27.11.14

Task 1

Q. what choice did you make when staging your monologue? Think about how you used your voice and physicality.  

Once we had written our monologue we had to make decisions on the staging, for example, physicality and voice. For the physicality, I decided I would start standing up and use the space around me. Then when the emotion of my character changed, as he was talking about being kicked out of his home, which is something that he didn’t like talking about, to portray this I chose to sit down. By doing this, I feel I made the scene more interesting as the scene wasn’t just still and with me sitting down. When deciding on the choice to make for the vocal, I decided to  put on a slight east end accent and I tried to deepen my voice, as the character I played was from the east end  and was male. I also used my voice a lot to help give across the emotion of the character. I did this by not speaking at the same pace and tone, for example, when my character was angry I raised my voice and talked at a faster pace. I feel this helped show my character’s anger and frustration.  

Q. How did the monologue task help you understand the play further?

When studying the play it made me understand the play further, as I feel I now have more of an understanding as to why the play is told in monologues. The reason why I think it is told in monologues is to make you think about things that happen in someone’s everyday life that you don’t really think about. Therefore, It would be told in monologues as it makes it easier to form a connection with the character, also it allows it to bring up loads of different issues. The monologues help me understand that as it made me think more in depth about the character’s situation and made it more realistic for me.

Q. What monologue performed by a peer worked well and why? What had they written about?

A monologue that worked well was Rory’s monologue. His monologue was told in a very unique way, his monologue was based around him being questioned about his girlfriend’s death, I believe he was being interrogated by a detective. This worked well as it made sense and it was easy to follow, yet still really interesting and different to anything I have ever seen. His monologue was from tale 5, he played an abusive boyfriend who murdered his girlfriend. Rory then put his own twist on it and decided that he would be an alcoholic and not remember killing her.

Q. Who performed their monologue well and why?

  In my opinion, I feel that Benji performed this monologue well, as he used the space very effectively. I think this, as he didn’t spend the whole time sitting down and when he moved he did so with purpose. Therefore, it made him have a good stage presence as he looked confident and was comfortable

 27.11.14

In today’s lesson we only worked on monologues, we had to pick a character we have worked on previously and then create a monologue for them. I picked the sly man as even though he is a male, I felt I could create a more interesting and in depth monologue with the sly man than any other of my previous roles. This exercise was helpful, as it was an opportunity to work on my creative writing skills, also I have never written a monologue, so it was a new experience.  Doing the exercise made me learn a lot about the character, I feel I connected with him more and learnt about his back story. I now understand how he ended up in his situation which helps me sympathise with him more.     

This is my monologue, in black writing are the stage directions

When to monologues had all been completed, we were all given feedback, this was very helpful because I have never performed a monologue that I have written. It was nice to be told what was good about it and what I could improve upon.

My feedback was

.’ Nice use of staging, I like how you were walking around and using the space, and then sat on the chair to show the change in you character’s emotions.’

. ‘Nice control of vocals and clear voice.’

.’ Good eye contact with the audience.’

Task 1.

On Thursday lesson (20.11.14) we worked on developing our understanding of different character. In the first half of the lesson, in small groups, we discussed our research about the character in tale 3. This was useful as listening to other people’s interpretation of the character helped me understand the character better as I feel I knew more information and details about the character.

Then in the second half of the lesson, in groups of 5-6, we worked on tale 6. This helped with my understanding of the play as it made me realized that all of the characters in the play live quite hard lives or they are going through a difficult time. This made me think about what different themes that appear in the play, so far, I think struggle is definatly one of the recurring themes in the play.

Task 2.

1.       What did you develop and create?

In my group we studied tale 3, we decided we would set it in an overcrowded pub and a fight would arise between two punters. We decided, that as in the tale 3, it talks about a fight in a pub where one of the men dies. Then as a group, we decided that all the witnesses would react very differently, some were scared, others were encouraging it and the rest didn’t take much notice. We did this as we feel that the main character has split personalities and we would portray that through the witness of the fight as each person would react in a certain way based on the main character’s personalities.

How?

We did this by having the witnesses to the fight miming different action, as if they were in a pub and having some people mime talking to each other, to give across the atmosphere of a busy pub.  Then to draw attention to the people how we’re going to have the fight, we decided that they would be the only people that did not mime. To make each personality clear we over exaggerated each person’s character and used our body and voices to help portray each personality. Then to perform the fight we decided that one of the men would be drunk and spill his drink down the other man and that is how the fight would start.

2.       How did your homework help you develop the tale practically?

My homework helped me develop the tale practically as it helped me understand my character and interpret more about them. For example, from doing my homework, I came to the conclusion that the character is a man, in his late 30’s and has always lived in the east end. This, helped me practically, as I already knew how my character would stand and what they would sound like, because of my research.   

3.       Explain what you did as your character. Why did you make these choices?

As my character, I chose to portray the rude and bad influence trait, so I was very loud, over the top, and encouraged the fight. Therefore, I decided that when I was encouraging the two men to fight I would really project my voice so I sounded over powering. I also put on an ‘east end’ accent. I did this, as in my opinion, I think my character is in his late 30’s would have lived in the east end all this life so therefore has a strong accent.

When I was performing, as my character, I was standing with a hunched back, legs a bit wider then hip width and with a pint glass in my hand. I did this as I wanted to over exaggerate my character because I wanted to make my character’s manly and impolite personality to be clear to the audience.

Task 3.

1.       What did you underline in the text?

In the text I underlined:

. I’m

. Landlords

. Brother

. Mother

.Son

.warm tired women

.sly man

.people

.daughter

.dad

2.        What scene did you develop?

In my group we had 4 sly men, one of them being me, a landlord and the sly man’s mother. We decided, that in our scene, we would all perform a monolog and that the sly men would share their monologs. We also wanted to include some interaction between the characters as well the monologs, so in between the monologs, we would have short conversation between two people. The scene stated with one of the sly men asking for a drink at the bar, this led onto the landlord’s monolog, next it was the joint monologs of the sly men, then it was the mother’s monolog which was performed in a hospital bed. Then finally it ended with another short monolog from the sly men.

3.        What drama skills did you use to do so?

When doing this, we had to use improvisation skills. This was because, even though we knew the basis of what we were doing in the scene, we hadn’t run it through as a whole. So when performing it, most of it was improvisation because there weren’t official lines or spacing.

Another acting skill I used was staying in role, I used this skill as in the performance, the other characters were frozen when someone’s monolog was being performed. Therefore I had to stay in role when frozen as I had to make sure I was standing like my character when frozen.

4.       Explain what you did as your character. Why did you make those choices?

When playing my character I decided to look down a lot and fiddle with my hands. I did this as I think my character (sly man) is quite a closed person, doesn’t like to share how he is feeling.  I also tried to make my voice intimidating but not shouting as I think that most people get the impression from talking to him that he can be quite aggressive.  

5.       What was effective about the characters they had decide to explore?

When looking at everyone else’s scene I found it effective, as they all gave their character a rather in detailed back story. This was effective as it helped you become more connected with the characters and made you sympathise with them more as you felt you knew them more as a person, not a fictional character. It was also effective because everyone got in to their character, therefore, I felt more involved with the scene and it made it easier to understand each character.

6.       Did the scene help you understand anything new about the play or another character?

When looking at other group’s scene it made me understand new things about the warm tired women. This is because in the tale it doesn’t talk much about her back story but from watching the scene, I understood that she missed her daughter more than is made out in the tale. Also we learnt that her daughter is purposely not talking to her mum as she feels that she has better things to do. From this I can interpret that warm tired women feels lonely and possibly unloved.  

This is an exercise we did called role on the wall we had to draw a ginger bread man and then on the inside write the feelings for a character from tale 6 and on the outside right what people think of thim.

This is the marking criteria for DEVELOPING for this project we filled out at the end of the lesson.

1.       Working on the Prologue.

The first exercise we did was in pairs, each pair was given a section from the prologues, and we created it by adding in another character’s lines. Me and my pair made a short conversation based around the taxi driver’s life. We made the conversation natural and I feel we made it flow well. We did this because we wanted the additional lines to make sense with the lines that were originally in the prologue and we wanted the audience to understand what was going on in our short scene.

After we decided on the lines, we then had to stage it, we did not want it to look as you would expect a scene inside a taxi would look so we tried to ‘think outside the box’. We decided that the taxi driver would stand on a chair, centre stage and deliver all of her lines facing out to the audience. Then we decided that the passenger I played, would walk on stage when I say my first line and stand quite far in front of my partner who was standing on the chair. I also delivered all my lines facing the audience. We decided to stage it like this as we wanted to show who had the most power in the scene, that is why the taxi driver was on the chair. We also wanted the staging to look interesting and intriguing to the audience, so we were not facing each other but facing the audience.

Something, that another pair did, which I found effective was even though they did not set the staging as if it was in a taxi, they still made movements as if they were, for example, when they turned a corner they all lent to the side. I found this effective because it made you believe, as an audience member, that you were in the scene, it also made it more realistic as they acted as if they were really inside a taxi.

2.        

       Hot-seating

The second exercise we did was hot-seating; this is an effective technique to use in rehearsals as it makes you think about character development. Character development is important as it enables you to use characterisation as you will know more about your character so you can connect with them more. Therefore hot-seating is effective, it helps you develop your character which will make you performance more realistic.

When doing the exercise, I learnt a lot about the taxi driver. I learnt that the driver is a male, and is not much of a family man so therefore has no children. He also seemed like quite an intimidating man as he said that if he gets any ‘abuse’ from passengers he said he ‘just sorts them out and they never trouble him again’. Finally I learnt that to clear his head he likes to play golf.

When doing the hot-seating exercise, I asked the taxi driver what type of conversation he makes with the passengers. By doing this I learnt about the taxi driver’s personality, he said he normally asked how the day is and why they are going where they are going. This leads me to think he is quite a talkative person and is an average nice taxi driver.

3.

Ensemble taxi driving

We also did an ensemble taxi driving exercise, this is where, as a group, we all became taxi drivers and we had to create some improvised movements and say some lines from the prologue. When doing this, I decided that I wanted my character to be quite chilled out and slouched over. I did this as I wanted my character to look comfortable in his surroundings because I wanted it to seem as if he had been a taxi driver for most of his working career.

I also decided to make the driver, be a man so I deepened my voice; I did this, because when I was reading the prologue I thought the lines sounded more as if it would of come from a man’s mouth not a women’s as in my head I instantly thought of a man. I also tried to make my voice sound mature and in the age range of 35-50.

As far as I know everyone in the class decided the driver would be a man. Mostly everyone positioned them self in a ‘manly’ way and were all quite slouched over. Also everyone put on an East End accent. However there was one person in our class who took a totally different approach to it. He decided he wanted his taxi driver to be quite camp. So he had his legs crossed and sat up straight and he put on a more feminine voice. I thought that his interpretation of the driver was really good because it was different to everyone else’s so it stood out compared to the rest of us.

 In this exercise, we had to work as an ensemble group because we had to say lines at the same time.  At the beginning we found this challenging as everyone was saying their lines at different times, and from an audience point of view it would have been hard to understand. Then finally, on the last time we did it, we all said the lines in the exact same time with one another. When we did this it sound really cool and even though the lines weren’t dramatic, saying it as a ensemble made the lines sound powerful and meaningful.