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.