we could show the "car" as a human and we could actually show the description of the car as a human.
My group decided to create the car.
We started in a square shape one person facing another in a four, we had our heads down and on the first few lines we would raise our heads. We then got into a formation with two people at the back and two people at the front me and Emily would then act out the speech for example when the narrator said "intelligent wipers)we would create the windwiipers with our hands and twist our heads when the narrator in the advert said oil.
This was a very abstract performance and was well constructed.
The other group decided to actually device a piece showing a car crash this was well thought out and it showed the hazards of drink driving, like me, Phoebe, Juan and Peles groups decides campaign piece it got the audience thinking about the message behind the performance.




19th
Today we got into the historical side of fog
And we learnt about the great London fog in the 90's.i learnt that it affected Hundreds and thousands of people and thousands lost there life's from the fog.
It's really interesting to learn about the historical background of the Fog itself and getting to and understanding of how dramatic it really was.
Brian then gave us a difficult task to do.
He showed us multiple pictures from a book and in groups of three we had to choose one of them a show every part of the picture, not missing out any detail.
My group chose a picture of a man on a carriage led by a horse in the fog stopped by a child with a light,
We didn't realise we had to show everything including the lamppost in the back ground
My group found this task challenging, we decided to get into character showing each person as they are in the picture
It was hard to get every detail.
The other group chose the picture of an arc and a man standing in the fog under the arc. They began with a freeze frame of the picture but then got into a story of there own.
Both groups began to tell a story and we realized it was put natural instinct to show and dramatise our pictures.
I feel as though we done this because we're used to acting and devising pieces Stanislavski style,instead of showing the audience something different and getting them thinking about the performance.

Introduction to Brecht and Metamorphosis

Tuesday 19th
Today in tutorial lesson we had a discussion on Alienation ,Epic theatre and Bertolt Brecht.
Rob gave us a small scene script from
He then chose three people to act out the first scene.
Georgia began and she had to read the text of Vlasova to her son(who tiny was playing).
She began to read it then rob stopped her midway,He told the class to imagine that the actors were in an old Victorian kitchen with everything around them I.e stove,sink and he even gave her a prop to work with as a spoon to stir the soup.
He then told her to be emotionally connected whilst reading the text, to feel guilt whilst reading it aloud,this way the text was more believable and we felt emotionally connected to the actors performing.
He then told Rose to read the text but this time there were no proPs and she was just reading it I. The normal school environment,she was told to say normally but show passion in the way she reads it,to show enthusiasm whilst reading the text this was showing brechts idea of of
the audience believing in the action onstage,became emotionally involved leads to them loosing ability to think and to judge.
I learnt that Brecht's way of showing an audience a piece of text by making an audience think about what the actor is saying  is different to stanavlaskis idea acting is more then the physicality and vocal expression of an actor.
I noticed that when Georgia read aloud the text It showed more realistic and she had more emotional passion towards what she was saying where as rose' passion was more to delivering the speech an Alienating the actor by to distancing  the audience from emotional involvement.

20th
We started the day of with a few warmup excersises focusing on our articulation of words,to do this we had a few tongue twisters and we were given different personas to say them in I.e "Peter piper picked a pepper" Rob told is to say this in the style of an over excited kids news presenter,to do this you have to over articulate the pronousiation of words and by doing this we worked our tongue and mouth muscles.
We then got into a few real life scenarios one was to act as a "begger"
Everyone had quite a smile pose.Rob then asked a supply teacher if we acted well as beggers and if it was quite a good impression she said yes and she agreed we all portrayed a good impression.We then all gave suggestions as what you could do to show your a begger.Thought prosseses,past experiences,many things were said to show the emotional attachment of being and portraying that character but Rob then explained to us that in the style of Brecht it's not nessary to have those things in mind as long as you show and portray to the audience that your a begger.
The next task was in groups to show a car accident scene but in the style of Brecht.
My group decided to narrate whilst acting the scenes.we started with text describing how we all went out and got drunk and we were now on our way home.
The narration was said normally with no over expression.
When the car crashes Leonie had to physically show herself getting out of the car and trying to open the other door Obiously to the audience
The aim of the task was to look at the narration and have an episodic piece that showed a message but didn't let the audience form an emotional attachment.
My group struggled with the task as were used to dramatising our pieces.

In the evening we worked more on Brechts style of theatre.
Our task in groups of four was to present a political hazard that is going on now in today's society.
My group decided to go with the "#Blacklifesmatter" campaign and we wanted to show the downfalls of the American police and how they effect the black society.
The begginging of our piece we introduced the black life's matter campaign.Qe decided to have me and Pelw act as wife and husband in a car and a police officer approach us.
We had narration through the piece and wanted to take away emotional attachment whilst narrating to follow brechts disbelieve of catharsis theatre.
When the officer came up to us(Mimi)she asked to see the drivers(Pele)documents
And when handed to her she said to the audience "I don't believe him" this gets the audience thinking about the situation and the police officers opinions towards Pele.
In the end we ended with saying the "#blacklifesmatter" but I done a count down before to show that it wasn't a scripted piece.

In our last lesson we worked on the Play
"Metamorphosis" as me and a few other people were in Fog we this was our first time being introduced to the play.
Sharon explained to us that it's an abstract piece which involves no props and some narration.
I had to read through the begging to understand the piece.
I was put in a group with ruby,Leonie and yasmine. We worked on a scene in which a character becomes a bettle,
We started with all of us backstage going on one bye one in a diomond formation.
Yasmine started making a ticking sound with her mouth whilst moving her head in three directions.i followed the rythm of the head turn whist crouching down with my arms on my shoulders.Ruby and Leonie were knees down on the floor banging to the rythm of the sound.
It got louder and louder and the tension built up,when it was at its peak I screamed stop,this was to show I was the character wishing the creature,confused as to what was going on.

Proposal Form Notes

Section 1 (rationale)
Before this course I never knew or experienced what was really involved in being an actress and going into the acting industry
I never understood how to reenact realism
In my performances,I never understood the techniques that help my performances in the theatre to appeal more to an audience.
Now I learnt that acting on stage involves a lot physical theatre techniques and in this course I had the chance to learn these techniques through workshops working with a range of companies such  as Camden youth theatre,they taught us
There's more to acting beyond the Stanislavski techniques "the physco-physical approach to actor training"
My tutor has also taught us a lot of key techniques putting my focus towards the detail I.e uta havens technique of creating the forth wall in acting to substaining realism this idea of keeping the forth wall has evolved in out final project
Reenacting different scenes sustaining realism by keeping the forth wall.
As an actress I will carry these techniques on my journey applying all the tactics I have learnt into the industry.
Section 2(Project concept)
Unlike the other projects this is the most interesting one to me
Blackout gives us a chance to apply all we have learnt into this performance.
I play a big part as a police man in this project and the one tho g I learnt from rob at this course is tht research is key.
I studied the different ways to approach the ways of creating a character,also showing obvious to the audience my objective of the characters reference.
As the play is very flexible
Me and my group have so far managed to create a very abstract piece
Involving different techniques,theories and tactics we have learnt over the past months.
We involved everyone in the play as we believe we can all project the controversial themes involved in the piece I.e racism violence and love
A clear piece of movement involved in our piece was when we learnt physical theatre techniques with Camden youth theatre
Untiring and tiring laces,over exaduration  the movement to overtake the idea of realism and show the audience clearly
The main goal in this play is to be inventive
For example in the second scene we have a split scene
Two class mates playing the same person
One in present one in future
This is very risky as we don't know if the audience will understand the concept straight away
The main goal i want  to achieve in this project is to make sure the audience understands the story well whilst maintains the dynamic we have created
Using the stage space as our redo use and the audience because in some scenes we break the forth wall,interacting with the audience for example
When Leonie is playing James she's acting to the audience and speaks to them aggressively,using sentences like "who's first then".
A barrier we have is that everyone is in to practice all the time
To overcome this we all split people's lines
So incase the person is absent at the time of the performance someone can take their lines.

Section 3(Evaluation)
To make sure I reflect and evaluate my work correctly I will look over the research I have done and make sure I have somehow adapted all of it in my piece,also whilst I'm practicing and devising I will put in the research and skills I know.
My blog work is key in showing evidence of the play and the project prosses
It shows some difficulties but the way we overcame them,looking back at what we have done is also a necessity,looking and viewing how we can improve the work we have already created.
Working with my other class mates so far on this project is interesting,it's interesting with makes effort and who comes up with ideas in our group.
We are all very strong minded in our group and sometimes people's egos disrupt the project process but to overcome it we all come to an agreement that no one is in charge and we all can put in ideas.

evaluation

On the 16th March 2017, we performed our production of 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' by William Shakespeare.On the 16th of March

Before the performance my initial expectation was that there were going to be a lot of mistakes because this was the longest performance we have done as a group.
My experiences with shakespeare have been challenging as i find it hard to remember the language especially with speeches or monologues,so when I was given the role of Silvia i was quite nervous
Overall the rehearsal process in my opinion was quite slow especially when my group done run throughs as the pay is so long and certain scenes needed to be perfected.
The performance went well,better than i expected,considering that we only had one technical rehearsal i was very surprised that everyone got there cues correct.
In the begging of the performance i feel that it went very quickly i could say that it was a bit rushed
i believe thats because of nerves and a downfall that i picked up on in this performance is that everyone concentraed more on the delivery f the lines than the performance itself and if i as an actor could see it I’m sure the audience picked up on it as well,
The performance ran smooth and although i was nervous i very much enjoyed the play and performing as Silvia.
There were a few mistakes when people delivered there lines but that didn’t surprise me as the play is in shakespearian language and thats quite common with long performances.

Whilst performing the play i rWhilst performing this play I remember the. Feedback I got given by my tutor:
Speak louder
Show Silvia as an innocent character
The way I deliver my speech is usually down to my confidence so to over come this I used Stanislavskis taught technique of acting realistically,imagining myself as Silvia taking over her voice and physicality,once I do that the audience doesn't really become visible to me so I can concentrate on being Silvia.
I do believe my overall delivery of the speech and punctuation was excellent.
To show Silvias innocence the first time I walked on stage I wanted to stage I wanted to show my interest in Valentine
But then when he shows the same interest back I have wanted to shy away
To show I'm afraid of love
This worked really well and from the feedback I got from the other classmates after the performance it came across as I expected.

We had a minimalistic set and we didn't include many props the main props we had were costume changes.
When we performed everyone knew what costume changes they needed to get into and it ran smoothly
The main prop we had on stage was a chair
This was used as a balcony
In rehearsals in the theatre space the chair was usually in the wrong position
Stopping me from taking it off stage easily
But when performing it was put in the perfect position allowing me to take it off stage without any difficulties.

The overall performance was entertaining.
Our energy levels were high on both performances.
The scene I was mostly cautious about performing was my scene with Jiulia(Leonie).
It took me and Leonie a few weeks to actually understand how both characters were around each other and how we both were supposed to react on certain lines.
We had to do background research on the characters to understand how they were around each other.
I watched the actual play on film to grasp
The message we both had to show to the audience.
When we performed it flowed so well
It was clear that we both bounced off each other.

To improve the performances
I would say that we all needed to practice with the props more.
Most of our rehearsals were without props we would normally have to mime the props so we didn't have that much practice.This lead to a few mistakes in our performance
For example when Valentine tried to pick up the sward it flew to the other side of the stage.
This got a few giggles from the audience which was not intended.
Another improvement could be the pronunciation of words.
A few actors in this performance had bad punctuation at  moments on stage
This could seem like an actor is blocking ,As an audience member could see it as the actor had forgot there lines.
As an actor it is always good to correct and work on punctuation whether it's with tongue twisters or exercises ,it's really obviously as an audience member which actors have a good punctuation of words.
Individual feedback for myself would be for myself to concentrate of the punctuation of words and how i deliver them.There was a certain word that i couldn’t pronounce in rehearsals but when performing i remember the feedback i got from the mispronunciation- of that word and i managed to say it correctly.

My last scene with Valentine and protius was my favourite scene,in the performance there was a muddled up  of lines between me and protius but we managed to overcome that and delivered our lines chronologically.
In the next performance i would like to enjoy the moment as thats something i struggled with.

Two gentleman of Verona

 Who is Silvia?

Silvia is the spirited daughter of the Duke of Milan and Valentine's girlfriend. When she falls in love with Valentine, she rebels against her father's wishes and makes plans to elope. Silvia is so determined to be with Valentine that, when her father banishes Valentine from Milan, Silvia runs away to the forest, where Valentine is
I had to read the play over to understand it fully so I set that as my goal for the next two weeks.
Weekly:
 today we line read  through the script to get used to our characters .
On  Monday we had worked on specific scenes and just running through them and line running. Nothing really changed. We worked on the Julia  scene in order to make it a bit less messy and it was flowing a lot better. We didn't receive any feedback as it was self-directed learning, so nothing had really changed or been altered.
Me and Leonie focus on the meaning of the lines to understand the lines more
Getting used to this backend forth speech
We realised it is a quite touching scene between both characters
Showing each other that they care for Julia
this week we had a full run through in front of the other group and Rob. The run through went quite well. In my opinion, the run through was quite smooth up until the last ten pages of the script then our group began to decline in fluidity. Our group is still struggling with lines and cues in a lot of places so this needs to be worked on.
Friday was our technical rehearsal so we worked from cue to cue
In this rehearsal we didn't perform whole scenes
Just the cue lines and endings
This helped us get familiar with the cues
Allowing us to know when we exit and enter different scenes


Today we line read through the script to get used to our characters. On
 Monday we had worked on specific scenes and just running through them and line running. Nothing really changed. We worked on the Julia  scene in order to make it a bit less messy and it was flowing a lot better. We didn't receive any feedback as it was self-directed learning, so nothing had really changed or been altered
Me and Leonie focuses on the meaning of the lines to understand the lines more
Getting used to this backend forth speech
We realised it is a quite touching scene between both characters
Showing each other that they care for Julia
this week we had a full run through in front of the other group and Rob. The run through went quite well. In my opinion, the run through was quite smooth up until the last ten pages of the script then our group began to decline in fluidity. Our group is still struggling with lines and cues in a lot of places so this needs to be worked on.
Friday was our technical rehearsal so we worked from cue to cue
In this rehearsals we didn't perform whole scenes
Just the cue lines and endings
This helped us get familiar with the cues
Allowing us to know when we exit and l different scenes
Next week is out final week,I am confident in myself and the performance and my other class mates


Learning some of my lines over the half term made it easier for me to focus on my acting in the play as Silvia and get into my characterisation  without looking at the script. In rehearsals Rob was adding the feedback to the scenes so that they don't seem scripted so when I was doing the scene with Julia he was sitting down although when I was rehearsing with Rob in the theatre when Julia was absent Rob was portraying Julias character and he told me how the scene should be so he said Julia will be standing and about to leave and you will go up to her asking her Who gave the letter to her.
This scene was one of the hardest scenes to perfect as Leonie didn't really know her lines.
Here is some of the feedback I received.

today was our technical rehearsal,
everyone seemed ready and was engaged in the rehearsal
the cues were all good however some people did come in to early.
Me and Leonie’s scene went really well,the conversation we had bounced off each other.

There are many themes in this play here are the main themes:
friendship
love
betrayal


Previous experiences (Shakespeare)
Prior to this project I have auditioned to drama school? and colleges in Shakespearian language,although i am not very confident with the language.
I have also analysed and studied the text in english lessons and for exams.
I also studied latin which is quite similar to the language.
The language is not new to me but i can not say i am an expert.

Acting Challenges
I know that i will face many challenges but my main challenge is  confidence,as im performing in
 Shakespearean language I’m not confident with the speech and punctuation,

Targets  
My targets for this project will vary throughout the unit.
 line learning is a target for me as i know i do struggle.
As an actor it is important to know your lines as it prevent "Blocking".
Characterisation is also another target for me,being able to become another character  by the way they talk walk,is important to me and that is mainly down to the research i do on the characterisation of Silvia.
 Uta Hagens three questions will also help with my characterisation as it allows me to become the character and understand their thoughts.

Warm up and characterisation activities:

For actors warmup are essential whether it's tongue twisters or tongue exercises .
Our normal daily exercises consist of tongue twisters and stretches.
Warmup a exercises the brain and the body.
The first warm up we done involved two people repeating the numbers 1,2,3 in chronological  order,you say the number 1 then your partner says the number 2 then you say the number 3 then it's repeated from the beginning .At first when Rob was explaining the exercises I thought it was going to be easy
It didn't seem challenging at all but when got into it,it was hard to remember the sequence.

The activity that helped my characterisation of Silvia was the Activity that Sharon introduced us to.
We had to pick an emotion that outlines our character in the play
I chose innocence as I relate that emotion with her.
We then had to match our emotion with some else in the class who's characters emotion is similar to ours.
Mine was Alexandra's character who's emotion was kindness.
We both had to enter the middle of the circle and walk around (as our characters)
It was a competition to show who could show there emotion the best.
We both showed similarities in the way we presented our character physically.
We both walked "gently" and our feet were soft on the floor.
I done a twirl around Aleks and by doing this I won the competition.
This was a good exercises and by doing this
I understood how to present my character of Silvia.

research links:
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/twogentlemen/

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jul/23/the-two-gentlemen-of-verona-rsc-stratford-review

Unit 8-Final prroject

 When recieving the scipt my first initial thoughts were on hown we would show the story of the play,whilst reading i realised the script has no given settings,no given characteristics,this was exciting because i knew we could make it our own,to show the story of James(the main character of the play)in our own way.
I realised the script was a platform for us,so my firrst goal was how was i going to tell the story of james to an audience.
We got into our group and together we gave our first initial thoughts on the play.
One student describes the play as "Awful" and was not excited to begin the final project from just reading the scipt
Another student described the play as "Interesting" and he was excited to develop the play into our own.
After reading the whole sript i picked up upon the main themes of the play which are:
Pain-James shows a lot of pain from his Grandfathers death which then leads to the next theame of:
Anger-The death of his grandfather was the rooot of his anger but another theme has encouraged his anger which is:
Bullying:Throughout the play James is constantly bullied by his classmates and  the effect it has on james is very obious when reading through the script.
Status-The bullies show a high status in the play as james shows hes frightened of them



Rehurrsals:
 The day after we recieved our scipts we decided to start creating the piece
For the first scene e had a bit of confusion on what we wee going to do.
Our first idea was to have Juan as james basically reading all the scene one,telling the story to the audience.
We then put ourselfs in the position of an audience member and we realised how unsatisfying it wouldbe to have someone on stage narrating all of scene one.
As a group to overcome this we then read over scene one analysing the text we decided to create a simple prrison cell with four people surrounding Juan,who at this moment is playing the role of James.We wearnt fussed about creating transitions onto the stage in the beggining as that wasnt our main focus.
The four people who created the jail cell where me,Leonie,Ruby and Georgia and for scene one we decided to split the script lines leonie had the firrst lines then rruby then me then Georia
With my given lines i realised there was a character involved(The policeman).Whilst reading through me and my group realised it wouldnt make sence if i were tto play the role of a narrator and a policeman,so i took the role of the policeman adn Ruby took my otherlines.
For my role as the policeman i had to reasearch how a policeman would act,to do this i looked upon many interviews with policemen and criminals.I noticed that they have a very dominant physicallity to show this i kept my back straight and held my hands behind my back.
In the first rehursals  i took advantage of these actions but i knew it wasnt enough.
I wanted to make obious to the audience that i was acting then role of a policeman so i decided to play around with different accents,It worked very well with my character.
We worked over this scene and our goal for this particular scene was to make it as abstract as we could,breaking the forth wall and interacting with the audience.
We didnt want to create a solid jailcell so we decided to add movement to the words "Metal Door".

After our first scene we wanted to still keep the abstract atmosphere we created in the firrst scene.
We decided to create a splite stage for ourr seconde scene showing the main characer of james int he present andmpat.
We decided to keep the present character of James as Juanso the audience will undestand our idea clearly.We involved both past James as it would be easyto show the story of James' abusive father whilst the Present James character accts as a narrator looking back at the story.
For this scene we wanted to focus on stanivslakis idea of Naturalism as abuse is a very touchy subject.
Initially we had the idea of Pele(who acted as abusive father) to hit jess to the floor.We then thought that would be too cliche and it wouldnt really suprise the audience.We also didnt want to involve too much physicality inour poject as we wanted the adudience to think about the story,we thought that too much physicallity would takeover the project.
So to create tension between both characters we desided to have Pele walking around frightened jess
who is looking at her bruses in the mirrror.

Our next scene was the scene where james' Grandpa is introduced
we had the idea of everyone prresent on stage in a "Vshape"
whilst creating this scene we had too many ideas coming together,we had to stick with a few and this caused a few arguments to ocour.
i noticed that as a group certain individuals aspire the role of dominance in the group which makes it hard for other people to get on with work.

The scene after that is whereby we gotto show the audience James' struggles from being bullied
by his classmates,
Dijarn introduced the storyline by describing how fake the bullies were and how they pretended to befriend him.
In this scene the main goal wa to show power and dominance.
To do this we wanted to showthe bullies walking  through the classmates to james.
We then desided on a transition from dijarn as james to Cheif as james.
To do this,after the confrontation from the bullies Dijarn will walk through everyone whilst narrating and chief will staying character as a bully follows him.
We then all pull him down and circle him.,as we circled him we used movement to represent the battering of James,they were very effecive or example as Dijarn was narrating upstage he would readout what the bullies done to him one example is "Kick him in the chest"n for this line we all stompped on the floor whist maintaining the circle we created around the cheif.

In the beggining of the play we created a jailcell this is something my group always go back on when Juan is narrating the piece.My group done this because we wanted to show James in present telling the story of how he got in that position,
In this scene physical theatre is involved i.e when describing people taking away James' laces and belt me and Leonie physically went down and created that action making it more believable to the audience.


The next scene(Scene 8) is a scene i have narrated.
The video below shows the scene and how we have adapted it.
This scene starts of with me narrating the piece and it then leads to the bullies creating noise backstage.

When the bullies enter the stage the most obious emotion to portray would be to be frightened but my tutor told me to show James' character as prepared and used to the bullies and the battering i was about to encounter,i use Stanford Mieseners idea of the actor to "Get out of there head"
so i can really relate to James' character.
This scene for our group is a very iconic as it shows what james had to go through whilst at school.
There are many moments when we are able to create forth wall in this scene i.e when me and Dijarn Look at the audience as james looking in a mirror and repeat the words in sync "Im not a gimp",This was really effective and it helped the characters understand that we are both playing James.
Another key moment in theplay was when Dijarn and Pele switched places on the lines "Cut yourr hair pure short" we done this because we wanted to show the transition of james after cutting his hair and as ppele has shorter hair than Dijarn this was very effective.
(video)
 Scene Ten introduces the theme of Extremisim.
This iswhere James does the Nazi salute infrnt of hisclass mates.
Georgia had the tough role of playing both teacher and narrator she had to change her pitch in voice when playing the techer,
I remeber after rehursig thhissceneour tutor Rob gave her the solution of solving things physically.

in scene 12 we had James who is played by Yasmine centre stage,this is where James shows his thoughts on a horror film hes watching,he seems to enjoy it.
Me,Leonie,Ruby and Georgia played James's mum and we all stood in a line behind yasmine whilst having a conversation with James.
We split these lines like most scenes
And we had a call and response flow.
We all turned our back at the same time on the lines "see you later" then faced back to yasmine when she explains that she puts on a horror film
Next we involve physicality on the lines "slash,chop,rip and stab"
We came up with four easy movements for these words which we all done in unison.
We all then got out of character and acted as James's classmates
To do this transition we had to be realistic to the audience,to help me I used
Uta hagens idea of
Knowing WHO you are to  find your own sense of identity in a character
This helped me switch from James' mother to classmate.
When rehursing this scene some students where still on scene and acted as a "blocker" stopping the actor from acting realistically and also stopping the other actors from acting as well as they could do.
Over the past 6 months I have learnt that it is important to learn lines as my tutor won't be able to give us constructive feedback as the actor wouldn't be acting trithfully on script.

The performance is coming up soon and we are all very excited we ran over particular scenes perfecting them and made sure we knew what we were doing.
The scene we focuses on today was scene 3 which is where James' grandpa is introduced.Me and Georgia introduced to actions on the words "ulsa flag" creating new movements for our piece.
We also focuses on transitions and staging
Although we haven't had out technical run through so it was hard to perfect the staging.


Our technical run through went better than expected
Everyone got a chance to perfect there cues and it allowed us to imagine ourself on stage.
It was unusual having such a wide performance space to practice on.
I was excited to see what the transitions would look like with the lights and it was all coming together very welll
The focus in our group was very good
And no one was "blocking" this helped our group have a quick run though before our final performance.
Colours like red and blue were used in the more Intense scenes and other colours like white were used when the main focus was on the character of James.


 

Research and character development

After reading https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/aug/25/blackout-underbelly-davey-anderson
before the creating the piece I got a clear synopsis of the play 
the first thing that stood out to me was 
"a young Glasgow boy wakes up in a prison cell one morning and can't remember how he got there"
this instantly caught my attention as it got me curious to how the boy got into the prison cell.
 It gave a grief description of the play and it gave another persons perspective
It's interesting to read about the play after reading the script and how people have different opinions from me,after reading this i knew all my classmates would have different opinions of the play and it would be interest when creating our final project



Another Link http://www.samuelfrench.co.uk/p/12241/blackout-anderson
Which gave me another synopsis or overview of the play.
Both links have no characterisation reviews so I knew we had to make this our own

The difference between this source and the one before is that this gave us out target audience age group

Another spires of research I got from "The actors thesaurus"
Is a quote:"Actioning energises rehearsal and revitalises performance."
This links back to Robs idea of solving thing physically,when I volcano physicality the performance and rehursals become more up lifting.

Performance evaluation:
The final day has arrived!
Most of us wearnt as nervous as we expected as we knew the audience wouldn't be large and we were performing in front  of coming faces.
My first thought before the performance were "I wonder if anything will go wrong".
I had my concerns about the transitions from scene to scene.
Our group performed Very well and the transitions worked,it was clear to the audience that we rehearsed for a few months on this performance.
I stayed in role as the character of the policeman and because of rehursals it came naturally to me
I didn't feel as I needed to force that character on stage.
My groups energy levels and enthusiasm were high and we're all in tune with eachother .
Throughout the year I have stifled with confidence as an actor but in the final project I didn't feel as I was nervous in anyway,this really shows my growth and how much I have learnt in this course.

The staging didn't work as well as I thought and in some scenes it was quite disorganised.
Some people forgot their cues and entered the stage at a wrong time
But the audience didn't seem to notice and it ran smoothly
The main areas to improve on are cues and staging.
My classmates allowed me as an actor to feel confident on stage and act trithfully

his is the individual and group feedback we recieved
Cues-All cues during the transitions need to be quick so the play can flow easily
React to the Bullies-Don't hesitate when the bullies arrive,make sure you show bravery and courage
Speak up-It is a large audience so quiet voices won't be heard
No blocking - have to be off script 2 weeks before the performance
Show the action of "laces" - Leonie and I had to over exadurate  the laces being taken off so it's obvious for the audience to see
Be enthusiastic- it's the final project
Final time to show your talent
 

 
referencing:
Gardner,Lyn.Blackout,Theguardian,25th august 2010
Available at : https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/aug/25/blackout-underbelly-davey-anderson




Blackout context and research:

The play blackout is written by Davey Anderson and is a true story based on a young Glasgow boy who's anger destroys his life.
Davey Anderson himself interviews the boy who is currently Eighteen,in the interview he describes himself from a younger age (15) and the crime he committed.
At the time of the interview he was on probation.

The original play was very simplistic
It only consisted of four chairs and an audience who surrounded the stage by sitting in front and on each side,so people got different angles of the play.
The play has been redone many different times,it has been more w
Elaborate and features like props are added to different characters and lighting is added for effect.

Who is Davey Anderson?

Davey Anderson is described as a Dorector musician and a writer from Glasgow.
He won the arches theatre new directors award which gave him a platform allowing him to stage debuts his play-SNUFF.
David Andersons plays include
Blackout,Snuff,wired,Clutter keeps company,The static,rupture,the static and scavengers.

Romperstomper-
Romper stomper is an Australian film written by Geoffrey write.
The film is similarly themed to The "American history's X",both films play a key part in James' anger outburst.
Romper stomper is about  aggressive
Neo Nazi skinhead gangs opening in Britain.
One person ends up in prison and tries to stop his brother from heading in the same direction.
The theatre similar in both films are
Anger,Violence,andExtremism.

James' Outbrurst

In the story "blackout"
I do believe that the main causes of James' aggressive out burst was:
-His grandfathers illness
-The bullies
When producing the scene were James' grandfather was introduced we wanted to show his character as brave but also very caring for James.
To show this we had many ideas
I.e on the line "and then he got his cancer"
Everyone in. The line at that time would hit there chest and then me (who played the grandad at that moment) would react to the firsts and act as I've felt it on my chest.
Initially we had the idea of hitting our chests with no sound
But we figured the sound was more effective and it went with the movement.
Initially for that scene we wanted to keep the split scene we had in the previous scene somehow ending up in a semi circle,in the Demi circle who every plays grandad would go up on stage.
This idea was directed by shena and inspired by a play she saw but we then discussed and came to a conclusion that it would be too long to figure out the transition between the split scene and semi circle,so we agreed on two straight lines facing the audience.
We disgusted the balance between physicality and voice and throughout the play struggled on which we would focus on more but after rewatching the play
On YouTube I do think that we go used more on the voice and presentation rather than movement.
To help me understand James as a person
I have done research on who the actual person is As the play is based on a true story.
The person who was interviewed was 18 but describes his former 15 year old self,to me this could mean not everything may be 100% correct this helps me allow myself when playing James to "over exadurate" my personality.

Another thing that I believe caused James outburst was the bullies.
In the play they were shown as fake and malicious.
We wanted to show there fake side in there actions and voice for example
In one scene the bullies come up to James each saying a line and patting his shoulder.
We initially had the bullies saying their lines like normal acting to James pretending their friends but we realised that didn't quite show their true feelings towards James to the audience.
We then thought as a group on how to elaborate this.
I came up with all the bullies having a fake tone when walking towards him and saying there lines.
By this i mean a more high pitched sarcastic tone,this helped us show T the audience the malicious side of the bullies.
We also had the idea of Leonie and Jess saying the line "can we come and sit for a while" in sync,this shows that it was planned for James.

unit 7

Skills and How  you have developed them

I have learnt many skills with my progression as an actress,The main skills have stemmed from learning about two famous practitioners Stanivslaski(He taught me about the Magic if technique,helping me imagine myself as the character I’m playing making my presentation more realistic to an audience).and Uta Hagen who taught me to question myself when acting in role ("Who am I? Where am I? What do I want) i used these questions when acting the role of James in my final production for this course,In a scene where i was narrating the main question i focused on was "What do i want" This question helped me focus on the characters needs so that i could present a realistic dynamic for my classmates tow irk with,If i didn’t have those questions in mind i would have struggled to present the character as well as i did.
Another skill i have learnt and have developed over the past six months is being in the moment.Many times in rehearsals students don’t give 100% and say there gonna wait till the performance day to do something but the reality is if they don’t do it in that moment of time its never gonna happen.
to elaborate on these skills i take in constructive feedback and see where i can improve by involving more skills.
One of the main skis i have developed is my characterisation.
In my Shakespeare performance i had to learn to act innocent ,swift and content,i had to completely change my body language and my pronunciation of words.I took part in many exercises    to perfect my role.
To help with characterisation i was introduced to many workshops such as Camden youth theatre
They taught us many physical theatre techniques,mainly  partner work.This taught me that characterisation involves physical body language and the way you present yourself in a role.
Confidence is also important to me.before this course i was never comfortable acting in front of people but now i have been introduced to so many new people and they all make me feel relaxed and i am confident working with them.

What is the essence of performance for you

To me the essence of performance is being able to forget all the stress about having to remember lines and having to remember transitions and guess ,my favourite part of acting is becoming and acting as another character,physically and mentally,saying what they would say even down to walking like them.
Stanivslaski taught realism and acting truthfully,to me thats the essence of performance.

Future pathways

Joining this course has helped me realise what step i want to take next,i do believe that drama school is the best option for me,i have already looked at many schools and one of my first choices is Silvia young,i have done many classes and performances for Silvia young and i do enjoy the environment and new people that go there.
I decided to goto a drama school instead of a university because i know know that there are more connections with agents and more opportunities,i currently am not 100% on what or where i want to go hopefully in the next couple of months will know.

Section 1 (rationale)
Before this course I never knew or experienced what was really involved in being an actress and going into the acting industry
I never understood how to reenact realism
In my performances,I never understood the techniques that help my performances in the theatre to appeal more to an audience.
Now I learnt that acting on stage involves a lot physical theatre techniques and in this course I had the chance to learn these techniques through workshops working with a range of companies such  as Camden youth theatre,they taught us
There's more to acting beyond the Stanislavski techniques "the physco-physical approach to actor training"
My tutor has also taught us a lot of key techniques putting my focus towards the detail I.e uta havens technique of creating the forth wall in acting to sustaining realism this idea of keeping the forth wall has evolved in out final project
Reenacting different scenes sustaining realism by keeping the forth wall.
As an actress I will carry these techniques on my journey applying all the tactics I have learnt into the industry.
Section 2(Project concept)
Unlike the other projects this is the most interesting one to me
Blackout gives us a chance to apply all we have learnt into this performance.
I play a big part as a police man in this project and the one tho g I learnt from rob at this course is that research is key.
I studied the different ways to approach the ways of creating a character,also showing obvious to the audience my objective of the characters reference.
As the play is very flexible
Me and my group have so far managed to create a very abstract piece
Involving different techniques,theories and tactics we have learnt over the past months.
We involved everyone in the play as we believe we can all project the controversial themes involved in the piece I.e racism violence and love
A clear piece of movement involved in our piece was when we learnt physical theatre techniques with Camden youth theatre
Untiring and tiring laces,over exaggeration  the movement to overtake the idea of realism and show the audience clearly
The main goal in this play is to be inventive
For example in the second scene we have a split scene
Two class mates playing the same person
One in present one in future
This is very risky as we don't know if the audience will understand the concept straight away
The main goal i want  to achieve in this project is to make sure the audience understands the story well whilst maintains the dynamic we have created
Using the stage space as our redo use and the audience because in some scenes we break the forth wall,interacting with the audience for example
When Leonie is playing James she's acting to the audience and speaks to them aggressively,using sentences like "who's first then".
A barrier we have is that everyone is in to practice all the time
To overcome this we all split people's lines
So incase the person is absent at the time of the performance someone can take their lines.

Section 3(Evaluation)
To make sure I reflect and evaluate my work correctly I will look over the research I have done and make sure I have somehow adapted all of it in my piece,also whilst I'm practicing and devising I will put in the research and skills I know.
My blog work is key in showing evidence of the play and the project process
It shows some difficulties but the way we overcame them,looking back at what we have done is also a necessity,looking and viewing how we can improve the work we have already created.
Working with my other class mates so far on this project is interesting,it's interesting with makes effort and who comes up with ideas in our group.
We are all very strong minded in our group and sometimes people's egos disrupt the project process but to overcome it we all come to an agreement that no one is in charge and we all can put in ideas.

4.48 Physcosis

The Play I'm recreating is 4.48 Physcosis,I am very farmiliar with this play and for my audition to the college I used a monologue from this play.
"4.48 Psychosis" has no dramatis personae or stage directions. It is a lyrical text intended to be performed for the stage, and individual directors are tasked with determining how many performers are involved in,This way I thought it would be very easy to recreate the play,making it my own but keeping the main concept.
The main character is a female woman suffering from Physcosis,I am farmiliar with the behaviour of someone with physicosis and the unpredictable actions that could happen because of it.
I am certain that there is a personality disorder behind the character.
As the character has multiple personalities instead of one person being the main person I would put different people behind different personalities
In my play I have decided there will be
5characters portraying different emotions:
Saddness,excitement,confusion,guilt,and depression
Scene one
But you have friends
The helper tries to motivate and draw the patient out but receives no reply.
The scene is repeated within Scene Twenty Three.

To recreate this scene I have decided to used all characters that show different emotions pushing eachother to the hospital & speaking to eachother but the reaspince from eachother isn't clear
Much like in Physcosis Communication between clinicians and patients is at the heart of psychiatric practice and particularly challenging with psychotic patients. It may influence patient outcome indirectly or be therapeutic in its own right.


a consolidated conciousness
A difficult scene.  The patient reveals the torment in her mind.  The image of cockroaches is used, and will come back later.  A seething mass of cockroaches reflects the dark thoughts going on in the patient's head.  The thoughts are deep in the mind, like in a darkened banqueting hall
The broken hermaphrodite is someone confused about their own sexuality.
 I am going to keep the main basic of the scene,keeping the imagery and strong description of visions
But for this scene all characters Are deceiving there emotion in there own emotion for example with the emotion of excitement the characte would portray the emotions in an exciting way positive about the world
 A few scenes planned:

Scene Three
I am sad
The patient is depressed and in despair .  The patient has "lost interest in other people" but at the same time "cannot overcome my loneliness".
A brother and a male lover are mentioned by the patient.
Whereas the lover can sleep under the influence of drugs (induced unconciousness), the patient cannot sleep
 I used this scene for my audition into the college,I am very farmiliar with the things said & the "cry for help" that Sarah Jane outlines in this scene
She describes herself as sad,not able to sleep or eat,quoting that things are against her.
For this scene I put all characters saying the scene vocally line by line.
The lines will be split up in the way of which lines best suit the emotion
The person who portrays sadness will go first with the first line
"I am sad"
The next line
"I am confused and I feel like the world I hopeless"
Is going to be said by the character of confusion and so on.

Scene Four
As a test of how lucid a patient is, they may be give a test such as count down from 100 in steps of seven.  Here the patient cannot do it.  Later in Scene Twenty the patient is lucid enough to give the numbers correctly.
In some performances the numbers are not spoken but written.
This scene is a very key scene in the play
i do believe that Sarah is secretly sending a message to the audience,writing a suiside note
This scene outlines her strength and countdown the her death
As there are 5 characters in my play
I would have each character writing vigorously up to ten
The silence will captivate the audience and engage them into the play

Scene Five
It wasn't for long
Thus is a short scene but also very important,the lines it wasn't for long are very sinister in the sence that Sara has an alterioir motive the audience isn't sure about

Scene Six
Have you made any plans
The helper and patient talk together "Who are you blaming? / Myself".
 This scene shows how patients with Physcosis blame thereselfs and out there selves down,
It's am intimate scene between the patient and the doctor
So I would have 5 doctors for each patient
Each patients portray there guilt in there emotions

Scene Seven
Body and soul can never be married
This scene shows that she can't have a normal life
"Body and soul can never be married"
This partt of the letter shows how
Sara knew life want the same anymore
So it's the climax of the play
For this part one of the characters will b holding hands with another one at and alter and another character will b there priest
With the two others being wild as the audience,laughing clapping,overexadurating

Scene Eight
With my play I'm relation scenes to real life circumstances,this scene will be another call for help within the characters
So I've decided for all the characters to be stranded on an island asking for help.

Scene Nine
Sometimes I turn around
The patient talks of her desperate love for someone, and the despair because the other person does not love her back ("I cannot believe that I can feel this for you and you feel nothing").

Scene Fifteen
Hatch opens
Mum .
A call out to her mother.
This scene is very sad
It shows her call out for help to her mother
All characters will present a letter they wrote
Reading it out to an audience

Scene Sixteen
"I gassed the Jews"
This scene is very chilling
It's S if Sara wants the audience to go against her
This was a horrific moment in history and affected everyone
I want all characters to replay that horrific moment
Showing there selves as the people who do it.

Scene Seventeen
In this. Scene I want the audience to see the characters in hell
Lost in there ohysicis
All characters on the floor mumbling to there selves.
Paintings with physicosis tend to keep there thoughts to there selves it is common that people on the outside are unsure of what is going on /what they are thinking








Scene Eighteen
At 4.48 when sanity visits
 In this scene we see what the characters would b like if they live a normal life
-character 1-in work,business
-character 2-with family,Christmas
-character 3-normal life reading a book at home
Character4-travelling
Character 5-with there partner
 Scene Twenty
100
The characters have reached there peak of confusion a delusion


setting-
The play itself has no planned settting,theres only a few hospital scenes.
so the main setting i want for the play is in an isiolated space.
I do feel as the play is a hidden message,some people say this is a suiside note.

lighting and sound-
The only light i want in the play are white stage lights,i feel like simplicity iskey and colours would take away from the atomosphere of the play

props and costume-
The actors will all be in white in the end scene i want them to be in black.
The black shows the danger and the white show the innocence of the actors,this works well as towards then end of the play physcosis hits at 4.48

stage set-
There is to be no props on stage whilst the actors are acting all objects must be mined,i dont wnt the props to take away from the message behine the story.