Filming our piece November: REHEARSALS

What is happening in the excerpt and how it fits in with our full scene? 

In this small scene from our performance we are establishing our characters and the beginning of their reactions to the storm. We learn that Kelly has a life threatening illness in which she has been asked to give a motivional speech at a conference on a boat in Brighton marina! We also learn that my character Summer loves to film everything and is passionate about becoming a film director. The audience will see Chrissys destructive behaviour and begin to understand the reasons why she is the way she is. Bella was absent from today's lesson so I was filling in for bella, we portray Chrissy and Hopes characters as sisters who are very different from each other and maybe do not understand each other...

At the end of this excerpt we show the beginning of what will be the storm, we all jolt at the same time to portray the boat stopping suddenly, we want to focus on the emotions of the characters rather than the storm itself, we want to show our characters reactions to the storm and how we will all bond with each other and pull together during the storm. 

Process of making the decisions shown in the excerpt...

Ideas I have: my main idea was for my character to be filming everyone throughout so it gives a documentary feel to our performance and expresses my characters love for film and also show how the camera will create conflict and tension between the other characters. 

Ideas my group has: My groups ideas were to start the piece with a small introduction to the characters and then portray the storm and the boat rocking to the audience. We want to create an emotional and strong feel to our piece with defined characters. My groups first main idea was to feature Kelly giving an motivional speech about her heart condition, this way the audience gets to know her character without her having to explain it to the characters, so the audience will feel more involved in a way. We interpreted the speech idea into having it on a boat, as our theme is La Mer, the boat will be a small boat with 1-2 rooms, like a small speed boat. We have all seen these types of boats at the Marina in Brighton, so this is our location. The audience will be able to relate to our performance as they will know where we are and have probably been there themselves. 

How we developed these ideas:

What we tried out: As a group we tried out every idea we all had, most ideas we enjoyed and kept, the ideas we have improvised, structured and kept are; my character using her camera throughout the performance, having a modern documentary feel to our performance, having a speech about Kelly's heart problems, using Hope and Chrissy as sisters, creating conflict between my character and Bellas character, using the strong link we all have about losing our fathers, creating empathy between all the characters due to this link and having every single character really defined and expressive of their personalities- through their clothes, body language, voice and movement.

What we rejected: every idea the group had we all tried out, I wouldn't say we have rejected anyone's ideas-yet! We have used every idea and interpreted it into our piece together. An idea we had about Izzys character, Chrissy was to maintain her negative and bitchy persona throughout our piece, but as we've been developing ideas and improvising we have realised that Chissy acts the way she does due to the fact she lost her father at a young age and has never had any support from anybody, we want to create empathy between the characters and see a different side to Chrissy as she is just a lonely young girl. But we haven't rejected this idea we have just developed it into something deeper and more meaningful- and more natural! 

Monday 11th November

My groups ideas from today's class... 

In today's class my group and I discussed and structured our scene, we have all had our own input to our performance and we all have listened to each others ideas and visions for the piece. We made a brainstorm together for further ideas and emotions our characters are going to be feeling during the performance. We have all established that our characters all have their own individual way of coping under pressure. My character, Summer does not cope very well under pressure, but if you do not know her personally she will come across as calm and cool about every situation, when inside she is screaming and stressed out. We all want to explore how far we can push our characters an who will crack under pressure and who  be the enabler, who will be the maternal character who looks after everyone? We feel Sophie's character Kelly will cope the best during the events that happen in our piece as she has a life threatening illness which is never going to change, this makes her an extremely strong and positive person, she seems as though she copes very well under pressure and everyday is a struggle for her but she always has a smile on her face and looks at the positives- this characteristic will work really well in our piece as she will be strong for everybody else and not just herself. 

We were also discussing props we will use, we want to keep it as minimal as possible as our performance is solely based on the characters and their emotions and reactions rather than the set and props. My character loves to film everything and has a deep passion to become a film director, therefore the prop I will be using is a video recorder, to give our performance a documentary feel to it which is quite an original and interesting idea. We also might use a cup  of water as izzys character, Chrissy arrives on the boat drunk as she is a mess and loves to go out and get drunk and do stupid things because she is trying to put a front on to cover up her true self, which is a scared and vulnerable young girl who has lost her father... We feel props aren't very important but the camera is a key prop for our performance as it symbolises my characters career driven spirit and gives that performance within a performance feel to our piece. 

Improvising! 

My group and I improvised parts of our scene today for 5-10 minutes, we have really established our characters and how different yet similar they are to one another. We all communicate very well which is an important aspect to performing and we all improvise well together and are always coming up with ways to improve and create our piece. 

From improvising today I learnt that my character has the ability to irritate one of the other characters in my piece by using the camera most of the time, this will have a great dramatic effect as the camera is something my character has passion for and loves to create motion picture and the other character finds it irritating and does not understand the passion my character feels. Bellas character Hope finds it un necessary for Summer to be filming everything all the time and feels she is using them for her university project, this is not true as my character does not use people to her advantage but this will be a great contrast an will create conflict between our characters. 

STATUS

Describe the status exercises....
The status exercises we learned in acting class today were all a & b and X & Y, between two people.
The first exercise was to do with Eye Contact. Whoever was X would hold the eye contact and whoever was Y would look down at the floor whenever someone made eye contact with them. This was a great status exercise as it showed who had the higher status and who was in control. When doing this exercise I felt very intimidated and belittled whenever I had to dismiss the eye contact and look down, and in contrast when I was X I felt strong, powerful and intimidating to the other person. It was showing how the concept of "Status" can be shown through numerous ways, not just the way you talk to someone. Body language and eye contact play a massive part in Status exercises.
The second exercise was performed in pairs. One person was A and the other B, whoever was playing A had to be the shop keeper and before they spoke had to say a very long "Uuuummmm" and B was the customer and before they spoke they had to say "Um" but very quickly and not exaggerated like A. 
When playing with this exercise I felt I was more in control when I was playing B, as I felt shorter "Um's" were much more assertive and almost seemed quite condescending. When playing A I felt I was was slightly nervous and the exaggerated "Ummmm" was used as a conversation mechanism, whenever I didn't know what to say I would say "Ummmm" and it sounded very un natural and awkward, it seemed as though A was a very nervous and gormless character and B was a very assertive and rather annoying character.

What is Status for Actors? 

Status for actors is the type of character they are playing. Like in the exercises we learned today, we noticed that one actor always has the higher status. For example, in the exercise I did with Heta, we had a few lines to say;
"Hello"
"Hello"
"Been waiting long?"
"AGES"
These simple yet effective lines allowed the audience to establish who had the higher status, not by the lines but by the way we delivered them, the tones in our voices, our body language and movement on the stage. Heta and myself both decided to play characters of a high status and were generally trying to out do each other! I entered the stage and initiated the conversation, and kept using movement around Heta, holding eye contact and a very condescending tone in my voice. It appeared that I maintained the higher status all through the performance, but just as Heta was about to say " AGES" she took off her glasses, wiped them, stared at me and put them back on. This was a great use of Business, as she used her own prop to portray her higher status and it really worked! 
This has taught me that for actors, someone will always have the higher status as it is natural and an audience like to see the different statuses. 
In theater a character could be a lord or an emperor, which is generally seen as a high status, but will be played by a character who is silly, clumsy or humerous, which brings the status down- this would be seen as a high status figure being played by a low status character. It creates contrast and humour for the audience and allows actors to play around with the concept of "Status" 

Using this in my devised piece....

Status is always something that works in performances, and I always like to use it. In my last devised piece I portrayed status very well. I was seen in the first scene as someone with a high status, then as the scenes went on I allowed the audience to realise that I did not hold such a high status at all I was just doing what I was being told to do by my manager who held the higher status.
I will definitely use status in my next devised piece as it creates contrast between characters and I feel if every character had the same status it would be un natural to watch as every group of friends or family always have a status hierarchy. Humans naturally always identify who holds which status. 
I feel my character I have chosen will be given a higher status as they are quite respectful people, and achievements and problems they have made and overcome in their lives will earn them respect and a sense of a higher status. Although I believe my character is someone who would not deal with having a high status as they are quite individual and like to do their own thing, I do not think they would like to be in charge or act in such a serious manner as it would be un natural to them.

What I have discovered about my character?

After today's acting class and being in the hot seat, I have discovered that my character is well liked and very respectful.  The audience wanted to know more about my character and felt they were interesting, strong and mysterious   This is exactly what I had hoped for, as this is how I felt about the character when I first met them. I am happy that I have portrayed an accurate and well thought out performance of my characters natural traits.


Who could my character know?.....
My character comes from an Irish gypsy traveler background, so I feel they could link with a character that is from an interesting and not so common background, or someone with a "hippy" vibe to their persona's.
My character is very emotional and driven about what they want to do in their lives and have high expectations of themselves, so they could work well with someone who is the complete contrast of them, someone who does not know who they are or someone who does not care, as this could irritate my character and make good theater.
My character is also very prone to stress and worries too much about little things, this could work with another character who is very happy go lucky and never worries about anything. As my character is quite complex and has a lot of depth I feel my character would work best with someone of a similar nature, someone who is mysterious and interesting to watch. 

MY CHOSEN CHARACTER: 22nd October

My chosen character for 2nd devised piece

'Friend 2'

I read out my 4 'friends/potential characters' to my group today and everyone selected friend number 2..

My chosen character is very different to myself which will be interesting to perform as a character and I am looking forward to learning to feel how they feel and find out more personal information about theme. 

They are very individual, can be too emotional and stressed at times and have a tenancy to be jealous and protective. Which is the complete opposite to my own persona as I am very happy go lucky and not a jealous or protective person. This character is probably the least like me out of the 4 people I chose which is ironic because I am now playing them for my second devised piece!

My character likes to bury their head in the sand when things start to get on top of them and can be very prone to stress related illnesses, which will be interesting to portray to an audience.

On the flip side, they are very caring and very family orientated and homely, as they have became  more mature over the years they have preferred to stay in than go out, they do not like to go out and drink alcohol or do anything too wild, although they used to enjoy doing this.

As a friend, they are loyal and loveable. My first meeting them I felt they were very mysterious and I felt they hid away their true feelings to protect themselves from letting anyone in, however now I know them extremely well I know most things there is to know about this person and their mysterious factor has disappeared but this is a good thing as I feel they have let me in and I feel comfortable with this person and vice versa. 

My chosen character has came from a VERY different background to me, they have Irish gypsy traveller heritage and have been travelling around the world at a very young age and attended completely different schools than I did. They have a very interesting family background, but have had hard times in the past few years as their father passed away when they were 18 years old. This I feel had a massive effect on my friend emotionally and also socially, their personality changed slightly and I feel they became unsociable and depressed. Our friendship changed during this time and I did not see them as much as I had been, but since then my chosen character has overcome their depression and difficulties and has changed for the better and has became a more mature, strong and inspiring person.

My character has very strong interests and dreams for their life, they know exactly what they want and are very dedicated to their studies, but not too much! 

I am looking forward to developing my character using this character as my stimulus as I feel I know them so well and can portray an accurate and naturalistic persona of them through my devised piece.

Some photos that portray my characters interests and personality..

They can be quite emotional and mysterious...

They have IRISH heritage

Their ambition and passion in life is to become a film director
They like to film everything!

They do not deal with stress very well, they can make themselves ill from it and can take them days to get over a stressful situation

They enjoy their own space and time to themselves. They can be seem as quite a loner at times and appear to be peaceful and grateful for peace and quiet

15th October 2013

Improvisation exercises and skills...

The exercises we did today in class were all about improvisation and learning theories on improv.

Keith Johnstone is a British playwright  actor and theatre director who specialises in Improvisational theatre. We were learning the techniques he uses in his plays and the way he acts. 

The exercises we tried out today were mainly in groups of 2. They consisted of one person 

starting a scene without talking and the other person reacting to their pose and back and forth until there was a storyline happening without speaking to one another. After this we got into a different group of 2 and one person would start off a dialogue by saying something, and the other would answer with ' Yes...and' this allowed the dialogue to develop and a storyline to happen and eventually allowed action to be introduced. Another improvisation exercise we focused on was very similar to that one, but instead of always answering with ' Yes...and' we answered with ' Yes..but' which allowed conflict to be involved, which I think personally helps develop a dialogue and emotion to improvising  and it allowed other ideas to be introduced instead of just sticking to the same subject with 'Yes...and' 

An exercise the whole class did at towards the end of the lesson was called ' Party quirks' it was a really interesting and fun improvisational game to play, as the whole class was involved and one person was holding a party, and the person who's party it was let one person in one at a time and each person in the class had been given a task to portray to Heta who was holding the party and the rest of the class. Everyones task was different and Heta managed to figure out most of them quite easily apart from 2 people's tasks! It was a great improvisation game as it allowed each person to portray their task in different ways and we could portray it in anyway we can, it also gave us some structure instead of being asked to act like whatever we want and other people had to guess.

How I feel…
I am starting to enjoy improvisation much more than I have done in the past as our class are constantly learning new skills for improvisation. I find walking around the drama studio in different ways i.e; weather change, getting into character, really helps my improv skills as I am using my imagination and how I would walk if the weather was boiling hot or freezing cold. It is opening up my imagination much more and improvisation is all about imagination. 

I am also learning to let go and not to let my inhibitions take over and just go with the improvisation.

FOUR CHARACTERS: 15TH OCTOBER

• 4 people I know I could play as a character for ' La Mer'...

• My oldest friend. She is 21 years old. I have known her since I was 1 years old, our mothers have always been best friends. She is very loving and has a big heart. She has had a hard childhood, her father passed away when she was 3 or 4. She is very nostalgic and reminisces about her past with her father quite frequently. Her personality traits are LOVE, that is the biggest one, she loves everyone she is close to and only has a limited amount of friends as she tends to see through people quite easily, but the people who are her friends are very loved by her. She has quite a strange sense of humour, its quite hard to understand but when you get to know her you see her sense of humour is very underlying and quite dry. She is not very similar to me but we have a great friendship bond. She is very family orientated but likes to take risks and is boy crazy. She always has been, she is rarely ever single as she does not like to be on her own and she likes to feel loved. She can have quite a temper, but it is no where near as bad as other peoples, she keeps it very controlled and I have rarely ever seen her loose her temper. She is an individual and fun to be around.

• A person who I have known for 4 years, we met by chance and it was unexpected.  She is 2 years older than me. She is from a very different background to me and is not the sort of person I would initially socialise with as we were from different areas, different schools and different cliques of friends. She is the most interesting person I know, she was quite mysterious when we first met, but after getting to know her she is not quite as mysterious as I once thought, which is a good thing as it revealed more of her personality. She is very caring and protective of those she loves. She is homely and likes to be comfortable and safe at all times. Stress is her weakness and it does not do her any good, she can make herself quite ill from being stressed out and not even realise it. She can be quite moody and jealous, but this is her defence mechanism and she tends to bury her head in the sand when things get to hard. She is funny too, her sense of humour is quite similar to mine and things that she loves make her happy, like the clothes she likes, the games she likes and the hobbies she likes. She relies on other people for happiness, I feel when she is lonely she does not feel happy, she needs people. But can be quite unsociable at times. She is my best friend and is creative, sensitive, attractive and emotional.

• A person who I don't really know but would appeals to me. She is 22 years old.She always seems distracted by something or someone, she never quite looks settled or fully satisfied with anything she does. She is a nice person, but some people get the wrong impression and feel intimidated or negative towards her. She is very unique and elusive, and can be quite destructive. She has a bad temper, but sometimes she can control it but other times she cannot. She is quite hard to understand and as a person she can be difficult to get along with or work with. She can be impulsive, but sometimes she just likes things as they are and does not want to break the rules. She is very unpredictable and can unreliable. She thinks this makes her interesting to others, and it does but sometimes it does not act in her favour. She is attractive to look at but can have a very ugly side to her personality. She is at times misunderstood and people take her hard exterior and paint her as something she is not.

• This is someone who is not my friend but someone who I have known for a few years. She is friendly and open to others. She is 20 years old.She is very loud and opinionated  She is very ' what you see is what you get' and some people feel there is nothing really to her just that she is a nice person. She can be quite silly and a bit stupid sometimes, but people find this loveable and endearing. She feels that people can take advantage of her good nature and feels that people do not see her for what she really is. She is never in a bad mood and always has a smile on her face. Even with people who know her really well she still does not let go of the happy go lucky persona and never lets anyone in. She is quite a confident person, but this is hidden by her clumsy personality. She is never boring and is always up for doing something with her friends, she never has relationships, she can never find someone who takes her seriously enough to have a relationship with. She is loving, amusing and fearless.

FIRST INTRODUCTION TO LA MER: 14TH OCTOBER

Initial responses to the stimulus material....

My initial response to the La Mer was curiosity. It is so different and more diverse than Song Lyric, and it requires a more in depth knowledge and deep interpretations.
It makes me feel enlightened; it is something completely different to what i've done before, and it is quite naturalistic which is the area of acting I really enjoy. So I am happy and excited with this assignment. It is quite a mature stimulus too as it is more than what meets the eye which I am happy about too. Overall I am intrigued with this assignment and am looking forward to our devised pieces and how we interpret each other's ideas and how they will all turn out.

The stimulus 'La Mer' makes me think of a range of emotions, when I was listening to the song and looking at the photograph in my mind I was thinking of freedom, love, mystery, fear of the unknown and death. All these emotions connected in my mind from what I was listening to and looking at. The song ' La Mer' by Charles Trenet was written in 1943 whilst Trenet was on a train! Even though the song was performed in french, I could still understand and hear the emotions being portrayed, I felt he had a sense of nostalgia in his voice, he sounded like he was reminiscing about a memory which made him happy once. It is also about love, he mentions a love song ' Chanson D'amour' and his heart 'Coeur pour la vie' at the end of the song which portrays he is singing about someone, possibly using the sea as a metaphor for someone or something he loves or has loved before.
The ideas the stimulus produces for me are to do with mystery and fear of the unknown. As the sea is a completely separate world from the land, it has tides, currents, animals live in the sea and have their own way of life and the sea itself has its own way of life and chooses its own paths, land just works its way around the Sea.
It also produces the idea of someone who is lost, who does not know what path to choose or which way to go in life, the picture we looked at in class today just made me think of people who get lost out at sea, people who have been 'claimed' by the sea. It has bought up a lot of different emotions and idea's in my head as it is such a deep stimulus which produces different routes to go down.
I want to know more about....

• The different emotions people link to ' La Mer'
• Why the sea is so powerful and meaningful
• The different personalities of the sea; i.e Some people say the sea is cruel and angry because of its choppy waves and tsunamis and other ideas are that the sea is peaceful and a tranquil place to be when the tides are calm and the water glistens with the sun. 
• How personality traits can be linked with the way the sea is
• Symbolic meaning and beliefs to do with the sea

The sea,
We see dancing along the shores of clear bays,
Shimmers with silver
The sea
Changing shimmers
Under the rain

The sea
With the summer sky
Mix up her white horses
With the angels so pure
The infinite azure shepherdess
Sea

Sea
By the ponds
Those big wet reeds
See
Those white birds
And those rusty houses

The sea
Has cradled them
Along the shores of clear bays
And with a love song
The sea
Has rocked my heart for life

English lyrics to ' La Mer'