11/12/14 Task 01

Ensemble

Write your own definition of what ensemble means in theatre.

 Ensemble means when a group of people do like an abstract piece to represent a subject or something in that play.

What has to happen in the rehearsal room to develop a successful ensemble?
We highlighted things that represent the atmosphere in the East End and the sudden changes in scenes in groups and found creative ways with our bodies and voices to represent the atmosphere.

Unit 15:Performing Scripted Plays Grading Criteria

Unit 15: Performing Scripted Plays Grading Criteria

DEVELOPING IN REHEARSAL  

P1 Explore, develop and shape a role using practical activities and research findings

M1 Explore, develop and shape a role using practical activities and research findings in relation to the demands of the text

D1 Explore, develop and shape a role using practical activities and research findings effectively, fully appreciating the demands of the text.

 

REHEARSAL 

P2 Demonstrate personal and technical skills in rehearsal making a positive contribution to the process

M2 Demonstrate personal and technical skills in rehearsal, consistently making a positive contribution and constructive contribution to the process.

D2 Demonstrate personal and technical skills in rehearsal with consistently positive and constructive contributions, engagement, commitment, input and self- reflection.

 

PERFORMANCE 

P3 Perform a role demonstrating competent use of relevant performance skills to communicate intentions to the audience

M3 Perform a role demonstrating competent use of relevant performance skills confidently and consistently, clearly communicating intentions to the audience

D3 Perform a role with competent, sustained and effective demonstration of relevant performance skills, accurately communicating intentions to the audience with confidence and control.

04/12/14 Girls- East End Tale 1

04/12/14 Girls- East End Tale 1

Q- What is your role in the tale?

I am playing a modern teenage girl who is on my phone the whole time as well as every other girl.

Q- How has it been staged?

The stools have been put in two rows centre stage, some girls sit on the stool and some sit in between and in front of the stools on the floor.

Q- What are the strengths of this piece?

The strengths of this piece are:

• it shows what girls can be like when not paying attention to the thing around them and always on their phones .
• it is using the torch effect to light up the room and the people talking.

Q- What developments need to happen throughout the rehearsal period?

We just need to work on the flow of it and timings and that is about it.

The picture is the new edited scrip.

04/12/14 Staging the Prologue

Staging the Prologue

How have we staged the prologue? Why have we made this choices? What is the effect that is created? 

We staged the prologue where we had the different taxi drivers positioned in different places at different angles. Each taxi had two head lights and a head light. We made this choice because we want to light up enough of the stage as we can and it makes a good night time/ lights in the city effect.

04/12/14 Thust Stage Over View

Rehearing:

Here is the basic configuration of our performance space. It is called THRUST staging.

 

Advantage

• The audience can see different angles of the stage and experience it as if they are in the same place as the actors.

Disadvantage

• If an actor looks to one side of the stage only that part of the audience can see and here properly that specific actor, the rest of the audience wont see/ hear as much.

 

Above is a plan of a stage. It tells you what we call each of the stage. Familiarise yourself with this as you will be asked by your director to enter from stage left or right, move up or down stage. This is vocabulary that you should be able to use as an actor.

27/11/14 task 2 replacement

27/11/14 Task 2 (Replacement) Monologue Feedback

Feedback:

"Confident to speak to audience , good use of levels and projection, good use of staging and chair.
A way to improve don't over direct it. If I carried on performing there could of been to much going on in the scene, just be careful with how much you put into a simple monologue scene." -Chris (Director/ Teacher)

27/11/14 Task 1 quesions 1 - 4

27/11/14 Task 1 Questions

Q- What choices did you make when staging your monologue? Think about how you used your voice and physicality.

Well Matilda was staging my monologue and since our monologues were very similar and about the same tale and in response to the same character we quickly read through both and thought of a way to divide it. We realised that Matilda's monologue was about the man' and woman's relationship before the domestic abuse came along, and my one was about when the domestic abuse was happening.

Matilda thought it would be best to have levels in my monologue because my character ends up killed as well as the twins. So I am basically having last thoughts and an over view of the last few moments of my life whist I am dying. I take it slow and build up the tension as I gradually get higher in my levels and faster to resemble my anger building inside of me, and I let it out my pushing down the chair to show the immediate drop in our relationship.

Q- How did the monologue task help you understand the play further?

It allowed my to look deeper into the mind of my character and empathise with her. Also live her story I can get a better understanding of why she feels a certain emotion at one point.

Q- Who performed their monologue successfully and why?

Roseby's monologue was very successful because she had the classes attention the whole time that when the timer was up the teacher didn't want her to stop. She was very interactive with the audience and creative to put on a different accent that was obviously not from the East End. But that's what made it really interesting and engaging.

27/11/14 Evaluation Sheet

Information about the East End (Wikipedia)

The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, east of the Roman and medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary. For the purposes of his book, East End Past, Richard Tames regards the area as coterminous with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets: however, he acknowledges that this narrow definition excludes parts of southern Hackney, such as Shoreditch and Hoxton, which many would regard as belonging to the East End. Others again, such as Alan Palmer, would extend the area across the Lea to include parts of the London Borough of Newham; while parts of the London Borough of Waltham Forest  are also sometimes included. It is universally agreed, however, that the East End is to be distinguished from East London, which covers a much wider area.

20/11/14 task 3 part 2

Task 3

Using the roles you had developed you created some scenes that show how these characters exist outside the play.

What scene did you develop?

My group decided to look at tale 6 because most of us researched the characters in that scene and did role on the walls for them. The three most popular characters that my group developed were: the warm tired woman, the sly man and the daughter of the warm tired woman who lives in America.


What drama skills did you use to do so?
We used split scenes to show what it is like between different characters. We used three scenes. The first scene was with the warm tired woman and her daughter they were talking on the phone with each other and you kind of see their relationship. In the second scene it is similar to the real scene in the tale where the man and the woman talk in the pub after the incident, however, in this scene you get to see the conversation and see hat happens after. In the third scene it shows a monologue for the warm tired woman; about her thoughts and questions she constantly asks herself even though she does not know the answer to. This is split between three people.
Explain what you did as your character. Why did you make these choices? (Think about character- voice/physicality.)
In our scene, I was in the second part of our scene playing the warm tired woman and Tara played the sly man. We chose to have a casual conversation sitting down about our children and our families. We decided to do this because their conversation is quite intimate and sensitive. It is not something that should be exaggerated.

Did the scene help you understand anything new about the play or another character?
 
The scene made me realise how calm and sensitive people in the East End can be and that different people can relate to each other in different ways.

20/11/14 Role On The Wall (brief)

Explanation 20/11/14

Sorry about the writing on the developing evaluation sheet. On this post I am going to make that comment more clear and explain what I meant. I said that  that I was working on a merit because I used the information and research from the previous session and the homework that I was set from Mr Warden. I was mostly concentrating on the warm tired women and the first east end tale. I drew a picture of what the east end would look like if he was a male and how the warm tired woman would look. I gave them more of a personality by doing a 'role on the wall' but I didn't get to finish it but the next post I put up will be the role on the wall for the warm tired woman and what I thought of her.

20/11/14 Unit 15 Developing Evaluation Sheet

13/11/14 task 4

East End Tale 8


"In groups you read through TALE 8. 

You needed to underline anything that suggested a location, weather, or atmosphere to them.

Write some examples of what you underlined OR take some photo of your script."

 

CREATE/REHEARSE

Once you'd done this you went through anything you'd underlined and created a series of sounds and some movement to develop the scene. 

You were asked to focus on creating the atmosphere and think about being the buildings, the weather, and the atmosphere.

You were allowed to use some of the lines from the text – however you might have decided to just use your sounds and movements to tell the tale.

What was effective about the sounds they had decided to use?

We decided to use clapping sounds ,screams and silence because the way we used it we slowly built up the tension and broke the tension when we ended it with a scream to symbolise a big change in the tale. This was to show there was a sudden change in the atmosphere to make it completely different to what it was before.
What was effective about the movement they had decided to use?
We were all walking in a circle and at a very slow pace to symbolise the temporal atmosphere that is lurking in the tale until there is a person who interrupts the atmosphere and screams that shows the instant change in the atmosphere and everyone starts to speed up and no longer walks in a circle. 
 How did the work make you feel?
It made me feel quite tense because the tension that everyone was building I felt myself get tense from that.
What could have been developed further?
I think from reviewing what we did, we could of added a bit more movement to create more atmosphere.
Are their many similarities in what groups decided to do?
Yes. Other groups seem too have agreed with the same sounds to symbolise change in the atmosphere.

13/11/2014 task 3

Ensemble taxi driving


"Whole group activity to explore being a taxi driver.

You all became taxi drivers and created some improvised movement, thought of some lines that the driver might say. 

Developed moments of ensemble work – could potentially be part of the final piece."

Explain what you did as a taxi driver. Why did you make these choices? (Think about character- voice/physicality.)

I slouched on my chair with my legs slightly open with my head bent back showing less interest in my job. This was to show my character wasn't exactly proud of what they did, they was pretty much very embarrassed but they still know that they don't have a choice in what they do and being a taxi driver is all they can be and do, they cant change that.
From the way I read the text you can tell the way I dragged out the words that I was trying to sound boring and tired and not very interesting. This way it shows my thoughts about everything from my taxi drivers perspective and tells us that my character's life is not that interesting and that they shouldn't show enthusiasm in the way they speak.