Acting the play Oedipus was very challenging at times as my focus sometimes was more on remembering the lines of the piece rather then the actual performance and focusing on my characterisation, however I believe that one of My main strengths in my performance was my characterisation, being able to maintain it through the whole piece, Even though Emily's character was quite comical and the audience laughed, it wasn't a major distraction and I was able to maintain full focus and concentration when performing.
Within performing the piece I am happily able to say that both Dijarn and Emily performed very well maintaining a strong presence on stage, we all had a strong connection/bond as actors off stage and on and after watching back our performance(witch I will link near the end) I believe that it really showed in our performance, I know There were many strong moments in our piece particularly our voice projection and diction as a group, the video of our was taken in the audience and everything was clearly heard
No one stumbled over words witch was very good.
I also realised our delivery of speech was linked with our staging i.e. When I was down stage in the beginning of the play my vocal projection was quite low compared to when me and DIjarn performed the argument we were both upstage and our voices were louder so the sound could travel right to the back of the audience, this was very clear in the video..
A very strong moment captured in the performance was when me as Jocasta and Dijarn as Oedipus had an argument regarding the discovery of Oedipus, past and the Shepherd.
In the clip as the argument begun I could clear gasps from the audience.
As I was performing this scene I remember the tension in the atmosphere, our energy was intense and we delivered it in a fast pace witch helped it become more believable to the audience, I know what your thinking, a fast paced delivery of speech means a rushed performance, well... not exactly, me and Dirjarn really wanted to make this scene realistic, of course because Miesner taught us that acting is "behaving truthfully in imaginary circumstances", we went over this scene many times on the day of our performance putting into mind Uta hagns technique, using the three questions, mainly focusing on the question "What do I want", so what are our objectives in the moment as my our characters. As we both done research and had background knowledge on our characters we both had a clear understanding of our objectives. We then imagined we were a modern couple arguing, when putting this into practice it really helped delivering our performance especially when I got on my knees and said: "On my knees I beg you" begging Oedipus not to continue, scared she he will ruin his reputation.Dijarn gave a strong outburst of "that's enough", the sound echoed in the audience and I stayed in character putting into mind everything we practiced involving the uta hagen technique and remembering to act in response to my fellow actor.
I learnt as an actor it is key to stay in role otherwise you wont be believable to the audience, luckily we were all truthful in our performance.
Another key strength we had whilst performing was our staging, this gradually improved throughout our
lessons as we got good feedback on it and how to improve.
our performance travelled on stage and as a group we had to have special awareness keeping in mind the audiences view of our performance. The way we staged our interpretation of the text was unique compared to the other groups as we had a plan of moving across stage and when it came up to the "dramatic "scene between me and Dijarn we would end up Add to dictionary groups like Aleks, group had there piece mainly centre stage, so there main focus was grabbing the audiences attention and making sure the audience was completely focused in there piece.
The staging in our performance linked with dominance as characters for example, my character Jokasta is a more dominant character than Emily who plays the slave, so in the beginning I was upstage facing the audience and emily was behind facing towards me,i decided to do this to make it obious to the audience what characters we played because if we were side to side the audience may have not understood what we were doing.
I believe that staging also made it interesting to the audience, normally if theres a long piece of speech the audience may loose interest and concentration, but the audience was completely focused in our performance, I now this because of the reactions we got in some parts of our performance(laughter, shock),this shows that we had a good communication with the audience.
We listened to our actors and had thought prossess, this was clear when Jokasta told Oedipus his father is dead and he was going to be crowned king,Emily had no speech until I left but had a good thought presses whilst we were speaking,she showed a clear understanding of characterisation and stayed in role even when she had no speech.
After watching the performance I noticed I had a range of different tones witch fitted well with my characterisation in different pars of the performance for example in the beginning the opening line I said calmly was "we return your greeting,you bring us news?",this fitted well with the context of that part of the performance, I said it in settle tone,trying to make Jokasta seem unprepared for the news she was about too hear.After hearing about Oedipus' fathers death my tone was sharp and my voice got louder,this worked well with the audience and helped with characterisation.
Although our characterisation was clear,i feel like we could have improved our exiting off stage. I think all of us failed to exit sage with a purpose and from the video it looked odd and didn't fit well with our performance.
After esearching the acient greek thetre background and watching clips of actors in that era,all actors left the performing stage with a purpose,even with masks on they were still able to show clear transitions leaving and entering stage.
We were given feedback on this but wen concentrated more on staging and characterisation.
I leant as an actor it is important to take feedback seriously as it does affect the overall outcome.
Another thing to improve on where our hands.We all nstruggles with knowing what to do withn our hands and in the performance sometimes we would fiddle with one hand whilst speaking,this shows our nervousness as actors and it was very distacrtin,it too away from our performance and was a big default when perfrming.In the performance after looking back at the video I noticed in the bggining scene with Emily I moive my right hand a lot to the audience,im not sure why I done this...in the moment it felt right but after looking back at it now it looks quite awkward as an audience member.It would probably looked better if my hands were side to side,straight down.
overall I think our performance would have been a lot better without these drawbacks but it helps me as an actor understand what I need to improve on next time.
Here is a link to our performance :
This clearly showed where our main focuses were
My first initial thought of the play was that it was going to be a challenging performance.
I was not interested in the text at first because I thought the roles were boring compared to the others,but after researching the charactters and watching the play I realised hw interesting it could be and how we could ake it our own.After reading the book "Acting techniques" by Micheal Powll I realised as an actor you may not like the roles you are given,but it is importsnt you explore different characters and go out of your comfort zone,agencies are looking for people that can play different roles for different jobs.
The Uta Hagen technique helped me find identity as a character,it helped me develop awareness of my surroundings when playing my role and helped me act with real human emotions.
Our main fcus as a group was Uta Hagens question of "what would you do".
We had toput ourselves in imaginary circumstances to really act truthfully in our role,discusing in rehursals how we would feel if we were actually in thae situations.
In the next project we do I want to focus on my punctuation as an actor.Delievering my words clearer to the audience,to help me do this I need to keep practicing tounge twister and cnstanants.
I would also like to be able to step out of my comfort zone when acting,delivering my inner monolougue through my thought prosseses,i believe my inner monolouges could be improved by looking over Uta hagens technique,focusing on the six questions she taught.
Showing posts with label unit 1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unit 1. Show all posts
Sunday, 11 December 2016
Monday, 17 October 2016
Medea
Week 1- An introduction to the text
Our first week we were introduced to Sharon and had a wider space for practical and unlike before, as we are in a dance studio we are able to see what we were doing, which helped me as an actress be aware of the audience and helps us all see our body language when acting and how we present yourself when performing, which helps us perfect our performance pieces. We were taught with a similar approach to acting, Like with every practical lesson we start with warm ups and games that have benefits to us as actors/stores see. This lesson we were told to walk around the space with no expression, telling no story to the audience, walking in neutral, hands side by side, head up, letting go of our habits.
Sometimes Sharon would tell us to greet one another using our bodies, in this lesson we had to use the edges of our feet to greet our fellow students, I felt a bit uncomfortable with this exercises as I despise feet, although I understood the concept of this exercise, to get comfortable with everyone.
Another exercise we done using the space of the dance studio involved taking instructions from Sharon. For example she would call out a number I,e 3,we would then get into random groups of three and then create a freeze frame relating to a word she says. She called out the word "Marriage", I was in a group of four, as we had 30 seconds to create the freeze-frame we decided to create a love story with that word, we wanted to be unique. I was the bride and my husband was running away,escaping from me, the other two students acted in shock and terror as a bridesmaid and best man. we were the only group who created a tragedy with this word, the activity was very interesting and got my brain flowing creatively and fast, making us quickly come up with ideas furthering our improvisational skills. Sometimes we found it difficult to come up with ideas as a group and it was confusing to Sharon when she came over to look, we would find it difficult to settle with one idea however it helped develop us as young actors learning from our mistakes.We were then told by Sharon we had stop moving as a class in sync with all our classes.We all found this challenging as there was no one to stop us and we didn't know when to stop,we tried many times with Sharon as an observer,we had to read other people's body language this way we could all stop in sync,this helps us as actors and actresses with spacial awareness and helps us read the body language of our fellow actors
Sometimes Sharon would tell us to greet one another using our bodies, in this lesson we had to use the edges of our feet to greet our fellow students, I felt a bit uncomfortable with this exercises as I despise feet, although I understood the concept of this exercise, to get comfortable with everyone.
Another exercise we done using the space of the dance studio involved taking instructions from Sharon. For example she would call out a number I,e 3,we would then get into random groups of three and then create a freeze frame relating to a word she says. She called out the word "Marriage", I was in a group of four, as we had 30 seconds to create the freeze-frame we decided to create a love story with that word, we wanted to be unique. I was the bride and my husband was running away,escaping from me, the other two students acted in shock and terror as a bridesmaid and best man. we were the only group who created a tragedy with this word, the activity was very interesting and got my brain flowing creatively and fast, making us quickly come up with ideas furthering our improvisational skills. Sometimes we found it difficult to come up with ideas as a group and it was confusing to Sharon when she came over to look, we would find it difficult to settle with one idea however it helped develop us as young actors learning from our mistakes.We were then told by Sharon we had stop moving as a class in sync with all our classes.We all found this challenging as there was no one to stop us and we didn't know when to stop,we tried many times with Sharon as an observer,we had to read other people's body language this way we could all stop in sync,this helps us as actors and actresses with spacial awareness and helps us read the body language of our fellow actors
As we all were new to the environment (dance studio) and our fellow students Sharon wanted us to all learn each other's names.We began by creating a circle,making sure it's perfect,with the same qual space between each student(equidistant from one another).Sharon also made sure gender is mixed so we are all comfortable around each other,away from our friends so we could focus on the excersise objective.She then picked one student to walk in neutral to another student whilst saying the other students name aloud,then that chosen student(by Sharon) takes another students place,this is then continued by the next student and so on.This is a really good excersise,doc using on concentration,being able to communicate with other students and memory.
After this excersise,we would do the same thing but without saying the students name out
loud,instead In this excersise we had to make obvious eye contact with the other student,then move
into there space.Sometimes we would do the the excersise with 2 pairs going at the same time,whilst doing this we still had to maintain the perfect circle.This got confusing at times and we usually lost a pairs,if this happened Sharon would make us start again,maintaining full concentration o the objective of the excersise.
After our warm ups Sharon explained to us we were going to be studying the text "Medea".
She wanted the groups to be random so she told us to get into groups of 5 and stand in a line,she then gave each person in that group a number.All the number 1s created a group,and 2s and so on.
This way we were working with people we don't usually work with.
I was working with Jessica,William and Pele.
She introduced us to the play and explained it is a Greek theatre piece.
We were then given a section of the play,my group was given the first section.on page 1
We read through it as a group first and We decided to work as an ensemble for physical
theatre,working off each others energy,we noticed this speach was all said by one person,so instead of
making things complicated as a group we descided to all speak as if. We were the same character.
We all decided to speak line by line individually to the audience.
This was really effective and worked really well,this technique helped engage the audience the audience,evolving them in the text.the aggressive body language showcases our emotions,shocking the audience.My first line was "move yourself" I said this with aggressive body language and a loud voice to show the audience my frustration.My whole group said there first line in the same voice tone,this was so the speach flowed well and it also gave a clear indication to the audience that we all played the same character.
We said lines together as a chorus in our group,showing the audience we are one and the same character.
Sharon also asked my group to practice without the script,helping us get used to the text,learning the lines quickly.
After practicing and getting comfortable to the text,we were all asked to perform a section of our introduction to the class,I was quite nervous to perform in the sense that it is a new play and it was our first day of practicing,however it is good practice for us as actors to work in a small amount of time.
We were sat like a Greek theatre audience,this helped set the atmosphere of our performances,watching the performances allowed us to understand the character of Madea in more deph,allowing us to make sense of the play.
Whilst reading thought the text we understood that the character of Nedea is a protagonist,reading the lines helped us understand the context of the play.
Whilst observing other people's work I noticed narration worked well but only when the voice projection of the students was immaculate,we didn't include narration as it wouldn't go well with the piece we were performing and we are speaking directly to the audience anyway.
From watching the other groups I also noticed that accents also engage the audience however it was not messesary in the pieces and sometimes it didn't fit with the message/context of the text.
A lot of movement was shown in the introduction pieces,showing me how physical theatre is
important in acting .
There were some pauses in between text but we carried on and it helped us understand that we were
unaware of the transition cues,which we can all focus on.
As individual actors we all showed confidence and good body language,showing good diction whilst performing.
After performing to the class And watching other people's pieces we decided we could improve our movement on the stage,by taking advantage of the space we have for example our first lines are said individually,maybe we could involve travelling and movement as a group.
We also thought we would change the pitch in our voice in some areas of the text for example William says the line "her old man Jason's gone off" and I carry on the sentence saying "with another woman",we both say this aggressively,maintains the same emotion through the whole text,however I
realised saying this sentence with a soft tone will let us introduce a new emotion to the audience,portraying sadness,making them feel sorry for Madeas character.
Week 2: Working on the Medea text
Our homework from the week before was to learn the lines of the text we were given.Luckily all the students in my group including me,learnt there lines,this made it easier for us to focus on the text and the things we need to work on from last week.
We went through our piece as a group and noticed it was different without our scripts as we didn't know what to do with our hands.We knew we had to involve more actions in our piece.
Going through the text a week later created a few challenges like remembering different movements.
This week we focused on perfecting the piece and improving the timing in our group,making sure we don't say lines to fast which was challenging for us as in order to show we were all the same character we had to make the piece flow.
After working on the play for the first part of the lesson we were told we had to bring section one and
two together by combining our group and group two together.
We were all confused on how we were going to combine the two groups together and struggled to
figure out what we were going to do,we had to do it so the audience makes sense of both texts.
We sat down as a large group and read through both texts together,we noticed how both texts flow together with a similarity of Medea as the main character.
Our group still wanted to keep the idea that we are all the same character but were struggling as we had to have everyone on stage at the same time.
Our first idea was to simply just have a clear transition between both pieces but we them realised that wasn't creative and we wouldn't be able to fit both groups on stage if we were to do it like that.
Group two text was mostly a speach,speaking directly to Medea.
My group decided instead of speaking to the audience,we would speak directly to group 2 which was a very clever idea as the text that they say is them trying to speak to Medea and our text is directly to an audience,telling them to speak to Medea.
As Medea is the main character we wanted to focus the audiences attention on her.Rose played the character of Medea so we wanted her upstage,in front of everyone.
We then decided to have group two in a circle centre stage with the backs facing each other,however we figured out a way to incoperate that with the first lines of my groups text.As we had the idea of us saying our lines to them instead of directly to the audience,we decided to show aggression towards them,pushing them centre stage to that position whilst saying our lines one by one.inpushed Toby whilst saying my line "Move yourself ".
This was really effective and helped us show the story on Medea in more detail.
For group twos text we decided my group was going to show the story of what they are saying through actions,we didn't want to take the attention from there group so we acted in the background.We fir gourde out a clear,swift transition from our text to there's: on the line Toby says
"come to the door" our group turn around with our backs to the audience in a neat line,this in a way is
a metaphor,showing the opening of the door.
On the lines Yasmin's says"there will always be masses of food on the table" we tried to have our
group from back stage come and join group two but we realised that wouldn't work as the attention from group two would have been drawn away due to my group travelling to centre stage.
We were the asked to perform,as everyone's group was joined together we had to perform as if we were actually performing to an audience.Groups 3 and 4 were positioned right stage,groups 5 and 6 right and my group and group 2 were positioned centre stage as were were the opening of the performance.It was interesting to see all our groups together and it felt like we were all about. To perform on stage.
Our performance was not perfect and it was clear we needed to get used to the new staging of the performance.
We received feedback on on our performance,we got very positive feedback on the staging of both groups and Sharon was able to outline the clear drawbacks of our performance which were the movements that some of my group done whic didn't fit well with the performance ad the timing the of piece.
After this lesson I felt more comfortable with performing the piece and I learnt more about the movement and transitioning.
I also learnt what ideas work well with different text,I thought more about the audiences prospective and what they will think when we perform.
Week 3- Combining the sections into a while piece of drama
Like every lesson we started with a simple warmup.This lesson we played grandmas footsteps.This game involves one person with there back to the class whilst the other students have to run up to the person and tap them,to become the next "grandma".It sounds easy but the twist in this game is that
the one student is allowed to turn around at anytime and the other students have to freeze.this game
teaches us as actors to maintain stillness,helps us become alert and aware,it's good in the morning as
it wakes you up.Lately we have changed the game slitly by letting the person who is
"grandma"telling us how to freeze.Tgis week I played as grandma,into,d everyone to freeze as a
tree.This twist on the excersise helps us maintain our balance,developing our awareness.it works on your controll and it can also be a trust excersises in which the students i who play grandma put trust in the students as there backs are turned away.
Another game we played this week was called "yes let's".This involved two students completing actions suggested by both students and they take it in turns replying with "yes let's".
My partner to start with was Rose,she suggested we go swimming,I replied with the words "yes let's" and we completed the action,pretending we were swimming overexadurationover the action of swimming,moving our arms.This excersises shows our confidence as actors,we swapped partners after a few sets of completed actions,getting more comfortable with the people in our class.This excersises put us out of our comfort zone which is important as sometimes as actors we are given
roles we maybe dislike.We were able to take risks with each other,energising us for practical work.
We began practical work,going over lines and had many run through so if the play however Will was not in so we had to split his lines,me and Pele took charge in learning his lines,with our team working skills we overcame that obstacle,maintaing full concentration on our objective to perform the piece using physical theatre.
We had a quick run through of each section as a class using the mirror in the dance studio to show our reflection.This really helped us as we could pick up every detail of our piece and we were able to see it from the audiences prospective,however as we could see everything,small movements from students whilst performing was distracting and took away the attention from the performers.This made me think about why it's important when I'm on stage to keep still whilst other people are performing,the audience can pick up tiny details and movements that you do.
Our performance seemed slow and many people forgot lines,I.e Pele forgot to say Wills line and we had a long silence in our performance.we all had the energy but not the right state of mind.
We had a break,ate some food and instantly I felt energised.Will was back and we got straight into practice.it was confusing at first because now I was used to saying his lines,but got into the flow
quickly.This helped me discover the hard role of acting,anything could happen and unexpected
changes could cause distrust ion in a group,luckily our group had a good connection with one another,we were able to figure out solutions quickly.unlike Georgia's group which I noticed had a lot of tension in there group.Chuef was absent this week and they seemed to struggle without him,they were not working well as a team unable to work on their own initiative and as a team.
Our group had to perfect our spacing as me will Pele and Jess were not visible in the second section of the play.I took the role of sorting out the staging and told my group to spread out so that we are on the sides of the other group,making us visible to the audience.
Sharon gave our group the choice of learning a second piece of text,she mentioned that it is not compulsory to learn it and if we were not able to we didn't have to.
We read over the text and immediately thought of heart break.
The staging for this was quite rough as we didn't have enough time to perfect it.We worked as an ensemble,playing different characters whilst reading each line.
Week 4 -Rehursals for performance
Our tutor wasn't in today so Rob left us in charge of getting on with our own work.Most groups were unfocused talking to there friends but my group showed good responsibility and we went over our piece a few times,working on the small details.
Our main objective was figuring out were Laueren and Ruby would come in as they were late joining this term.We decided as a class to go through a quick run through of the piece,so that Ruby and Lauren can see the staging and figure out where to come in.we were faced away from the mirror so that we had full concentration of what we were doing and not get distracted from the movements of other students.
I was surprised at how swiftly we worked and how mature we were as a class.We developed our ability to work together as an ensemble,tuning in to each other.
I'm our section we took on board the things we messed up on in the week before and worked as a group for example,confusion of lines due to Wills absence.we went through it and got used to the lines we learnt.
Because our tutor was absent there was less focus in the class which was a drawback for all of us as our performance was so close.
People lost focus and. Became very irritating at times.
After this excersise,we would do the same thing but without saying the students name out
loud,instead In this excersise we had to make obvious eye contact with the other student,then move
into there space.Sometimes we would do the the excersise with 2 pairs going at the same time,whilst doing this we still had to maintain the perfect circle.This got confusing at times and we usually lost a pairs,if this happened Sharon would make us start again,maintaining full concentration o the objective of the excersise.
After our warm ups Sharon explained to us we were going to be studying the text "Medea".
She wanted the groups to be random so she told us to get into groups of 5 and stand in a line,she then gave each person in that group a number.All the number 1s created a group,and 2s and so on.
This way we were working with people we don't usually work with.
I was working with Jessica,William and Pele.
She introduced us to the play and explained it is a Greek theatre piece.
We were then given a section of the play,my group was given the first section.on page 1
We read through it as a group first and We decided to work as an ensemble for physical
theatre,working off each others energy,we noticed this speach was all said by one person,so instead of
making things complicated as a group we descided to all speak as if. We were the same character.
We all decided to speak line by line individually to the audience.
This was really effective and worked really well,this technique helped engage the audience the audience,evolving them in the text.the aggressive body language showcases our emotions,shocking the audience.My first line was "move yourself" I said this with aggressive body language and a loud voice to show the audience my frustration.My whole group said there first line in the same voice tone,this was so the speach flowed well and it also gave a clear indication to the audience that we all played the same character.
We said lines together as a chorus in our group,showing the audience we are one and the same character.
Sharon also asked my group to practice without the script,helping us get used to the text,learning the lines quickly.
After practicing and getting comfortable to the text,we were all asked to perform a section of our introduction to the class,I was quite nervous to perform in the sense that it is a new play and it was our first day of practicing,however it is good practice for us as actors to work in a small amount of time.
We were sat like a Greek theatre audience,this helped set the atmosphere of our performances,watching the performances allowed us to understand the character of Madea in more deph,allowing us to make sense of the play.
Whilst reading thought the text we understood that the character of Nedea is a protagonist,reading the lines helped us understand the context of the play.
Whilst observing other people's work I noticed narration worked well but only when the voice projection of the students was immaculate,we didn't include narration as it wouldn't go well with the piece we were performing and we are speaking directly to the audience anyway.
From watching the other groups I also noticed that accents also engage the audience however it was not messesary in the pieces and sometimes it didn't fit with the message/context of the text.
A lot of movement was shown in the introduction pieces,showing me how physical theatre is
important in acting .
There were some pauses in between text but we carried on and it helped us understand that we were
unaware of the transition cues,which we can all focus on.
As individual actors we all showed confidence and good body language,showing good diction whilst performing.
After performing to the class And watching other people's pieces we decided we could improve our movement on the stage,by taking advantage of the space we have for example our first lines are said individually,maybe we could involve travelling and movement as a group.
We also thought we would change the pitch in our voice in some areas of the text for example William says the line "her old man Jason's gone off" and I carry on the sentence saying "with another woman",we both say this aggressively,maintains the same emotion through the whole text,however I
realised saying this sentence with a soft tone will let us introduce a new emotion to the audience,portraying sadness,making them feel sorry for Madeas character.
Week 2: Working on the Medea text
Our homework from the week before was to learn the lines of the text we were given.Luckily all the students in my group including me,learnt there lines,this made it easier for us to focus on the text and the things we need to work on from last week.
We went through our piece as a group and noticed it was different without our scripts as we didn't know what to do with our hands.We knew we had to involve more actions in our piece.
Going through the text a week later created a few challenges like remembering different movements.
This week we focused on perfecting the piece and improving the timing in our group,making sure we don't say lines to fast which was challenging for us as in order to show we were all the same character we had to make the piece flow.
After working on the play for the first part of the lesson we were told we had to bring section one and
two together by combining our group and group two together.
We were all confused on how we were going to combine the two groups together and struggled to
figure out what we were going to do,we had to do it so the audience makes sense of both texts.
We sat down as a large group and read through both texts together,we noticed how both texts flow together with a similarity of Medea as the main character.
Our group still wanted to keep the idea that we are all the same character but were struggling as we had to have everyone on stage at the same time.
Our first idea was to simply just have a clear transition between both pieces but we them realised that wasn't creative and we wouldn't be able to fit both groups on stage if we were to do it like that.
Group two text was mostly a speach,speaking directly to Medea.
My group decided instead of speaking to the audience,we would speak directly to group 2 which was a very clever idea as the text that they say is them trying to speak to Medea and our text is directly to an audience,telling them to speak to Medea.
As Medea is the main character we wanted to focus the audiences attention on her.Rose played the character of Medea so we wanted her upstage,in front of everyone.
We then decided to have group two in a circle centre stage with the backs facing each other,however we figured out a way to incoperate that with the first lines of my groups text.As we had the idea of us saying our lines to them instead of directly to the audience,we decided to show aggression towards them,pushing them centre stage to that position whilst saying our lines one by one.inpushed Toby whilst saying my line "Move yourself ".
This was really effective and helped us show the story on Medea in more detail.
For group twos text we decided my group was going to show the story of what they are saying through actions,we didn't want to take the attention from there group so we acted in the background.We fir gourde out a clear,swift transition from our text to there's: on the line Toby says
"come to the door" our group turn around with our backs to the audience in a neat line,this in a way is
a metaphor,showing the opening of the door.
On the lines Yasmin's says"there will always be masses of food on the table" we tried to have our
group from back stage come and join group two but we realised that wouldn't work as the attention from group two would have been drawn away due to my group travelling to centre stage.
We were the asked to perform,as everyone's group was joined together we had to perform as if we were actually performing to an audience.Groups 3 and 4 were positioned right stage,groups 5 and 6 right and my group and group 2 were positioned centre stage as were were the opening of the performance.It was interesting to see all our groups together and it felt like we were all about. To perform on stage.
Our performance was not perfect and it was clear we needed to get used to the new staging of the performance.
We received feedback on on our performance,we got very positive feedback on the staging of both groups and Sharon was able to outline the clear drawbacks of our performance which were the movements that some of my group done whic didn't fit well with the performance ad the timing the of piece.
After this lesson I felt more comfortable with performing the piece and I learnt more about the movement and transitioning.
I also learnt what ideas work well with different text,I thought more about the audiences prospective and what they will think when we perform.
Week 3- Combining the sections into a while piece of drama
Like every lesson we started with a simple warmup.This lesson we played grandmas footsteps.This game involves one person with there back to the class whilst the other students have to run up to the person and tap them,to become the next "grandma".It sounds easy but the twist in this game is that
the one student is allowed to turn around at anytime and the other students have to freeze.this game
teaches us as actors to maintain stillness,helps us become alert and aware,it's good in the morning as
it wakes you up.Lately we have changed the game slitly by letting the person who is
"grandma"telling us how to freeze.Tgis week I played as grandma,into,d everyone to freeze as a
tree.This twist on the excersise helps us maintain our balance,developing our awareness.it works on your controll and it can also be a trust excersises in which the students i who play grandma put trust in the students as there backs are turned away.
Another game we played this week was called "yes let's".This involved two students completing actions suggested by both students and they take it in turns replying with "yes let's".
My partner to start with was Rose,she suggested we go swimming,I replied with the words "yes let's" and we completed the action,pretending we were swimming overexadurationover the action of swimming,moving our arms.This excersises shows our confidence as actors,we swapped partners after a few sets of completed actions,getting more comfortable with the people in our class.This excersises put us out of our comfort zone which is important as sometimes as actors we are given
roles we maybe dislike.We were able to take risks with each other,energising us for practical work.
We began practical work,going over lines and had many run through so if the play however Will was not in so we had to split his lines,me and Pele took charge in learning his lines,with our team working skills we overcame that obstacle,maintaing full concentration on our objective to perform the piece using physical theatre.
We had a quick run through of each section as a class using the mirror in the dance studio to show our reflection.This really helped us as we could pick up every detail of our piece and we were able to see it from the audiences prospective,however as we could see everything,small movements from students whilst performing was distracting and took away the attention from the performers.This made me think about why it's important when I'm on stage to keep still whilst other people are performing,the audience can pick up tiny details and movements that you do.
Our performance seemed slow and many people forgot lines,I.e Pele forgot to say Wills line and we had a long silence in our performance.we all had the energy but not the right state of mind.
We had a break,ate some food and instantly I felt energised.Will was back and we got straight into practice.it was confusing at first because now I was used to saying his lines,but got into the flow
quickly.This helped me discover the hard role of acting,anything could happen and unexpected
changes could cause distrust ion in a group,luckily our group had a good connection with one another,we were able to figure out solutions quickly.unlike Georgia's group which I noticed had a lot of tension in there group.Chuef was absent this week and they seemed to struggle without him,they were not working well as a team unable to work on their own initiative and as a team.
Our group had to perfect our spacing as me will Pele and Jess were not visible in the second section of the play.I took the role of sorting out the staging and told my group to spread out so that we are on the sides of the other group,making us visible to the audience.
Sharon gave our group the choice of learning a second piece of text,she mentioned that it is not compulsory to learn it and if we were not able to we didn't have to.
We read over the text and immediately thought of heart break.
The staging for this was quite rough as we didn't have enough time to perfect it.We worked as an ensemble,playing different characters whilst reading each line.
Week 4 -Rehursals for performance
Our tutor wasn't in today so Rob left us in charge of getting on with our own work.Most groups were unfocused talking to there friends but my group showed good responsibility and we went over our piece a few times,working on the small details.
Our main objective was figuring out were Laueren and Ruby would come in as they were late joining this term.We decided as a class to go through a quick run through of the piece,so that Ruby and Lauren can see the staging and figure out where to come in.we were faced away from the mirror so that we had full concentration of what we were doing and not get distracted from the movements of other students.
I was surprised at how swiftly we worked and how mature we were as a class.We developed our ability to work together as an ensemble,tuning in to each other.
I'm our section we took on board the things we messed up on in the week before and worked as a group for example,confusion of lines due to Wills absence.we went through it and got used to the lines we learnt.
Because our tutor was absent there was less focus in the class which was a drawback for all of us as our performance was so close.
People lost focus and. Became very irritating at times.
Sunday, 16 October 2016
3rd october
On the 3rd of October we were taught the difference between showing a telling in acting,the difference between being truthful and being fake in the way u present yr characterisation as an actor.this links to last weeks lesson of reciving and responding,how u take in information from another character & think about it,without overexadurating for the audience.
This lesson highlighting the importance of "reading yr fellow actor",there body language and speech,this will help u responed to them in way tht it relevant to yr characterisation.
Improvisation can help actors in the way they approach a script,it helps actors be aware of other actors and allows them to have clarity in their communication between them and there fellow actor/audience,improvisation enhansises an actors state of mind,allows them to branch out with their creativity which forces them to act on the spot without thinking about lines,this will help an actor build confidence on stage.this links to last weak lesson of acting in response to your fellow actor,acting in response to them,thinking instead of overreacting a response
In this lesson our main focus was improvisation,using real life situations and acting them out,creating our own setting and environment.
Our first improvisation task involved us individualy packing a suitcase,my first thought was tht I had to actually imagine myself packing the suitcase in real life,I'm a very clumsy person and forgetful,so I acted in a fustrated manor,packing things in a rush,this helped me think about uta Hagen technique "An actor needs: talent, imagination, a grip on reality, desire to communicate, character and ethics, point of view, understanding of human behavior, total discipline.".the idea that an actor may have talent but an actor needs to be able to feed off of his/her fellow actor/actress understanding there behaviour and responding in a correct way.
In our first improvisation task we were told to speak aloud out inner thoughts,expressing our emotions through speech.As I acted in a fustrated manor I was grunting a lot and speaking to myself getting annoyed,forgetting things,this would probably happen in real life and as an actress it is important to relate to real life situations when put yrself in a make believe environment to truthfully show the audience yr character.
Our next improvisation was putting a needle in a thread,I started after everyone else as I wanted to observe wat everyone was doing,I noticed everyone looked the same,concentrating on getting the needle in the thread so Iike before I decided to actually put myself I. The situation.this improvisation lesson was very important because it's teaches us how to act alone rather than reacting then responding,it also helps me because In my Odiepus piece I have to react a lot in response to my fellow actor,taking In the the information he says and acting upon it,I did struggle on that because sometimes I am unsure of what todo with my body and how to present myself in front of an audience but I remenered that "Acting is behaving truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
Our last improvisational setting involved us pretending to be at a post office
In this lesson,one of our classmates came late and she was told by rob to complete one of the improvisation games she missed out on and perform it to the class.
She was told to pretend to hold a present in a busy line.
like most people she done the obvious,look at watch action, she acted in a frustrated manor,over exadurating her facial expression and body language.
Rob taught us that the audience pick up the smallest things,they can pick up tiny details so its not nessesary for us to over exadurate
This lesson highlighting the importance of "reading yr fellow actor",there body language and speech,this will help u responed to them in way tht it relevant to yr characterisation.
Improvisation can help actors in the way they approach a script,it helps actors be aware of other actors and allows them to have clarity in their communication between them and there fellow actor/audience,improvisation enhansises an actors state of mind,allows them to branch out with their creativity which forces them to act on the spot without thinking about lines,this will help an actor build confidence on stage.this links to last weak lesson of acting in response to your fellow actor,acting in response to them,thinking instead of overreacting a response
In this lesson our main focus was improvisation,using real life situations and acting them out,creating our own setting and environment.
Our first improvisation task involved us individualy packing a suitcase,my first thought was tht I had to actually imagine myself packing the suitcase in real life,I'm a very clumsy person and forgetful,so I acted in a fustrated manor,packing things in a rush,this helped me think about uta Hagen technique "An actor needs: talent, imagination, a grip on reality, desire to communicate, character and ethics, point of view, understanding of human behavior, total discipline.".the idea that an actor may have talent but an actor needs to be able to feed off of his/her fellow actor/actress understanding there behaviour and responding in a correct way.
In our first improvisation task we were told to speak aloud out inner thoughts,expressing our emotions through speech.As I acted in a fustrated manor I was grunting a lot and speaking to myself getting annoyed,forgetting things,this would probably happen in real life and as an actress it is important to relate to real life situations when put yrself in a make believe environment to truthfully show the audience yr character.
Our next improvisation was putting a needle in a thread,I started after everyone else as I wanted to observe wat everyone was doing,I noticed everyone looked the same,concentrating on getting the needle in the thread so Iike before I decided to actually put myself I. The situation.this improvisation lesson was very important because it's teaches us how to act alone rather than reacting then responding,it also helps me because In my Odiepus piece I have to react a lot in response to my fellow actor,taking In the the information he says and acting upon it,I did struggle on that because sometimes I am unsure of what todo with my body and how to present myself in front of an audience but I remenered that "Acting is behaving truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
Our last improvisational setting involved us pretending to be at a post office
In this lesson,one of our classmates came late and she was told by rob to complete one of the improvisation games she missed out on and perform it to the class.
She was told to pretend to hold a present in a busy line.
like most people she done the obvious,look at watch action, she acted in a frustrated manor,over exadurating her facial expression and body language.
Rob taught us that the audience pick up the smallest things,they can pick up tiny details so its not nessesary for us to over exadurate
Tuesday, 27 September 2016
Tuesday 27th September 2016
Our morning session was very early,having to get to school at 9.15 is a struggle for me as I live far,the key for me is an early nights sleep which I never usually get.
We started of in the morning with a context session in which we were in room 222,
Before we got taught about blogs and blog work,we got into a few warm up excersises and games.
Today we played a game in which a class member had to go out of the room and everyonce else had to pretend they were a celebrity/Famous public figure.My favourite one was Juan,we had to pretend he was Kim Kardashion.He got asked questions like: "Why is your bum so big","omg,why did you do this". It got the person thinking and it was on our on initiative if we were to involve ourself in the activity.This helps us as actors with confidence and learning to involve ourself in different things which in my eyes links to characterisation,becoming characters we are not familiar with.
learning and understanding how to layout our blogs.We got the opportunity to look at an ex Level 3 students blog.This helped me understand the high standards blogs have to be like.The main message Alex(the ex level 3 student) was giving us was that our blogs are basically a personal response,they show individuality in each student,noones blog can be the same as we all have different opinions about different things,I took this message on board and looked back at my previous blogs and added more from my personal view about the things that happened in certain days.
I made a note at the front of my note book about the things to put into my blog
(Image)
After the lesson we went had a break,I was able to catch up on my energy levels by eating a healthy snack,I felt more enthusiastic and ready for practical,with a proactive attitude.
Our last lesson was with Rob,this was the acting techniques lesson.As a warm up fbefore practicing our scripts we mostly trained our voices,my favourite part of the warm up was where as a class,we had to create a voice machine,we created a weird sound and had to figure out were each person fitted in the machine.This excersise really helped me with my team working skills and as today we had new people,we were all able to involve them in the activity helping them feel more welcome and comfortable in the class.
After our warm ups we went over lines and perfected staging.The thing I found hard was staying in role,although I had done read Earth on the play,I found it hard to stay in role.We also perfected out staging,I took role in staging for the begginging as after watching odipus on YouTube I had an idea of the staging in our group.
Weirdly I found it quite nervous performing in front of everyone today this was probably because it was my first time performing in front of the class using language from that era,however I have learnt a Victorian script for an audition before.
I did feel confident in the staging for my group got good feedback from another group who looked at our group while rehursing,this was effective to me as an individual for my group,Dijarn and Emily accepted my input and together we worked upon it.
After performing we were given feedback from Rob,these are the keynotes I picked up:
(General Feedback)
-Don't rush lines
-stand still when speaking
-Always look up (facing audience)
-Keep and engaged physicality
(Individual Feedback)
-Eyes up when speaking
-take time whilst reading lines
-Great staging-(This was Due to the research)
-After hearing that Odiepus' fathers dead respond quick/own the stage
-line-"hear this man" change to "hear this woman"
-line-"mating with your mother"-say in a more comical context
From the useful feedback received it was clear that maybe I didn't have a great understanding in the words and what they meant,to improve I will act upon what Rob has said & take onboard his comments,also I will research the meaning behind some of the words.This feedback benefits me as an actress because I can quickly learn from my mistakes and act upon it before I perform,I have learnt to do more research before performing.Dijarns feedback showed that he had a strong dominant voice which worked well in our group,Emily got feedback that her comical approach to her characterisation worked well which helped me respond in a serious manor allowing the audience to clearly see her comical characarterisation.Their delivery to the performance was good and they maintained a stable characterusation ,I also Performed with stability in my characterisation.After receiving this feedback I have also read part of the introduction in the book "Actors Thesaurus".The introduction highlighted the act of "Actioning" This action provides stimulation for the actor/actress to directly play each line of text and develop alternative ways of bringing their character to life,this helped me think out side of the box,considering my surroundings and speach when playing my character Jokasta.
We started of in the morning with a context session in which we were in room 222,
Before we got taught about blogs and blog work,we got into a few warm up excersises and games.
Today we played a game in which a class member had to go out of the room and everyonce else had to pretend they were a celebrity/Famous public figure.My favourite one was Juan,we had to pretend he was Kim Kardashion.He got asked questions like: "Why is your bum so big","omg,why did you do this". It got the person thinking and it was on our on initiative if we were to involve ourself in the activity.This helps us as actors with confidence and learning to involve ourself in different things which in my eyes links to characterisation,becoming characters we are not familiar with.
learning and understanding how to layout our blogs.We got the opportunity to look at an ex Level 3 students blog.This helped me understand the high standards blogs have to be like.The main message Alex(the ex level 3 student) was giving us was that our blogs are basically a personal response,they show individuality in each student,noones blog can be the same as we all have different opinions about different things,I took this message on board and looked back at my previous blogs and added more from my personal view about the things that happened in certain days.
I made a note at the front of my note book about the things to put into my blog
(Image)
After the lesson we went had a break,I was able to catch up on my energy levels by eating a healthy snack,I felt more enthusiastic and ready for practical,with a proactive attitude.
Our last lesson was with Rob,this was the acting techniques lesson.As a warm up fbefore practicing our scripts we mostly trained our voices,my favourite part of the warm up was where as a class,we had to create a voice machine,we created a weird sound and had to figure out were each person fitted in the machine.This excersise really helped me with my team working skills and as today we had new people,we were all able to involve them in the activity helping them feel more welcome and comfortable in the class.
After our warm ups we went over lines and perfected staging.The thing I found hard was staying in role,although I had done read Earth on the play,I found it hard to stay in role.We also perfected out staging,I took role in staging for the begginging as after watching odipus on YouTube I had an idea of the staging in our group.
Weirdly I found it quite nervous performing in front of everyone today this was probably because it was my first time performing in front of the class using language from that era,however I have learnt a Victorian script for an audition before.
I did feel confident in the staging for my group got good feedback from another group who looked at our group while rehursing,this was effective to me as an individual for my group,Dijarn and Emily accepted my input and together we worked upon it.
After performing we were given feedback from Rob,these are the keynotes I picked up:
(General Feedback)
-Don't rush lines
-stand still when speaking
-Always look up (facing audience)
-Keep and engaged physicality
(Individual Feedback)
-Eyes up when speaking
-take time whilst reading lines
-Great staging-(This was Due to the research)
-After hearing that Odiepus' fathers dead respond quick/own the stage
-line-"hear this man" change to "hear this woman"
-line-"mating with your mother"-say in a more comical context
From the useful feedback received it was clear that maybe I didn't have a great understanding in the words and what they meant,to improve I will act upon what Rob has said & take onboard his comments,also I will research the meaning behind some of the words.This feedback benefits me as an actress because I can quickly learn from my mistakes and act upon it before I perform,I have learnt to do more research before performing.Dijarns feedback showed that he had a strong dominant voice which worked well in our group,Emily got feedback that her comical approach to her characterisation worked well which helped me respond in a serious manor allowing the audience to clearly see her comical characarterisation.Their delivery to the performance was good and they maintained a stable characterusation ,I also Performed with stability in my characterisation.After receiving this feedback I have also read part of the introduction in the book "Actors Thesaurus".The introduction highlighted the act of "Actioning" This action provides stimulation for the actor/actress to directly play each line of text and develop alternative ways of bringing their character to life,this helped me think out side of the box,considering my surroundings and speach when playing my character Jokasta.
Monday, 26 September 2016
Monday 26th September 2016
We started the day with improvisation activities and games to build our confidence.
Normally,before we begin practical sessions,we gather together as a class and stand in a circle and perform excersises useful to us as an actor.
Rob normally tells us to stand in "neutral",with our arms side to side,and legs shoulder width apart,imagining a string holding our head up,creating good posture,this is important because as an actor it is important to be able to take the shape of a character.I found that in secondary school i had a bad habit or foul posture,unaware of the way I'm presenting myself to the people around me,the position neautral helps me become aware of my posture and helps me come out of that habit,maintaining a dominant posture.Sharon also tells us to do this with no expression,showing no emotion to the people around us,this helps us as actors with our concentration and focus.
From Neautral Rob then told us to Roll our shoulders forwards and backwards,this helps us increase the range of motion in our shoulders and upper back,improve our posture and release tension in our muscles,allowing us to have control over our body.Rob then told us to roll each shoulder in a different direction to the other,I find this excersises challenging as i struggle multitasking,however after my muscles feel relaxed.Rob then told us to roll our body forward,allowing our heads to fall in front of us,still maintaini g a good balance,with our arms to the ground,reaching out to our feet.He then tells us to move from side to side,swaying our arms.we done this for about 15 seconds,Rob the. Told us to come up slowly,as a lot of blood as just rushed to our heads,after this excersise I felt relaxed and more loose in my body,I already felt ready for practicle.
We then worked on our voices,focusing on different parts of our mouth,tongue,throat and diaphragm creating different sounds consonants and vowels,pronouncing letters with over exaduration,working on the different muscles,helping us as actors with projection and pronousiatiin of words.
An example of an excersise using the tounge would be saying aloud the letters "L" & "N",using the tounge we would flick the tip upon our palate working the tounge muscles,
We then done a few tounge twisters,this to me is like speech therapy,challenging me out of my comfort zone,repeating similar sounds,words and syllables.
Tongue twisters can be used to treat speach problems but as an actoress they help the brain connect tongue movements to sounds.Correct pronousiatiin allows an actor to clearly show their characterisation through speach,helping the audience understand what's going on.
My favourite one is : "Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers from a pickle tree.",probably because I can pronounce this the best out of all the rest.Tongue twisters are a great way of training our voices,which is important for me rasped jalopy as I want to get into drama school,I have to be unique from everyone else being able to pronounce letters and words correctly.
In our acting technique lessons we usually play a few games,these games help us build confidence and help us become melodramatic.my favourite game involved one of our class mates standing outside the class room whilat the rest of us stand scattered around the room,Rob chooses a leader and we have to follow their movements.The key to this game is not following the leader but the people around him/her,this way it's almost impossible for the person to find out who the leader is,it's a fun game where everyone is involved,it helps us as actors/actresses become aware of our surroundings and people around us.
Warms up and excersises like this help me as a actress get more into and involved in what we're doing,it helps me concentrate and get in the mood for practical work,teaching us to be willing and creative in our work.
After excersisig our bodies and mouths we then got into our scripts,the night before I watched the scene from the play and analysed it,also watching different inerpretarions of the play,helping me explore my character(Jokasta).research helped support my development in the script(understanding my character and different emotions that she may be thinking in the scene) and it developed me as an qctoress(helping me understand the depth of research needed to clearly understand a character)I thought thoroughly about stage directions and thought about how I can adapt speach.
I enjoyed the play more and got more comfortable with my characterisation after my reaserch
However I faced a few challenges which were: learning lines,stage directions,body language and my biggest challenge was pronounsinf different poetic terms,as I was unsure of some the the words and phrases from that era I wasn't quite sure about the context of them or how to pronounce them correctly,Me and my fellow partners overcame this challenge by asking Rob what context different words were in,from here we understood how to approach the text as a team,helping us get better diction.I didn't really find learning lines a challenge as I've had a lot of experience learning lines,normally I would record myself reading the other limes and respond,that way I am able to imagine myself speaking to another character.
I felt as I worked well with Emily and Dijarn and we all connected well,none took complete control of the group which was good as in secondary school I was used to having someone leading the group,but in my group we all show an equal level of dominance,which made me confortable in my group,we all have freedom and show no signs of hesitation when sharing our ideas,which is good for me as an actress as I haven't worked with them before,it's good to work with different people and see
how they interpretate the text.Also if I disliked anyone and disliked them it would challenge me as an actress,putting aside differences and getting on with work.
Greek Theatre-Oedipus Week 1
We started off with Robs acting technique classes,in this we got more knowledge on Greek theatre.
We watched a documentary "BBC Ancient Greece The Greatest Show on Earth - Democrats - 1/3".
this documentary was very interesting,after doing my research on Greek theatre,I did not feel as tho I knew enough knowledge in the history of greek theatre & the reason to why it is so significant in today's society.
In this video I was able to get a look at how drama in Athens was deeply connected to Athenian democracy,it helped me realise how strongly Greek theatre and Democracy is linked.
I learnt that:
-Greek civilisation effects every aspect of our lives
-Greek authors revolutionised story telling
-Greek theatre was a reaction to real events(story of Athens)
-In the 6th Century Athens was ruled by Democracy,so they had more freedom after the war
- lifelike statues & sculptures were created
Which helped the Greek authors when play writing
-All Greek performers wore masks as a signal of profession (masks were known to help people get closer to God),when you put a mask on it was as if you were a different person
Throughout the video I was able to maintain full concentration as I was quite interested in learning about the history of greek theatre,there were many eye catching moments in the video and it really caught my attention.
In the afternoon we were with rob for acting techniques in which we trained our voices and practiced tongue twisters,I struggled with this as I'm not used to saying tounge twisters but as this helps with vocal speech and as an actress punctuation in speach is very important,when I get time I will practice them as much as I can,these assist my learning and subsequent development.
Before getting our scripts we played a few games as a class,developing our skills as actors and helping us with team work,these games
We then got given our scripts and were put into groups for out Greek theatre unit 1 performance.
I like working with Emily and Dijarn as I haven't worked with them before,I like there approach on the play and characterisation.I feel comfortable around all of my class mates and don't ferl shy if I make a mistake or mess up around them,I know there characters and I know we all support one another and we all take in feedback and learn from our mistakes.
We read through our scripts in groups,My first impressions of the script was that I knew a lot of emotion was linked with the script,so before getting into it I had to understand the characters and research about them before I got into it.
I wasn't quite farmilliar with the language used in the scripts although I have auditioned somewhere with a Macbeth speach.The highlight of the day was receiving the scripts,even though I didn't know the limes I was already thinking about the staging and directing.
We watched a documentary "BBC Ancient Greece The Greatest Show on Earth - Democrats - 1/3".
this documentary was very interesting,after doing my research on Greek theatre,I did not feel as tho I knew enough knowledge in the history of greek theatre & the reason to why it is so significant in today's society.
In this video I was able to get a look at how drama in Athens was deeply connected to Athenian democracy,it helped me realise how strongly Greek theatre and Democracy is linked.
I learnt that:
-Greek civilisation effects every aspect of our lives
-Greek authors revolutionised story telling
-Greek theatre was a reaction to real events(story of Athens)
-In the 6th Century Athens was ruled by Democracy,so they had more freedom after the war
- lifelike statues & sculptures were created
Which helped the Greek authors when play writing
-All Greek performers wore masks as a signal of profession (masks were known to help people get closer to God),when you put a mask on it was as if you were a different person
Throughout the video I was able to maintain full concentration as I was quite interested in learning about the history of greek theatre,there were many eye catching moments in the video and it really caught my attention.
In the afternoon we were with rob for acting techniques in which we trained our voices and practiced tongue twisters,I struggled with this as I'm not used to saying tounge twisters but as this helps with vocal speech and as an actress punctuation in speach is very important,when I get time I will practice them as much as I can,these assist my learning and subsequent development.
Before getting our scripts we played a few games as a class,developing our skills as actors and helping us with team work,these games
We then got given our scripts and were put into groups for out Greek theatre unit 1 performance.
I like working with Emily and Dijarn as I haven't worked with them before,I like there approach on the play and characterisation.I feel comfortable around all of my class mates and don't ferl shy if I make a mistake or mess up around them,I know there characters and I know we all support one another and we all take in feedback and learn from our mistakes.
We read through our scripts in groups,My first impressions of the script was that I knew a lot of emotion was linked with the script,so before getting into it I had to understand the characters and research about them before I got into it.
I wasn't quite farmilliar with the language used in the scripts although I have auditioned somewhere with a Macbeth speach.The highlight of the day was receiving the scripts,even though I didn't know the limes I was already thinking about the staging and directing.
Monday, 19 September 2016
Greek theatre
I was given the task to research the history of Greek theatre and obtain information about it, these are my notes
What was the time period?(of Greek theatre)
The Greek theatre history began in 5th Century BC,in this era they hournered Gods with festivals,A God Dionysus was honored with a festival called "City Dionysia",During this festival in Athens the men used to perform songs,plays were also presented at the festival.Athens spread festivals like these to it allies to promote a common identity.
What else was happening at this time?
The Persians left Athens,which lead to Pericles Taking lead of Athens.
He had such a profound influence of Athenian society,he created an Athenian empire and lead his countrymen during the first years of Peloponnesian war.Pericles Created many buildings and statues,Introducing art and design.He lead Athens into "The Golden age of Athens".
Greek theatre began from religious traditions honouring Dionysus,the great God of spring/vintage,this God was known to be the God of wine.
Was it important and how did it affect any Dramatists?
The Golden age of Athens created the era of artists,The main play writes Sophocles, Euripides & Aeschylus created comedy and tragedies still relevant in today's society.In the golden ageGreek authors revolutionized story telling expressing Athenian culture through plays.
Greek theatre was usually a reaction to real events for example "Trojan horse"
Trojan horse is first mentioned in Homers odyssey,a song describing the aftermath of a war a Troy that purportedly took place around 500 years earlier.
In the "Golden Era of Athens lifelike sculptures and statues were created which helped Greek authors when playwriting.Pericles introduced a new Athenian democracy leading to more freedom for the Athens.The new found freedom encompassed freedom of speech hence a new era of playwrights
The Greeks made theatre,they created an innovation that was not only theatre but entertainment that was closely linked to democracy and politics.
Who were the playwrights?
The main playwrites were Aeschylus,Sophocles 496-406 B.C.EEuripides 480-406 B.C.E
what were their main works?
Aeschylus- The Persians,Prometheus bound, seven against Thebes
Sophocles-Antigone, Oedipus the king, Philoctetes,Ajax
Euripides-Medea,The bachae,Hippolytus
what were the main themes of these plays:
Tragedy,Death,comedy were the three main themes in the plays.Plays in that era usually related to actuall events,sometimes the masks were created to look like greek leaders.
were they socially relevant?:
They were socially relevant as most of them were linked to real events happening in that era, they gave across different messages to the Athens and some of the actors were imitating the leaders of the greek society in that era.
After reading about Greek theatre it has helped me understand the depth and emotion involved in the plays and how important theatre was in that era,
It helped me realize that when starting my performance its not just about reading the lines,it's about my character and the message I'm trying to give to the audience and how actors in the 5th century would have acted it out and what message they wanted to show to the Athenian society.
In my opinion it was a way of giving different messages to the Athenian people and it gave them an insite of what there leaders were like in that era,it gets the audience thinking,as it links to real life events and helps them understand whats going on in there society.
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