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.