Research on Naturalistic theatre

A strong user of Naturalism and improvisation...
MIKE LEIGH

Mike Leigh is an English writer and director of film and theatre.

He has had huge success in making low budget films based on the concept of "Naturalism"

He attended the Camberwell School of Art, and then applied to London Film School.

Mike Leigh uses improvisation and naturalistic acting techniques in the majority of his films and theatre productions.
What "Naturalism" theatre is..

•  Acting which is very similar to real life
• offers a photographic reproduction of reality to portray to an audience
• rejects un natural dramatic styles
• Can be based on real life facts
• Naturalism theatre reached its high point between 1880-1890
• Neutralism and realism are other terms that apply to Naturalism, usually used as synonyms
• 
  

Naturalism is a style of theatre that remains very true to life - Stanislavski used a range of techniques that he used to help him achieve 'naturalistic' results on stage including Given Circumstances, Throughline of Action, Circles of Attention etc.
It's meant to be as true to real life as possible - the audience make the "fourth wall" of a room so it's almost like they're a fly on the wall, watching a slice of life happening before them.



Constantin Stanislavski developed his own "method" when it came to acting, he used Naturalism frequently and was a strong believer of method acting, in which came the term "the Stanislavski method"

• Stanislavski was born in 1863 in Moscow, Russia
• He worked as an actor in his early teens and later became a director of stage productions
• Stanislavski co-founded the MOSCOW ART THEATRE in 1897, this is when "METHOD ACTING" was created
• Method acting allowed actors to include and portray their own real life histories in order to create well rounded characters

Evaluation of La Mer devised piece

Evaluation of La Mer Devised Piece

B0471 Acting 2

Sophia Hinchliff

My group’s devised performance was based on the theme, “La Mer” which included a range of stimuli, the stimuli included poems, songs, a painting, our individual characters we chose and naturalism techniques.  Our performance required a lot of research on our real life characters, situations they were in and naturalistic acting techniques.

On the whole I feel my group and I delivered a very strong, moving and naturalistic piece. I feel our energy as a group helped us vastly throughout rehearsals and our performance, and it inspired us to become more detailed and emotionally connected to the performance. Our group energy I feel showed throughout our performance and there was never a moment in the piece were the energy levels changed, I feel we maintained it very well throughout, which is certainly something that worked for our piece.

During director’s notes after our rehearsals, we received great feedback about our projection and volume. We were always projecting to high standards, and were always clear throughout the whole performance, this a largely important factor to drama performances, as the audience has to be able to hear and understand what is going on at all times.

I personally feel I have naturally quite a loud and clear voice, which is a clear benefit in acting as projection is key, especially in theatre.

I feel the energy is linked to the projection, as we all felt confident with each other as performers and confident in our ability to produce a strong piece, which enabled us to have great projection and clear speech at all times.

We also received great feedback about our articulation and pace during rehearsals from our voice tutor. These factors worked extremely well during our performance as our dialogue was easy to adapt to from the audiences perspective and we were audible and understandable throughout our piece.

I feel on the whole our performance concepts and idea’s worked really well as they were realistic and easy for the audience to relate to in some ways, particularly about our characters having lost their fathers, this is something the audience can relate to, and we conveyed empathy for each other throughout, in which the audience were able to empathise with the characters too.

During rehearsal time, my group and I were always trying out new ideas and seeing what would work and what wouldn’t work, I feel compared to my song lyric devised group, we tried out so many more concepts and ideas this time around, as I feel we have all become much more confident and versatile as we know have more experience of devising. As a group we showed consideration to one another at all times and we were always researching together about Naturalism, storms, real life facts about boats that have sank during storms and images of storms so we could visualise as a group how it would feel for us to be in that situation together.

We worked very well as a team and there was never any bad feeling or competitiveness within our group.

I feel working together as a team and sharing ideas during every session enabled us to make our performance work as we were constantly experimenting and changing little details, and developing relationships with each other as actors.

If someone individually in the group had an idea, we would all discuss that idea and interpret it into how we would all visualise it within our performance.

We of course, studied our chosen real life characters individually and together, making links between all characters and acknowledging the unique personality traits each one had, this really helped us in creating our performance as we all became so absorbed in our characters, and I felt at some points, I had turned into my character, especially during the performance, as I was seeing things through her eyes and not mine and I became totally in the zone with my characters emotions and opinions. I feel everyone in my group felt this way too.

Naturally, during our devising and in our performance there were some aspects that did not work quite as well. During devising, we came up with various ideas that we later realised would not work in our performance, one the ideas we came up with which we decided to let go of was to have Sophie’s character, Kelly die tragically from her heart condition, and all the other characters frantically screaming and becoming slightly mad that they were stuck on a boat with somebody they hardly knew, dead on the floor.

We tried out a few improvisations for this idea, but in the end we all came to the conclusion that this idea seemed a little too “cliché” as her character had a life threatening illness, and it almost seemed too obvious that this would happen to her character. So as a group we decided it would be much more effective for the characters to drown and die together, rather than having just one character dying. We wanted all the characters to feel the same pain and empathy for each other, they started on the boat together, so the idea that they leave the boat together was a dynamic idea which I felt worked very well, especially as we used the voice recording of our characters just before they drowned at the end of our performance, which we learned was very haunting and chilling from feedback.

In our final performance, there were little details I feel did not work and things we could of improved on, for example; I feel we could of dived even deeper into the father link all the characters had, and maybe could of portrayed even more emotions about the situation, it could have been mentioned more, now that I have watched the performance.

Another little detail I noticed we should have used more was physical contact with one another. My character used physical contact with Izzy’s character towards the end of the piece by linking her arm and leaning on her shoulder. But I feel all the characters could have used more physical contact with each other as it could of made our performance appear more naturalistic, because if I was in that real life situation and was sharing my personal emotions with people who I empathised with, I more than likely would have hugged them or held their hands during the storm and the confessions.

In rehearsals and during devising sessions my group could have discussed in more detail what they would do in this situation and how they would react, then we would have been able to portray an even more naturalistic piece, and more importantly, discussed what our real life characters would have done, we did discuss it, but I feel we could have discussed in more detail and adapted this to our piece. We should of spent more time on our spacing around the stage, but as it was naturalistic the spacing did not matter too much as it was mainly focused on our acting abilities, and the audience were in Arena, which meant no body was ever masked, but I still feel we could of mapped it out more clearly with each other, for example, having the black blocks more into the centre of the stage and having our characters more close together at times.

I feel overall our performance was very strong and I am pleased and proud of my group and myself for putting together our piece and the effort and energy we all bought into our performance, however we could have made a few little changes to improve our performance to make it even more stronger.

I feel we definitely should have spent an extra few minutes towards the end of our piece when we all open up about our characters Father’s, in order to establish the situations more and to create more dramatic effect and empathy for the audience and for our characters. It felt ever so slightly rushed, but it has improved massively from when we first started devising. I also feel to improve our performance we could have spent a little bit more time creating stronger relationships between the characters, even though I do feel the relationships were there and the audience could see them forming, particularly my character and Izzy’s character, I feel all four characters should have been more linked and could have bonded much more during the storm and just before their death came.

In conclusion, my groups performance was strong, emotional and haunting, I feel as a group we worked extremely well together and always maintained a great attitude towards devising, and were never stuck for ideas. It seemed rather difficult at first, but after we all shared ideas and began improvising it flowed extremely well and enabled us to create our piece together. I am happy to have worked with my group and am delighted at the outcome of our hard work, which came from devising and rehearsing together.

LA MER STIMULUS: POEMS

These poems are the first stimulus we all had to LA MER, they helped me visualise and interpret LA MER in my own way and gave me ideas for my current performance…

Sea Fever

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over

Brighton beach.

It was always a special treat
Off to the seaside
A long ride, tempered by the fact
That a great treat was in store.

Entering the town of Brighton
So busy! the hundreds of tourists
Buying all novelty items made of candy
Visiting the chamber of horrors and other sensations.

Looking down the streets you could see the sea
Sparkling and glinting
The smell of ozone, strong and exciting
Combining with the greasy fish and chip bars
That made the seaside what it was.

The beach of pebbles - no sand here
Always crowded with screaming children
Others wedged into rental deck chairs
Elderly men with a knotted handkerchiefs
Covering their bald spots.

The exciting cold water, a joy to splash in
Fun to be in as well as out
The long afternoons
Stayed until the sun went in
And time to leave
Salty and very tired, too tired for supper
But with a happiness always remembered.

These poems have a positive feel to them, especially "Brighton Beach" it feels very nostalgic and it is as if someone is reminiscing about a time in their childhood they used to love, a happy time they would share with family and friends at Brighton Beach. 

The ending line is a lovely end to this poem, and it almost feels as if this poem is a metaphor for someone the writer is in love with, or was in love with once.

"SEA FEVER" has a different feel it to,it is positive but at the same time I feel it is haunting and quite spooky. Its as if the poet is drawn to the sea, and he emphases MUST in every line, like he is addicted to the sea and the life it brings him. 

Some people have a lifetime living by the sea because it is seen as a different way of life and it is different from living somewhere like London or New york, were there is no sea side and everything is quite enclosed. I feel living by the sea is a feeling of freedom and purity, as you can always go to the beach and sit by the sea and it does not make you feel trapped or stuck, whereas living somewhere without a beach or a sea could be quite suffocating.

Friday the 8th November

Status exercise...
I was not in college on Friday the 8th but I have discussed with my class mates about what we did in the lesson and how the status exercise helps us learn how to express and project status as actors...
The exercise involved using a small script and it was based in a work environment. It included a manager and employees.
The status was shown through body language, for example how the manager held themselves and how they portrayed their power through the way they stand and the way they treat the room.
Employees and people who had a "lower" status than the manager projected this through their body languages as well, for example- they might not have stood up as straight as the manager or they may not have made eye contact as much. 
The status exercise has taught me how to portray power and different statuses through the way you move as an actor and they way you treat the stage. If I was playing a character with a high status I would use up as much of the stage as possible and almost show that I am in charge of the stage and I can go wherever I want, and in contrast if I were to play a character with a low status I would stick to my own part of the stage and not really move around the stage, as I would want to portray weakness and show the audience I do not have the confidence to pace around the stage and let myself be exposed to the audience and the other characters.

The discussion about "La Mer"
The whole class had a discussion about the sea theme and how they interpreted it. Everyone gave an input to their idea's and concepts they had thought about with their groups and individually. 
The discussion allowed each person to talk about how they feel about the sea theme and what emotions it portrays to them and how the sea can have a powerful impact on the audience, the plot lines and the characterisation.
The class brainstormed on the board about the different emotions and feelings the sea made them feel and think about. This allowed the group to discover how everybody else felt about the theme and what idea's they could explore.
The emotions and feelings "La Mer" makes me feel are;

• Sadness
• Lost
• Hopelessness
• Feeling free
• Calm
• Love
• Power
• Distance

This is a brainstorm the class did on Friday about what LA MER makes them think about and ideas and concepts for our performance

Performance night 28th November

Rehearsals and performance at Pelham Tower Theatre…

Today was the day of our final rehearsals and performance for La Mer, the class was at Pelham tower for 11 hours, rehearsing, having directors notes, helping each other and performing in front of friends and family, and having support from the second year actors and level 2 actors!

My groups final performance I feel went really well, we felt it was the best we have ever performed it, I am proud of my group and myself for the hard work we put in to create our devised piece. I received great feedback from my friends and family after they watched the show and I feel very pleased with how it went, and the performance as a whole.
My group's performance was last out of the four devised pieces, and we feel it was a strong ending to the performance, as we used movement and a voice recording at the end of our piece, this I feel created emotions between our characters and I feel the audience definitely felt the emotion we were portraying.

I felt the movement pieces all went extremely well and I received good feedback for both pieces. My groups devised movement piece we performed before our drama piece began was a lot better and flowed very well, it was the best we had ever performed the piece, it flowed like the sea and every movement was sharp and on time. 
The final movement piece went really well, we were all in time with each other, some points it went slightly out of time, but we went with it and overall it went extremely well and I am happy with how the whole performance went.
I have enjoyed working with my group so much and we have always had complicity with one another and always listened to each others ideas and tried the ideas out, and interpreted them in our own individual ways. Our characters works so well with each other and they were all unique and had their own characteristics. 
There was never any tension or bad feeling at any point in our devising, and we all have mutual respect for each other as actors, and friends. 

What we could have improved…

• We used all of the stage during our performance, but we could have performed more at the sides of the stage, rather than performing to the front. We did perform to all sides, but we could have done this in more detail
• Our movement piece could have flowed EVEN more!
• Used even more body language to establish our characters, but I feel the body language we did use was very good
• Made the transition from movement to drama piece more flowing and natural
• Used more physical contact between characters; when Summer and Chrissy have a heart to heart about their fathers, my character links Chrissy's arm to show support and affection. I feel all the characters could have done this, to show to the audience that they care for one another a little bit more…

What we did well…

• Our projection was very loud and clear for the audience, we used volume extremely well
• Our group energy was one of our massive strengths, the whole piece had so much energy and excitement to it
• We used humour really well, it was never "Gag" humour, it was naturalistic humour that people use every day
• We engaged the audience throughout 
• Our piece flowed really well and there were never any quiet parts or parts that did not make sense
• Team work and portrayal of characters

Overall, I feel our piece was very good and I am extremely proud of myself and my group for our strong and meaningful performance.

Rehearsals at Pelham tower theatre 27th Novemeber

Rehearsals today.... 

Today we were all at Pelham tower rehearsing our pieces, particularly focusing on our movement pieces and the sound and lighting. 

We learned how to use the space provided and know just how close the audience are going to be to us when we are performing! 

My group and I made a few changes within the sound and lighting effects used in our piece, instead of having water sound effects after we all realise the water is rising in the boat, we are just goin to keep the storm and rain sound effects throughout the whole piece, and just having it becoming louder as the panic rises between our characters. 

In our ending scene we originally wanted blue lighting for when the water was rising, just before we all drown, but now we are keeping the blue lighting throughout our piece, as it signifies a dark and cold mood, which is what we are aiming towards and the lighting creates a more dramatic effect rather than having white lights up until the water scene. 

The last technical change we all decided would look best is to have the lights black out when we rock back and forth on the stage when the boat starts to rock , as opposed to having flickering lights. It looks better and much more effective and less literal, as we want the audience to believe that the lights on the boat have turned off as the storm has hit the boat SO hard! 

We made a lot of decisions today for our sound and lighting and I feel it looks much more dramatic and almost quite eerie, particularly the ending scene of our piece when we are all standing on black blocks swaying in a circle, the lighting is a green colour, which signifies we are under the water, drowning and also the floorboards creak naturally in Pelham theatre which adds to the distress and horror of our ending scene....

We perfected our movement emsemble to the best of our ability today and it flows so well and looks really naturalistic and we are always in contact with each other at all times, instead of holding hands like we did when we first put it together, we now lean on each other and are always physically joined in some way. We emphasise sea movements in our piece which contrasts very well with the whole theme of our performance, and we also portay our characters, not too much but the characteristics are there. For example, at the beginning and ending of our piece we are all in a line and lean on each other to the right and left four times and then slowly let our heads drop to the floor and hang lifeless in between our legs. To me, this symbolises our characters after they have all found empathy and common ground with each other, and genuinely begin to bond and have feelings for each other so they lean on each other and support one another. But this bond is short lived as all the characters drown together, and slowly dropping our heads to the floor symbolises death and hopelessness for all the characters. They support each other and bond, and then they drown and die together. This I feel is shown in our movement piece and establishes our relationships and the fatal ending to our piece. 

Chorus, Commitment and Complicity: 25th Novemeber

Todays exercises...

Today's lesson is 3 days before our performance night! And we mainly worked on how we are going to link all four devised groups together in the performance, we also worked on our movement pieces and came up with creative and flowing movements which relate to the sea.

We studied two pieces of text taken from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" performed by Ariel as a song.

These pieces of text were..

Come unto these yellow sands,

And then take hands:

Curtsied when you have, and kiss'd

The wild waves whist,

Foot it featly here and there;

And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear.

Hark, hark!

Bow-wow.

The watch-dogs bark.



Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell

As a group we all came into a circle and read the text together each having 1 or 2 words each, after this we split in half and studied the text in groups of 7 and performed it to the class, using rhythm and movement.

We all decided that this should be the opening text to our performance La Mer on Thursday evening, we will say the first half of this poem, beginning with "Come unto these yellow sands" and this will be projected in chorus; all together and will establish the sea theme to our audience right from the beginning of our performance. Our setting will be in our four separate groups, sitting together on a beach or by a lake and everyone in unison will perform the first piece of text.

The other exercises we took part in today were movement based, and we in our devised groups, firstly starting off with pairs from each group and then merged into the full group of four.

In my pair I was with Bella, and we worked on our movement piece using three words as a stimulus; BY.THROUGH.ROUND

Throughout our piece we used contact with each other which included, lifts, holding hands, turning in unison and canon and leaning on each other in which I leaned on Bella and she took my weight and I lifted into the air slightly. We had to use six different movements which interpret by,through and round movements and gestures.

The idea of the movement piece was to be connected at all times and always doing things together rather than separately  After we performed our piece, we got into our devised group by joining Izzy and Sophie and both pairs shared their movement pieces an we merged the two pieces together to form one performance which featured all the gestures and movements from both pairs combined. We always stayed in contact with eachother and created movements to flow like water, matching our theme La Mer. 

We decided as a class that each group is going to perform their movement piece before the devised drama piece begins, in order to transition from one piece to another in an alternative way, rather than one group finishing,applause, then another group on stage! When working to such a specific theme I feel transitioning from one piece to another using movement forms which flow nicely and match the theme is so much more interesting and creative than just having one devised after another. The sea theme is such a strong theme and it needs to be expressed in ways other than drama.

Another exercise we learned today within the group was a singing exercise, we were divided into four groups and sang the song…
Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose
Shall I ever see the red?
I marry that thou shalt
When thou art dead…
This song at first I felt was a sad and hard hitting song, but when I actually listen to it and sang the words, I realised it actually means that there is a happy life after somebodies life has ended, death is not such a bad thing as the song writer is portraying how they will love someone and marry someone after their life has ended. It is a powerful and meaningful song, even though it only has four lines.
This exercise is about chorus and working together as a team to create complicity and harmony between one another. Each group started singing ROSE ROSE ROSE ROSE at different beats, so the song was performed in canon between all four groups.
I enjoyed this exercise, as it was different and a nice change, as we have not ever sang in an acting class before.

In today's class, the focus was getting the performance as a whole more structured and creating movement pieces to transition into our own devised drama pieces, slightly in character but more focusing on the movement and the meaning of the movement. I really enjoyed today's lesson as it was different and really creative, it gave me even more ideas and interpretations for my groups devised piece. 

  

IMAGES

The following images are images I have found online for inspiration, and focused on how I would feel if I was in this image, if this really happened to me and how emotional I would feel and how scared I would be…

When our boat is sinking during the storm...

During the storm...

My group and I looked at these images together and used them as a sort of stimulus for our performance as we needed an image in our minds of what a boat would look like in the middle of a storm and how frightening it would of been for anyone on these boats.

These images really helped us as they were a visual aid for our imagination and gave us something to visualise when performing our piece.

Friday the 23rd November: REHEARSALS

Rehearsals…

In today's rehearsal my group and I worked with Jim to record our ending voice over, which will begin after we have all left the stage one by one.

Todays rehearsal allowed us to achieve a lot of work and make huge improvements to our piece, particularly the "Confessions" scene, in which we were given feedback from Andy, the feedback were guidelines to suggest we should make the scene longer and go into detail more about our characters "father" situation which links us all very strongly together. 

This feedback has inspired us to create more emotions and empathy between each other and the scene looks so much better after this! We are using levels a lot more and instead of all sitting down during confessions, we all walk around the stage and use different parts of the stage, for example; when I ask Chrissy and Hope why they were arguing, they both walk off in different directions to face the audience, as we are performing to an arena audience, it does not matter where we stand on stage as everyone will always be able to see us and we will not mask each other at any point. 

Hope sits down on a block we are using in our performance when she is opening up about her and her sisters father situation, and my character Summer will sit next to her listening to her talk about it, and then Summer will walk over to Chrissy to comfort her. This works so much better than all sitting down during this scene, as the dialogue of this scene is so important and emotional, sitting down does not link at all, as when sitting down the audience could become quite bored as we are not doing anything with our body language, using the stage more and levels definitely makes our scene 100x better than it was when we sat down, I also feel as an actor that using my body language and movement more during the scene, gives me more energy and ability to portray my acting ability in such a better way than to just sit down through such an important and moving scene.

We also finished working on our ending  scene and it looks great, and we received feedback from our peers who also said the ending looks really interesting and almost rather eery!

We all stand on the blocks we will have on stage and after Chrissy delivers the last line of our performance " HOPE, HELP ME, THE WATERS TOO DEEP, I CANT SWIM!" We all start to sway from the right and round in small circles, like we were taught in Movement to feel as though we are swaying on a ship ever so slightly, it looks really effective and intense and draws the audience in, it almost feels as if our characters are in a trance and the sea has claimed them and they are completely powerless to the feeling. 

Chrissy and Kelly are on the front blocks and my character and Hope are on the two back blocks (due to height!) and Chrissy is the first character to get down from her block, and almost float off stage, then Kelly, then Hope, and lastly my character- Summer gets off her block and places her camera in the middle of the stage and exits.

We have discussed as a group that we would like the lighting to begin to slowly fade, and have the audiences attention on the camera in the middle of the stage, and then the sound recording we have made together will begin to play, we want the audience to imagine that it is a playback from Summers camera and that no one really knows what happened to us, if we died or if the water claimed us and we were lost at sea?…

Our piece is pretty much finished, the plot lines are finished, the character establishment has been completed..all we need to do is keep running through our performance, focus our attention on the confessions scene and just perfect the last little details. Todays rehearsal has been the starting point of our group being almost finished and our performance almost perfected! 

Rehearsals: 21/11/13

Rehearsals 1 week before show….

Today my group and I rehearsed during Brighton live productions in the drama studio, we all knew exactly what we had to work on from the feedback we received on Friday.

We have made huge progression today and have structured our opening scene and ending scene and we have made our piece a lot longer and more established.

At the beginning of our piece we have made the argument between Chrissy and Hope longer and more detailed, and have began with Kelly already in the middle of her speech, rather than her introducing people to the conference.

To make the opening scene more clear to the audience, Kelly ends the speech and after Summer asks her the first interview question, Kelly interrupts and informs the audience and Summer that she needs to see people out of the boat and back onto the marina as the speech has ended, this shows the audience that everybody else who were watching the speech have left and it is now only us four left on the boat. During this, my character Summer will be playing around with her camera and will over hear Chrissy and Hope arguing and will begin to film them secretly without them noticing, when Chrissy finally notices, Kelly comes back to Summer to finish the interview, so Chrissy and Hope do not get a chance to ask Summer why I was filming their argument. This has lengthened our first scene and it is definitely more clear and understandable for the audience, and it flows much better than it did before.

My group and I have also structured the "confessions" scene when we all sit down together in a circle, and have decided to have Chrissy start to become emotional about her father and this will break the ice for the characters to all start to open up about their situations, and then after we have all shared with each other our empathy and sorrows, Hope notices that our conversation is way too deep and emotional and we need to keep things light hearted so our characters will begin to share silly secrets and confessions with each other. We feel this way it adds a lot more empathy and comfort between all the characters, then we will end the conversation on a lighthearted note, rather than a sad note.

Towards the end of our performance, we have made a recording for Jim the sound technician to play at the end of our performance, after we have all left the stage in canon, my character will leave her camera in the centre of the stage, and Jim will play our recording of our characters screaming and shouting for help as they are drowning in the boat, as they are trapped in a room and the boat is beginning to sink and the water is rising. We felt it was much more effective to do it this way, rather than to be on stage acting as though we were drowning, it adds some suspense and mystery to our performance and will be more powerful as the stage will be near black out, the camera is the only object left on stage and the audience will begin to hear our screams and shouts from all around them.

The ending of our performance is very dramatic as we will all die, but we do not want to show this directly to the audience, we are all going to stand on chairs as the water is rising, banging on the ceiling shouting for help, and Chrissy has the last line, stating that she cannot swim, and then we will have water sound effects and during this we will one by one get down from our chairs and leave the stage, my character Summer is going to leave the stage last as I am going to place the video camera in the middle of the stage and exit.

OUTCOME OF TODAY:

Rehearsals today gave my group and I a lot of time to improve and structure our piece and I feel it was extremely beneficial to us and we have made massive improvements and our performance is coming together as we have all envisioned.

Tuesday 19th November

Film of today's rehearsal in front of peers and tutor using Arena audience....
http://b0471.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/20131119124308mp4.html

Today my group and I performed our piece in front of Andy and our class mates. Our piece is roughly 8-10 minutes long so far, which needs to be lengthened. We received good feedback from every body and we are very clear on what we need to improve on and what we are doing well.
The feedback our tutor gave us was mainly just to make our piece longer and to emphasise panic and emotions much more and just take our time to be in the zone and panic, just as we would if this were a real life situation.  
We also need to establish the beginning scene more and begin from when Kelly is already half way through her conference, instead of her beginning it from the start of our piece. The audience were slightly confused as to where everybody else disapeared to after the conference ended, this again is something we need to establish and make absolutely clear to the audience.

The idea we have is that after Kelly's speech, she is shaking peoples hands and thanking them for attending her speech, and then they would leave, and just as Kelly is about to leave I stop her to ask her questions, this then keeps Kelly on the boat and Chrissy and Hope are still arguing which distracts them from leaving the boat! As a group we need to make this more clear that everybody has left the boat except from our characters.
Our characters are all very well established and have their own individual traits which is something that stood out in our performance, our tutor feels the characters are really strong and we have a lot of good emotions and empathy for each other. I feel we could push ourselves a little bit more to have total empathy towards each other, but we are happy that everybody feels our characters are realistic and naturalistic. 
We have humour in our piece which the audience really enjoyed and I feel humour is a massive part of naturalism, as no body naturally is always really serious and stern.

My group and I are going to work on lengthening our piece and adding more structure to the ending of our piece. We have listened to the feedback and taken it into consideration and will definitely act upon the feedback we have recieved.
I feel our piece has great characters and the empathy and emotion the characters show towards each other is so clear and strong, we just need to work on our structuring and establishing the first scene in a more clear way to the audience.

Monday the 18th November

Today's rehearsal...

My group and I are making vast progression every time we rehearse, today we have improvised the ending to our piece and are extremely happy with it. We are using movement in our ending scene and water sound effects, we want it to be relaxing and flowing- which contrasts dramatically with the reality of the ending, which is that we all drown as the storm floods the boat and brings in down into the deep sea. We want to leave a hint of mystery with the audience and let them ponder on what could p happened to us. We came up with a creative idea to pre record ourselves screaming and shouting during the flood and the storm, and to play this to the audience in our ending scene when we have all moved off stage. We feel this is very effective and will have a greater impact as the audience will see us using calm and relaxing movements as we come off stage and then will find out what really happened to us when we exit.  My character will leave her camera centre stage and then the recording will be played, we discussed how we will record our voices and feel it will be more effective if we record ourselves and give it to the sound technician and he can play it as we exit the stage...rather than having it recorded on the camera as it will be too difficult for me to press play and find the recording whilst I am in character! 

My group and I put together a script and have one each so we can study it together and in our own time, having a Script is really useful as it gives us structure and allows us to know the best way to say something instead of just changing the dialogue all the time, I feel as an actor I need some structure to my work as I feel more confident than just having to use improv in every single scene. 

We also got together and discussed what "secrets" our characters can share with each other when we have our sit down heart to heart with each other about our similar family situations... We want to develop trust and empathy in each other in order to portay our emotions to the audience and to ourselves as actors.
We each went home and wrote down a list of secrets and confessions our characters could have, which relate to their lives and personalities. We want to create a scene were the characters link with each other and the audience is able to see the connection and empathy forming between all four characters.

Friday the 15th November

Video of our scene today....

*video to be uploaded*

In the scene we filmed today we have made a huge progression as a group, starting with the fact that Bella was in lesson and we were all together to share our ideas and improvise as a group! 

Bella shared her ideas in which we acted upon and have came up with a more detailed and structured piece. We have all developed our characters to a higher level and have established our relationships with one another. My character is made an outcast during the scene due to the fact my character loves to film everything, including the storm which the other characters do not take a liking to, they feel I am using them as part of my project in order to get a better documentary. My character is very protective of the things she has and does not like people invading her space and touching her things. It seems as though they are never going to get along but towards the end of this scene the audience see all the characters sitting down together and sharing secrets and events that have happened in their lives. 

In our rehearsals we have used the time as much as we can as we had a lot to develop and structure. After today's rehearsal my group and I feel that our piece is coming together really well and we have portrayed our characters individual emotions and characteristics to the audience. We received positive feedback and we all know how to advance out piece further. As a group we   All work extremely well and hard together, we all use each others ideas and respect each others choices. During rehearsals we all had a discussion about what we liked about our piece and what could be improved on, we shortly after went back into improvising and rehearsing for the rest of the day and I am really happy with how today's class went a we have made such good progress and have really got into our characters, I really enjoy playing my character as she is so different to me in many ways and it is an exciting challenge.


We have also used rehearsal time to discuss what our characters image is going to be, for example: what costumes we are going to have and how their clothes will reflect their individuality.
Hope is a very hippy and laid back person, so we have decided her costume will reflect this and will be very unique and hipster style.

My character Summer is quite alternative and does not follow fashion and does not really have a particular style she just wears what she feels like and uses her mood to determine her outfits, so for my character is will be wearing patterned clothes that stand out and portray my personality to the audience. 
Chrissy is quite girly yet has a "chavvy" streak to her, so we have envisioned Chrissy to be wearing quite casual clothes, maybe a pink tracksuit to portray her trouble maker ways, but we do not want this to appear cliche. 
Lastly, Kelly is a very serious and responsible person, and as she is giving a motivional speech we have come to the decision that she will be wearing something smart, like a black blazer with smart trousers, we want her to look professional yet young, as she is only 18.
All our characters are so different, and we want to portray this through the way they appear, as well as through their body language, voice and movement. 

THE SEA ASSESSMENT WEEK

Assessment Week Work
B0471 Acting Level 3 Year 1
The Sea Sophia Hinchliff
Monday 10am – 11am: As a full group, discuss all the characters you have begun to develop.  What possible plot lines could develop?  Which pairs of characters would work well together? Why? The full group will choose partnerships. This must only be based on characters on not on whether the actors want to work together.
In our self-directed lesson today we all sat together in a circle and discussed our characters briefly as a refresher to our character to everybody else. As group we all made comparisons between every body’s character in order to develop possible relationships and plot lines. We were contrasting characters together to see if it would work, for example; we used Liam’s character who is football mad, likes to go out, seems quite arrogant and moody and contrasted it with Jenny’s character who is really friendly and opinionated and loves art and animals. We felt that two characters who were not too similar would work together as it would create contrast and possible conflict which will be interesting to the audience rather than having two characters who are similar and very alike. We all continued to compare and as a group the majority chose the pairs who we all felt would work well together and produce good plot lines and relationships. I felt Michelle and Greta’s character would work really well together as they have some similarities and I feel they can bounce off each other, Michelle’s character is really bitchy, rude, nasty, full of herself and bad natured and Greta’s character is very laid back and does not care much for her life, she takes drugs and goes out all the night and has no consideration for other people, however she is not a bitch but I feel these two characters will create great storylines and possibly some contrast, as Greta’s character could become annoyed by Michelle’s two faced nature and it could create arguments and clashes. Also I feel Izzy and Bella’s character will create a good plot line, as they could be sisters who are completely different from each other. Bella’s character is very ditzy and in her own little world and is not interested in following cliques or spreading rumours about people, she seems quite relaxed. In contrast Izzy’s character is very bitter, spreads rumours about people, has a troubled past and does not get along with girls. The group felt this would be good as two sisters who are complete opposites and maybe do not see eye to eye. I am really happy with my chosen partner as our characters link in lots of different ways, ways that I did not expect at all!
Monday 11am – 5pm: When do you think you could have first met the character you have been paired with? Improvise the time when you first met. This should be at least a 20 minute long improvisation during which you do not go out of character. Discuss the improvisation with your partner. What have you learned about your character and your relationship?
My partner is Sophie, whose character has a life threatening illness and has a life expectancy of 30 years old. She is extremely motivated and has a troubled child hood. She always looks on the bright side of life and wants to live each day as if it were her last; she has a very positive aura and is well liked by others. Sophie and me were discussing in detail about our characters and their backgrounds. My character, Summer, comes from an Irish traveller background and her Father is from a big family in Manchester. Sophie’s character is originally from Manchester- this is a massive link as our characters share the similar backgrounds and this is a definite starting point for our relationships and plot lines. Our characters also share an emotional link, as Summer’s father passed away 3 years ago when she was 18. And Sophie’s character has never met her father. This is another extremely strong link and will create empathy and a connection between the two characters. We came up with a way of them meeting as Sophie’s character is arriving in Brighton to perform a motivational speech at a conference in Brighton for people with similar conditions as herself and Summer is going to the same place to film that speech for a project she has been set at University for her film degree. They would meet during Sophie’s character is giving her speech and Summer filming her. So the first scene went straight into the speech. Afterwards, Summer approaches Sophie’s character asking her if she can ask her a few questions for her film project. The two characters would then get talking about their lives and they would both identify the link they have with Manchester. This leads to similarities they share with each other, which allows the characters to open more to each other. Sophie and I feel this improvisation was a great starting point for the two characters and will open up many doors to their relationship. My character is very mysterious at first and appears to be quite in their own world and different. This contrasts really well with Sophie’s character and as they get to know each other more my character would probably open up about the passing of her father which will then lead to another link they share and this will create empathy between the two characters. I feel our characters contrast really well together and will portray a great relationship and storyline to the audience.
Tuesday 9am – 12.45pm: Discuss with your partner 1 important event in your characters’ relationship. For example: if you think they are now married, the proposal; if they are work colleagues, the time one got a promotion and the other didn’t; etc. Improvise this event. This should be at least a 20 minute long improvisation during which you do not go out of character. Discuss the improvisation with your partner. What have you learned about your character and your relationship?
My partner Sophie and I discussed our characters backgrounds in todays lesson in regards to yesterday when we found out that both our characters have a Manchester background/family and that both our characters have lost their fathers. We feel this is a great link and is definitely an important part in our characters relationship. Our improvisation went really well. We used Sophie’s character Kelly’s heart problems as a way to create a starting point for our two characters. My character, Summer loves to film everything and wants to become a successful film director one day. We came up with the idea in our improv that Kelly would be giving a motivational speech about her heart condition and Summer will be filming this conference as part of her film project. This I felt works very well and gives an opening into the characters lives in a different way. We then went on to Summer confronting Kelly after the conference in order to ask her a few questions and film her for her project, kind of like a hot seat interview but less formal. Summer asked Kelly a range of questions about her heart condition, how she deals with knowing her life expectancy is not very long and where she is from….this question sparks up another link between the two as Kelly is from Manchester, and Summers fathers side of the family are all from Manchester, so the two characters instantly have something they can both relate to in order to create a friendship between the two of them. Today I have learned that my character is very strongly linked to Kelly and that their relationship will be unique and special, they can both empathise with eachother about the loss of their fathers and will have respect for each other. My character loves to film everything so today I came up with the idea to use a video camera as a prop in our scene and film everything, so our whole scene is sort of like a documentary. I feel this is really interesting to watch as an audience will be watching a performance, which is being filmed by an actor in the performance who wants to make films. Although I will not actually be filming, I will just be acting like I am filming!
Wednesday 13.45 – 5pm: As a full group, discuss all the developing relationships. Where do you think there is room for conflict and therefore drama to develop between the different pairs? The full group should decide on partnerships between two pairs, to make a full group of 4. Improvise the first time your full group meets. This should be at least a 20 minute long improvisation during which you do not go out of character. Discuss the improvisation with your group. What ideas do you have for the development of drama in your group?
Sophie and I chose to work with Bella and Izzy today as we all notice a strong connection between the characters and feel there will be some conflict between the characters and relationships. Izzy’s character, Chrissy is very bitchy, nasty, spreads rumours, does not get on well with other girls and likes to cause trouble, this will definitely cause conflict between all the characters, especially Bella’s character Hope, who is a very laid back, calm hippy and has a very relaxing aura to her. We have decided as a group that Hope and Chrissy will work really well together as sisters, Hope being the older sister who tries to get Chrissy to have a different outlook on life and be a better person, and Chrissy being the annoying, selfish and rude little sister who embarrasses Hope all the time because she is so distructive. We improvised a meeting point, using the same meeting point as Summer and Kelly but developing it more so Chrissy and Hope can come into the scene dramatically. Hope brings Chrissy along to the motivational speech in order to help her become a better person and appreciate her life, but Chrissy does not see the point and begins to get bored and acts inappropriately whislt Kelly is giving her speech. Summer is filming Kelly whilst this is happening and our two characters will transfer into a freezeframe whilst Hope and Chrissy are having conflict between each other, it works really well as we are all establishing our characters to the audience. We then improvised what we spoke about in yesterdays lesson about me giving Kelly a hot seat interview about her illness for my film project, during this Chrissy and Hope will be miming their conversation on one side of the stage, so we are using cross cutting skills but still all being on the stage at the same time. I feel our improve went really well and we did not break character, even when we started to run out of ideas we just went with it and it all fell into place, we improvised a few times, improving on what we did the first time, but during our improv we always stayed in character.