18/09/15
In this lesson, we were told that our play was going to be "The Flint Street Nativity". The play follows the weeks leading up to a nativity play by seven and eight year olds. The children are supposed to be played by adults, however, the adult actors have to be convincing and take their roles seriously. This is because children are very naïve and don't realise what they are saying is inappropriate or rude. Also, children say what they think, thus making the script very comical.
Miss Cordell gave us all the first scene and allocated parts at random. At first, we read through it sitting down, and then we got the piece up on its feet. There is also a musical number in this first scene, which we made a good start on.
This is all we had time for this lesson, as we had to be told the synopsis of more of the plan than our first scene, so we understood our roles better.
22/09/15
This lesson consisted of work shopping one scene. We were given scripts and as a group we had to stage that scene. Half the group was in the scene, whilst the other half observed. Miss Cordell kept rotating the parts so we got a chance to try each role, also allowing her to see who suited what role the best.
24/09/15
Improvise time! In this lesson, we were split into two groups and told to improvise a scene of children getting ready for a nativity play. My group decided to create a scene of children auditioning for their nativity play.
We worked out in which order we were going to audition and what each character was like (e.g. who the bully was, who the naughty child was, who the quiet child was). Once each group was ready, we performed them to the rest of the class (and a couple of year 13s). The thing we struggled most with was making our voices sound believable; it is easy to sound like a five year old, but we had to sound seven. In our actual performance, I believe that we did manage to achieve this. We did this by not making our voices to high and through our conversation topics.
25/09/15
Today's lesson was our last lesson before the cast list is created and revealed. In this lesson, we were given a scene from act two, where all actors play their act one character's parent (e.g. whoever played Mary in act one, will play Mary's mum in act two). After we read this scene once as a group, we rotated the parts round - enabling us to try different roles and to allow Miss Cordell to see how we were at different parts. We then got the piece on its feet. We really struggled doing this, as there are many conversations going on at different times, and there were a lot of stage directions.
