Single - Applying Acting Styles - Blog 2 - 09/09/16

Today in Single, we continued with our work on Antigone from last lesson and blocked out our short scene. As Rob and I talk to each other in the scene we made sure we were next to each other. The way we performed our section was I sat with a piece of paper and a pen and I was writing a letter home to my mother detailing our recent success in battle and I was asking Rob for help with the letter. I would read out the details I already had and Rob shouted more in excitement.

After this, we were asked to "translate" our lines into something that made more sense to us and we would then run the scene again using our newly made lines. This would help us with how we said our lines as they were in a more familiar form than the rough Greek translation.

Following this activity we performed the original scene but as we had studied the meaning of our lines it was easier to say the original lines as we knew the meaning of them. Below is our final performance of the scene:

Double - Auditions for Actors - Blog 2 - 09/09/16

Today, we performed our monologues we found ready for this lesson. The monologue I chose was Pax's monologue from Dreams In Captivity.

We, first, were asked to read out our monologues to the class and were asked why we chose them. I chose mine because I felt like it had a very motivational message and I also looked into the plot of the play and found Dreams In Captivity very interesting.

After this we were split into pairs (Rob and Lorna/James and Ollie/Charlie and Lewis) and performed our monologue to each other, making notes on how the other did with comments on how to improve. When Charlie performed his monologue, I thought he needed to slow his down a tad as he could of added a bit more emphasis to some of his lines to make them more effective. However, he did use very good facial expressions throughout and his tone was perfect for the scene.

Charlie's notes on my monologue were I had good diction and my tone was very good, however I should've slowed down at the beginning a bit as I could've made my point cut deeper into my wife in the piece.

We then were asked to swap monologues and perform them to each other, putting our own notes into practise. After watching each other perform, we both were very impressed and took note of how to improve. For example, as my character is from America, Charlie performed my monologue in an American accent. I wasn't too sure about whether I should do one or not at first but after hearing Charlie do it, I was much more confident in trying one as it made it a lot more authentic to the story.

Next, we were asked to highlight all words/phrases we'd put emphasis on when speaking. These choices are very important as to how we'd want to portray our character as the slightest change in emphasis can change the whole mood of the piece. Below is my script highlighted:

Finally, we all grouped together and performed our monologues to the class. When performing mine, I took the following notes:

• My accent wasn't too bad but on certain words I lost the accent as I found it very challenging; if I were to choose an American monologue again, I would need to make sure my accent was better to make it sound much more authentic.
• My movement was very awkward as I'd be standing still for a while then feel like I'd have to move so I'd then move quite a lot but then I'd feel like I'd be moving too much so I stopped moving entirely. This was a continuing cycle throughout the piece.
• My tone during the piece was very good and I felt like I had the audience captivated at all times.

I was then given props (a group of chairs in a pile on the floor) and Lorna to interact with as Pax's Wife. I was told to make my monologue more realistic as opposed to making it a performance, as if the audience wasn't there and I was just talking to Lorna, cleaning up the chairs.

After performing it in this style, I feel like my eyes are more open to performing Realism as opposed to Naturalism. The scene looked a lot more realistic and the situation was far more believable.

For next lesson, we were asked to find two more monologues, one of which must be from a classical play. The monologues I chose were:

• CLASSICAL - "As You Like It" (Jacques): http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_030.html
• CONTEMPORARY -  "The Seagull" (Treplev): http://www.notmyshoes.net/monologues/treplev.html

Next lesson we will work with our chosen monologues.

Triple - Naturalism & Realism - Blog 2 - 08/09/16

This lesson, we spent a great deal of time determining the difference between Naturalism and Realism. This was very confusing for me as until this lesson, I always thought that they both meant the same thing. But after this lesson I realised how wrong I was!

After collating ideas as a class, these are the thoughts we had:

• Realism is set in real situations with real characters who the audience honestly think are real. This usually doesn't take place in a theatre as the stage/lighting/sound makes it less believable.
• Naturalism showcases believable characters in far fetched scenarios but the audience don't mind this as it's much more interesting than realistic events. Naturalism asks the audience to suspend their disbelief in order to fully appreciate the play.
• An example we came up with is in the TV show "The Only Way Is Essex," the situations the characters face are very believable as are the characters, however in soap operas such as "Eastenders," the characters may be believable but the scenarios they encounter are very far-fetched but this seems much more entertaining for the audience.
• The way I liked to look at it was that in Naturalism, actors are performing and the audience is around them watching as the plot is very dramatic and centralised so it's more entertaining to watch. However, in Realism the actors are around the "audience" and they don't recognise it much as drama as it is extremely realistic and to some it may seem dull so it's not looked upon as much as Naturalism.

After learning these differences, we were asked to devise a piece of Naturalism. With no stimulus at all we assumed our imagination would take advantage of this freedom but we weren't sure at all what to do. Our first thoughts went to the ages of our characters and we thought it'd be best to stay with our own ages as this made them seem a lot more believable which led us to wanting to set our piece in a school where people of our age usually congregate. After attempting to write out a script, midway we felt stuck for ideas. We were then given a major event to base our piece around. We were told that there was a dead body in our living room and we had just found it; we were also told to improvise as we would find it a lot easier. After this stimulus, we found it only too easy to generate a piece based on it. Below is the video of the piece (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa2zif3oTlY):

What went well:

• We all kept in our roles very well.
• All of our characters were believable.
• The piece was realistic but just far-fetched enough for the audience to suspend their disbelief.

How to improve:

• Lorna's name didn't stay the same throughout the piece.
• As Ollie forgot the staging we had in place, he tried to call Lorna and I through a wall whilst we were supposedly outside.

Single - Applying Acting Styles - Blog 1 - 08/09/16

Today we began work on our new unit, Applying Acting Styles. We went through the unit's content and began with our first acting style: Greek! After studying Greek theatre independently for my Historical Context unit in Triple, I already knew plenty of information about the playwrights, staging and traditions (http://lewisfisherra.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/triple-historical-context-blog-1.html) but we started by going through this so that everyone knew.

Afterwards, we were given an extract from the script of Antigone by Sophocles. This section features entirely chorus lines which only broken by Choragos' lines but we decided to have his lines as part of the chorus too for the purpose of our exercise. To introduce this task we watched a short video explaining how the chorus was used in Greek Theatre. In short, the chorus was usually 10-12 of Greece's best actors and the chorus lines would be split amongst them. These actors described and commented upon the main action of a play with song, dance, and recitation.

Our task was to read through the play and decide where the chorus lines can be cut off and separated for each of us.

Rob and I decided we'd take the second chorus verse which involves a lot of celebration over our recent victory and recalls the events of the recent siege. We decided our characters would be young soldiers and we split the lines evenly, each of us has 2 pairs of lines alternating between each other. I feel the alternation would showcase our youth as it shows us as very excitable and wanting to get our point out to each other.

Next lesson, we will block out the scene!

Double - Auditions For Actors - Blog 1 - 07/09/16

Today, we started our new unit: Auditions for actors. As our lesson was cut rather short, we only had time to discuss the units content and the dates of each performance.

Our job was to go home and find a monologue to start with which we'll work on next lesson.

Below are the monologues which I found which I could try out:

• "Punk Rock" (Chadwick): http://hogofthetardis.deviantart.com/journal/Brilliant-Monologue-Punk-Rock-End-of-the-World-225723397
• "Dreams in Captivity" (Pax): http://www.monologuegenie.com/the-roadrunner-never-looks-down-monologue.html
• "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"  (Rosencrantz): http://www.whysanity.net/monos/rosencrantz.html

After considering the three, I decided to go with Pax's monologue from Dreams in Captivity. I chose this monologue because I love the way it's crafted together and the content involved, when performed right, can be very moving. Also, the way the monologue is written, it doesn't out of context at; the scenario which the pair have themselves in is made apparent very easily. Below is a short synopsis of the play:

After being kicked out of culinary school, aspiring chef Pax returns to his hometown to regroup. There he happens upon an old friend from high school, Livi, who he learns has forgone a promising acting career to work in a retirement home. Meanwhile Livi's sister-in-law Reina enrolls in a class about space at the local community college and, much to her husband Barry's dismay, becomes fixated on the unlikely dream of becoming an astronaut. Pax supports Reina's aspirations and encourages Livi to revive hers - all while pursuing his own far-fetched dream of opening a restaurant for celebrities in LA.

Next lesson, we will perform these monologues and then change the way we perform them based on feedback.

Triple - Naturalism & Realism - Blog 1 - 07/09/16

Today we were split into two pairs (Ollie & Lorna/Charlie & Me) and asked to read through and give our perceptions on our scripts and the characters.

Our focus for this unit is Naturalism. With Stanislavski being a fan of the ideas of Realism, we decided to focus on his history and the way he liked to do things, keeping in mind who he collaborated with and the practises he uses to train his actors. Stan's "system" is a systematic approach to training the Russian actors in the 20th century and some actors in theatre and film swear by it to this day.

This system featured three main sections:

• Mind: This would refer to getting into the mindset of your character and this would require tonnes of research into the character whether this would mean reading the play that the character is from and drawing facts about them or if it's an original character, decide these facts for yourself.
• Feeling: This section depends on experiencing a characters emotions. This requires jumping into the mindset of the character trying to personally experience their lives first hand. Most actors don't take this so literally and simply imagine how it feels to be their character and link back to their own personal memory; for example if a character were to feel very angry, an actor would link this back to a time where they were equally angry. However, some actors, including the likes of Heath Ledger, Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, take this to a whole new level and fully immerse themselves into the lives of their character. Whilst Heath Ledger was preparing for his role as The Joker, he locked himself away in his hotel room in London and played around with the voice and laugh of The Joker and kept a diary written entirely as the character of The Joker.
• Will: This part refers to taking into account the given circumstances of the character and his/her scenario. These circumstances are given to you within the play and means you won't have to assume these things but at times there will be details you will want to know about your character that aren't mentioned. This is where Stan's "Magic If" comes into play. Thinking objectively like this makes you asks questions about your character and you get to decide the answers. If you're wondering what your character's favourite animal is and it's not mentioned then you can make that assumption yourself. Also, you can make assumptions as to how your character or how another character might react to previous actions.

After establishing this, we read through our scenes and we wrote down our thoughts on the characters in the scene. Charlie and I were given a scene from the play "Punk Rock". Below are my opinions on the characters:

• I feel the relationship between Chadwick and Will is very forced
• Will is a burden on Chadwick
• Will is a liar
• Chadwick relishes in telling Will about Lilly - But then feels sympathy as he realises its hurt Will's feelings
• Will hasn't got good social skills
• Chadwick is uncomfortable with Will
• Will wants to get closer to Chadwick
• Chadwick ignores Will at first

After reading through the script and combining our thoughts, Charlie and I blocked and performed the scene.

Double - Doctor Faustus - Blog 19 (Evaluation) - 15/07/16

What went well:

• Everyone remembered most of their actions in physical theatre sections.
• Ollie and I remembered the vast majority of our lines which meant the performance was consistently smooth throughout.
• All the props were in their right places.
• All PT sections were amazingly performed, included meaningful movement and were all performed in time with the music.
• After discussion with the audience afterwards, it seemed they mostly understood the idea we were going for with Faustus being a computer geek and Mephistopheles being Faustus' idea of perfect; a better version of himself.
• I feel my body language throughout the piece was very effective at portraying my characters emotions which helped a lot due to my lack of PT in this piece.

What didn't go so well:

• At times when characters forgot their lines I had to try to recover them which went well but there was a slight pause and I feel that this was obvious to the audience.
• Sadly due to an issue with tech and wiring, we weren't able to use the projection which Charlie created. Although this was a shame as the projection was impressive, the projection may have distracted the audience from the actual movement.

Ways we could improve:

• Make sure we all learn our lines leading up to the performance and practise without scripts more often.
• Invest in a longer cable to attach the projector to a laptop.