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.
Sunday 18 June 2017
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.
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.
Thursday 15 June 2017
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
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.
Thursday 8 June 2017
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.
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.
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