Audition Speeches - Cymbeline "I see a man's life as a tedious one"

My second classical piece is from the Shakespeare play Cymbeline, it tells the story of Princess Imogen and her lover Posthumous and how Imogen and Posthumous are separated after her father the king of England exiles Posthumous after she and Posthumous wed without his permission and because she is the only living heir her husband will become the next king. This shows the pressure put on Imogen and through the play we get to see how she copes with all the trials the come her way.

Beginning characterisation for Imogen I began by reading the play through several times and making notes on how I thought she would act in certain situations and how she would be feeling in the different stages of the play as a woman of that time and in that situation. I wanted to push the idea that she is still deciding how to lead her life even though a lot of it has been decided for her, that her thoughts are quite deep and unlike a woman of the time the play was written. We see Imogen being bold cross dressing even in her circumstances, I find this bold for a woman of her position and love the fact that she is going by her own mind, her first line in this monologue is " I see a man's life as a tedious one" and to me this line just says it all. The line states how she feels about what a man's life is like having lived like one for just a few days, she realises that not everything is how she originally imagined and I wanted to show this in the speech her indecisiveness in how things are and how so many things are rushing through her mind that she has to say them all at once and how she looks at things from both sides not just one. I wanted to show that she thinks very differently to a lot of the people around her and defy's their expectations of how she should be, I find that very appealing in a character and that was also one of the reasons I chose the speech because it shows more than you think.

I thought that the audition went relatively well compared to how I thought it would be, I was worried as to how my character would come across as I wasn't totally prepared with her actions and feelings. Baring this in mind the actual audition went how I wanted it to, I allowed myself to let her take over and show how she is indecisive and her attitude to life is very indecisive too with how she acts to her current situation.


Imogen

Name: Imogen
Age: Unknown
Family: Posthumous (Husband) Cymbeline (Father) Guiderius (Brother) Arviarargus (Brother)

Imogen is the daughter of the king of England, Cymbeline she is also the wife of Posthumous who is currently in exile because he and Imogen secretly married without Cymbeline's permission, this upset Cymbeline because Imogen is his only living heir and so whoever she marries will become the new king. This then sparks off the events of the play leading to cross dressing finding long lost family members and the reuniting of love.

Audition Speeches - Bronte "Do you ever wonder what our lives would have been like"

My contemporary piece is from the play Bronte by Polly Teale it was written in 2005 and follows the lives of the Bronte sisters and how they felt about their own situation and lives as women in the 19th Century. I chose this speech because I found that what Anne Bronte questions is exactly what she needs to question as a writer and as a woman in a society that disagree's with a woman thinking this way. I loved the way that she is passionate about the smallest of things and takes note of the insignificant things and turns them into something that means a lot to her and to how she sees life.

I began characterisation with looking at reading some of the Bronte's novels such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and finding how the characters within the stories are possibly related to either how the sisters themselves felt or how they saw other women and men of the time. I also used materiel from the history books and historical clothing to see how the clothing of the time would affect how they would have walked, sat and stood. Finding that a corset would of course restrict a lot of their movement and how they would have spoken as well, the corset causing constriction of the chest and only allowing a small amount of movement. To practice how I would stage this monologue I began with the research above and then practiced my own movement and how I could adapt my own self to embody Anne Bronte and how her movement would also reflect how she was feeling and how those feelings would come out on her body. I also read up on Anne and watched documentaries about her life and how it would have been, what her daily life consisted of and what events had happened in her life to shape how she is in this monologue and her ideas on how we as human beings act and what in life we refuse to acknowledge and try our best to prove wrong.

In the performance I undertook in the mock audition I felt quite connected to Anne as a character and as a person I could almost feel her influence rubbing off on me as I was delivering the lines. I also felt that I managed to keep the movement to a minimum as would be expected of Anne with the restriction of the clothing of the time and yet still portray the emotions and ideas that are running through Anne's head and that she has to confess to her sister Charlotte. Overall I felt that the performance itself gave over what I wanted it to but could still be added to by a little more variation in movement.

Anne

Name: Anne Bronte
Age: 28
Family: Charlotte Bronte (Sister) Emily Bronte (Sister) Branwell Bronte (Brother) Patrick Bronte (Father)  Maria Bronte (Mother) Elizabeth Bronte (Sister) Maria Bronte (Sister)

Anne was born into a large family as the youngest of seven siblings the two oldest having died very early and her mother passing away when anne was only one. She and her siblings were then brought up by their father Patrick Bronte who kept them all close to home in the parsonage of the church where he was the curate, from there Anne and her siblings all began to write their own stories to escape from the lack of interaction of other children their age they had, this was due to the lack of hygiene of the area and a lot of the children carrying disease and after Patrick Bronte had lost two children to disease before he was unwilling to loose another. The Bronte sisters also wrote under pseudonyms to get their work published as it was uncommon to have a woman's novel published in that era, not just because it was written by a woman but also because it wasn't seen as decent for a woman to be writing stories as it could put ideas into their heads.

Audition Speeches - Romeo & Juliet "The clock struck nine"

My classical piece is from the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet written between 1591 and 1595 It tells the story of Romeo and Juliet as the title suggests. In this play we witness the romance that blossoms between these two lovers and how it brings across their demise, the speech from the play I have chosen is spoken by Juliet, she is remarking and moping about how her nurse has not come back from seeing her Romeo in the time she said she would be.

To begin characterisation for Juliet I read the play over and also watched some of the film versions of the plays to gain an idea of how other actors have portrayed Juliet in the past. I then compiled mental markers as to the mannerisms that they used to evolve Juliet, also being 17 I know what it's like to be 14 and impatient. So from compiling information from books, performances and personal experience I created my own version of Juliet. I found my version to be a little more down played than some of the versions I had seen on screen, I deliberately down played the character because I felt that in a lot of instances the character is overplayed with the stereotypical "I'm a teenager and the world revolves around me". I wanted to change her to become a more understandable person for an audience to see and relate to, to find that the impatience is a universal thing not just for a teenage girl waiting for her boyfriend. To rehearse this character I played with the vocal tone of her, seeing as she's meant to be a young teenage girl I knew the voice needed to be a lot more high pitched and whiny in a way as a lot of younger voices are before they mature. I also looked at how she might move having been brought up in a high ranking family and being subjected to act and talk like a lady of the time, this led me to become very aware of how she carries out her actions.

I felt that my mock audition went very well, I liked how I felt within the character and how I delivered my lines. In the audition I felt that I managed to convey the downplayed Juliet and how her feelings are universal feelings, I also felt that I used the stage appropriately to the situation of the monologue I was Performing. I felt that I managed to explain through the monologue who Juliet is to the audience and that there is more to her than her stereotype suggests.

Juliet

Name: Juliet Capulet
Age: 14
Family: Lord Capulet (Father) Lady Capulet (Mother) Tybalt Capulet (Cousin) Rosaline Capulet (Cousin) Nurse (Surrogate Mother)
Spouse: Romeo Montague

Juliet is a fourteen year old girl who lives in Verona, Italy her father is a Lord and so she and her family hold a high position in the society of Verona. Her family have been feuding with another high status family in Verona called the Montague's, during this play she falls in love with the son of Lord and Lady Montague which becomes a catalyst to their demise.

Shakespeare - Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar is a play written by William Shakespeare and tells the story of the conspiracy to kill Julius Caesar, it also tells the repercussions of what happens when such an act is committed. The play was first performed in 1599 and is thought to be the first production to be performed at the Globe since it's opening in the same year. The theatre didn't last too long as during a production of Henry VIII on the 29th of June 1613, the cannon that went off to announce the start of the show set fire to the thatched roof causing the building to be burnt to the ground.

The production of Julius Caesar gives a lot of ideas for staging as it has various parts throughout the play where levels and audience interaction can be used(The picture to the left is of how the stage was set up for the current production). Not too much is known about the original staging or the production because of the lack of documentation in that era, luckily a passing tourist and diarist made an entry about seeing the production and remarking upon it. From the trip with my class to the globe to go and see the production there I know that in a more modern representation they used Mark Anthony's podium as a very court like box, they included the audience at the beginning by bringing large boxes and yelling about Caesar in support of him. Before the show we were given a small talk about the Globe and how the original production might have been staged, there is the thought that for the speeches to the people of Rome that are spoken by both Mark Anthony and Caesar might have been performed from the balcony on the stage being a very ideal place to address not only the actors playing the people of Rome but also the audience and the way the stage is set out it would also allow their voice to be carried throughout the theatre. The play is based upon the original Julius Caesar and how he ran Rome and his assassination after his friends and advisors felt he as one man held too much power, Shakespeare found his information initially about Caesar, Brutus and Anthony from Plutarch's Lives in North's English translation. Shakespeare also used books like the bible for inspiration and using his own experiences from having been on stage himself as well as writing created a play that was not only visually pleasing for the audience but gave the actors so many strong emotions to play on and use to enhance the play.

The play was important because what had happened with Julius Caesar was still very prevalent to the Elizabethan public it was a common tale and to have that brought to them and shown as a production would have been talked about. The fact that there wouldn't have been any set for the play was quite interesting considering a lot of the public would have had preconceived ideas about how it would have looked, the point of no set meant that it would be a lot easier for the average person to interpret it how they liked and make the show what they wanted to. Props such as swords and letters would have been used to bring the violent element of the play to light when Caesar gets assassinated and using the Mark Anthony speech when he is talking about the will to draw the audience to a focus point. Costumes would have been used to show the different levels of status in the play between the characters and illustrate the personality of a character too giving the audience a clear idea of where each character sat within the hierarchy of the play. The political themes of the play lie in that it was better for Rome when they had a monarch, it was a way for Shakespeare to suck up to Queen Elizabeth and gain her approval for his work. It also meant that the audience would be thinking that it was a good thing that they had a monarch, and weren't letting history repeat itself. The politics involved in this play were purely to get a lot of favour from the people who held the power of it's day, it would also ensure that William Shakespeare had free clearance to keep putting his plays out there.

The theatre in Elizabethan times was a real social thing it was available to all levels of society, the levels were stills shown within the theatre not only as to where people sat but also in the prices of the tickets. The different levels of seating were divided as such, the yard is for the standing public who would come on the day, the lower upper and middle galleries and the Lord's rooms. The yard would have had the everyday men and women, the galleries would have housed those who could afford the seating and were higher up in the class system, the Lord's rooms were for the Lord's of the courts to be seen in their extravagant outfits, they were situated to the sides of the stage to allow the public to see their finery and show off their status. Shakespeare was alive and working during the reign of two monarch's, Elizabeth I and James VI and I. The religious differences between these two times changed dramatically, the country went from Elizabeth I's time where most nobles were still Catholic and so in turn were a lot of the commoners, even though the protestant's were beginning to gain more support and so the Queen showed her dislike for them. When James VI and I took the throne in 1603 the puritans began show their want for reform in the country's religion, in 1604 James VI and I called a conference at Hampton Court to allow the Court to hear what Puritan leaders had to say about their religion and so began their climb in the world of religion.

Theatre has changed in many ways since the days of Shakespeare, it has evolved to allow almost anything to be performed without having the writer beheaded for a treasonus theme in the play. In the Elizebethan era only men were allowed on stage because it was not respectable for a woman to be on the stage, now we have not only women on the stage but women playing the male roles, I recently saw a production of Henry IV that was an all female cast and set in a prison of modern times. The price of a seat in a theatre now costs a lot more than it used to and most wanted seats have gone from being behind the stage to be seen and admired in all your finery, to the front row of the upper circle to gain the full view of the stage. Ticket prices used to range from 1d to 5d which would now translate to roughly £0.52 to £2.61 which really wasn't much whereas now we would pay between £30 and £100 for a good west end theatre ticket. Plays in the late 1500's and early 1600's would only play for at most a few days and then a new one was expected of the public, now we have plays that will run for several months at a time and even musicals that have been running for decades. There are more things for the public to do now rather than just going to the pub and the theatre, the theatres now also are indoors whereas the shakesperian theatres were outdoors and because of lighting were only performed during the day (candles were dangerous with thatched rooves and wooden structures) and sometimes due to weather conditions they would postpone shows as with no roof a lot of their audience would have been uninterested in being drenched at what is supposed to be a fun event.

This is a link to a Youtube video that explains the outline of the play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgyAPrv30eg

The link to the RSC website

http://www.rsc.org.uk/

Punk Rock and Shakespeare - Week 1

These first few weeks back have been interesting to say the least, it has been a period of transition for all of us, going from the first year to the second and final year of this course. We began the term by finding out what our new time table was and which subjects we would and will be studying. In this first week finding out what we were going to learn about and perform set a certain feeling that this really was our chance to work hard and shine, the subjects we are studying and learning about in this first term are contemporary theatre and Shakespeare.

Contemporary

In Contemporary theatre we are studying, producing and performing the play Punk Rock by Simon Stephens, the play is about a group of teenagers in the library of their fee paying school and are in the process of studying for their final A Level exams and applying for university. This of course means that tensions are running high and everyone is at their wits end but is unwilling to show it. We began our study on this by doing a read through as a group of the play, allowing us to get a feel of the script and knowing what goes on within the play as well. After going through the script we had a group discussion of the play, finding out how each of us perceived each character and our thoughts on their backgrounds and what is really going on behind the scenes. Reading this play for myself was quite hard because having gone through a similar secondary education as the characters, I found I was comparing my own real life situations to the characters, and although this was in some ways quite painful because I could relate to the characters and their position in the world, It also gave me the advantage of knowing what was going on in the characters minds and how they were feeling about the whole situation. They in my mind were almost scared and do a lot of what they do out of fear, they study out of fear of bad grades and bully out of fear of loosing their place within their delicate hierarchy of student politics.

The play itself I found to be brilliant because of how true each sentence that is said is and i do honestly believe in what Earnest Hemingway said "all you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." and there is a specific speech that Lilly says in the play that to me almost justify's the whole play, in this speech lilly is talking about good people and how William isn't any different or any more special than anybody else, this to me was an important part of the play because she stated quite clearly what a lot of people that age don't realise, that we are all the same, that we are no different or no more special than anybody else in the world. This play also touches on the fact that in a lot of fee paying schools bullying isn't necessarily done with physical fights but with the most sinister and thought provoking words that stick with you and eat at you until you snap, and this is exactly what happens to William, at the end he is so sick of the verbal abuse that not only he gets, but also everyone else that he takes matters into his own hands, not in the most ideal way but he does, it also shows that the way he and other children might react, still although about to be an adult not quite knowing how to handle the situation.

Shakespeare

In Shakespeare we are studying Julius Caesar which was written in 1599 and follows the story of Julius Caesar's reign over rome and his assassination. I was quite glad to hear we were going to be studying and performing excerpts of this specific Shakespearian play because it was one of the Shakespeare plays I have not studied as much in my own time, it gives me the opportunity to really explore and develop my own personal knowledge of Julius Caesar. I loved the fact that we were studying one of the Historical plays instead of one of the Tragedy's or Comedies, I like that it is a real life event and that these events did occur.

On Wednesday of last week we took as a group a trip to The Globe Theatre in London to see the production of Julius Caesar in the original text and costume. Also whilst there we participated in a workshop with one of the educator's there who also took us into the theatre and showed us around and let us know about how the theatre was used and what to possibly expect from the show.

 After Showing us the theatre we went into the studios along the street and did a workshop on the play itself and together worked on a scene from the play and tried the rehearsal technique that the actors in shakespeare's day would have used and that was to have only rehearsed it about three times and the end result was really good, it wasn't perfect which you wouldn't expect after having only worked on it for about half an hour but it was good and I liked what was produced. We also looked at another scene between Cassius and Brutus and looked at actioning and how that affected the scene and how it changed the meaning of it, applying certain moves to certain objectives changed the atmosphere of the scene completely and made it more intense without overworking it. After the workshop we went to the museum attached to the Globe Theatre and found many amazing things, they had a whole display on costumes and the sort of clothes that would have been worn in the productions in Shakespeare's time. There were also lots of other types of displays such as a section on drawings of the characters out of the plays and concept art for costumes and set 

design ideas, on the ceiling was art that depicted the stars and the constellations of the time when the stars were considered to bring you luck and tell the future, there are also constellations on the ceiling of the stage of The Globe. Having had a look at the museum and gaining more ideas and learning new things about The Globe's history, we went for lunch and a break before going to see Julius Caesar. Coming back to go and see the play was quite surreal in a way walking into the theatre with everyone else and finding a place to stand and also have a good view of the stage, being only 5'1 my view of the stage was limited having much taller people in front of me, this also gave me an idea of what it would have been like in Shakespeare's day being in an overcrowded space trying to get a good view of the stage. During the performance I had to move to the back because the crowd of onlookers was quite overbearing but also a learning curve as to what it really was like, being at the back I had a better view of the stage and the actors because there were less people surrounding me. I found it fascinating from the back of the theatre to watch how the crowd reacted to what the actors did and how the play unfolded in front of us, some knowing what would happen and others not knowing what would happen, and yet by the end we all came out of the theatre having had the same experience of feeling the same things the actors were and going through their stories with them and taking that home with us. 

Commedia - Parts 1,2 and 3

Part 1: 
In the beginning of Commedia I found the stock characters to be more overly exaggerated than I had even dared to imagine and in a way it put me off wanting to learn and perform Commedia. My initial responses were that it wasn't for me as I don't think of my self as very comedic or possibly being good at any of that type of theatre and Commedia isn't just a comedic play it is Commedia and it's the beginnings of all theatre which also makes it even more daunting. Beginning to improvise Commedia made things seem even more confusing as I found it so easy to watch some of the others performing their little snippets of Commedia that they had come up with in less than ten minuets, and then it was my turn to come up with some piece of theatre in a foreign area to me. Things became a bit clearer to me when Kaz our team leader gave us a sheet with dialogue on it and asked us in pairs to make it into a form of Commedia, most of the group had already sussed out what it took to perform and create their own types of Commedia and I hadn't, this made me even more reluctant to even try, but I did. With Paige we did this piece of dialogue together about Perkins and Sir and trying out Commedia with a set script seemed to set things into action for me and I figured out somewhat, what I needed to do even though Kaz said there was more I needed to it was like lightening had struck my brain and even though I knew it wasn't a brilliant piece of theatre I had just performed it was a start and that was all I needed. Then we moved onto looking thoroughly at trying out the traditional stock characters and that was when I became apprehensive again as I was worried I was going to fall flat on my face, instead of falling on my face I began to find ways of performing the characters and having researched more of Commedia I found out why some of the characters are how they are and that made things easier to understand it was liking suddenly being given the back story to your character and I had my backbone. The characters I liked the most and connected best with were the following three: Harlequin, Columbina and Punch, these characters were all like my own personality in a way except for punch and it was only when I found out Punch's back story that I began to see some resemblance's and those were that Punch is weighed down by society and that's sometimes how I can feel and I can understand why Punch is so mean and condescending because it can sometimes be the only way to keep yourself going even if it isn't the best way.

Part 2:
In the beginning we had so many ideas about what our Commedia setting would be that we had filled the entire white board and we had to whittle it all down to one and that seemed like the biggest challenge we had faced so far. In the end we had the two groups one was doing Buckingham Palace and the other my group was between choosing a Beauty Salon and a Dating Agency and other than interviews for the Dating Agency we couldn't come up with any other ideas and that really held us back and really put our hopes for a good show down. Being a group of sixteen we thought why couldn't the two groups of eight just join together and all work together on one show of the Buckingham Palace idea. We then as one big group used the ideas that the others had come up with when it was just them doing the Buckingham Palace idea and then brainstormed ideas that we had come up with using and idea of kaz's doing almost speed dating but more speed idea making. We all came up with ideas for each character working on a scene with ours which meant we ended up with so many ideas and that gave the group a lot of breadth. In different groups we tried out different ideas my group consisted of the servants and that meant it was Charlotte, Paige and myself and we did a scene where we found out information about the Royals that they wouldn't want to be shared and that made things rather interesting, the strengths of this scene were that we managed to create some sophisticated comedy and made our classmates laugh which to us was a success the con was that we had no way to add to it and we ended up changing the entire scene the next day. The next day the outcome of the scene was that we all ended up jumping for the evidence of the Royal's indiscretion and then Bradly a Royal walks in and takes the evidence stating "I've been looking for that" and then we all look at the audience in horror.

Part 3:
We got to our final decision of Buckingham Palace by working through all the ideas that everyone had accumulated and shared between the group it was finalised when as a group we all decided to merge as one big group and became the cast of Commedia's Buckingham Palace. The characters are based on the members of the Royal family and typical house servants that the Royal family would have, we then assigned the stock characters to who we felt were similar to the actual real life people and worked on it from there, it was also a choice of which characters it was that we ourselves wanted to play and adhering them to the character and developing it further to make the two connect. We finalised the plot by as a group sitting around the whiteboard and writing the scenes down in numerical order and working on it from there, we then came up with other ideas and optioned them by using the base ideas we had come up with such as that Charles is missing or that the Queen's jewels are missing, each of these ideas gave us a lot of space to create sub plots underneath what was there. Problems were that we had so many ideas and bringing them down to our total of around twenty four but still finding new ideas. We found breakthroughs when we were experimenting with the scenes we had and were able to change and mould the scenes to what we found on our journey to the final cut of those scenes and it was even more amazing when people came up with these little ideas and those little ideas made the scene what it is. Overall the creative purpose has been challenging but also worth it and has brought us as a group closer together and also allowed us to share ideas and inklings in a much more relaxed way.

The Wardrobe - Post Performance 3

This week we came back and got stuck straight in, over the easter holidays I had been watching the film version of Henry the fourth part one by william shakespeare and from this I remembered how Prince Hal was publicly humilliated by his father for his actions and was then slapped by his father and this drew my attention back to the script in a new way I saw genevieve in a new light and maybe she was upset coming into the scene because the same turn of events that had happened between prince hal and henry the fourth had happened between genevieve and her father and that he had slapped her for disobeying his orders to accept a marriage proposal that would aid him in his social standing. I then thought in the fight scene that genevieve would go to slap whinnie because she was influenced byt her fathers actions.

The Wardrobe - Post Performance 2

This week began with looking at other schools versions of The Wardrobe and how our production differed from theirs, through looking we found that our version of the production was a lot more grounded than the others. The other productions useds a lot of modern ideas within the realms of theatre, using ideas such as clear lighting or just lighting to represent the main parts of the wardrobe itself. There was also a consistency of people wearing solid colours such as simply just white or black, there were a distinct lack of costumes in many of the plays which helped to determine which eras they were from and gave them character. I prefered our production because I felt it had a sense of realism to it and that to me makes it more of a beliviable performance and show.

Today began with receving our grades for our overall sections, I wasn't pleased with the grade I got because I wanted the top grade and I felt a little down about it untill Karen our team leader said we had a chance to raise our grades if we did the work this week and the week after easter when we are performing at the capitol theatre in Horsham, this in a way hit me quite hard and I felt that I had to work harder because i'm determined to get the top grades even if that  means gving up my free time. In  working through the list of five things karen wanted us to try I found that I wasn't giving enough emotion to Genevieve and that I needed to tap into how she would be feeling and convey that more clearly to the audience. I used personal experience and a dash of stanislavsky to acheive this objective and I could feel the difference as the character and I was almost in tears with the amount of emotion this was evoking from me, it made the scene feel more real and made Genevive expose her vulnerable side and how she is acttually feeling about Arthur and how much he means to her.

The Wardrobe - Post Performance 1

This week began the discussions as to what we were going to with the show when we tour it to Horsham on the 25th of April. Theses discussions included which scenes we would cut to save time as we are only allowed  to perform for 45 minitues there, the first thoughts I had were to cut the Dido scene because it wouldnt effect any of the other scenes but not many people agreed with this because it was such a good scene, I could understand this because it was such a powerful scene. We then looked at getting rid of scenes three or nine and I felt they couldn't take either of these brilliaant scenes because they were so tense and yet so poignant and gave you a lot to think about. I then suggested scene two to be cut because I felt that it made the beginning of the play sometimes drag with scene on before it there wasn't any tense moments to it and it wasn't as directly effective as the others, the scene also wouldn't  effect any of the other scenes with continuity. We are now on our final decisions about what we are going to do with our play. As a group we went through the play taking off senes two and three to see how the play look without those scenes and how we felt about the play without them. Karen our team leader chose to cut scene three because it wasn't suitable for the staging because when caryl is  struggling there is too much space for it to be beliviably small enough for her to panic in. I was dissapointed that we would loose scene three because I felt that it was such a serious and tense scene and I love a tense and dramatic scene, I also felt that it was brilliant to have right before scene four because it goes from tense and dramatic and being unable to breathe to a happy and laughing scene and I felt it threw off the audience but in a good way, in that it didn't give them a chance to really evaluate and keeps them immersed in the play and slightly shocked.

The Wardrobe - Week 7

This week we came back from half term and were all quite tired and relaxed, this had a negative effect on the entire group as a whole, we began the day by all sitting in a group circle and having to take some paper and pens from the centre (pens and paper were a multitude of colours) we had to draw five images that represented what we found most stood out to us personaly in the play. I chose the wardrobe itself because to me it represents a stillness to the play and that although it moves around through time and the country, all the stories still take place in the wardrobe and I find that amazing, to me it's as if walls could talk this is how it would be. I then chose the dagger in scene one because Cecily wants to kill her sister because she gets to have what she could never have and in a way with a sibling I can relate to the reason that she nearly did this because there are times when we do want to dispose of our siblings, but in the end when it comes down to it at the end of the day we would never hurt them. Thirdly I chose the candles in scene nine because in a way I felt that they represented hope and saftey, this scene is completley lit by the boys candles and they seem to radiate the hope of their fears and saftey from the way they hold them close and find their way to the saftey of the wardrobe with the candles, they are beacons and guiders. The fourth thing I chose was the Bannana in scene two because I found that it represented the exploration of young people and that we have to explore a lot of things in our lives before we do anything big and in this case the wardrobe helps them to acheieve this objective. Lastly I chose the snow because snow is so pure and white and innocent and it's also very magical just like Narnia, it is a place for people to escape to just like the Wardrobe is for the children.

Looking more into our charcters I enjoyed using the stances technique because it allows you to take three solid states of your character, and find how it feels to be in that state as the character, I enjoyed it as a new way to help me find my character. We also began to look into Ennegram's as a way to look into your character, it gives the nine states of who we could be and certain numbers link to others in both good ways and bad ways, to me this was a bit like horoscopes just without the specific dates added to it. These methods helped me to finally find my character and to find her innermost feelings, and how to show those hidden feelings through subtle but also showable emotions, such as her status. Genevieve is a higher status not only because she is higher born but because she has had a hard life, she has never really felt freedom and this is why she seeks out Arthur Scott, because she needs that outlet and having that outlet jeopardised really challenges her to keep her status and she uses her hard mannerisms that she has accumulated through her life to do this.

The Wardrobe - Week 6

This week we worked on trying to find our character more, in the case of my scene I needed to work on where she came from and how that would affect her in this case she was from liverpool, so working on a liverpool accent was key. We worked (Alicia and myself) on the accents with Bradley from the year above and he helped us to nail this accent. I found this very difficult and kept going from a liverpool accent to french to italian to irish which didn't really help my cause. Instead we decided to keep my character in an RP accent and to make it seem as though they had only recently moved to the area and she still had her original accent.

Later in the week we worked on looking into how to stage the scene and found that keeping within the wardrobe wasn't as easy as was previously thought. We ended up working on trying to keep it in the singular place and that helped a lot and then with Karen's guidance we worked it out together.

The Wardrobe - Week 5

3rd February

This week we looked at Brecht and how he uses Epic Theatre, we looked at his life and how he used theatre to shock people not just blind them with some story for a few hours which they would soon forget the moral of, he wanted it to be real and memorable. To look at this we got into politics and how that would be a possible thing that Brecht might have looked at had he been alive today and sectioned off into groups and were told to come up with a song or rap of some sort on politics and our ideas on what we were annoyed about and in this we used education as our base coming up with a rap and ending it with a quote from

Einstein - If you judge a fish on it's ability to climb a tree it will spend it's whole life thinking it's stupid.

This was our way of trying to say that not everyone is an academic and that a lot of us as actors in training are more suited to the arts but the way that the education department in the government is going is taking us away from what we are good at because they are blinded by academic success when not everyone is going to be good at it.

In the afternoon we came back and worked in voice we again partook in a few of the groups personal vocal warmups that they had come up with and provided backing evidence to. This week was also my turn to present and so I did, I used a few techniques that I had found from going to different places of drama training and others I had found from the internet and from my singing teacher and combined which ones I found the most useful and after leading and partaking in the vocal warm ups I felt much more ready for the day.

The Wardrobe - Week 4

29th January

- The Wardrobe

• Today we began by looking at our scenes and how we were going to start working at them and seeing how they could start to come together, it was also the first opportunity to start working on our scenes using the system of Stanislavsky.
• Looking into what we were doing we found that working on a bit of staging was key because we were quite literally just making small steps to show a stage and that didn't seem right at all.
• Second we looked at how the character might be feeling in the scene and what would be going on behind the facade of the actual character such as where do they come from and what effect does their background have on it.
• The back story also came to light when we realised it was set in liverpool and needed to think about accents to which both Alicia and i were a bit taken aback as our accents weren't necessarily up to par but being it the beginning of the rehearsal process we decided that could wait until later.
• We started to also work on Beats and used them in our scene we went through our entire scene and worked out when we thought there ought to be a beat and put them in, after this we then sat across from each other and read our lines with the beats, just saying the lines within the beats and read them to find the underlying signs.
• When we performed these to the class we found that we were far too fast with delivering the lines with the beats and meant that we were also rushing the scene when we were actually performing it normally, it gave us a lot of food for thought.

30th January

• Today I came into the Drama Studio and didn't quite know what to expect, I knew as a group we were going to do a workshop with Karen but I was still undecided as to what we would be doing. As soon as Karen walked into the room we were asked to put away our things and stand in a space within the studio, then to lie down on the floor and work on the first state.

1. Awakening - Slight movements such as waking up in the morning. (Impatience, Agitation, Boredom). I led down on the floor and the lights were dimmed, lying down like this in a relaxed state with little light really brought on the effect of sluggishness and a reluctance to want to create much movement or at all to get up. 
2. Drunk - Heavy un supported body. (Drunk, after a fight, drugged, zombie). Moving up from the awakening state to the drunk state took a lot of energy as you had adjusted yourself to lying on the floor in a quiet and calm state with almost no movement. The heavy un supported feeling was quite easy for me to obtain as i just took on the state of mind of only having just woken up and not wanting to actually be up.
3. Toddler - upright and free and a curious energy. (upright up but still wobbly and un supported). In this state i felt as though i was lower than everyone else because i felt in-superior being unable to move as freely and easily as i usually would do and in my opinion not only gave the appearance of being a lot younger but the personal feeling of that as well which made the transition a lot easier because i could feel the atmosphere that went with it.
4. Neutral - A reserved and private/professional state. (no story or hidden agenda). This state had almost no effect on me as i didn't feel any specific mind set that went it the actions and atmosphere and to me that achieved the neutral state i was in a neutral position as an actor.
5. Someone's watching you - The first possible stages of paranoia. (Paranoia, Waiting). In this state i began to become more aware of my surroundings and actually noticed a few things about the studio that i hadn't before such as that there is an eye drawn on the floor and that the mirror had been put back onto the vanity that we used in the orestia. i found that this state really quite dramatically changed the atmosphere of the room to a heightened sense and that also affected my own personal reactions.
6. Definitely someone is watching you - Real paranoia and fear set in. (Fear, Paranoia). In this state i felt quite shaken and actually began to shake i could feel the raw emotion that was coming from this unseeable atmosphere that the group was creating and i didn't like it and out of instinct i became the same and my emotions heightened and were on death con level 10, my breathing became more shallow and actually made me feel slightly dizzy, they were quite extreme actions.
7. About to catch the ball - The hang in the air moment. (Anticipation). This was the moment when there was a very high level of anticipation and waiting and that made you rock on the balls of your feet ready to move at the slightest thing that was going to happen it was a lovely moment and kept you quite literally on you toes.
8. There i a bomb in the room - A tense moment of the unknown. (Stillness, Mania). This moment i felt was overplayed by the group and was a bit more like a cartoon than real life. I felt that this moment would have been portrayed with complete stillness and tranquility as i didn't feel it was realistic for everyone to majorly panic a few people in the group including myself edged to the corners of the room and tried to keep themselves to themselves and tried to deal with the news alone.
9. The bomb has gone off - A moment of helplessness. (Helplessness, emotionless). In this moment there was almost utter panic within the room and again i didn't feel it was necessary it was almost like a circus. Again i wanted virtually no emotions just sheer panic and with sheer panic comes absolute quiet for at least a long time it's never complete panic in a real situation, i felt that the panic needed a few minutes minimum to set in and realise the actual situation and then to act upon what was actually happening within the space.

• To end the day we worked on the Dido scene with Yaz as she is doing the monologue of Dido and we sat in a semi circle around her so that she could interact with us but also so that we could see all sides of what was happening. Yaz used the words and their possible meanings and attached specific words to each of us so that she could use us as  focus points. Then as her focus points we were to nod if we honestly believed what she was saying and that we could feel what she was trying to convey through her monologue to us. Through doing this i felt it helped with the scene because it gave Yaz a chance to see how she could make things believable within the monologue.

The Wardrobe - Week 3

20th January
- The Wardrobe

• My scene, scene 7 is 8 years before the publication of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
• Debating between putting the wardrobe at either spot A or B, I prefer spot B but we're going to experiment with both options to gain a better sense of which would be better.
• Looking at finding the Historical details of our scene

22nd January

- Chekov

• Anton Chekov was boork in 1860 and died in 1904 due to tuberculosis. He was a russian playwright and a leader in naturalistic drama writing, he trained as a doctor whilst pursuing a career in journalism and writing short stories, he wrote his first play in 1887 and in 1898 he joined forces with Stanislavsky and produced work that screened at the moscow art theatre and this was where his plays found success.
• Naturalism - Mirror of real life, people and events
• The pause is vital, the truth is revealed
• An event changes nothing, yet the characters are affected forever
• Chekov's plays are a portrait of provincial russia in 1900
• Symbolism -  Hope represented through key character
• Theatre of Mood & Atmosphere - less focus on plot
• Indirect action - understatement, broken conversation or off stage events.

- Stanislavsky

• We looked into Stanislavsky, his life and his work and how this all plays a part in our performance in the play and how to better utilise or acting techniques and learn new ones.
• Stanislavsky worked closely with Anton Chekov with whom he revolutionised the acting world by introducing realism into the equation of melodrama.
• 1885 went to drama school and left after only three weeks, stating that it taught him what not to do in the world of theatre. 
• He created the system

- The System

1. Imagination
2. Imaginary Moving Picture
3. Action
4. Units & Objectives
5. Emotional Memory
6. Circles of Attention
7. Solitude in Public 
8. The Magic If 
9. Given Circumstance
10. The Super Objective and Through Line

23rd January

- The Wardrobe

• We worked on one of the parts of the system "the magic if" through this we went and worked on several situations that Karen gave to us and reacted in a way we thought would be within the realms of realism, in my opinion what came of this was quite often over exaggerated emotions and reactions within the given situation and I felt it was not entirely within the realms of realism.
• One of the exercises we did was when Karen came up to me and just told me to go with it and so I did she then told the class I had lost my ring, my grandmothers ring and I had to react to the situation in a way that was believable. I slyly put my ring in my pocket at that point and began to bring myself into a state using emotional memory to remember a time when I had lost something else and remembered the blind panic you get, in the end I managed to convince about half the class that I had really lost my ring the others were either completely skeptical or had heard me jump when Karen first came up to me to give me the instructions.

The Wardrobe - Week 2

13th January
- The Wardrobe

• We began again by working on the different scenes and discussing which scenes we ourselves wanted to be in. After working on the scenes in separate groups we performed them to the class, we then went on to other scenes to try out more
• I found that through doing this process I was able to make a better decision as to which character I liked most and which one I would like to play it also made me change a lot of my decisions and characters I previously liked and wanted to play became almost unbearable and vice versa.

- Movement

• In Movement we re did our work out/Dance again to be sure we knew it well and it took a couple of tries to get things right.
• We were then split off into groups to re work the formation into new ways, adding different types and ways of movement, such as adding in cannon and new jumps or leaps.
• The finished compilation was a much more versatile version of the original dance bringing a new concept to the whole dance.

- Voice

•  We went through a variety of exercises for Vocal Warm ups to aid us in our voice assessment, looking at both the Articulators and the Resonators, this also helped to give us an ideas as to how to run and present our warm ups. 
• We also found out how much more of the written we would have to be working on and what sort of material we would need to further include in the written part of the assessment

15th January

- The Wardrobe

• We spent today working on the scenes we were individually interested in today as well as working on the scenes Karen wanted to see us in.
• Today was to work on the final casting session with Karen our course leader this was to allow her to find out who would best suit the roles but which roles would also challenge everyone.
• I found doing an audition process this way helpful because it allowed us to see who worked well with who and which groups of people had potential together in particular scenes.

16th January

- The Wardrobe

• I've been cast as Genevieve alongside Alicia as Whinnie, I'm very pleased because this is who I wanted to play. This role is in scene 7 and after reading the play and trying out all of the scenes I realised that this was who I wanted to play.
• There is a lot that can be done with this scene, i'm particularly excited to start figuring out the costumes as this scene is set in the era of Jane Austen and I love the period clothing of that time.
• The High point of this scene as we have figured out so far is when Whinnie over steps her boundaries as her status is lower than Genevieve's, with Whinnie being the servant and Genevieve being a lady of the house.

The Wardrobe - Week 1

6th January
- The Wardrobe

• Inspiring, makes you think about all of your own family heirlooms and what they've seen.
• The theme of the play is innocence, this play shows to prove that children know what they're going through and know how to survive they can in fact grow up when they need to be and be childish the next minute.
• After reading The Wardrobe i found that the characters I most wanted to play were Elisabeth, Cecily and Nell. Everyone wanted me to be Anne but she was too much like me and I didn't want to be playing myself I want a challenge.

- Movement went well in that we began by warming up by both releasing joints and stretching muscles, we then took the routine we had worked on as one group and were split into three separate groups and in those groups we had to come up with more varying move to add into the routine, using jumps, leaps and extra foot work.

8th January

- The Wardrobe 

• We were each given a section of the play to work on, I was paired with Yaz and we worked of the Narnia scene.
• I find the Narnia scene quite emotional as it's about and ill child's friend bringing the magic to life.
• I found it difficult to act ill at the same time as being skeptical and finding what was happening to be childish.
• Working this into a wardrobe idea made getting my head around things a lot harder to do
• After lunch we came back and worked on different scenes, ones that we ourselves wanted to try out.
• I worked on the scene four and played Anne. this was the role I originally detested because of it's likeness to my own personality, reading it through and acting the role were two very different things and I found that acting the character was a lot of fun and there was a lot i could do.

9th January

- The Wardrobe

• We started the afternoon by doing some warmup exercises to get ourselves warmed up and woken up.
• We began working on scenes that Karen put us into and had to write out a certain amount of information about the scene such as a word that sums up the scene and things about the time.
• We began by reading the scene together and then working it out into a space, we then showed our finished part to Karen who was looking at us for casting which she will be deciding next week.
• We then finished that scene and went for a break, when we all came back we were sent off to work on a new scene that karen wanted to see us in.
• I found today useful because we got to try out scenes and see how we felt about the characters ourselves.

Black and White - Evaluation

The piece we were performing was a contemporary adaptation of Orestes called Blood and Light by Helen Edumdson but with this we also added in parts of the original text from the parts of the Chorus to add to the adaptation this gave us a chance to work as a group on scenes.  My lines went well during the performance and at the end i felt i knew them well but still had that sense of fear that i would forget them, at one point i forgot a line but thankfully Bradley who i was playing against moved straight on to the next part and we sailed smoothly from there, everyone else did well with their lines as well. Scene transitions, entrances and exits were quite sketchy the week of the performance but on the day of the first performance we nailed it and it went perfectly. The pace of the scenes went according with the atmosphere and lines and i felt it went just how it needed too because we all relied on instinct and it ended up working very well, it felt right. The timing went okay but on the second performance the sound cut out and we had a lot of our timing judged on it, but still everyone went straight with it and made it work. The style of the piece was contemporary because we had used the contemporary version of the play and kept it in an almost timeless setting. The subject matter discussed was that of revenge and loyalty, the play shows the relationships between families and how they interact and how much they would actually give for their family. Characterisation wasn't really simple for me as i felt i was becoming the character more gradually than finding her straight away, i felt the part when the crown was put on my head and i was in costume because i became Electra i didn't just characterise her. Vocal deliver was good overall but needed to be louder and much more projection was needed for the audience to hear it clearly, but it was well done closer to the audience but lost closer to the back of the stage. Gesture was used quite well with everyone as it was important with the silent themes of the play to come across in the more subtle parts of the play. As an Ensemble the team worked quite badly together through rehearsals as it felt like it would never come together but when it came to performing things went better than just good everyone became a team because there was no pressure to keep on going and to keep trying to figure out what we were going to do and we could just do it. The focus was great as well when the house lights went down and the stage lights came up there was this sudden focus that everyone seemed to be connected to and it worked brilliantly. The work was done to the best of everyone's ability, the energy and dynamics of the piece came together and it all came together to create a brilliant show.