Drama: Week Two

Monday 15^th – Tuesday 16th September 2014

We did more on articulation on these two days. It was nice to work on it because practice makes perfect, after all. We did more tongue twisters such as

 “Can Khan call Khartoum? If Khan can, can he call quickly?” and

“Thirty three thousand frying flying fish, frying.”

Obviously to say tongue twisters properly you have to articulate and make sure you pronounce every word and syllable clearly, but it also takes a lot of focus. It was fun, though.

We also read out a poem by Roger McGough called “Let Me Die a Young Man’s Death”.

We read out a line of the poem each, as we had done the previous week with Ozymandias.

Later on in the day, we worked further on improvisation.

We did an exercise called post cards. In this simple game, you split into groups of about four. Rob then gives us the name of a country, and we have about a minute to come up with a freeze frame which we think represents that country.

We also did an improvisation where you had to get into pairs and have a conversation, but part way through the conversation you have to act like you’ve just realised the other person has bad breath. We also had conversations in pairs where you had to act like you had a secret crush on the other person.

We played a similar improvisational game to one we did last week, where we performed an improv in pairs, with only an environment and one scripted line each to work with.

Wednesday 17^th September 2014

We spent this entire day telling our stories based around an object to the rest of the group.

We told our stories, which could be either true or false, one by one, and presented the object our story revolved around to the other students. We then had to vote and guess whether we thought people’s stories were true or not, and we gave feedback to one another on our story telling skills.

This was my story:

Last year, during the summer, I was on a train journey from London to Penrith, which is a small town in Cumbria. It was quite a long journey, and whilst I was on the train, my phone ran out of battery and died. There was no wall socket to charge it in at my table, so there was nothing I could do.

In order to tell the time throughout the journey, I decided to get my little pink alarm clock out of my bag, and put it on the table. I had it with me because I take it wherever I go travelling, as my grandparents bought it for me quite a few years ago, so it means a lot to me.

The whole journey was fine, and when we got to Penrith station, I got my luggage and got off the train. But as I stood there on the platform, I realised that I had left the clock on the table. The train hadn’t pulled away yet, so I quickly got back on with my luggage, and went over to the table. I got my clock and made my way back down the carriage, but before I made it back off the train, the doors closed and we set off again!

I stayed on the train until the next stop, Carlisle station. While I waited to reach Carlisle, I called my mum and told her what had happened. She wasn’t very happy, but she left Penrith station, where she’d been waiting to pick me up when I got off the train, and she drove to collect me from Carlisle instead.

It was a bit of a messy situation, but at least I got my clock back!

The end.

This story wasn’t true, but the majority of the class guessed that it was. Some people saw the flaws in my story though, and worked out that it was a lie!

Some of the feedback I was given was as follows;

·         I needed to work on the structure of my story more, because I contradicted myself. After saying that my phone died on the train, I later said I used it to call my mum on the way to the next station. Oops…

·         The manner in which I told my story was convincing

·         The detail in my story was good

It was an interesting little project to work on, I really enjoyed it, and the constructive feedback I was given by the rest of the group was helpful.

Thursday 18^th September 2014
 

Unfortunately, I didn’t make more specific notes on this day, but we worked on more of the same stuff we had been doing over the past week and a half.