25/09/14 sharon mckevitt - devising theatre

In todays lesson, Sharon decided to let us group into 6's and make our own warm-up we was all going to do with the class, our group decided to do 'Zip zap boing' this is a concentration game for everyone to practice and create tension and focus within the group. the game consists of three words obviously being zip zap and boing we all stand in the circle and pass the zip on with a pointed hand gesture to the person standing next to you boing would be to reject it so the other person turns the opposite way and zap would be to pass the zip onto another person across the circle you can also reject zaps by using the same line boing. the faster you play the game more people make mistakes and are out which is why you have to be completely focused to win.
other games included cat and mouse, follow the leader and duck duck goose. 

After the warm up games in the same groups as before in previous lesson we devised short scenes using the stimulus this being words 'crime, prison cell and justice' we could all create something completely random as long as it linked to these words my group was sharnae, Emma, killah, misharlie and hangela. For our crime scene we decided to do something slightly abstract in which killah was being approached by a mentally ill person asking for money with myself standing on the side on the phone and witnessing what was going on, the train being sharnae Emma and hangela travels slowly across the room finally reaching killah and Mischarlie pushing her in this is all done in slow motion to create tension. Killah then turns into the train and it continues to drive off 

(Killah now apart of train and Mischarlie running off with myself witnessing everything)

After the criminal scene we show the prison cell, this scene we decided to show a innocent person accused of a criminal act and imprisoned, this is a very common situation between law and criminals with wrong information and not enough evidence. 

Myself being the witness of this scene gets imprisoned by hangela Emma and sharnae as I was the only person there and their was no evidence that Mischarlie was the person to have threw killah in the train tracks. 

(Me being taken to prison/being arrested by sharnae emma and hangela) 

(Prisoner inside the cell calling out for help, sharnae and hangela being the prison cell and emma guarding)

After the prison fell scene it was our final scene JUSTICE! In which we decided to do a bbc news interview Mischarlie being the presenter while killah and hangela being the innocent prisoners parents who were calling out for justice on her release with protesters in the background being sharnae and Emma preaching that I am innocent and should be released this meets the criteria of justice. 

We thought it could be quite interesting if I sat on the side of this scene as If I'm there but actually I'm still In my prison cell oblivious to what is going on outside. 

23/09/14 Sharon Mckevitt/Naomi

Criminal Justice


Sharon began the lesson with us walking around in a space for the room to gain full focus, we then discussed as a class what we spoke about last week at the Donmar Theatre on Criminal justice, before Naomi entered the lesson at 10:30.
from my first impressions of Naomi she's a very loud character with loads of energy, she introduced herself then we played a quick game introducing ourselves to her with an action to our name we then played a warm up game called 'hey you' this involves having a conversation between a pair using only 3 lines I think Naomi chose this game to see how we communicated with each other and how we would make ourselves stand out with these lines.


Naomi then introduced a game quite similar to what we do every morning with Sharon but slightly different, walking around in a spot changing direction then the sentence 'clear the space' your action would be to find the nearest wall and slam both your hands against it then the second sentence was 'roll' in any style you would have to do a roll on the floor and carry on with walking in the space straight away.


we then grouped into sixes, my group being Mishali, Emma, Eliot, Parys and Killah, we was given the question "Do you think Prison rehabilitates people?" we all had different opinions on this but the majority was no, my opinion on this is that it doesn't rehabilitate people because I don't think prisons have a very strong educational system I think prisons should spend more time teaching a criminal how to be a citizen when they eventually get out because there is still life after prison and this isn't considered when you're in there.


We didn't discuss the question instead Naomi put a chair in the Centre of the room and if you had a statement to say you would sit on the chair say it and if your peers agree they'd come close to you if they disagreed they'd go as far away as possible, there was interesting statements such as Giftys, her statement was that in the future we should have electrical bracelets to detect whether we were criminals or about to proceed in doing a criminal act, I strongly disagreed so much so I came out of the room; my opinion on this is that we will no longer be free human beings and the government will have full control over what we do and where we go if this was to happen also to the fact of technology will never be able to out rule a humans emotion and could never justify if someone would or didn't do a criminal act.
My statement on the chair was I think instead of sending young people to prison we should have a strict military camp or send them into war, I think this would awaken young people and also would be less costly and more beneficial in the teaching you would get there such as teamwork, obedience and self control, everyone agreed with my statement in the class.


we then got into groups of six again to do short freeze frame images demonstrating the words criminal, prison cell and justice we decided to stylize it differently and doing one freeze frame images with all these words included our first image included killah making a criminal act with Mishali then myself being behind bars with Sharnae and Hangela being the bars and me clinging onto their arms this is very abstract as we used them as an object we then had Emma at the end with her fist pumped in the air to represent justice.


I'm looking forward to next weeks lesson on what Naomi is going to  bring to the table from all our ideas, I truly think this is going to be a very interesting production will be making in the next four weeks.

Brecht - Rob Alexander

19/09/14


In Today's lesson with rob we began the session with the normal warm up exercises such as the vowel sounds "ooo ohh oree and aaa arrr eeee" then onto pronounciation n letters "aaa ccc gg ddd ttt lll mmm ppp" we then warme p our sinal cowrd by rolling to the floor slowly and doing small bounces to streatch the muscles whilst breathing softly and letting out the sound 'uh' we then came to the board and dome some tongue twisters my tongue twister was "Plymouth sleuths Thwart Luther's Slithering" Rob said i need to practice more on my Th's espcially on the word 'Thwart'.

We then was told to Read our monolgues i had a monoluge prepared from ages ago the play its from is called "I ate the Divorvce Papers" ive had mixed feedback on this piece in the past but enjoy performing it, it was abit rough around the edges as i had'nt practiced it but decided to throw myself in the deep end, my feedback was to play it less comical, to really relate to the character (stanislavski method, imagining if it was my mums ring being taken away from me and how emotionally distraught i would be) Rob then called up connor to sit infornt of me to be the imaginary person i was talking to, even though i played the more sentimental character i still gained laughs, i need to work on how to structure the scene more and really focus on being in denial that my husband is gonna divorce me until the last sentences when the peny finally drops.
Rob then pulled up a youtube clip on the classic 'Dirty Den' scene with Angie when he hands her a divorce paper after he finds out she was lying about dying and how indenial angie was in the begining can help me link this character into my own.

After lunch we was given our script 'One big family' written by Brecht. my secne is called the black shoes, after first reading it i'm not particulallly feeling it much i feel its very stanislavski like with the whole mother not wanting her daughter to attend the camp, but hidden emotion abut it as she doesn't actuall say this she claims she has o money (pfennins) I'm slightly nervous that im ot going to get the Brecht feel on this play as i feel that the metod/language its written like is very stanislavski.

Criminal Justice

17/09/14

Today Our class had a workshop with the Donmar theatre in covent garden, we met up with other colleges and had a speak about criminal justice we was asked questions such as, 'what is prison for?' 'what is criminal justice?' and 'should capital punishment be legal?' we then seperated into groups mixed with other colleges our tutor for the day had a time line of a guy called john who showed his life journey being in and out of prison we come to the conclusion that johns life started downgrading in school when he needed help with his gcse grades and started falling behind, we then moved to a different room about a different topic of the for and againts on people who arent involved in a criminal act but witnessed it or played apart of the atmosphere.
i came to the conclusion that prison should be for actual criminals the expansion of growth in prison how much money is wasted on certain inprisonments is ridiculous its 35'00 to imprison someone so for crimes like frawd their should be other punishments such as community service and military camps. For actual criminals in prison i think they should have more support, and taught how to be a citizan and able to like a law abiding life in community.

We then moved to our final room, we started with a warmup exercise of a battle between two groups on freeze frame images on punishments from years before and now still exsisting an example of this would be, stoning, electrecution and drowning.
We then spoke about what kind of punishments/laws would their be in the future our group came up with a ban on reproduction also recycling.

We ended the workshop with a quick brief on who will be visting our colleges in the next few weeks to create our theatre pieces to perform in the donmar theatre.

Devising Theatre - Sharon Mckevitt

16/09/14

We started the lesson having a group discussion on what we thought was a good theatre piece,
my opinion on this was having a storyline that is unique nothing is expected the structure and plot is different.
we then put ourselves into groups of four my group being Mario, Emma and Sharnae and got given the word peer pressure as a stimulus to do a short scene on, we decided to make our scene like a trailer of a movie. we discussed our own experiences with peer pressure and linked this into our scenes.
We chose, peer pressure to loose your virginity, peer pressure to drink and take drugs and peer pressure with gangs.

We started it off with a freeze frame image of mario standing in the centre, with Emma Sharnae and I making a gesture of pushing mario from each angle, with mario having a distressed look on his face we then all walked into a straight line swiftly, and advertising 'peer pressure' in a comical voice really trying to advertise it as if its a trailer. myself emma and sharnae then sat and two of them were talking about their sex life whilst i was on the edge outkasted from the conversation then to be brought in by them saying for me to do it, making it obvious to the audience that i didn't fit in because i was not a virgin. Mario being the narator of the piece then turned it comical by saying "ARE YOU LIKE JADE? DO YOU NEED ADVICE ON HOW TO SHUN YOUR FRIENDS AWAY? THEN COME DOWN TO THE CINEMA NOW AND WATCH PEER PRESSURE 101 TODAAAAAY".
The second scene consisted of myself Emman and sharnae dancing around the space whilst mario stood still, and sharnae telling emma to loosen up abit as she was acting very quiet in the club I then spiked emma's drink with drugs making her dance crazily. Mario then said a similar line as before making it commical and trailer like whilst me and sharnae froze and emma still continuing to dance showing the contrast that emma could not stop.
the last scene involved Mario being peer pressured by me and Emma into shooting his friend (sharnae) then mario repeating the same lines making it commical again "ARE YOU BEING PEER PRESSURED INTO SHOOTING YOUR FRIENDS? THEN WATCH PEER PRESSURE 101 TODAAAAAAAY"

I really enjoyed creating this short piece of thearte as i thought it was different to most other peoples structures, we got great feedback however our constructive feedback was that it may have been enjoyed too much and missed the meaningful message behind it.
we could improve this by trying to lower the comical side of the dialogue and maybe creating more tension in the scenes.

Brecht - Rob Alexander

12/09/14

We started the lesson with warmup exercises in the theatre, we grouped into pairs, my pair being sharnae, and was given different characters to play such as cat&mouse, poor&rich and coward&hero.
Then in pairs we was devided and told to stand opposite eachother on two sides of the room and scream a lullaby/child nursery rhyme as if it was a really important message your pair had to hear!

The class then grouped into fours my group was Sharnae, Fru and Justina our stimulus was to create a short freeze frame imagie with a begining middle and end. we decided quite randomly to create a scene about 3 people watching telly a burgler interrupting and then killing one of the family/friends who was watching the tv. Rob then decided he wanted us to add a slogan on to every scene; our first slogan was eastenders theme tune, our second was "its a hard not life" a quote from the classic film 'Annie' and finally 'GAME OVER' as the person was killed.
We was then told to add dialogue, we could add up to four lines per scene.
We then performed the plays to eachother, the group I liked was Tutu's as it was very unrealistic and imaginative with comical dialogue, their freeze frame images was about zombies.

I think we could of improved the scene by, making it flow easier, so instead of the tv somehow turning into a burgler which could have been easily mistaken by the audience maybe creating a gap to flow the burgler into the freeze frame image. Also maybe changing the slogans to make it more dramatic rather than comical.

Our next exercise was to create a freeze frame image like before but about something political, we decided to do a scene about 'Rape' and how society excuse some rape cases due to how someone is  dressed or their style. our first freeze frame image was sharnae grasping onto the floor and myself dragging her by her leg, our second freeze frame image was the structure of a court with the defedent, victim, judge and the criminal. we decided the defedent and criminal would have joint lines consisting of 'It was provogative' 'she was asking for it' and the judge dissmissing the case. Then the last scene was the young girl standing up with the audience to create their own enviroment for her and her use of dialogue was ' never judge a book by its cover, not everything is how it seems'

I think we were given these exercise as it links to brechts style completely, with the whole 'shoving it in the sudiences face' and making it blatent. i think our scene matched brechts style as their was no inbetween thoughts its either yes you agree that she shouldnt have been dressed provagtivley or no it shouldnt matter what style of clothing she was wearing rape is rape.

After lunch the class returned upstairs to watch a documentray on 'Brecht'.

Here are some notes I took down 

Devisng Theatre - Sharon

11/09/14



'Under Milk Wood' By Dylan Thomas was the poem we was studying today, as a whole class we sat in a circle and read it out line by line, getting to grips with the poem and seeing what we thought the writer was speaking about most of us came to the conclusion that it is set in the night when everyone is sleeping in this small village by the sea on the coast.

We then grouped into fours myself working with Toriek, Hangela and Abigal. we all spoke about how we felt on the poem and how we think it should be performed; we decided that we wanted to make the poem more stern and as if we were nagging about the town.

Toriek started the piece, then Hangela leading on after playing the role of a young girl caught up in a dream world about love, then myself playing a young boy waking up from a dream which had sword fights and continuing the fight with Toriek as i risen to finish the rest of my sentence. Then Abigal finishing our paragraph of the poem as a adult shutting down a childs imagination bringing reality back to the poem, the whole class then got filmed performing it, making it an abstract piece.

Our feedback from our group was to slow down, I think we could improve this by having more time which would make us more comfortable with the lines, slowing us down creating more impact on the audience and having a lot more energy.

The group I enjoyed watching was Graces group, i liked their movement in the piece as if they were actually the enviroment in the poem an example of this would be when they swopped side to side un-semtrically looking like either wind or leaves.

Devising Theatre - Sharon

09/09/14




We started the lesson walking around the room with intension, changing directions and pace. This gave the room full focus to get into task.
Our task began when Sharon paired us up with a class peer; we had to speak about our holidays then group with another pair and tell each others holiday experiences.
I worked with Killah, Sharnae and Andrea. we then had to make a short scene demonstrating each of our holidays combined or one persons, our decision was to "mix it up"


After Lunch we walked around the room with intension and pace again to gain focus, Sharon then asked us to walk around the room as a 'police man' , 'lady of the night' , 'priest' and a 'fisherman'.
labelling them as our own stereo types. we then grouped up into fours and created a scene to include all characters meeting. I worked with Tutu, Eliot and Wendy.
our scene included the lonely fisherman arranging a date with the lady of the night, then the priest witnessing this crime to god and of course preaching, kicking up noise the policeman is called arresting the priest and advising the lady of the night to go home. we performed this in front of the new level 2s.


I think the scene could have been improved with more time, due to the short space of time we had to create and develop the scene it was a bit 'rough around the edges' and could have done with more planning and depth.