Drama: Week Nine

Monday 24th November 2014 

Today we spent more time rehearsing our scenes from Our Country's Good. 

We performed for one another in the theatre, and each received feedback from Shauna, who used to do the course which we're on. 

This is the feedback she gave me: 

• Good physicality 
• Good diction 
• Work on projection 
• Add more "oomph" or sass to role
• Good at staying grounded 

We also gave one another feedback, and this is the feedback I received from other students: 

• Work on emotions and facial expressions
• Put more energy into it 
• Work on projection, as Shauna said
• Perhaps play Mary a bit more annoying? 

Tuesday 25th November 2014 

Today we worked with the second years all day, it was cool. 

We did some improvisation, working in small groups and all starting out with the line "I need to change this lightbulb". It was interesting to see the different ways everyone went with just that one line. 

In the afternoon we rehearsed our scenes, and those who wanted to could perform for Rob and be critiqued and and given further direction from him. 

Wednesday 26th November 2014 

Today Sharon wasn't in so we had self directed learning time. We played some improvisational games as well as rehearsing our scenes. 

Thursday 27th November 2014 

Today we did more voice work. 

We did a warm up as usual and did some tongue twisters for our articulation. 

We also practised doing sight reading, and looked at the principles of it and tips on how to do it successfully. We also did an exercise where people could volunteer to go up and read out a short piece of writing for the rest of the group, having never seen it before. 

Before we finished and went to self directed learning to rehearse our scenes, we were each given the chance to read out the first two lines of our chosen poem, and Rob gave us as much feedback as it's possible to from only hearing two lines! 

Drama: Week Eight

Monday 17th - Tuesday 18th November 2014

On these days we worked further in our groups, rehearsing the "Our Country's Good" scenes. 

We started each day with a warm up and some tongue twisters before getting to work.
I worked in my group with Elvina and Katy and we rehearsed over and over again, trying to improve our piece however we could, and Rob also spent some time with us choreographing the small fight which happens in our scene.

We also all worked on the concept of emotional recall.
We did an exercise where we sat with our eyes closed and were told to imagine as vividly as we could different senses; a pleasant smell and an unpleasant smell, a nice sight and a bad sight, something nice to touch and something not nice to touch. a positive sound and a negative sound, and a taste we like and a taste we don't. 

Wednesday 19th November 2014 

Today we started looking at our next storytelling assignment, which is about stories from World War one. We looked at the whole concept of war and shared our ideas and opinions on it. 

We started by standing in a circle and going around it one by one, saying one word we associated with war. After we had done this for a while, we split into pairs. 

We had to, as quickly as we could, do the same exercise, but one on one. 

Then we did it where we added an action with the word we said, and we did it in several different pairs. 

Next, we formed groups of about four, playing the "Yes, let's!" game, but with war theme. 

We would go around the circle in our fours and each say a word along with an action about war, then everyone else would do the same. 

We continued to do this, joining other groups, until eventually the class was split into two large groups doing this exercise, and then we directed our words and actions at the other group as a whole, and it became very like a battle itself, with opposing sides. 

Then, we split into groups of only about four, and worked on short improvisations based around just one word we associated with war. 

I worked in a group with Amber, Mara and Didi. The word we chose was dictator, and we did an improvisation about how one girl who wanted to be in the Hitler Youth turned on her two friends who were against it, and how that conflict led to their demise, and resulted in one of the friends actually killing another. 

It was an intense story even though it was short. 

Everyone performed their improvisations for the group and we all gave feedback to one another. 

Thursday 20th November 2014 

Today we continued to do voice work and work on our poem assignment. 

Drama: Week Seven

Monday 10th - Tuesday 11th November 2014

On these days we were officially put into our groups for our "Our Country's Good" assignment and were given our scenes.
I am in a group with Katy and Elvina. I play Mary, Katy plays Dabby, and Elvina plays Liz.
We started to get familiar with our scene and to rehearse it over these two days. 

Wednesday 12th November 2014 

Today it was time to perform our fairytale or myth for our storytelling module. 

We were given the first class to add the final touches to our stories, rehearse them, and work with one another to perfect and get them down to that one minute time limit. 

For the rest of the day, we each performed our pieces to the rest of the class and Sharon, and they were also all filmed. 

Thursday 13th November 2014 

Today we continued doing voice work. 

As usual we did a warm up and practised our articulation, as well as doing vowels, consonants and tongue twisters. 

We also worked in pairs on Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" sonnet. 

I was in a pair with Didi. We were given some time to rehearse our sonnet, taking a line each, and were then to perform it for the rest of the class in the style of stand up comedy. 

Some people's pieces were hilarious, it was a fun exercise. 

Drama: Week Six

Monday 3rd - Tuesday 4th November 2014

These were our first two days back at college after half term, so we started looking at the work we were going to be doing over the next several weeks. Rob showed us that we would be doing work on Stanislavski techniques, as well as working in groups and working towards short assessed performances, which would be scenes from the play "Our Country's Good".

We worked in pairs or groups using example scenes and looking at Stanislavski tehcniques that could be applied in them. 

I was in a pair with Amber, and we rehearsed the scene we were given as well as looking at the characters' objectives in the scene and thinking more deeply than we might otherwise about the actions of the characters. 

Wednesday 5th November 2014 

Today we started working towards a storytelling assignment with Sharon. 

Once we had spent some time warming up, we were told to find a space in the room. We then had to think for a while and choose our favourite fairytale or myth, or one we knew the story of very clearly. Then we got into pairs, and were given the task of first telling our partner the story which we had chosen, and then telling it in the space of about one minute, using all the different storytelling techniques we knew of. 

I was in a pair with Nuray. The story she chose was Peter Pan, and the story I chose was Cinderella. 

We had to fill out some sheets which asked questions such as what is the brief synopsis of our story, and what are three key moments in it. Once we had filled those out and had a clearer idea of what we needed to include in our storytelling and how we were going to structure it, we started to rehearse, telling our stories to one another. 

Once we had spent some time rehearsing our stories and giving direction to one another, it was time for the class to all come together again. About half of the class got the chance to practice performing their story for everyone else, so we could get tips and feedback from the group, and get more used to doing it in just that one minute. 

I got the chance to practice performing it for everyone, it was fun and I got some helpful and very positive feedback.

Thursday 6th November 2014

Today we started to properly work on our voice module of our course. We were told what our next voice assignment was; reading out a poem of our choice and having it recorded. 

We started to do some voice work then, keeping in mind what we were working towards. 

We did a warm up, and then did work on sounding out different vowels and consonants.

We practised the different sounds such as "Oo Oh Or", at first all together, and then individually so we could work on our own voice more specifically. 

I was told that I should allow myself to loosen up a bit, and also to make sure that my northern glottal doesn't sound prominent! 

We also did some tongue twisters such as "I flew through the air without a care" to work further on our articulation. 

Next we did some work with an actual poem. We paired up and were given a poem by Brian Patten called "A Blade of Grass". I worked in a pair with Mara. 

We had to do half of the poem each, but work together to make its overall effect. We had to start thinking about the given circumstances of the poem, the meaning behind it, the subtext and anything else that we found helpful when working on it, and we had to write our ideas about it on the back of the poem. 

Then we rehearsed reading it out, and once we had been given a while to work on it, we all sat around in a circle, and we all took it in turns to read it out in our pairs. 

A few pairs were asked to go up and read out the poem, having been given different emotions and sensations to imagine whilst reading it out, and it was interesting to see what a difference it could make if they put different emotions behind the same words. 

The homework Rob gave us today was to look at some information on Our Country's Good on Moodle, and to watch the National Theatre's voice classes on Youtube, as well as choosing a poem we wanted to use for our assignment. 

Technical Theatre 5

Today in technical theatre Jack taught us how to use moving lights.

• Type in the number of the light into the keyboard and press CH/ID
• To change the intensity of the light, you scroll the wheel on the keyboard
• To use the moving lights and change the settings of them, you use the four rotating buttons
• To change the focus, you press "focus" on the keyboard and then scroll the first button around until it is where you want it
• To change the tilt, use the second button
• To change the colour, press the "colour" button on the keyboard and scroll on the first button to change it
• To switch between Gobos, press the "beam" button on the keyboard and then use the third button to scroll. To rotate the Gobo, scroll with the fourth button
• To reset the lights, press the buttons rather than scrolling on them

We also put the finishing touches to the plans of our light states for the Elvis "Bossa Nova Baby".
Jack, Elvina and I selected the rest of the colours we wanted to use and added them to our list, before sending our finished state plan to Becca.

Technical Theatre 3 and 4

Technical Theatre week 3:

Last week in technical theatre we started looking at planning and programming a state of lights.
We were shown a song, Bosonova by Elvis, and we had to split into teams and plan a state of lights for it.
In that session we were to just visualize it and see what we wanted to do with it. We looked through all of the colours and chose which ones we wanted to use.
That was our only task for last week.

Technical Theatre week 4:

So, today we went into the theatre and learnt how to program the lights on CONGO. Woo!
We watched a video on Youtube that explained the newest version of Congo and showed you how to use some of the features. It looked pretty simple, but it would still be intimidating to go up to the board...
In our separate teams, we then got to go upstairs and learn practically how to use the board.
Rebecca taught us how to set a state of lights and then record the state, then we were each given a chance to record our own state, which had to be made up of three lights.


Setting the states and recording them:

1. Choose a light you want.
2. Type the number of that light into the keyboard and then press CH/ID.
3. Type 100 into the keyboard and press @level to set the intensity of the light to the maximum.
4. Repeat the first three steps two more times to add the next two lights.
5. Highlight the three lights you just set on the screen.
6. Hold down CH/ID and press the "record" button on the keyboard.
7. Give your state a title and then press record on the screen.
8. Then, to turn on the state you just created, press "GO BACK" on the keyboard and then press "GO" on the keyboard.
9. To save the work you have done, go to the browser on the left hand side of the screen, click on the arrow next to "files" to expand that section, and then click "save" and title your work.

Drama: Week Five

Monday 6^th October 2014

Today was the first day of assessments.

Those of us who weren’t performing our pieces today watched everyone else perform.

Tuesday 7^th October 2014

Today was the day we had for our final rehearsal, and Jerome and I did as much fine tuning as we could in order to feel prepared for our performance the next day.

Wednesday 8^th October 2014

Today the half of our group who didn’t perform on Monday had their assessments. This included Jerome and I, it was finally time for us to perform our scene from Medea.

All of our hard work over the last few weeks had been building up to this moment, and it was quite nerve-wracking!

Our performance went well. I felt like it was very successful, we both put in 100% and just went for it. It was terrifying but exhilarating, the audience were great and receptive, and I felt the piece worked well when we finally got to performing it in that space to all those people.

And although we of course had to keep in mind to do our best because this was the one performance of our piece that really mattered, I just wanted to enjoy it, and I did.

 I had a fantastic time working with Jerome, and although I was nervous and hoping to do well for our assessment, I felt a complete thrill and even a little sadness knowing that this was the last time we would do our scene.

So much work, research, practice, rehearsal, weeks and weeks of and perfecting and going over tiny details to improve our piece had really paid off. I felt a total rush of happiness, relief and accomplishment when we got off that stage, having finished our assignment. 

Phenomenal People Performance

On Friday October 3rd, our class went to the Camden People’s Theatre, and took part in Fuel Theatre’s Phenomenal People event.

The purpose of the event was to celebrate phenomenal and inspirational women, especially but not exclusively in the arts. Our group had been asked if a few of us wanted to take part and fill up a slot in their day of performances, which was about fifteen minutes long. 

We decided that it would be perfect to perform our pieces of Greek Theatre, as the plays we were doing excerpts from were all stories based around extraordinary women.  

Amber and Klodian, Carlos and Shaday, and Jerome and I all performed our pieces, as well as Shaday doing a monologue which she had written herself.

It was an absolute privilege to take part in this event, and as a feminist and someone who is aspiring to be an actress; it was like a dream opportunity for me.

It was also fantastic, if a little terrifying, to get the chance to perform our piece in another environment, for a live audience. It was a really good and helpful experience, and I feel that it really helped to pad out or process of working on this piece. It was brilliant.

I enjoyed performing our scene at another theatre, especially as it was as part of such a wonderful event.

It was also inspirational and extremely touching to listen to and meet the other women who contributed to the event by telling their own stories. They were exceptionally brave to speak so truthfully about their own lives, it really felt like a privilege to have such personal things shared with us. 

The Phenomenal People event was great, a very rich experience which I am glad to have taken part in. I’m very grateful we were given the chance. 

Drama: Week Four

Monday 29^th September 2014

Today we continued to rehearse our pieces of Greek Theatre. We practiced doing our scenes in different styles, playing around with it to try and trying to get even more comfortable with them.

We also performed our pieces for Rob and he gave us feedback to help us improve for when we continued to rehearse. We also watched one another’s pieces, as we often do. I find it really helps to watch what the others are doing, as you can get inspiration from them and it’s  great to all work together and share our opinions and advice.

Later on in the day, some women from the London Transport museum turned up and talked to us about a project they were doing for 16-25 year olds. They invited us to join them and take part in the project, and a number of us signed up.

Tuesday 30^th September 2014

Today we continued to rehearse and work on our pieces, as well as performing them for Rob again to get further advice on how to continue improving. We were also given our written assignments.

Wednesday 1^st October 2014

Today we worked with Sharon, and she allowed us to have most of the lesson time for rehearsing our pieces. It was good to rehearse them in a different space and see what it was like doing it in another environment, even though it was only slightly different.

Jerome and I found it interesting to work in the dance studio, as we used the mirror to help us see our own piece and work on the staging.

We also did a bit of improvisation, playing a game which was influenced by our Greek Theatre. It was fun, and I always find improvisation helpful as it helps me to develop my flexibility as an actor. It’s also nice to do things like improvisation games because it gives us a chance to work as a team, which is always great.

Thursday 2^nd October 2014

Today we did more rehearsal and were given a chance to perform and practice our pieces in the theatre space where we will be performing for our assessments.

Some of the feedback which Rob gave to everyone in general was to make sure we avoid looking down, project effectively but avoid exclamatory acting, stay grounded and still in our space, get under the skin of our pieces, and keep a steady, slow pace.

The feedback he gave to Jerome and I was that our listening and reacting to one another was nice. He told me I should do some work on my facial expressions, and try to stay grounded and engage with the audience more.

Elvina, Ryan and I also helped out with some tech stuff that needed doing around the theatre, and it was cool to be involved with that and to get more used to working tech in the theatre.