IB Theatre – No Lectures :(

Thursday 15th October and Friday 16th

No Theatre for these two days, leaving less time for monologue rehearsals, gutted :(

On the brighter side, we had IB residential which was awesome! we also found out that Cara was on a course and so wouldnt have been in the lectures anyways, so no worries! :D

IB Theatre – To the Costume store

Thursday 23rd October

I arrived today to find myself a little behind schedule, thanks to my illness on Monday, with most of the group starting to feel the staging of their pieces coming together.

After wasting the first ten or fifteen minutes of the lecture (trying to find a copy of Look Back In Anger, after forgetting mine!) I sat down for a proper read through of my lines, while trying to add meaning to them, and getting to know my character.

In order for us to feel that we new our character better we performed the following activity:

Character imagination – Everyone lay down on the floor and closed their eyes Cara then asked us to imagine the character, as if they were standing in front of us. We were then told to build a visual image of our character's first impressions, e.g. their stance, posture, clothing, facial expression, clothing etc. We then ‘jumped into our character, getting up into the same figure we had imagined, then went around the room greeting all the other characters in the room. This was a very useful activity as we were able to gain an idea of how the character would act being in their shoes in relation to others. To finish we shared ideas and opinions on everyone’s character and explained our first impressions of each other.

IB Theatre – Autumn Half Term

Monday 26th – Friday 30th October

No Theatre for a whole week!

Never mind, Half Term :)

IB Theatre – The senses

Friday 24th October 2009

To start the lecture everyone started with a little run through of our pieces, trying to understand what exact mood the character was following for my chosen section.

Once we had established the general mood, for me I found that my character Jimmy is very agitated and annoyed with his wife’s behaviour at the time, we did another imagination type activity:

Senseless – This activity is very much linked to the works and ideas of Stanislavski, and his ideas behind naturalism. Everyone took a space within the room and lay down, relaxed on the floor. The leader of the activity then went through various senses, with us using our imagination in order to relate these to experiences etc.. For example, A strawberry, this would trigger the participants’ imagination to the smell of a strawberry. Feelings and emotions were also used, in order to trigger are memory of certain emotions and feelings and the idea is to recreate this within our pieces, and the emotions portrayed by our characters.

This for me was a very useful activity, I could see Stanislavski’s theory behind this activity; being able to place your emotions and feelings into another characters shoes.

IB Theatre – Not another lesson missed!

Monday 19th October

Dang… I hate stomach bugs, no Theatre for me today :(

IB Theatre – Monologue Analysis

Monday 12th October 09 -

  IB Theatre is awesome, even if we did do paperwork for virtually the whole one hour and twenty minute session.

Today, now that we had all decided on our monologues, for our first assessed performance we set about analysing the character that we were to play. As a guide we used the following points, in relation to our character:

• Identifying the given circumstances -
• Prior scenes, characters mind state
• Facts by the character, portrayed by the playwright -
• Setting and location etc.
• Stage directions
• Other present characters and their speech etc.
• Character Objectives (what the character is trying to achieve)
• Units of action – splitting the monologue down analysing where the character experiences a change of thought or the overall atmosphere in a piece, and naming each unit.

All of these points are shown in relation to my character in note form below!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really enjoyed today's lesson, as I have never before studied a character that I have been given to perform in such an in depth way. The techniques have inspired me and I will use them in the future for my CAS project; a production that I hope to direct with a group ok KS4 students from my old secondary school… bring on next lesson, which unfortunately won’t be until next Wednesday, due to IB Residential fun, fun, fun… :)

IB Theatre – We’re on our own

Friday 9th October 09 -

  We’re on our own boys, its time for a monologue. Today's lesson was spent in the library researching different naturalistic monologue playwright’s. This was sooooo hard, I spent ages searching and the most interesting one I could find was extremely sexist and being the only guy in the group thought this wouldn't go down well.

  I've taken two books home over the weekend: ‘The Contemporary Monologue Men by Michael Early and Phillipa Keil, and John Osbourne’s ‘Look Back in Anger’. and I’m hoping that one section from these might enlighten me so to speak :/

IB Theatre – Is it believable…?

Thursday 8th October -

  WOW… My head is spinning, what an eye opener that was, and I thought theory of knowledge spun my head.

Today's, lesson was based oh how an actor is able to make a character believable, for us to understand this we took part in a few different activities:

• Just Keep Clapping – This activity is exactly as the title suggests. As a group we formed a circle sitting on chairs with all but one person clapping their hands continually. The chosen person then walked around the circle to each person individually and told them to ‘Stop clapping’ however way they wanted. When the person clapping felt that they were being asked in a convincing way they would stop. Each person was then given a go at asking people to stop. It became apparent that the most believable way was to look the clapper directly in the eye as this got their attention.
• Good Times – For this activity the group got into pairs and shared a memory with each other. They then discussed and chose who's memory each of them would perform to the group. Once a decision had been made the circle was reformed and each person in turn gave their memory. The aim was for the group to guess who’s memory it was and establish what gave it away. We found that their was a certain state of mind that was shown when somebody is recalling a memory of their own, they almost become separate from everyone else in order to go through the memory in their head. On the other hand the person lying was able to make more eye contact etc… A very interesting activity!
• Just Sit on the Chair – and that was the task, the group sat end on and watched one person sitting on the chair, that was all the information we were given. This was the activity that hit me the most, it should have been easiest, but instead was the hardest because you unconsciously performed, whether by making lots of face movement (me, very embarrassingly) to simply laughing. This focused on the idea that you become a character rather than just perform as a character while on stage.

  The reason for us doing these activities was that in tomorrows lesson we will be researching a monologue to use as our first assessed piece. It is to be a naturalistic monologue and therefore must be believable for the audience, which should be interesting…

IB Theatre – Session 12

Monday 5th October

  As a starter to today’s lesson, we used extracts from our ‘The Lesson’ piece and deliberately performed them, making mistakes. The mistakes included, laughing, over acting, blocking each other and drawing attention from our partner. The reason for performing our pieces with mistakes was for us to get them ‘out of our systems’ so that we would not make these in performance. I found it very useful as in doing this activity I realised how unprofessional it looks to make these mistakes on stage, hopefully preventing me from doing these in the future.

  We then had twenty minutes to ‘perfect’ our pieces for performance, in which time me and Georgia added in a few more comic sections and learnt lines. We were then asked to fill in a review sheet for a certain group member and I chose to review Kitty, using the sheet below.

  Each pair was able to produce the script from a completely different viewpoint. I am really enjoying creating pieces of Theatre and seeing how everyone's ideas can differ when all based on the same thing… ITS AWESOME! I can’t wait to see what awaits us on Wednesday! 

IB Theatre – Session 11

Friday 2nd October

  Who suggested the idea that we started today with paperwork… yes it was me :( To start today’s lecture we went through our first proper written assessment based on ‘what we think theatre is’, using an extract based on ‘the field of drama’ which is shown below.

  Cara then informed us of a fantastic  opportunity to watch a performance of  six characters in search of an author at Plymouth’s  Theatre Royal on the  27th – 31st October. We were also told that it may be possible to receive free tickets, thanks to a scheme for people aged under 26. It looks like an awesome production and I hope I can get a ticket :)

  After a long discussion based on the theatre trip and what was involved in the essay, we finally continued rehearsing our ‘Lesson’ pieces, But I had a problem. Georgia had to leave early, which meant I was left with no partner, but Jenny also had no partner so we teamed together and had a discussion as we were both playing the same character. Our little discussion opened my eyes to how differently one person can visualise a scene to another. Jenny saw the professor as a very powerful man who was able to manipulate the pupil, through status control over the piece. I on the other hand saw the professor as a little delusional and stuttering, the typical over the top, crazy professor. The same script just performed in completely different ways… 

IB Theatre – Its not about you, its me…

Thursday 1st October 09

  Today wasn't just about me but all of the Theatre Arts group, and how we consider ourselves as artists expressing our interests, inspirations and development in drama to the present. After two weeks preparation, the daunting task of presenting our ‘Me Project’s’ was finally here.

 

  At first I found it very difficult to think of images that portrayed these points realistically, so in the end I chose pictures that represented the ideas on the task sheet in a more abstract way.

  I was very nervous before giving my presentation and wasn't sure how people would respond or whether I could make it last long enough, but once I had started I felt confident and well prepared. 

  It was once again a very enjoyable lesson as you got to see how many ways these ideas could be portrayed by different people and also the creative ways that they were presented. From a plain PowerPoint like mine, to an artistic washing line of images, all based on the same ideas. Another amazingly open and creative IB Theatre task…