AAS (10) - Stanislavski & "He's Talking"

To begin this lesson we discussed Stanislavski and his beliefs. I wrote a little blog post on Stanislavski at the beginning of year 12 but I have obviously done a lot of work on him since. Stanislavski is a Russian practitioner who has made a lasting impact on theatre as we know it. Stanislavski believed that performances should be as realistic as possible - he created the idea of realism and naturalism. He used the following techniques / believed in the following:

• Emotional memory -- the actor should link the character's emotions that they feel in given circumstances in the script to real events that have happened to the actor. The purpose of this is to make their reactions more realistic.
• Subtext -- This is the actual text itself, and understanding what it all means.
• Method of physical actions -- This is how a simple everyday action would change depending on the situation (for example, someone putting down a glass whilst chatting to a friend, compared to putting down a glass whilst preparing to tell your partner that you are cheating on them).
• Given circumstances -- This is the information that you are given through the character's lines, what other characters say about your character and how the stage directions describe your role. This is the starting point to creating and becoming your character. 
• "If" (also known as the "Magic If") -- What would your character do in different circumstances or situations. An actor should consider these as to know their character better.
• Objective -- This is what your character's aim is. There can be several different objectives within one short section of script.
• Super-objective (also known as the intention) -- This is what the overall objective or goal of the play is. It is normally linked to the overall outcome of the play. If there is one clear path to the outcome of the play, then this is called the "through-line". 
• NOT breaking the fourth wall -- Stanislavski didn't believe in breaking the fourth wall as this would involve directly addressing the audience and thus breaking their emotional connection to the character(s). He did believe in the circles of attention though. The first circle of attention is yourself, the second is the closest people to you and the third are others around you.

After discussing Stanislavski's methods, we were given a part of the script from "He's talking". This play was written by Nicholas Wright. The synopsis is as follows (taken from the website: http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsW/wright-nicholas.html#87299): "What would you do if you were caught and interrogated? How long would it be before you cracked? Would you betray your friends? Would you give the names of the ones who had escaped to safety, and then stay silent? But once you'd started talking, how would you find the strength to stop? And if you went on to do the worst thing you can imagine, what would the rest of your life be like? 'He's Talking' is a fact-based fiction about an anti-racist bombing group in apartheid South Africa. Luke, the leader, is seized and questioned. Every word he speaks will have a lifelong effect on his young friends and on himself. One year later, they all meet up. Or some of them do. Or only a few. It all depends on whether he talked. . .or not."

In this lesson we sorted out who would play who and read through just Scene One (but not the next part). There are a few replays of this scene. These replays fit very well with what Stanislavski would have wanted. Each replay is basically another "If" scenario. Our cast list is as follows (every character is in their 20s):

• Katya Solley (KS) = Tanya -- British & in a relationship with Deon in this scene
• Lorna Clark (LC) = Rosie -- South African & extremist & used to live with Sal & only one who knows Skeets in this scene
• Hope Fashina (HF) = Sal -- South African & used to live with Rosie
• Lewis Fisher (LF) = Luke -- South African & extremist & was the one who got discovered
• Oliver Kelly (OK) = Oscar -- South African & doesn't agree with anything that has gone on
• Robert Andrew (RA) = Deon -- South African & in a relationship with Tanya in this scene
• Ollie Marshall (OM) = Skeets -- South African & only known by Rosie
• James Borg-Clancy (JBC) = Miles -- British & Tanya's brother

Next lesson we shall probably read through this scene again to ensure that everybody understands it, and then we shall begin staging it.

Musical Theatre (4) - "Seasons of Love"

In the past few lessons we have been working on the ensemble number "Seasons of Love". The first couple of lessons were spent working on the vocal side of it, whereas the next ones were spent blocking the number and polishing the vocals.

Vocals:

Movement:

• Begin off stage
• Walk into set positions during the second bar of the into and face different directions
• On second verse, walk into one straight line spanning SL to SR
• TM walks out of the line towards downstage whilst singing her solo, but returns to line once she has finished
• AA walks forwards during her solo and then walks back to the line once she has finished
• HA walks forwards on his solo and I join him on the line "in bridges he burned"
• HA walks back a little bit to join the line, whilst the rest of the line walk forwards to join him. This is done on the lines "it's time now, to sing out though the story never ends".
• I stay standing out of the line for my solo part. I stand on a 45 degree angle, singing my solo to the line, but turn out to face the audience for my line "measure your life in love".
• We sing the last few lines where we are.

The positions at the beginning are set to ensure that everyone can be seen. The loudest singers, Alice and I, have been placed at the front, and the quieter singers at the back. The purpose of this is to ensure that everyone can be heard when we walk into our line - Alice and I have to turn our backs to the audience to walk to the line, whilst the quieter singers just walk forwards. We didn't want the quieter singers to turn their backs as they wouldn't be heard (as we won't be using microphones).

To Improve:
To improve this song, we need to work on finishing the lines together to make the piece crisper and cleaner. We also need to work on our tuning in some places as it tends to get a little bit flat when we are singing all together. Moreover, we need to work on our volume (which will come with confidence) to ensure that the parts are balanced when singing harmonies, otherwise one section can over-power the others.

AAS (9) - "Mother Courage" Performance

In today's lesson we performed our "Mother Courage" scene. Before performing it (to our teacher and a video camera) we ran through it quickly. In this run, we finally got our projection working. One slide of the projection was a paper ID from around the same time of when Anna Fierling was alive. This was projected when the Sergeant asks for her papers. The other slides of projection were black crosses, which we projected on to the curtains behind us when Hope looks at the pieces of paper with crosses on (the Sergeant's, Eilis', Swiss Cheese's and Kattrin's). The reason we included projection was because it was another Brechtian technique, which worked well in this scenario.

Also in this run we added in another prop. To represent the Sergeants helmet, we used a cardboard box. This was for the section that Hope asks the Sergeant for the helmet into which she puts the paper in to shuffle before drawing them one by one. This worked really well as Hope could move the papers about in the box rather than just holding paper. The paper we used were our name placards. Once Hope pulled our names out, James took them, screwed them up and threw them away to portray that he shall take us and the war will then crush us.

Our actual performance went really well on the whole. We all remembered where we needed to be, and the use of placards were really effective. We all used our body language effectively and the projection looked really good. However, when it came to quickly re-setting before our performance, we forgot to put the box in place (though thankfully we remembered everything else). Fortunately, as Charlie was the director and so not actually in the piece, he got the box and put it in a convenient place at the side - this was in a place that was out of shot of the camera and audience, and in a place that Lewis could just reach over and get it. Lewis and I made it a part of the performance by picking it up in an intrigued manner and fiddling with it before putting it where it should be. If we were to do the performance again, and if we had more time, we would have ensured we had everything in place and also we could have learned all of our lines off by heart.

I like the idea of Brecht's techniques but I don't particularly enjoying performing Brecht as I like to get deep into a role. I like the idea of breaking the fourth wall and being represantational but I like to be convincing in a role.

Auditions (10) - Othello Monologue

For this lesson I had to have learnt one monologue off by heart and have another one prepared. Unfortunately, we only had time to do one monologue this lesson, so we performed our learned ones.

Below is the feedback I was given for my first attempt:

• Acted it well
• Read to the punctuation well instead of to the end of the line
• One line needed care ("palettes for both sweet and dour") - I stumbled on my words slightly which put me off
• Convincing. Clearly new the meaning. Understandable
• Watch diction at times
• Try it again but as if talking to a friend

Below is the feedback for my second attempt:

• Much preferred it as if talking to a friend
• More convincing
• Don't go too quiet, just because you're talking to one person

As we didn't get a chance to perform our second monologue this lesson, we have been asked to learn it ready for next lesson. Below are the notes I made for my character:

• Playing age: 30s - 40s
• Francis' love interest
• "Charlie Clench's bossy, voluptuous and feminist secretary"
• Commedia dell'arte equivalent is Columbina
• Note from the same website from which I got the monologue: "Dolly has just watched Pauline Clench and Alan Dangle argue about Pauline's innocence and purity"
• Alan is a wannabe actor; Pauline is pretty and stupid

Musical Theatre (3) - Character Profile

• Lawyer -- trained at Ivy-League University. Public interest Lawyer.
• Lesbian -- falls in love Maureen.
• Complicated relationship with Maureen -- Has trust issues, and rightly so. Maureen is very flirtatious and has cheated in the past ("She cheated. Maureen cheated. I'm defeated I should give up right now. I'd fall for her still anyhow" - some lyrics from "Tango: Maureen").
• Parents loving but not supportive -- Parents are loving in the fact that they care for her and they refer to her as "Kitten" (in "Voice Mail #2"). They do not support her choice in partner or dress sense, telling her to wear a dress, not wear Doc Martin's and to come alone to her mother's hearing (also from "Voice Mail #2").
• Forgiving -- In "Take Me or Leave Me", Maureen and Joanne's relationship is on the brink, but she is willing to try again if Maureen is willing to "take it back".
• Organised -- Keeps everything in order. "I look before I leap. I love margins and discipline. I make lists in my sleep" (as she says in "Take Me or Leave Me").
• Masculine one out of the pair -- She wears the trousers. Typically wears suits.
• More submissive -- Does everything Maureen asks of her.
• Gets on with pretty much everybody -- Apart from Maureen, she has no major conflicts with anyone.
• Parents have important professional jobs -- One is awaiting confirmation to become a judge, whilst the other is a government official.
• Paranoid -- Always worried that Maureen is going to cheat on her.
• Committed -- Just wants commitment from Maureen. "Never quit, I see it through" (she sings also in "Take Me Or Leave Me").

 Below is a character relationship map I have made - it shows the relationship between Joanne and the main characters, and the relationships happening around her. The green lines show pretty happy relationships, red and green show this it is a little bit shaky, whilst the red line shows that it is not brilliant.

Musical Theatre (2) - Audition Preparation & The Audition

Out of the ten people that are taking part in this unit, only three of us are girls - this means that the roles we will all get one of the following roles: Mimi (centre), Maureen (right) or Joanne (left). I decided that I definitely wanted to go for Joanne. I decided against Mimi as I personally don't think that I suite her. I love Mimi's songs and I can dance, but I don't have the right figure for her and I would suite the other two better. I am currently doing another production of Rent at my theatre school, where I am playing the role of Maureen, so I didn't really fancy going for this character again, as not only would the choreography/staging become confusing, but I fancied playing her partner. I have always loved the character Joanne due to her personality and her songs (especially "Tango: Maureen"). I think that I would suite this character best vocally as well - although I can belt, I prefer Joanne's songs and I find it a challenge to belt as high as the role of Maureen demands.

For my audition, I chose to sing Joanne's solo song "We're Okay". In this song, she is having three phone call conversations at once. The song starts with her talking to "Steve", a councillor who she works with, about business ("so tell them we'll sue, but a settlement will do"). The pay phone rings - Maureen is on the other end asking about arrangements for her protest ("yes I have the cowbell, we're okay"). Also on her other phone, her father is trying to ring her to talk about her mother's hearing. Throughout the song Joanne is gradually getting more stressed out. Towards the end of the song, her lack of trust for Maureen is obvious as she tells Steve that she "gotta go", and she continues asking Maureen about Jill. During my audition, I mimed holding the two phones - although this was quite cheesy, I thought it was necessary to ensure the song makes sense. Another vital element of musical theatre singing is facial expressions - like anything, without facial expressions, a lot of meaning is lost - so to show my characters constant change of emotions I really varied my facial expressions.

The feedback from my audition is as follows:

• "Very strong singing voice." - Mr Webb
• "Good song choice. Clear understanding of the piece shown through body language and facial expressions" - Mr Webb
• "Acted it well. Perfect timing. Character could have had more Lesbian qualities" - Mr McKay

I was really happy when I found out that I got the role of Joanne. I was also really happy when I found out that Alice got the part of Maureen, as we work really well together and so there should be no problem about doing duets together. The full cast list for our version of Rent is as follows (I have put the initials next to their names as this is how I shall refer to each person in blogs to come):

• Henri Alabi (HA) = Roger
• Cameron Falconar (CF) = Mark
• Taylor Medford-Major (TM) = Mimi
• Lewis Fisher (LF) = Collins
• Owen Pickett (OP) = Angel
• Alice Abbott (AA) = Maureen // Mrs Cohen
• Lorna Clark (LC) = Joanne
• Will Dunn (WD) = Benny
• Warren-Joe Banfield (WB) = Alexi Darling // Mr Jefferson // Warren
• Tyler Goodyear (TG) = Waiter // Mrs Jefferson // Gordon

AAS (8) - Brecht & "Mother Courage"

Our first step to creating this scene was to read through the script. Charlie announced the cast-list and we then read-through the script slowly, stopping whenever anyone was confused. The cast list is as follows:

• Recruiter = James (JBC)
• Sergeant = Oliver K (OK)
• Mother Courage = Hope (HF)
• The Elder Son = Rob (RA)
• The Younger Son = Ollie M (OM)
• Eilif = Katya (KS)
• Swiss Cheese = Lewis (LF)
• Kattrin = Lorna (LC)

When reading through the script, we worked out the character's intentions and what was actually going on in the scene. In this scene, Mother Courage drives down a country road on her cart with her three children: Eilif, Swiss Cheese and Kattrin. She is stopped by the Sergeant and the Recruiter. By the end of the scene, Mother Courage has been distracted by the Sergeant, whilst the Recruiter has taken Eilif away. We worked out that Eilif and the Elder Son were the same people, and Swiss Cheese and the Younger Son were the same. As well as allocating characters, Charlie also split up some of the stage directions and allocated them to certain people to read, as this was a Brechtian technique for stage directions to be spoken. Mother Courage also has a song within this scene, but as we did not know the tune, nor are any of us composers, we decided that this would be spoken. So that this didn't turn into one long, rhyming monologue, Charlie split up the lines and gave them to different people.

After reading through the script a couple of times, Charlie briefly spoke us through what he had planned for the scene, and we began blocking. The Brechtian techniques that we have included are as follows:

1. Reading stage directions aloud
2. Placards (e.g. "Eilif Nojocki", "Swiss Cheese" and "Kattrin Haupt" are haled up by said characters when they are introduced to the Sergeant and Recruiter by Mother Courage)
3. Representational props (instead of having a real cart, we are using a table turned on its side with a placard attached)
4. Minimal costume (e.g. Rob will take off a jacket to turn from Older Son to a soldier)
5. Simplistic lighting (we are not using any additional lighting, apart from the normal lights in the room)

In today's lesson we completed all of the blocking and polished the scene. For my character, I don't say anything as she is mute and also described as "dumb". Therefore, I have to really use my facial expressions and body language.

Auditions (9) - A Doll's House

For this lesson we had to have two monologues: one we knew off by heart and one that we kind of knew. The monologue that I learned off by heart was the one from "A Doll's House" spoken by the character Nora. I chose this monologue as I had done a little bit of it before and I wanted to work on it more as I was considering using this monologue as one of my three that I have to do for this unit. The other monologue that I chose was the one from "Othello" spoken by the character Emilia. I thought this monologue would be a good choice as I wanted to do it last lesson, but we only had time for one. I had also done the first two lines from this monologue before, but I wanted to do the whole thing.

We were then told then we probably wouldn't have time to do both monologues this lesson as we were going to be going in to them in depth. I therefore decided that I would use the "Doll's House" monologue as I had taken the time to learn it and I really wanted to explore this monologue further. Also, the fact that I wouldn't be holding a sheet, meant that I could work on my movement more and had nothing to hide behind.

The first time I performed this monologue, I did it sitting down (as this is how I had practised it before). After this performance, I was told that I had good articulation, good eye contact and that I grabbed everyone's attention. I was also told that I portrayed the character as being measured and controlled really well, but this wasn't really appropriate for the character.

For my second attempt, I was asked to perform it again, but this time standing up. The purpose of this was so I wasn't restricted and could work on my movement. This was also symbolic as this is the first time that Nora stands up for herself and stands on her own two feet. I was also asked to "explode"! Instead of performing this monologue quite measured, I was told to try it in a completely broken state - my character has reached breaking point in this monologue and is so angered and distraught that she leaves her husband and children (which was not the done thing at this time). To add movement in to this monologue, I paced from side to side quickly, but stopping at various points to exaggerate a certain line. I varied my tone of voice throughout to show my character's unstable mental state. I spoke at a faster pace to show her need to get what she has to say across. This also made a big contrast to the sections that I slowed down to exaggerate.

Before I perform this monologue again (if I chose it), I shall annotate my monologue with the character's objectives and feelings for each line to give me a better understanding of how I should perform certain lines.

Business (4) - Task A - Powerpoints

In today's lesson, we presented out research as a PowerPoint presentation to the rest of the class. We all did three theatre companies each, and a few of us picked the same companies. However, this was quite useful as we could then see if we had missed any information out. James also used National Theatre as one of his companies. What I liked about his presentation was that he zoomed in on the important people involved with the company.

For example, I learned that Rufus Norris (the artistic director of the company) is a multi-award winning theatre director, with his awards including the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer (Afore Night Came), two Olivier's and a Critics' Circle Award. James also did the Royal Shakespeare Company and Frantic Assembly in his presentation. Oliver also did Frantic Assembly, and I really liked the company's quote which he put in his PowerPoint: "We began with little more than a fierce work ethic and a desire to do something different and to do it differently". Ollie's other two chosen companies were also National Theatre and the Really Useful Group. What I liked about Ollie's Really Useful Group section, was that he included random facts, such as "approximately 1 in 3 of all visits to a London musical is to a Really Useful Group theatre".

Auditions (8) - Two monologues

For Wednesday's lesson we have to choose two monologues: one that we have learned off by heart and one that we are kind of familiar with. I have chosen to learn my Othello one off by heart, as I still haven't had the chance to perform this one yet, and I decided that I would find a completely new one to familiarise myself with. I really like my monologue from Othello (spoken by the character Emilia) as it is basically stating that men and women are equal and should be allowed to do the same things.

I found three monologues so I could look at them all before choosing my favourite one to perform on Wednesday. I considered each monologue individually - what I liked about them and what I disliked. The three monologues that I found, and my thoughts on each, are as follows:

• ((My William Shatner Man Crush -- D. M. Larson -- Jenny))
  
  • http://freedrama.net/thingnerd.html
  • Themes of monologue: love, relationships, nerds
  • Approximate age: 17 - 18
  • It is comical, and I like how there are quotes from stereotypically "nerdy" things integrated in to the monologue. I can connect with the character as she is about my age and also because I used to be known as a nerd throughout junior school and the beginning of secondary school.
  • I am not choosing this monologue, however, as I can't find any information on the play itself, and therefore I don't know what happens before and after this. I don't know who she is talking to and anything else about her (apart from what I can work out from the monologue itself)
• ((Guys & Dolls -- Jo Swerling Abe Burrows -- Sarah Brown))
  
  • http://stageagent.com/monologues/629/guys-and-dolls/sarah-brown
  • Themes of monologue: Preaching, determination, leadership, religion 
  • Approximate age: 25 - 35
  • "Sarah is standing on a street corner hopelessly preaching to the sinful gamblers walking by."
  • I like the character's determination. Although people are ignoring her, she continues to speak her beliefs and tries to warn people not to gamble. Although I am not religious, I like how she refers to everyone as "brothers and sisters" as it suggests that we should be living in harmony and should be as one.  
• ((One Man, Two Guvnors -- Richard Bean -- Dolly))
  
  • http://stageagent.com/monologues/2211/one-man-two-guvnors/dolly
  • Themes of monologue: Advice, relationships, men
  • Approximate age: Early 20s
  • I can connect with the character as I am also the one who ends up giving advice to people
  • I like how honest and open the character is.
  • This piece is quite a contrast to the pieces I have done so far.

Musical Theatre (1) - Rent research

Today Lewis and I found out that we will actually be doing a Musical Theatre Unit. As we are ahead of Charlie and Oliver on the Triple course (as they only started at the beginning of this year), we have been asked to join with the Year 12 double class, for their production of Rent. I am really excited to be doing another production of Rent, as it is one of my favourite musicals.

General Information:

• Lyricist & composer = Jonathon Larson
• Rock musical loosely based on the opera "La Bohème" byPuccini
• Set in the 90s in New York
• Most characters have AIDS

Characters:

• Mark Cohen -- Roger's roommate // Recently been dumped by Maureen // Struggling filmmaker
• Roger Davis -- Mark's roommate // Girlfriend (April) committed suicide after finding out she has HIV-positive // struggling musician and songwriter // Dates Mimi // Has AIDS
• Mimi Márquez -- Dancer at the Cat Scratch Club // Has AIDS // Dates Roger // Drug addict // Almost dies towards the end but pulls through
• Tom Collins -- Has AIDS // Anarchist professor // Dates Angel // Former roommate of Roger and Mark (and Maureen and Benny)
• Angel Dumott Schunard -- Has AIDS // Street percussionist // Transgender // Dates Collins // Dies
• Maureen Johnson -- Possibly has AIDS // Ex-girlfriend of Mark // Dates Joanne // Flirtatious and a cheat // Performance artist // Hosts a protest
• Joanne Jefferson -- Lawyer // Lesbian // Dates Maureen // Organised // Powerful parents
• Benjamin "Benny" Coffin III -- Former roommate of Roger and Mark (and Maureen and Collins) // Was in a relationship with Mimi // Married to Allison Grey (who's part of a wealthy family involved in real estate) // Landlord
• Mrs Cohen -- Mark's mum // Very mothering and over-caring // Leaves multiple voicemail messages
• Alexi Darling -- Producer of "Buzzline" (a "sleazy tabloid company")
• Mr and Mrs Jefferson -- Joanne's parents // One awaiting confirmation to be a Judge, the other is a government official
• Mrs Davis -- Roger's mum, who leaves a voicemail saying she is confused and doesn't know where Roger is ("Roger, where are you?")
• Mrs Márquez -- Mimi's Spanish mother, who leaves a voicemail saying she is confused and doesn't know where Mimi is
• Mr Grey -- Benny's father-in-law // Wants to buy out the lot
• The Man -- A drug-dealer // Roger used to buy from him // Mimi's dealer
• Life Support Members -- Paul // Gordon // Ali // Steve // Sue // Pam
• The Waiter -- Waiter at the Life Café
• Homeless Woman -- Also known as "Woman with the bags" // Angered by Mark filming her
• Squeegee Man -- Homeless man who chants "Honest Living"
• The Preacher -- Kicks Collins out of the church as he can't afford Angel's funeral 

 Musical Numbers:

AAS (7) - Brecht

To begin this lesson we got back into our pairs and presented our findings on Brecht to the rest of the class. After doing this, we got into pairs and stood on the opposite side of the class to our partners. We then had to think of a nursery rhyme and mime it to our partner using gestures. The partner had to guess what nursery rhyme it was and then we would swap. The purpose of this exercise was to get used to using exaggerated gestures.

We were then told that the next play we would look at was "Mother Courage and her children".  Brecht wrote this play at the height of World War 2. The play is about Anna Fierling (a.k.a. "Mother Courage") who is trying to make money from the Thirty Years' War (1618 - 1648). However, from the very war she is trying to make money from, her three children lose their lives and she ends up losing her money. Angered by the war, Brecht wanted to write an anti-war play, but knew it would be stupid to write about the current war (as this would result in him being arrested or even killed) so he wrote about a previous war in Sweden.

We were given the script for the scene we will be working on at the end of the lesson. The characters in this scene are as follows:

• Recruiter
• Sergeant
• Mother Courage
• The Elder Son
• The Younger Son
• Eilif
• Swiss Cheese
• Kattrin

There are eight characters and nine of us in the class so we decided that someone would be the director. We all had a vote and ended up deciding that Charlie would be the director as he really wanted to direct, he comes up with a lot of good ideas and he knows a lot about Brecht. Next lesson we shall work on this scene.

Auditions (7) - Character Profiles

Realism & Naturalism (7) - Viewpoints & Monologues

In this lesson we had an ex-student, Tom, come in and do some workshops with us. He has recently completed a course at National Theatre and is now on their books. We spent the first half of the lesson exploring Viewpoints and the second half working on a smaller monologue of our choice.

Viewpoints are to do with voice and spatial relationships:

• Voice:
  -- Tone:   How you say something, and the personality we communicate it with
  -- Pitch:   How high or low you speak
  -- Pace:   The speed at which we say something
  -- Accent:   The dialect you speak with
  -- Volume:   How loud or quiet you say something
  -- Gesture:   This includes stutters and pauses
• Spatial relationships:-- Proxemics:   The distance between you and others
  -- Time:   The duration you spend away from / near others
  -- Patterns:   How you use the space and what it looks like from above
  -- Gesture:   Hand gestures (e.g. a wave)
  -- Touch:   The physical contact you have with others
  -- Architecture:   The physical props you use and physical objects
  -- Repetition:   How often you repeat a gesture or how long you maintain a certain relationship
  -- Audience:   You have to consider what it looks like from the audience's perspective
  -- Shape:   The physical shape you make with your body
  -- Eye contact:   How long you maintain you eye contact with certain people

Tom got Ollie, Lewis and I to line up in a diagonal line across the room. He then swapped places with us one at a time, so we could step out and do what we thought was underlining / highlighting the shape. We really struggled with this, but Ollie accidently did this right. He moved from USL to stand with Lewis DSR. This made another interesting shape as Ollie was standing close to Lewis facing him, whilst I was far away from them - this shape in itself could suggest many different things (for example, they could have been fighting over my character, or they could be in a relationship and I was jealous). We moved around a few more times to see if we could all try highlighting and to see if we could get used to this new concept.

Once we understood this, we tried "adding architecture". For this exercise, we had to do the same thing, but this time, use objects in the room. My first individual movement was going to press the fire alarm. The other two did something individually, and without realising it, we had managed to form an interesting pattern. Another one of my movements was reaching as high as I could to try and touch the projector. Tom then wanted us to add the technique of "touch". This time, Lewis gave me a piggy back, and I stretched up and managed to touch the projector. We were also given scenarios which changed our facial expressions (thus including another viewpoint) - for example, Tom then told me that the wires of the projector that I was touching were in fact wires to a bomb which I was trying to disable.

After doing a few workshops to explore viewpoints, we began working on our monologues. We were told to use monologues that we knew off by heart, so we used the monologues we used in the previous double lesson for our audition unit (I used my monologue from "Assassins"). Below are the comments Tom made about my first attempt:

• "Awesome!" // Loved the laugh at the beginning as it was really believable and caught his attention straight away // good use of tone, tempo and pitch
• Perhaps use more hand gestures // focus on someone else so he could watch the entire performance and my body language instead of looking into my eyes (as I was staring him out during this monologue) // include more vocal gestures // elongate the entire speech - drag out phrases to show that I am high

Below are the comments Tom gave me after my second performance:

• Good and convincing use of pace // good use of hand gestures // liked the vocal gestures // still held his attention, despite focussing the entire monologue on Ollie
• lost accent a little bit in places due to speed but this was "understandable" and expected // maybe let my eye contact completely vary next time to show that I was high (I found this point interesting as it was the opposite to what my double teacher wanted)

AAS (6) - Brecht

In this lesson we began our study on Brecht. I already knew quite a bit about Brecht, as I studied him for GCSE and I have done a little bit about him on a previous blog (http://lornaclarkra.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/bertolt-brecht.html). We also discussed fascism and communism. We discussed the meanings of these words and an example for each (Carl Marx was a communist and Hitler was a fascist). Brecht left Germany during the First World War and became a state-less citizen. Brecht was nearer the communist side of the scale then fascist as he believed that people derive to be treated equally and he left Germany because of Hitler and the Nazis.

Ollie M and I paired up and researched Brechtian techniques:

• Verfremdungseffekt = Distancing
• Wanted the audience to think
• Theatre for the brain, not for the heart
•  Didn't want the audience to become emotionally attached
• Breaking the fourth wall - directly addresses the audience
• Narration
• Third-person narration (normally takes place within a freeze-frame)
• Speaking the stage directions
• Using placards
• Multi-rolling
• Minimal set / costume / props
• Symbolic props
• Bright whit lights / visible scene changes
• Song & dance - style of the music and lyrics don't seem to fit together
• Montage (a rapid sequence of cross-faded or straight-cut segments)

Business (3) - Task A - Ambassador Theatre Group

• Name: Ambassador Theatre Group
• Established: 1992 // Founded by Sir Howard Panter and Rosemary Squire OBE
• Theatres include: Apollo Victoria // Fortune Theatre // Lyceum // Playhouse // Savoy // Trafalgar Studios // King's Theatre, Glasgow // Richmond Theatre // The Lyric Theatre Broadway // Theatre Royal Sydney
• Notable productions: Women on the Verge of a Mental Breakdown // Dirty Rotten Scoundrels // Legally Blonde (in Australia) // West Side Story (Australia) // 
• How it is funded: Mainly owned by Providence Equity Partners 
• How it programmes it's productions: Restaurant partners with many including Bella Italia, allowing ATG Ticketing to create meal package options // The Ticket Machine Group was acquired by ATG in 2013, so uses the very popular "LOVEtheatre.com". 
• Work outside of their performances: Project Blackout (turning off electrical supplies overnight) // Waste and recycling project // Partnership with Drop4Drop, working with suppliers // ATG Creative Learning
• http://www.atg.co.uk/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassador_Theatre_Group 
• http://www.atg.co.uk/ticketing/ 
• http://creativelearning.atg.co.uk/about-creative-learning/ 

Auditions (6) - Contemporary monologue performance

In this lesson, we only had time to perform one of our monologues. As I had worked on my classical monologue a little bit in the previous lesson, I decided to use my contemporary monologue from "Assassins". We ran this lesson like a serious audition. We all performed our monologues to a panel of two (our teacher and an ex-student) and the rest of the class. Before I started my monologue, I was asked questions about my character (such as their name, age, situation, and what had happened prior to this monologue).

Feedback given for my first attempt:

• "Clear understanding of the piece and the context"
  
  • I managed to answer all of their questions about my character as I had done a lot of research
• "You need to work on eye contact with the audience"
  
  • I tried to perform my monologue too much, as opposed to making my character more believable and natural. I wasn't really sure who my character was talking to, as I couldn't find any information on it.  However, after this attempt, I made a decision that my character is talking to a counsellor in prison. This may not be the case, but I decided on this so I could then focus on one person and use my eye contact better.
• "Vary your tone of voice throughout"
  
  • As my character is high on marijuana, I was focussing on my characterisation, and forgot about my tone of voice. I kept my voice quite low and smooth to show that I was high. However, I realised after this attempt, that I could still vary my tone, even if I am supposed to be high.
• "You need to hook the audience from the first line"
  
  • I managed to hook the audience a few lines in and hold their attention, but it is extremely important to hook the audience from the first line, as judges / casting directors would make up their mind from the very start.

Feedback given for my second attempt: 

• "Good eye contact"
  
  • By deciding on who I was talking to, I managed to have better eye contact, and thus made my piece more engaging.
• "Less drawn out words - Change the pace"
  
  • I managed to vary my tone more this time, but I didn't really concentrate on the pace at which I spoke. I kind of said everything with the same sort of rhythm.
• "Use pauses effectively"
  
  • I paused in appropriate places to add depth, but to make these pauses more meaningful and more natural, I should have made them longer. By doing this, I could have shown the audience that I was thinking during these pauses, as my character would be reliving this event in her head, as opposed to reciting lines.
• "Needs an energy injection"
  
  • As I was trying to portray the fact that my character is high, I sounded and acted a little bit too laid back. Instead, I should have focused more on making my piece engaging. The fact that I didn't vary my pace enough didn't help.

Unfortunately, we didn't get time to perform the monologues again. This was a shame, as after my second attempt, I went through my monologue and annotated it thoroughly (pictured below). I practiced it a few times, with all the feedback in mind. Also, whilst practising, I managed to learn it off by heart (although we were told that we didn't have to know it off by heart for our performance in class). This is definitely my favourite monologue I have done so far as, although I struggle with accents, I really enjoyed the challenge of having to do one. I also think it is a really interesting piece and I find the character fun to play, as she is so different to me.

AAS (5) - "An Inspector Calls" performance

In this lesson we performed our scenes. Before the performances, we were given time to work on them for a bit longer. Firstly, we ran through our scene and decided that we should add a bit more movement to it. As I was playing the part of an upper-class Victorian lady, I decided that I should stay seated throughout the scene - Kat also remained seated for the same reason. James moved a lot throughout the scene to imply that he didn't belong there (as it isn't his house) and to also show that he was nervous as he was desperately trying to please everyone. Lewis moved around a little bit as well to show his higher status and to show that he owns the place.

After running the scene with our new staging, we decided that we would do the scene again but as different characters - Kat and I swapped roles and Lewis and James swapped. The purpose of this exercise was so we could see how someone else would play our role; we could then bring what we liked about their interpretation to our own performance. I really liked how Kat said the line "much nicer really". Before, I said the line as if I wanted my voice to be heard and was warning Arthur not to say something he'd regret. However, Kat almost said the line as a statement, as if she's thinking aloud. I decided that I would say this line in this way, as this would create less tension at this point, thus making Arthur's discussion about business instead of Sheila's happiness more tense.

Self-observation from the video:

• I maintained my posture throughout
• I liked how I didn't move at all apart from my head, as it shows that my character has quite a high status and is refined 
• I articulated the majority of my lines
• I should have done a character profile and worked out what my character felt about certain topics of conversation - for example, how does she feel about Arthur thinking Sheila is calling him a "purple-faced old man", and what does she think about Sheila's expression of "squiffy"?
• If I had learned my lines off by heart, then I could have worked on my eye contact more and improved my facial expressions
• Although I maintained my stern facial expression throughout, I think I could have varied my expressions a little bit more.

I enjoyed Victorian melodrama as it is similar to naturalism but is heightened and over-the-top making it more similar to musical theatre. However, I found this quite challenging as I didn't want to make it to over-the-top as I kept forgetting that it was melodrama. If I were to do this again I would completely relax and just go for it, rather than trying to make my character as convincing as possible.

AAS (4) - "An Inspector Calls"

We began this lesson by reading through our scenes again and altering them as Ollie was not in this lesson. We got rid of the character Eric, and James played Gerald instead. After reading through the scene again, we began to stage our piece. We knew that we wanted to all sit on chairs, as they had supposedly just had dinner. We left a chair empty for where Eric would be sitting. Although, no one was playing Eric anymore, he was referred to during the scene as if he was there. This ended up being quite symbolic, as his character gets ignored a lot. We also considered proxemics to show relationships and character objectives - for example, James always tried to get closer to Kat to show that Gerald wanted to please Sheila, however, Kat often tried to back away, to show that Sheila is hurt that he practically ignored her during the summer.

We then performed these scenes to each other. One piece of feedback we received was that we were starting to get the hang of our body language; we managed to maintain the strong, upright posture for the majority of the time. Also, we maintained the posh voices throughout, though they needed to be a little more fluid at times.

What we need to work on next lesson is making our characters more belivable and creating more tension.

Realism & Naturalism (6) - Character Profile & Monologue

In today's lesson we discussed how to do a successful monologue. Our main focus was how to begin a monologue - you need to capture the audience's attention from the beginning and make them believe in your character from the very start. To be able to do this, you should take as much time as you need to ensure that you are in character from the beginning. You should also use eye contact (if appropriate) and really consider your body language. Most importantly, you need to know your character inside out. Even if you are only doing a tiny monologue, it is important to know what has previously happened to your character, what situation they are in now and what they are like. Therefore, we spent a long time today doing character profiles...

• Appearance & Body language:
  • In her late teens - 18/19
  • Short
  • Mild pregnancy bump
  • Dark hair worn down, framing her face
• Backstory:
  • Abused by her father when she was six
  • Mother takes all doors off of the house in an attempt to protect Mona
  • "Raised" by her mother
  • Her home is filled by random men thanks to her mum
• Relationships (MUM):
  
  • Strong, wild laugh
  • Spoilt, young, beautiful, honest, trying
  • Loves her daughter but finds her strange
• Relationships ("HIM"):
  
  • Powerful, strong, scars, broad, unusual
  • Exciting and sexual
  • Mysterious, generous, welcoming
  • Left her on a cold stone
• Personality & Other notes:
  • Has many secrets
  • Vulnerable, excitable, childish and pregnant
  • Gone through a lot
  • Doesn't blame "him"
  • Disgusted / angered by her mother
  • Very confused and messed up mind set

After doing our character profiles, we quickly learned the first line or two of our monologues. As we understood our characters a lot better, we could then begin characterising them. We only focussed on the first couple of lines of our monologues as our aim this lesson was to create an engaging beginning. I wanted to do mine sitting down at the beginning and quite inwards, as I think Mona is reflecting at this point - she is trying to put everything into perspective and get things straight in her messed up and confused mind. My first two lines are "This is the house that my mother built. This is the house that lets the outside in and keeps the inside out". When I first did this I sat perfectly still and just said the lines. I took a little pause between the two sentences to show my character thinking and giving herself time to get everything straight in her head. The fact that she begins both sentences the same way shows that she is having to take her time and really go over every detail so she can make it make sense to herself. Also, the first time I did this, I kind of jumped straight into it - I didn't give myself that long to prepare. At first I thought I wanted to show my character's honesty and willingness to share her story, but I decided against it as I wanted to give myself more time before.

The second time I performed these two lines was completely different. I still sat with my legs crossed on a chair (like a child in an assembly, to show my characters innocence and to emphasise the fact that she has been through a lot although she is still quite young), but this time I didn't sit still. I took about ten seconds before I started speaking just to fiddle with a hairband. The purpose of this was not only to give me more time to get into character, but to draw the audience in to what I was doing. I said both of my lines in a similar manner but I didn't look at the audience at all. I wanted to keep it quite internal to suggest that my character is preparing herself before openly sharing her life story. On the next line I was going to look up, as Mona then goes into detail about what her house is like. This would be an ideal time to look up, as it fits well with the character's confidence and willingness to share, and also avoids me looking down for too long.

By next lesson, we have to read through the monologue several times and really familiarise ourselves with it.

Auditions (5) - Monologue research

Classical Monologue:

• Play: Othello
• Playwright: William Shakespeare
• Character: Emilia
• Approx age: 20 - 30
• Additional info: Married to Iago (marriage made in Hell) // Maid to Desdemona (knows the ins and outs with her marriage to Othello and how she is treated) // Is talking to Desdemona in the monologue
• Before this monologue: Desdemona has been set to bed by Othello and he has completely disregarded her.
• Themes of monologue: Feminism, confusion, desires and relationships
• Link: http://www.inexplicabledumbshow.com/shakespeare-monologues/female/o-4-3-85-emilia.pdf

Contemporary Monologue: 

• Play: Assassins
• Playwright: John Weidman
• Character: Lynette Fromme
• Age: 27
• Additional info: Middle-class upbringing // Met Charlie when she was 19 // Criminal // Commits crime to get Charlie to be called as a Witness where he can use this opportunity to deliver his speech to the world.
• Where  they're from: Los Angeles
• Themes of monologue: Love, family and addiction
• Link: https://alwaysworkingartists.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/assassins-fromme.pdf

Auditions (4) - Workshops & Monologues

To begin this lesson we did a physical warm up (consisting of jogging and jumping to increase our heart-rate, and stretching to increase the elasticity of our muscles to avoid injuries). This lesson was run like an actual audition. We took part in a variety of different workshop activities that would be lead in an actual audition.

Workshops:

• Discovering a new world: We had to lie on the floor in a neutral position and then imagine that we were the first life form on earth. We then took our own time to start moving and exploring. The purpose of this exercise was for the audition panel to see how we worked on our own, and how we used the little things. Ollie, Rob and James were complimented in this section as they really took their time on the little details (e.g. they explored each joint in their fingers).
• Soldier: We all had to lie on the floor with our eyes shut - when we were tapped on the shoulder, we had to get up as if we had just come to after an explosion, to find that we were the only surviving soldier. This exercise happened one at a time. This took away the visual element of the audition, as we couldn't get any ideas by watching other people, and instead had to think for ourselves - the panel got to see what we would bring to the scene. Ollie and I were complimented for this scene as we were believable and took our time with it.
• Corner exercise: We had to do five runs and five jumps, then four runs and four jumps, then three of both, and down to one of each. This exercise was to test our timing and concentration. I found this exercise quite challenging as you had to ignore the bars in the music to be able to do the right amount of runs and jumps, but have to listen to the beat at the same time to keep the right timing.
• Walk neutral: We had to line up across the wall and walk neutrally to the other side. This turned out to be a lot harder than we thought. However, we all managed to get it eventually. The reason I didn't get it at first was because I was walking too much like a dancer - I was holding my carriage up too much and therefore wasn't completely neutral.
• Animals: For this exercise, we had to create individual freeze-frames of any animal we liked. I picked a lioness (having done the show Lion King at my theatre school, so had done a lot of work on how this animal moves). I sat on my knees, with my hands on the floor (with my elbows outwards) and my head slightly lowered but with my eyes up. This was to show that I was watchful but ready to attack at any moment. We then had to move around as these animals and interact with everybody else. Charlie, Ollie and I got complimented on this section as we jumped straight into the exercise and weren't worried about what we looked like.
• Colours: We also had to think of a colour and all move round as this colour. I found this exercise quite interesting as some people thought of the emotions connected with some colours, whilst others thought of the connotations connected with these colours.
• Noodles: We had to pretend we were a noodle in a microwave. I thought this was a challenging exercise as I have never had to do this before! However, I found this really fun and just jumped into the exercise. I thought about the severe heat, and my fellow noodles around me, and how they were.
• Group work: We then had to get into two groups. We had to think of a group of people, and create five identical movements with sounds. Charlie, Lew and I decided to be circus performers (as this would give us a wide range of possible movements). The purpose of this exercise was to see how well we worked in groups, and to see our creativity too. The three of us were complimented for working so efficiently together. 

Monologues:

• First Time: We only had time to perform one monologue, so I chose to perform my classical monologue. I performed my monologue as honestly and as convincingly as I could. I varied my tone throughout to ensure it wasn't boring, and thus, I varied my emotions too. I tried to use pauses as effectively as possible throughout to add a deeper meaning
• Second Time: To see if I could take direction, I was then asked to perform my monologue again, but this time as if I had a really painful leg and I couldn't act at all. To do this I altered my body language by limping and sometimes stopping at various points to hold my knee. I also performed the text whilst intently looking at the paper and then briefly looking up and over-acting sections of sentences. For example, I performed the line "pour our treasures into foreign laps" whilst throwing my arms about but instantly went back to reading from my paper, and completely ignoring the audience, and reading certain words extremely slowly as if I am having trouble reading. I don't do a lot of comedy, so the fact that I got quite a few laughs during this was really nice. 

Realism & Naturalism (5) - Scenes & Monologue

In this lesson we looked at proxemics. Proxemics is to do with the distance between you and someone else - this space (or lack of it) says a lot about the characters relationship, their intentions and their feelings. We re-visited our scenes to put what we had learned about proxemics into practice. Ollie and I used the same bit of script that we performed to the class a few lessons ago, as we knew this section quite well.

Ollie and I began this task by looking at our scripts and working out when his character would be seated next to mine, when he would move closer and when I would pull away. For example, I lean towards Ollie when I say "I've got your number" as to attempt to reassure him, but he backs away a little when he says "What?" as this suggests that he thinks Louise is on his case. However, when he realises what she means, he comes over and sits with her. We went through the script for this section and did the same for every line. Once we had worked out where we wanted to be positioned throughout the scene, we ran this scene without any dialogue. This was quite interesting as it made us see if our body language and proxemics were strong enough to convey what was going on in this scene. However, we did find this exercise quite challenging as we were often on different lines and we couldn't confirm with each other as we couldn't speak! We then did this again but with the dialogue put back in. We found that when we considered our proxemics, the scene seemed more intense and looked more interesting. The audience could then begin to understand our character's objectives.

After working on our scenes, we then looked at our monologues. We looked at our character's intentions and objectives in our monologue. I decided that my character's intentions are to be accepted by her mum, to be loved and to gain control over her past and future. When we began looking at our characters objectives we all struggled a bit because our characters are so unusual and complicated. To make this task a little easier, we decided to look at what our characters emotions were throughout the monologue.
By doing this we would then be able to vary our emotion throughout the monologue - this would then avoid the monologue becoming too repetitive and boring. My main emotions throughout the monologue are as follows:

• reflection - (pg 1, para 1)(pg 4, para 3)
• depression - (pg 1, para 1)(pg 3, para 1)
• disappointment - (pg 1, para 1 & 2)
• admiration - (pg 1, para 3)
• excitement - (pg 2, para 1)(pg 3,para 1)
• anger - (pg 2, para 1)(pg 4, para 4 & 5)
• reminiscing - (pg 2, para 3)
• in awe - (pg 2, para 4)(pg 3, para 3)
• lust - (pg  3, para 2)(pg 3, para 4)
• exhaustion - (pg 4, para 1)
• disgust - (pg 4, para 2)(pg 4, para 5)

Business (2) - Task A - National Theatre

• Name:  National Theatre
• Established: 1963 // Pamphlets complaining about the lack of "serious theatre" first appeared in 1847 // The New Shakespeare Company (now RSC) and Herbert Beerbohm Tree founded RADA in 1904, but there still wasn't a National Theatre // A "National Theatre Act" was passed by parliament in 1949 // In 1951, the Government stated that there wasn't enough funding for a National Theatre // In 1962, a separate board was set up to run a National Theatre Company and lease the Old Vic theatre.
• Notable productions: Hamlet // Othello // As You Like It // The Tempest // Amadeus // Guys and Dolls // Cat on a Hot Tin Roof // An Inspector Calls // Sweeny Todd // The Merchant of Venice // South Pacific // Anything Goes // War Horse // Much Ado About Nothing // Frankenstein //
• How it is organised: Director = Rufus Norris // Executive director = Lisa Burger // Deputy Artistic Director = Ben Power // Nine associates // 13 board members, including Sir Damon Buffini (Chairman) & Kate Mosse (Deputy Chair) // Head of Press = Vicky Kington // Press Manager = Martin Shippen // Senior Press Officer = Mary Parker // Press Officer = Emma Hardy
• How it is funded: Registered charity (no: 224223)
• How it programmes it's productions: Partnership with Travelex means there are hundreds of seats at £15 for every performance // The New Work Department is the "engine room of the National’s creative process, developing work and artists for the NT ’s stages and beyond"
• Work outside of their performances: National Theatre Bookshop // The Primary Programme (visits to Primary Schools in London - performances & workshops) // On Demand in Schools (Teachers can stream certain performances to schools for free - https://schools.nationaltheatre.org.uk/app/os#!/home) // Workshops // Family days
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_National_Theatre
• https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-the-national/key-facts-and-figures/whos-who 
• https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-the-national-theatre/press 
• https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-the-national-theatre/new-work 

AAS (3) - Victorian & "An Inspector Calls"

To begin this lesson we created a timeline of the history of theatre:

• 500BC - Ancient Greek
• Roman
• Medieval
• Elizabethan / Jacobean
• Black hole of theatre - Puritans arrive and destroy theatre
• Restoration
• Victorian / Edwardians
• Post-war
• 2016 - Contemporary

Below are the notes I made from our discussion on Victorian theatre:

• Took back control of the theatre. Made it more refined and civilised.
• They built proper indoor theatres, with curtains, fixed seats and (due to the invention of electricity) lights.
• Three main playwrights at this time were Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and J.B Priestley
• They had variety acts at this time - magicians, opera singers and circus acts
• Music Hall was invented at this time - http://lornaclarkra.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/individual-unit-3-music-hall-research.html (link to my blog on Music Hall from my Special Subject Investigation unit)
• Victorian Melodrama - heightened naturalism (modern example is "Woman in Black")

After learning about Victorian Theatre, we were then split into two groups and each given a section of script from "An Inspector Calls". We learned this synopsis of the play so we knew the context of the play. My group was given the opening scene to the play. In this scene the family have just had dinner and are celebrating the engagement of Shelia and Gerald. We began by casting our play and working out the relationships between the characters. Arthur Birling (Lewis) and Sybil Birling (me) are married and have two children, Shelia (Kat) and Eric (James). Gerald Croft (Ollie Marshal) is engaged to Shelia. We then did a read through of the scene and then began staging it.

Auditions (3) - Choosing two monologues

For our lesson on Wednesday, we have to choose two monologues, one classic and one contemporary.

Classic Monologues:

• ((Othello -- William Shakespeare -- Desdemona))
  
  • http://www.inexplicabledumbshow.com/shakespeare-monologues/female/o-4-2-148-desdemona.pdf
  • Themes of confusion, love, devotion, pain and loyalty.
  • Approximate age, 18. Young, innocent wife of Othello. Beautiful and a victim.
  • Like the monologue as her loyalty is admirable and she is a sweet character.
  • Haven't picked this as my classic monologue as I don't feel connected to the character in any way.
• ((Othello -- William Shakespeare -- Emilia))
  
  • http://www.inexplicabledumbshow.com/shakespeare-monologues/female/o-4-3-85-emilia.pdf
  • Themes of feminism, confusion, desires and relationships.
  • Approximate age, 20-30. Wife of Iago. Wise and bold.
  • Can connect with her as I share similar views. 
  • I have chosen this monologue as my classic monologue
• (( As You Like It -- William Shakespeare -- Phebe))
  
  • http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_032.html
  • Themes of confusion and love.
  • Quite sarcastic. Loved by Silvius. Loves Ganymede but he insults her. 
  • Like the monologue as I feel I can connect with her constant questioning of herself.
  • Haven't picked this as my classic monologue as I find it is a bit too repetitive. 

Contemporary Monologues:

• ((Assassins -- John Weidman -- Fromme))
  • https://alwaysworkingartists.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/assassins-fromme.pdf
  • Themes of love, family and addiction.
  • This monologue will be challenging for me as I can't connect with the character that well as I have never been kicked out by my parents, never got high on marijuana or murdered someone! Also, I found it quite interesting as it ends with her saying that she held Charlie's hand until he was arrested for murder, making the audience confused and wondering if she actually held his hand whilst he murdered someone.
  • This is the monologue I chose as I found it interesting and it contrasted to my classical monologue.
• ((Why is John Lennon Wearing a Skirt? -- Claire Dowie -- A woman ))
  
  • https://alwaysworkingartists.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/why-is-john-lennon-wearing-a-skirt.pdfh
  • Themes of anger, confusion and oppression.
  • The character refuses to live up to the stereotypes of women and is angered by the fact that men are treated differently to women.
  • I decided against this monologue as it is so similar to my classic monologue, as they are both about feminism. As I wanted a bit of a contrast between between my monologues, I thought I should go for sosmething with different themes.
• ((The Power of the Dog -- Ellen Dryden -- Lisa))
  • http://www.thesca.co.uk/pdf/girls1416.pdf
  • Themes of honesty, dissapointment and opinions.
  • Lisa is about my age and is also an English student. She says what she thinks and is completely honest. I could connect with this character quite well as she is not afraid to have different opinions to other people.
  • This piece is a comedy and so contrasts with my classic monologue. However, they both share the same theme of opinions.

Business (1) - Task A - The Really Useful Group

• Name:   The Really Useful Group Ltd (RUG)
• Established:   1997 // Andrew Lloyd Webber // The company was set up when Lloyd Webber became frustrated with the terms of his contract with an impresario, so he took more control of the management side. In 1990, Lloyd Webber took his company in to complete private ownership.
• Notable productions:   Cats // Evita // Jesus Christ Superstar // Love Never Dies // The Phantom of the Opera // School of Rock // Starlight Express // Sunset Boulevard // Tell me on a Sunday
• UK Theatres:    Adelphi // Cambridge // Her Majesty's // London Palladium // New London // Theatre Royal 
• How it is organised:    The group has many divisions: Really Useful Theatre Company, Really Useful films, Really Useful Records, Really Useful Theatres, and Really Useful Magazines. // Max Alexander (former managing director of TalkTalk) is managing director, in charge of the corporate side // Jessica Koravos (formerly RUG vice president) is president, in charge of overseeing productions and professional licencing // Executive chairman is Mark Wordsworth.
• How it is funded:    It is a private company, with 100% of the composer's work belonging to the company alone. RUG "floated on the stock market", and was later bought by Seagram (a Canadian beverages company) and finally ended up as a private company.
• How it programmes it's productions:   The company has many shows running at any one time in a variety of different theatres around the world, therefore casts are different // The only thing that is consistent across shows is the composer // They advise through social media, media and merchandise.
• Work outside of their performances:    Lloyd Webber's shows have been produced as films // Licences for many of Lloyd Webber's shows are available for amateur groups to purchase // Really Useful records produce cast recordings of shows // Many of his musicals are either West End or Broadway, but do tour as well
• http://www.reallyuseful.com/about-us/the-really-useful-group/ 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_Useful_Group 
• https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2016/really-useful-group-restructure-splits-creatives-and-corporate-arms/

Realism & Naturalism (4) - Intention & Objection

• Intention: Overall arc. What your character's intention is in general?
• Objective: Scene by scene. What your character's purpose is in different places? This can change halfway through a sentence. Purpose of the objective is to bounce off other characters.

In one of Stanislavski's lessons he looked worried so his class asked him what was wrong. He told them that he had lost his keys, so the class started looking for them. After a while, he revealed that he hadn't lost his keys and so his students were confused as to why he had "wasted" their time. He told them to look at how they were when looking for the keys, thinking they were actually missing, compared to how they would have acted looking for keys - he was demonstrating naturalism.

We then got our scripts out from the first lesson ("After the End") and worked out what our characters intention was and what their objectives were at different points. I think my character's intentions were to stay safe, find out what was going on and to not upset Mark. I then looked at the short section that Ollie and I performed in the first lesson, and worked out what my characters objectives were throughout the scene. My first objective in this scene was to clear my name and also to convince Mark that she wasn't going to leave without saying goodbye and that she would have called him. When they were talking about whether she had the chance to "talk to [him] properly last night" or not, her objection changes to trying to remember what happened. When the conversation changes to whether they argued or not, her objective is to find out the truth. For the rest of this scene her objective is to clear everything up and sort out the issues between them - she does not want to upset him. We shall be performing these scenes against next lesson with objectives in mind, and we shall also be learning about proxemics.

As Lewis wasn't in, so we Charlie didn't have his partner to do his scene with, we moved on to monologues. We will be using these monologues in lessons to come, but for now we just read through them. The monologue I have is from "Eight" by Ella Hickson. The character who performs my monologue is called Mona, and she has been abused by her father, her mother has removed all of the doors in her house and filled the place with men and Mona runs away. Whilst she is on the run, she meets a guy in he graveyard and has sex with him. When she wakes up, he is gone. She is pregnant.

AAS (2) - "Antigone"

In this lesson we completed our staging of our scene from "Antigone". Although our staging was good, we needed to work on how we said our lines and our intentions. To do this, we translated our lines and then performed our scene with everyone saying their translated lines, as opposed to the actual script. My section was as follows:

"But now in the beautiful morning of victory
Let Thebes of the many chariots sing for joy!
With hearts for dancing we'll take leave of war.
Our temples shall be sweet with hymns of praise,
And the long night shall echo with our chorus."

I translated this paragraph to the following:

"Yeah enough about death, thanks!
We won! We should be celebrating!
Let's forget about war. It's done.
Let them hear the drinking song we'll sing!"

 This was a really helpful exercise, as not only did we understand what our characters were saying, but we also understood everybody else's lines and characters. By working out what our characters were saying, we could then say our lines more naturally. Initially, we sounded like we were attempting Shakespeare for the first time, but after doing this exercise, we said our lines more naturally and convincingly.

To make our characters even more different from each other, we experimented a little bit with accents and dialects. This also helped to demolish the idea of the chorus members sounding as one.

I enjoyed this acting style as I learned that the chorus doesn't have to be in unison. I found it quite challenging to change what I previously thought about Greek thatre, but that's what made this more interesting for me - for example, we didn't do the typical thing of wearing masks just because we were doing Greek theatre.

Auditions (2) - "A Doll's House"

In this lesson we got into pairs and performed our monologues to each other a few times. I went with Rob and watched him perform "Killing Chuck" from "Unbearable Hotness" by Gabriel Davis. I performed my monologue from "A Doll's House". We gave each other feedback, focussing on our voices - this included notes on intonation, use of pitch and use of pauses, timing and use of breath. On the right are the notes I gave to Rob's different readings. His feedback to me mentioned that he liked my use of pauses and how I varied my tone throughout. He said he also liked how I didn't get stick to one emotion; I fluctuated between being confused, being angry and being depressed.

After a couple of read-throughs, we swapped monologues and performed them to our partner how we thought they should be performed. When Rob performed my monologue to me, I made the following notes:

• I like how calm he began the piece. Suggests Nora has understood this fact.
• Good use of pauses. Paused in places I didn't think of pausing in. Gave the audience more time to take everything in. Doesn't feel rushed. 
• Really articulated the plosive sound "t" to show the character's anger.

After reflecting on what we liked the other person doing, we highlighted what words we wanted to stress/emphasise on our scripts (yellow) and marked where we wanted to pause (orange). I found this exercise really useful as it forced me to think about every sentence, and every clause of every sentence, very carefully and what the meanings were. For example, originally I stressed the verb "thought" in the second sentence - this was to show that Torvald in fact didn't love Nora. However, I now stress the word "be" as it is suggesting that there was no real love, and instead was a concept and a convenience.

We performed our monologues again to our partners and got more feedback. Rob said that by adding the pauses and emphasising certain words, the piece was given more depth and more meaning. We then performed our monologues to the rest of the class. To make this more like an audition, we first performed them how we had rehearsed them, and then we were given direction and had to perform them again with the new direction. I performed my monologue three times in all:

1. How I had rehearsed: I was given similar feedback to what Rob had given me. However, I was told to perform it again but, this time, I had to be more natural and "not perform it".
2. Acting for screen: The first time I performed it, it would have worked for a stage production, but this time I had to imagine having a camera being close in my face, so therefore would be less dramatic. By doing this, my character was more believable and the emotions I was trying
   to convey were more convincing. 
3. In a restaurant: This time I had to perform the monologue as if Charlie were my husband (who the monologue is directed to), and we were in a restaurant together, and I didn't want people around us to hear / notice our argument. When I performed it this time, I moved my chair closer to Charlie, leaned in towards him when I spoke and kept glancing from side to side to make sure no one was listening. I also spoke in a rushed whisper - I spoke quicker to show my urgency to get what I have to say across; I spoke a lot quieter too to show that I didn't want anyone to hear. I think this scenario made the audience even more sympathetic towards my character as, not only is she being courageous, discussing a difficult issue and standing up for herself at last, but she is having to do this in a public place, but has no choice too.

Realism & Naturalism (3) - Meanings & Creating a scene

To begin today's lesson we discussed and learned the differences between realism and naturalism. We discovered the following:

• Realism: Real situations // Real characters // Audience isn't aware they are watching a performance // An example would be social experiments (e.g. to see how the public would react to seeing domestic abuse with a male abusing a female, compared to the female abusing a male)
• Naturalism: Acting // Believable characters and dialogue // Asks the audience to suspend their disbelief

After establishing this, our task was to create a short naturalistic scene. We decided on our characters first. We knew that we wanted to be either 17 or 18, as this would be believable as they are our actual ages. We then decided that we all wanted to know each other from school as to keep the bonds we have between us the same and therefore believable. However, when it came to deciding what we should do our scene about, we began to struggle. We thought we could set it in school (as that is how we all know each other) and be chatting about something (similar to the play "Punk Rock" by Simon Stephens). We said we could have a debate about the EU referendum or discuss the new uniform rules but decided against these as it seemed too much like realism as opposed to naturalism. We realised we needed quite a big and shocking situation but we would react to it in a naturalistic way. We decided on having a dead body in the house. We tried scripting the scene, as we all like working with scripts, but found this really difficult so ended up improvising the scene.


Our setting changed to a living room at one of our homes. We set the situation at a party at the house (as we have all been to a party together and is stereotypical for people our ages) and we found the body on the floor of the living room. When improvising, we just reacted to how we thought we would react if we actually saw a body lying there. On the right is the video of us improvising this scene. We were anxious about improvising (me especially!), but realised that we had to completely commit to it to make it work. Once we got into it, we felt more natural.

What went well:

• We all reacted how we thought we would actually react if we saw a dead body
• When we were speaking, we all overlapped and sometimes didn't finish our sentences
• We reacted in a few different ways (which was accurate as not everybody would react the same) 
• We used the space quite well
• We had a lots of moments of people talking over each other as well as moments of silence

What could have gone better:

• As Ollie and Charlie entered by walking round and through the chairs, Lewis and I had to do the same - which didn't look realistic as Ollie technically called us from inside the house
• My name ended up changing from "Lorna" at the beginning of the scene to "Sandra" by the end, as we didn't actually agree on names!

AAS (1) - Greek theatre & Antigone

To begin this lesson we discussed Greek Theatre. Having done the Historical Context unit, Lewis and I already knew quite a bit about Greek Theatre (see my blog entry on Greek Theatre by following this link - http://lornaclarkra.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/hc-greek-theatre.html). But we also discussed the three main playwrights at this time: Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus. These three were alive and writing at the same time so were always in competition with each other to get named the best playwright of the year.

The main thing we discussed about Greek Theatre was the use of chorus. The noun "chorus" has many meanings, including a group of people performing in unison, or the part of a song which is repeated at intervals. If we think about Musical Theatre, audiences tend to look forward to the large chorus numbers, and are not as infused about the scenes in between - this was the same case for Greek Theatre audiences. One would assume that a Greek chorus has to speak in unison and move in unison, but this isn't necesssarily the case. We then watched a video about National Theatre's version of "Antigone" and the role of the chorus in their production.

We got the script for the scene leading in to the one on the video. The part of the script we have contains the chorus and Choragos. We sat down as one big group and worked out how we would split the lines up. We were learning how a chorus doesn't have to be as one, and can in fact have contrasting opinions. Therefore, we read through the script carefully, looking at where parts contrasted, and split the lines up and allocated them to each of us and worked out what personalities our characters had. To make the play more modern, we kept the idea of us all being soldiers, we set it during World War Two.

 The first paragraph of the script, we decided, was the army general congratulating the troops and pointing out the obvious - that they won. This character was James, and so we also allocated him the lines that were positive about the victory. Where it made sense to, we allocated whole paragraphs to different people, but some paragraphs we split up. For example, the third paragraph is very high energy and suggests that the speaker is very excitable. Too build on this sense of excitement, we split this paragraph into two. Rob and Lewis shared this paragraph as if they were talking about the battle. Continuing to think about characters, the next couple of paragraphs were split between James and Charlie. I particularly liked how we split fifth paragraph:

"We heard his shout of triumph high in the air
Turn to a scream; far out in a flaming are
He fell with his windy torch, and the earth struck him.
And others storming in fury no less than his
Found shock of death in the dusty joy of battle."

James had the first line, as it matched his character's enthusiasm and wish to have his voice heard. However, Charlie took over on the second line. This shows that Charlie's character disagrees with James and therefore creates tension within the chorus. To continue this tension between the two characters, they also split the next paragraph between them. 

Once we allocated all the lines and read through it a couple of times, we then got up and formed a line in order from lowest status to highest status. This made us really think about our character and their position within the army compared to the other characters. We read through this script standing in this line, however, we could move up or down the line as we spoke. I found this exercise really useful as it helped me to understand what was going on and the influence each character had in the conversation. I have the seventh paragraph and I basically say that we should stop talking about war and should just celebrate! My character therefore has quite a low status as I don't say anything until nearer the end of this scene. Also, my point is pretty much ignored as the next paragraph is then about the King's arrival.

After reading through our lines in this status order, we then read through the scene again but this time we began staging the scene. We are all either sitting or lying down having just won the battle. However, we positioned ourselves logically - we considered who we communicate with. For example, as Rob and Lewis talk to each other, they sit next to each other, whilst Hope only says one thing and in disgust at everyone's attitude, so she sits at the side with her back to us all.