3/10/14 auditions and Brecht

In today's lesson we started off straight with our audition speeches I decided to sit back and watch over people's pieces today as last week I was the first person up I thought I would see how different people would take a different approach on their speeches. It was interesting watching other people and their feedback I have now decided to change my monologues I don't think they are right for me. 

After the lunch break we went to theatre and ran over our Brecht work, this was a long process but has to be done we went through scene by scene laying out our exits and entrances. I'm doing scene 11 the 'black shoes' about a mother and daughter having a conversation about the butler youth group, a group of children who are involved in likes committee equivalent to a Girl Scouts now but yet ran by hitler but which would have been poisoning the youths mindset back then my character being the mum doesn't really know how to approach her daughter on this and doesn't like the fact her daughter is involved and so caught up in it her mum is slight aggravated in the scene but hides it in her words but shoes it in her tone sarcasm and actions. 

Our feedback was to learn lines. 

Donmar workshop

Lesson two 

Criminal justice 

In today's second Donmar based lesson we continued with Naomi from where we left off last week. We started with a general discussion as a class, we reflected on last weeks lesson and how Naomi had said she had a brief idea of what we could do for our final performance from stuff we did in the last week. We then done a warmup game led by Naomi I was interested to see what she was going to bring to the table next as all her warmup games have been very energetic fun and engaging but yet challenging and efficient in getting warned properly in all aspects. She done a game which involved our bodies and voices repeating short lyrical lines in beat then eventually moving to the lyrics engaging with other actors in the circle and then finally being confident enough to move around the space dancing singining and engaging with everyone else, considering our class is an acting pathway I genuinely think were pretty good at choir work all sounding in tune and confident. 

As the warm up came to a close we sat back into a circle, and Naomi had told us she had seen this BBC documentary about solitary confinement, and how it was like and how the prisoners were treated. We used the subject as our stimulus for the lesson. She had told us that young teens from the ages 17-18 in 30 years time would be in prisons solitary confinement. She had also told us things that they'd do to communicate with other prisoners, as they are locked up and have no access to communicate with the other prisoners and that they'd be in their cell for 23hrs out of the 24hrs a day and that they'd only be allowed get an hour of the 23hrs to be let into the yard and have fresh air. And that they'd have ways of communicating with each other by using string which would be connected to the other cell and they'd pass notes around once the guard had his back turned. Also when they wanted to protest they'd do many things, either self harm, cover there cell window with tissue, spread their foetus's on the wall or their blood on the wall. So we had a general discussion about that then started our exercise.

After speaking Naomi asked as a few questions these were:

1• what does an inmate do in the 23 hrs they spend in solitary confinement?

2• In solitary confinement prisoners still find a way to protest about their situation - do they do it?

3• All prisons are not allowed physical contact... How do they communicate?

4• What happens when they lose their identity?

5• Can rehabilitation change people if they don't want to be changed? We was then told we had to do a improvisation exercise and at the end we'd find out the answers to these questions using the questions as a stimulus we did an improv exercise. Where an actor starts a still image and another actor joins and then the first actor leaves, the second actor that joins has to connect their image to the first actors, so once the first actor left, someone else would join, no one was suppose to leave the actor in the space hanging, so the still images would continue until we were stopped, we were told to think about our entrances and our exits, so it doesn't look like bus stop acting and looks abstract and flows nicely, After getting a hang of it Naomi then added music to it, so it flowed. We had to think about how we'd come out of the still image without disturbing the other actors image this could mean climbing out their arms bending sliding and twisting. 

Afterwards we were split in half of the circle down the middle, so there's be two groups and we were asked to do the same exercise but this time there was a theme, our themes were the Justice system & solitary confinement. We were asked to choreograph a sequence with each actor entering the space three times, we has to think of 'what the life of the individuals would be like', we'd tell a story with the images. 

Our next activity was in pairs, we were asked to find someone who was a similar build to us my partner was grace the activity was that their is a prisoner and a gaurd, we both sat on the floor and myself being the prisoner had to escape from the guards arms legs or however they had me locked as soon as I stood up yh myself I won. This was a very fun game but yet shows the struggle of a prisoners life and also the struggle of a gaurd who has to keep things under control no matter how hard the situation is. 

Our next exercise was we got into groups ( Conor, Sarah, Grace, Tutu, Gifty) we had think about ' what crimes will our peer group be committing in 30 years time? My group said drugs and trafficking. Then with the same groups we did the prisoner/guard exercise but with blocking, we'd have one prisoner which was Conor in the middle and the rest of us being the guards would be around Conor and blocking him, we first tried a technique of keeping him very close in a compacted area this didn't work as he still got out we then tried a different approach of us being spaced out blocking himhis aim was to try and escape from us. After this we done it as a whole class, Conor again was the prisoner and the rest of the class were guards but this time we'd do the opposite of what he does, when he stands we'll bend, and when he moves to the right we'd go to the left. So we did this activity to end the lesson. 

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.