The Homecoming

On the 7^th of December, we went to watch ‘The Homecoming’ at The Trafalgar Studios. It is a two-act play first published in 1964; it was premiered in London 1965 and New York in 1967. Harold Pinter was born on October 10, 1930, in England, the son of a hardworking Jewish tailor. He was a playwright, screenwriter, actor and director who wrote the play. In addition, he wrote a few other best-known plays such as ‘The Birthday Party’. Harold Pinter’s plays are particularly famous for their use of understatement to convey characters' thoughts and feelings.  He grew up in a working-class area, full of railroad yards and factories. When World War II broke out in 1939, Pinter and most London children, was evacuated to the countryside to be safe from the German bombing. Pinter married Vivien Merchant, an actress, for several years and they had one son. He then embarked on many long affairs, which had cost him his marriage and the love and respect of his son.

The play was set in North London; it has only 6 characters, five men and one woman: Max, a retired butcher (Ron Cook); his brother Sam, a chauffeur (Keith Allen); and Max’s three sons - Teddy (Gary Kemp), an American philosophy professor; Lenny (John Simm), who appears to be a pimp; and Joey (John Macmillan), a boxer in training who works in demolition. Lastly, Ruth (Gemma Chan), who is Teddy’s wife. The play concerns Teddy’s and Ruth’s “homecoming”, which has different symbolic and thematic associations. Throughout the play, the set didn’t change apart from some of the props being moved around from time to time, it was very simplistic. The Homecoming is a psychological thriller featuring a torn family who have changed over time, each having their own problems, most likely because of their mother’s death.  As Teddy and Ruth return to the family home after six years in America, a riveting game of sexual warfare, morality and power enter the room. It is an unsettling show of one-upmanship which develops throughout the play as Teddy’s father and brothers battle to impress his wife; they’re all startled at first when they see her because there hasn’t been a woman in the house since their mother. There is a theme of not being trusted by anyone in the family as they’re all capable of doing things if they wish to do. Also, anger is a key theme; each family member seems to express their anger whenever they feel like it. The theme of love prances in the air as they each question each other’s love. When Ruth asks for fresh air, Teddy insists on going to sleep in case anyone wakes up and hears them. From this I can tell that there seem to be a few problems in the marriage with trust. Ruth is overprotected by Teddy causing her to feel unhappy because she is not given space to do what she wants.  The play defeats the purpose of female equality for example, the next morning when everyone sees Ruth and don’t know that she’s Teddy’s wife, they all assume that she is a whore, one of Lenny’s prostitutes after Sam works out that they’ve been up all night together. The Homecoming is set in a matriarchal society where men only see that women are only good for cooking and pleasure; sex. From this I can see that Pinter is portraying feminism.

Soutra Gilmour, the production designer, designed a simple red frame around the stage along. I felt that the idea of having a plain and uncomplicated set was to get the feeling of timelessness; a sense of present living in the past. For example, when Teddy returns home after an absence of six years, he returns to a place where nothing has changed. The house, furniture, lock on the door, his empty bedroom, and his family are unchanged. It is as if a world where all the action has been unchanged for generations. I thought that she did a great job at having a simplistic design because each furniture on stage stood out to the audience which was very effective. The door with the unchanged lock stood out to me the most because it was a gateway to freedom and I think that was a strong symbol in the play. It was very clear to me that the grand chair was the father’s chair because he was the only one who sat in the chair and when Ruth sat on it, the men looked at each other thinking ‘She just sat in Max’s chair!’

Richard Howell, lighting designer, contributed to the play to setting the mood and atmosphere in a scene. I thought the lighting was very successful in intriguing the audience for example, the naked light bulbs pulsing at different moments and the music being played live and not on a recording, made the atmosphere so tense that even the audience were scared to know what’s going to happen when it stops. Another example was that the lighting was adjusted to show a sense of mood and tension was when an actor would step onto the stage and the lighting would go back to normal. I thought this stood out and was a fun special effect to see as it made the character the centre of attention because the spotlight was on the character on stage. Lastly, the lighting was used to establish the different times of the day.

The costumes represented the person they were, in this case they were all middle classed. From the way a person is dressed, you can tell what status they are for example, for someone who is working class you can immediately see that they are poor and wear scruffy clothing whereas someone who is high class is wealthy and is neatly dressed, covered in expensive jewellery. The use of cigars on stage showed the theme of masculinity; I was quite curious as to if they were real cigars being smoked on stage. This is a health hazard that should have been discussed however it worked really well in the play.

Overall, from what I saw of the play, I thought that it was very well directed and it was clear that it had a deep meaning. The cast did a wonderful job of keeping that same energy going when they performed as they had to perform again that same night for a few weeks. I’ve been to see a few plays myself such as ‘War Horse’ and ‘Othello’ and they have all got a similarity of maintaining their characters throughout the play and remembering their lines. However, for musicals, not only do they have to memorise their lines but they have to memorise their dance moves and have a clear throat for their singing; they have to maintain a lot of energy. I enjoyed watching ‘The Homecoming’ although at times it left me quite confused because I didn’t understand some of the words they would say. I think having Gemma Chan or Keith Allen in the play was a successful thing because they are both quite famous actors who enjoy what they do and also Harold Pinter is able to gain popularity from the public to watch it; they are people’s inspiration. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite understand most of the play so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone around my age because it is mostly for the people who are older and much more mature so they’re able to relate and understand the storyline. 

Evaluation on Our Country's Good

The researched I carried out on the play helped to understand the play and my character even more as I’ve never seen this play before and I didn’t know what my character was like so I researched the play and my character. I watched YouTube videos of people performing my scene and my character to get the idea of who my character is and what she is like. I used my own interpretation of my character including Stanislavski’s techniques which I found very useful when researching because I found that it helped me develop my character more. For example I used the technique of Emotional memory where I thought of a moment in my life where I was in Mary’s position and so I adapted to it to make my emotions realistic. Each of the characters in the scene had an objective, a purpose and mine was to help Dabby Bryant and Liz Morden with their lines. The subtext and motivation helped me to make my character more realistic because I could look into specific words and I could find the meaning behind it such as when I say ‘I’ll teach you the lines’ to Liz Morden shows how determined my character is to help her learn her lines.  The motivation of the text makes you think about the emotions you need to stimulate your actions. Overall, the play is based on convicts who supposed that they could take a turn in their life to do something good so they decide to put on a production as they believe starring in a play will help them achieve their goal. This links with Stanislavski’s teachings of believing that when playing a bad character you should find the good in them and vice versa.

I fell as if I’ve developed the skill of physicality in my play for example, throughout rehearsals when Dabby says to Liz ‘..you can’t read’, Liz (played by Stephanie) would quickly attacked Dabby (played by Dulce) by pulling her hair and I needed to run in to break them apart. I needed great timing of when to come in and speed and I believe I’ve achieved that. In addition, I focused on my vocals and tried to articulate the words to make it clear to the audience what I am saying. Even though Mary is quite a shy character, I still used a clear loud voice however with my body language and the emotions on my face I portrayed a shy character.

The collaborative piece with the musical theatre students went fantastically considering we didn’t have much time to prepare it. This brought us together as a performing arts industry. At first, I didn’t think that our Greek Theatre plays would go together with the musical theatre’s movement piece but once we got it all together it managed to work really well.  I believe for me working with the dancers gave me a good experience and idea to use in the future. However, something that could’ve gone well and that we needed more rehearsal time on was the timing of the piece and where the positions for people were. It seemed as if some of the parts were slow and people were confused as to where they should stand.

The ‘Our Country’s Good’ performance went very well as we expected however a couple of pauses and mistaken lines but the audience didn’t even seem to notice. As a group, we worked very hard trying to interpret different ways of performing our play such as doing the play in one emotion; anger. I feel that the relationship between the characters in my group was very strong, it was clear that Dabby seemed to have more power over me and when Liz enters, Dabby’s power over Liz is challenged as they are both stronger characters than Mary so they both try to overpower each other. Another thing I felt was strong was, our facial expressions were strong when reacting to some of the things one of us were saying for example, when Stephanie tells me to read the script instead of her I question her and she used put on an annoyed and irritated facial expression because I was asking too many questions and didn’t just do what she said. This is also an example of the theme of power in the play. We managed to interact with the audience as they seemed to love Stephanie’s character as we got lots of laughter when Stephanie kissed her teeth at Dabby and when I called Dabby a whore the audience went ‘ooooh’. Some things that could’ve gone well was Jireh’s entrance as Ketch, we didn’t rehearse him coming in from behind us and putting his arms around Stephanie and I but we had to go along with it. It seemed a bit awkward but we managed to pull it off. In rehearsals he was supposed to come from downstage right and have his back to the audience so the audience can see Dulce, Stephanie and I clearly forming a type of girl power against Ketch even though we don’t really like each other. Overall, the use of voice was very clear from every person in the group, and the interaction with each other worked very well for example the cat fight. We all stayed in role even when there were slight pauses, we managed to skip to the other line and carry on for example, when Stephanie forgot to say one of her lines I skipped to the next. The use of space and levels of characters worked very well for example, Dulce started off sitting on the floor daydreaming and later on standing up.

The production elements of sound and lighting were successful. Hopefully in the future when we do another performance, we are able to use a wide range of lighting such as red or blue. It seemed quite dull and basic. I think what we need to develop is our movement because I noticed some people couldn’t really stand still and danced about which showed they were nervous. Also, our vocals needed working on as a few of us didn’t really project and articulate their words correctly so it made it hard to the audience to understand what they are saying. To improve this we would need more vocal warm ups and tongue twisters. If we were to take this production on tour I think having costume and more props would introduce the setting of the scene and to show who these characters are. For example, to show a character that is poor, they would have torn clothing and look dirty whereas for a rich character their clothing would be the opposite. Finally, the idea of us wearing all black didn’t reveal which character we are playing because we all looked the same so it was harder for the audience to guess who our character is.

Throughout this term, I think that I’ve improved a lot. At first, it was mostly quick skits to play together so we can get to know each other and we’ve all become a great team in working together and supporting each other. I believe I’ve worked better on my vocals especially my articulation due to the tongue twisters we say over and over again as a class for a warm up. Also, I’ve now realised how important it is to have an objective for your character in a play because without one you wouldn’t know what your character wants to achieve. At the start of the term, I set a few targets/goals for myself and one of them was to be more confident when talking to people because when I’m acting on stage I have all the confidence in the world because I am not myself but when I am myself I tend to be quite shy. However, I do get a bit nervous but I’ve managed to reduce that to not being so nervous and just relax because it causes me to forget my lines. My goals for next term are working with other people who I don’t usually socialise with and deliver many successful performances.


Here's the video to our performance:

Greek Theatre Essay

Greek Theatre

Firstly, for the first term we have been studying Greek Theatre to observe the different between drama performance back then and how different it is in the modern world. Moreover, we were set in groups to perform either ‘Oedipus’, ‘Trojan women’ or ‘Antigone’. Secondly, in the second term we have been looking at a different genre of theatre, we’re exploring ‘Our Country’s Good’ with a practitioner; in this case it’s Stanislavski.

The Ancient Greece Theatre was built in the 7^th Century (700BC) and is situated in the City of Athens. It is a significant theatrical culture, political and military powered during this period of time and is part of a festival called Dionysia. During these festivals, men and boys would honour their gods by performing songs and acting to welcome their god, Dionysia. Tragedy, comedy and satyr plays were the three theatrical forms. People viewed them as separate genres for example, satyr plays dealt with the mythological subject in comedy and Aristotle’s Poetics shows the perfect structure for tragedy. In addition, tragedies were often about the past and actors wore dark colours, whereas comedies were more likely to be about current and everyday life and actors wore bright colours.

Ancient Greek theatres were very large; they were built in a semi-circular shape with rows of stone seating around it and open-air structures on the slopes of hills. The shape of the theatres had excellent viewing for the audience and they could hear the actors very clearly. Theatre buildings were called theatron.  They consisted of three main elements: the orchestra, the skene, and the audience. The orchestra is a large circular or rectangular area at the centre of the theatre, where the play, dance, religious rites and acting would take place. Another part would be the skene which is a large building used as backstage behind the orchestra, this was a place for actors to change their costumes and masks. The final part is the audience where up to 15,000 people are able to fit and the smallest of sound can be transmitted to any seat.

Actors wore large masks that exaggerated facial features and emotions for the audience to see. Masks worn by Greek actors had large holes to help amplify their voices, making their words easier for the audience to hear. The masks showed the audience what kind of character and actor was playing such as sad angry or happy. Tragic masks carried sorrowful and pained expressions, whereas comic masks were smiling. The Greek term for a mask is persona which was a significant element in honour of Dionysus at Athens, most likely used in ceremonies and celebration. Actors also wore costumes such as thick-soled shoes in tragic plays that rose them above other actors however if they were in a comedic play, they’d wear thin soled shoes. Some actors wore padded costumes to make them look fatter or stronger depending on what their character looked like. They also wore wigs to portray their character. The arts, such as music, singing and poetry, played a huge part in Greek festivals.

My group’s play was Oedipus and we took our time going through the script and just trying to make out what is going on, what is being revealed throughout the scene by my character, Jokasta. The main theme of our scene was love relationship between Jokasta and Oedipus and a feud relationship between Creon and Oedipus. Creon wishes to claim Odeipus’ thrown after being told that he must die however, Oedipus believes that Jokasta’s brother, Creon had snitched on him which causes an argument between the two men where Oedipus calls Creon a traitor. Throughout my monologue the theme is about death and tragedy as I am revealing something that no one has realised before, this is shown when we find out that Laios was killed at a cross roads where three roads meet. During my monologue I tell the story of what a prophet once said to Laios causing him to die which is an example of the theme of death.

Our Country's Good Essay

Our Country's Good

In our second production, we had to explore the techniques of Stanislavski. Our Country’s Good is a play written by the British playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, who he adapted from Australian writer Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker, which is based on historical facts. It was first staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 10 September 1988; the play is set in Sydney, Australia. It explores the very nature of theatre. The story concerns a group of Royal Marines and convicts in a penal colony in New South Wales. In the 1780s, convicts and Royal Marines were sent to Australia as part of the first penal colony as a punishment, who were mentored by an idealistic young officer – Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark. The play shows the different class systems and explores various themes such as sexuality, the Georgian judicial system and punishment. Keneally in his novel imagines what might have happened and creates a convincing picture of the colony and its citizens to make it an unbelievable project. Whereas Wertenbaker is more interested in telling a story rather than drawing themes from the actions like Keneally does.

Most of the characters in the play are based on real people who sailed with the First Fleet; however characters in the play have had their names changed. Also, the personalities and views of some of the characters don’t match details from the First Fleet. The timescale of the events has also been changed in the play.

One of the themes in the play is the Georgian judicial system; this was the hardest system in Europe. Many prisons in Britain were overflowing due to extremely harsh sentence for criminals from the public. The public weren’t concerned about giving severe punishment to major crimes such as murder but wanted sever punishments for those crimes committed against property such as theft.

Thomas Keneally thought of making Lieutenant Ralph Clark director of the play. In reality, Clark strongly disliked the convicts, specifically the behaviour of some of the woman, which he thought-out to be immoral. On the other hand, he had a relationship with a convict named, Mary Branham who is also known as Dabby; they had a daughter together, he named her after his wife, Alicia. In the play, Ralph’s objective is to stop the play however Captain Philip tries to convince him to carry on with the play.

I was given the character, Mary Brenham who is a shy character and the objective of Mary in the play is to help teach Dabby Bryant and Liz Morden their lines. She feels insufficient to play a noble lady, as she is ashamed of having sold herself to a sailor on the ship for food to feed Dabby and her husband.  With my group, we’ve worked together in rehearsals to develop our characters more and find their objectives in the play. We played around with the text and characters by exploring with different emotions for example, when I say ‘That was different. That was love.’Dabby Bryant, who is played by Dulce, calls Mary a whore but she doesn’t want to admit that so I act quite annoyed with Dabby for talking about the tattoo on my leg and I’m trying to explain to her that I’m not a whore for something I’ve done out of love. I use the gesture of crossing my arms and turning my back on Dabby.  Also, I emphasise on the word ‘her’ when I say ‘No. I have to be her.’ to show that I am very dedicated and want to do my best in the play. Later on when Stephanie comes on stage (who plays Liz Morden), my character acts quite scared of Liz because she is violent towards everyone but when Liz asks for help, Mary sees a soft side to Liz and helps her. 

Individually we all have different feelings towards each other such as Liz and Dabby hate eachother and Mary is the innocent peacemaker however, when it comes to the end of scene eight when Ketch Freeman comes to talk to the girls, we decided as a group to make all three of the girls come together and be against Ketch.

Why do I want to be an actor?

I always thought of acting as a place where I am free without being judged. I love the sensational feeling I get standing on stage and being able to pour out all my emotions that are hiding inside of me. Acting helps you to explore different personalities to fit different characters, however to make it more convincing to the audience you’ve got to add originality to your character such as some parts of your personality.

Ever since I was young I was always told I was confident because whenever I’d hear the word ‘drama’ and ‘acting’ I’d get super excited but I’ve never believed I was as confident as people say. I’d always get someone else to ask for help for me for example, if I had a question for a teacher or if I knew the answer to a question, I would never put my hand up. In addition, I’d always try to find an item that I need in a store myself rather than ask for help. I guess I was just afraid of judgement. I still am.

As an actor you get to live with the imagination of the story rather than the idea given to you, you are creative in the way you work with yourself and others. Having a passion for acting connects you with people who enjoy acting just as much as you do, you’re able to socialise with new people through acting on stage. Also, watching movies brings people together because you’re able to steal ideas from a movie to put into your own play and be creative together.

Overall, acting is just fun. It’s a great way to get together with everyone and enjoy yourself. Acting helps me become someone I can’t be in reality and that’s why I love it.

Medea

When we were introduced to Medea we noticed that it was a different type of text to what we normally did. We were put into groups of 2-3 and we had to read the sections we were given by Sharron and split those sections into lines for each person in the group. My group had a section of being the voice of Medea. In my group there was Dedan, Segun and I. We all picked out the lines we wanted to say and we put it all together.

During one of the lessons with Sharron, we were given 5 minutes to practise our lines with our group before we came together and sat on the floor to read the whole script together.  Firstly, we started off by normally reading our lines without looking at the script to test our memory. Then, we stood up and in chronological order and we said our lines using clear voices and our diaphragms. This was to help us practice our articulation and projection.

After practising on Monday’s lessons with Sharron, we were told we had to put our own interpretations of the sections into a whole group performance for our assessment. We were all quite confused as to how we were going to do that. In order to get used to the stage directions and the balancing of the stage, we played a game to get to those stage directions. Sharron was shouting out the stage directions and we had to run as fast as we could as a bundled group. This informed us on where to go and memorise the staging. Then we got together and came up with ideas of how to combine these little sections into a whole script which in my opinion was quite confusing. Due to the fact that there were about 23 of us in that room it was hard to get ideas in because we were all speaking over each other and others weren’t concentrating so it got a bit frustrating but in the end we managed to come up with a performance ready for Sharron to see and assess.

I thought that our performance wasn’t as neat as it should be because it was quite last minute as on the day of the assessment nobody knew we were even going to be assessed. There were some students who hadn’t learnt their lines yet so they had no choice but to use the script which made us look unprepared and unprofessional. Moreover, the transitions weren’t quite clear to some of us however we all managed to remember our positions throughout the performance.

Lion King Review

On the 18^th November, the Year 1 and 2 Musical theatre classes and some of Year 1 drama class went to the Lyceum Theatre in Covent Garden to see the Lion King. It is based on the Disney animated movie. I thought that it was a truly inspiring theatrical experience and I felt as if I got to connect with the characters because I personally love Disney films so being able to see it in a theatre live was just a whole new experience that I extremely enjoyed. However, I was sitting on the upper stall looking down on the stage and I didn’t really like where I was sitting because people were In the way of the stage and I couldn’t see most of the show. If I was seated at the bottom I would’ve gotten a better glance at the show.

I thought the skill of the puppeteers was absolutely stunning.  I could tell that Harold Gossington who played the loveable Zazu, had practiced very hard with being able to move the puppet and act like a bird. Furthermore, what connected the Lion King to change it to make it more modern to suit with the current event was when Zazu sung the song ‘Let it go’, which is a very popular song known by all from the award-winning animated children’s film ‘ Frozen’. This connected the audience with the character.

I felt that the strongest character was Mustafa who was the Lion King. This is because he adapted the way a lion moves by using his whole body and the way he would open out his chest to show that he dominates over all the other animals.

In the end, we got the chance to meet the characters Zazu and Nala. Harold Gossington mentioned a struggle he had which he then managed to do perfectly after a lot of practice which was being able to open the puppets mouth whenever he had to say his lines. All the props were amazing to see and I could tell that there had been lots of work put into them to make them seem as realistic as possible for the audience. I loved how passionate the two characters were of their animal and being able to perform 8 times a week shows that they are dedicated to what they do and are willing to carry on.

Overall, this was my first time seeing Lion King in theatre as well as on television as an animated movie. Personally, I thought it was an amazing experience and I loved every song, every joke and every character in the play and I’d love to be able to see it again but more closer to the stage. I recommend anyone of any age to go and watch the Lion King in theatres as it will bring back your childhood memories of watching it at home on television but this time watching it live in front of you.

Stanislavski's Techniques

A few examples of Stanisklavski's techniques:

·         · The given circumstances are the information about the character that you start off with and the play as a whole. The actor should ask themselves questions like: How old is the character? What’s their situation in the play and in relation to the other characters? Are there any notes provided about the play and its characters?

·        · Emotional memory is when the actor finds a real past experience where they felt a similar emotion to that demanded by the role they are playing. They then ‘borrow’ those feelings to bring the role to life.

·        · The script of a play is called the text. The subtext is the actual meaning and motivation behind the lines that are spoken and the actions taken. For example, saying “I love you” is just a text however, it can have many different meanings.

·        · The magic if is a technique where the actor puts themselves into the character’s situation. The actor should ask themselves a question such as 'What would I do if I was in this situation?' and the character would answer it.

·      ·    An objective is the reason for our actions. The character should ask themselves ‘What are we trying to achieve?’ in the play; there can be more than one objective for a character.

Konstantin Stanislavski

Stanislavski’s real name was Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev but he adopted the stage name of Stanislavski from an actor whom he met in amateur theatricals in 1884. Born on January 17, 1836, in Moscow and died on August 17, 1938, at the age of 75. Stanislavski grew up in one of the richest families in Russia; he was the son of a rich industrialist. His family loved the theatre and he was able to indulge in amateur theatricals. Stanislavski started working in theatre as a teen, going on to become a thespian and director of stage productions. His classical education included singing, ballet, and acting lessons as well as regular visits to the opera and theatre. Beginning in 1888 he directed and acted in performances for the Society of Art and Literature, which he had founded, and he continued these productions until 1897 under the sponsorship of the Hunting Club. As a serious theatrical practitioner, he made careful notes and evaluated his work; he was to write major texts on the art of performance. Some of his major texts were: My Life in Art, An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, Creating a Role.

Stanislavski met Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, a successful playwright and teacher in the Moscow Philharmonic Society School.  They both founded, The Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 and developed a performance process known as method acting, allowing actors to use their personal histories to express emotion and create characters.The theatre was both successful and hugely influential in the world of theatre. The opening production of Alexey Tolstoy’s Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich was a popular success because of its realism. Realism was a 19th-century theatrical movement, seeking to portray real life on the stage. Stanislavski was a committed follower of realism throughout his working life. However, naturalism is often used to refer to the same things but it can also mean the belief that a human character is formed by what they’ve inherited from their family and environment. Stanislavski was committed to realism throughout his career and came to stand out against the scientific idea of naturalism. Experimentation on realism and naturalism was his key approach to theatre.

A few ways to present realism by Stanislavski is:

·         · The fourth wall is set of a realistic production will be solid and three dimensional. The performers present the action realistically, without using techniques such as addressing the audience, which presents an illusion of real life being played out.

·      ·    Everyday conversations and style of speaking in a realistic play would use non-rhythmic literature and ordinary language, rather than a wide range of vocabulary.

·      ·    The use of ordinary people presents realism as the stories are generally about people who are more defined as middle or working class.

·      ·    A carefully rehearsed acting style that creates or confirms the impression of reality.

·         · A carefully distilled representation of real life that is still theatrically effective.

·      ·    These plays are set in realistic contexts. They won’t have fairy tale or fantasy settings and are likely to be contemporary.

Evaluation of Greek Theatre

After a few weeks of rehearsing for our Greek Theatre pieces, our performance day came and we were all excited to show off our work and our acting skills to a new audience and new teachers.

The strengths in my performance with my group was that we helped each other by directing one another to improve our performance. For example, in the beginning Zulaiha was just standing on stage throughout the play and would only step forward when she had to deliver her lines and we changed that by make her move around the stage more in order to interact with other actors in the group. In addition, a few days before our performance day Zulaiha was absent and couldn’t attend the rehearsals so as a group of 3 we managed to work hard on developing our own characters and going over our lines with each other just to be confident with ourselves and ready for our performance day. Some of the things we did to develop remembering our lines and some of the words in our script was to work on our articulation and pronunciation of some of the words for example, a few of us found it hard to remember the pronunciation of the word ‘Thebes’. This is because we don’t use those types of words in the modern day. Moreover, the weaknesses in our performance were using more facial expressions. For example, in my monologue I revealed a lot of information and in rehearsals when we worked on my monologue with the help of Rob, we cut it down and evaluated each part and noticed that my character Jokasta was revealing bits of information about who Oedipus was to Jokasta and what happened to his father, Laios. As a group we directed Jireh to using a wider range of expressions such as being confused and shocked and I would use the expression of being confused and inside feeling quite sorry for Oedipus.

Our whole drama class had done a great job working very hard during rehearsals and with remembering lines. We all enjoy what we do as aspire to be brilliant actors and very dedicated which is a very important thing in the acting industry as it helps us get work done to the best of our ability and help others succeed too. After every rehearsal we would give each group feedback on how to improve their play and some of the strengths and weaknesses in their plays which is very helpful. One of the groups didn’t really feel that they could connect with their Greek play so a really fun and interesting thing that one of the groups did (Joseph, Peter and Marion) was change their Greek play and try to make it into their own which made their performance unique to the other groups. In addition, for Joseph’s monologue he decided to use some of his own personal skill of rapping into his monologue which was a great idea as it is something that the audience of young teenagers can relate to also they could finish the induction with a fantastic finish.

The Musical Theatre class put on a great performance, you can tell this by the amount of work they put into their performance to make it in time with the music, dancing and the singing. However, at times it was obvious that they not all put in the effort as the whole group was no in sync with each other which are a weakness as it let down the group making it look quite messy. Overall, it was an enjoyable performance to watch. The level 2 drama performances were all intriguing to watch because as an actor you are able to examine the way some things were performed and you could steal some ideas for any future performances. All of the groups made it clear what the theme of their play was about. They all had great projection however some at times were quite hard to hear especially because I was sitting at the back of the theatre so I was struggling to understand what the actor on stage was saying. The whole of the stage was used well by all of the groups, not one group performed in a corner, they were all centre where the audience can see clearly. 

One of the groups had decided to show it’s a new scene by using black outs, this is a very good idea however a weakness was that the audience was confused as to what is going on and the scenes seemed too short so there would be a blackout every 1-2minutes and it lost the audience’s attention. Another weakness in another play was that some of the actors came out of character which is a very powerful thing and can be spotted immediately for example, the actor was talking about weed and got a reaction from the audience so they came out of character which affected the whole group as it lost its meaning of what it was trying to teach us. Personally, I thought that the music performances were fantastic with recreating popular song and adding originality such as their own raps which sounded amazing. However, a weakness that could be easily spotted was that not all of the groups used their popular song and play around with piece to show that they can be creative.

 Overall, all the performances, Musical Theatre class, Level 2 Acting class and the Music class, on induction were brilliant and you can tell they worked hard and worked to their ability to performance an outstanding first piece. Audience’s reaction differ on type of performance for example, at a music gig, the audience are lively and can get involved more depending on if they are familiar with the type of music being played which they can relate to, whereas for a drama performance, the audience should be quiet because noise can distract an actor on stage who is concentrating and being in their character and if someone’s phone goes off this will cause the actors on stage to lose confidence and come out of character. The engagement of the audience depends on if the audience can relate or not, if a modern piece in drama was performed then many will be able to relate in contrast to Greek Theatre which has challenging and unfamiliar words to our modern world.

Mark Gatiss

On Friday 16^th October, we got the experience to get tickets to a masterclass at a theatre with Mark Gatiss. He is an accomplished author, actor, comedian, screenwriter and novelist. He is in the award-winning comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and is involved in the television series of  "Doctor Who" scene, having written a variety of novels and audio plays (most of which he appeared in). He has co-written two plays for the Edinburgh Festival and appeared in a number of theatre and radio shows. In addition, he co-created and co-produced Sherlock. From the questions being asked and the answers Mark Gatiss gave I thought were important for me and to anyone whose aspiration is to become an actor.

One of the questions asked was ‘What is your favourite thing about being and actor and your least favourite thing?’  Mark Gatiss’ most favourite thing was meeting new people and working together also to him it is very important to share a laugh. On the other hand, his least favourite thing was that the experience doesn’t get less terrifying in terms of, the experience rarely having any challenges to face when it comes to playing a new role. An interesting fact about Mark Gatiss is that he has been a Doctor Who fan since he was a child, and is now one of only three people to both act and write for the show. In addition to other television shows he had helped direct, he helped write two episodes of Game of Thrones and was once asked “Who should be on the iron throne?” – Mark Gatiss answered by saying himself.  Mark Gatiss mentioned that he loves to collaborate with other and believes that it is a very good and important thing in the industry. Moreover, when writing, Mark Gatiss has empathy of past icons in order to make his piece of writing more realistic. One thing that Mark Gatiss said that stood out was that to be able to write about a specific generation, you have to be living it to be able to write about it.

Report on the National Theatre

Brunilda Haxhijaha         

UAL

Professional Practice

On Friday 18^th September, both drama and musical theatre groups went to visit backstage at the National Theatre.  The four theatres at the National Theatre are the Olivier Theatre, Lyttelton Theatre, Dorfman Theatre and the Temporary Theatre. We were lucky enough to be given the experience to tour all four of the theatres backstage which was magnificent. 

The Olivier Theatre was named after Laurence Olivier, who was the first director of the National Theatre. In addition, the Olivier is the largest of the three theatres at the National. It has one temporary theatre which will be taken down in 2017. The Olivier has a concentrated intimacy. It’s in a shape of a semi-circle with a total of 1160 seats. The architect specifically designed this theatre so the span of the seats matches their effective span of vision. He gained this inspiriting form the Ancient Greece. However, there have been a few minor adjustments because of the location in the area. 

The theatre was built so that it has an 118^oC peripheral vision which gives the actors a view of the audience within the compass of the eye. Moreover, the Olivier has a special feature that isn’t in any of the other theatres at the National. This feature is the tower where many objects or props that are heavy or difficult to transfer onto the stage and it can be replaced. During one performance, an actor was lifted from the tower and then required to drop to make it as believable as possible.

The Lyttelton Theatre was named after Oliver Lyttelton and Viscount Chandos. It is a facade theatre (the arch that separates a stage from the auditorium).  Also it is a small television style theatre, you can hear and see almost equally well from each of its 890 seats however, it does not have the excellence sight and acoustics like the Olivier theatre. At the time that we attended, technicians were adjusting the lights with the help of a cross formation with numbers 1-11 to help them to position the lights for the next performance. 

Another thing technicians can do is they can make change the stage and make it into an open-end stage; add a forestage or create and orchestra pit for musicians. The architect thought that the National theatre should have a classic design so he set the Lyttleton theatre to be his first and last design.

The Dorfman Theatre is a rectangular room and is the smallest theatre in the National which can hold up to 450 people. However, it has been reconstructed to have a greater capacity in the theatre including better and flexible seats that are more comfortable for the audience to sit on. For almost every production, the seating is different to fit the actor’s point of command. The seats can be folded away completely to become a flat floor.

From this experience, it was a pleasure and an amazing experience being able to tour the National Theatre.  Also, I've gained a lot more knowledge about the National Theatre that I didn't know before for example, the National Theatre was opened in 1976 and the Temporary Theatre is to be taken down in 2017. I would love to have the opportunity to come back and watch a play in each theatre.

Letter to Oedipus

Your Majesty, Oedipus

I feel terrible. I’m so sorry you were accused of killing your father, my ex-husband.

The city wants you dead because they believe that you’ve killed Laios however, I know that he was killed by strangers at a crossroads where three roads meet.

We need to make people believe us. Believe you. You did not kill Laios, Laios was not killed by his own son’s hand.

We must speak to the city, to the world. The Gods know it’s not true, they know what happened to Laios.

I don’t want you to die. I love you.

                                                                                                         

                                                                                                               Jokasta

Class

At the start of every lesson, my drama class began with warm ups of the body and the mouth. We would all come into a circle standing neutral with our bags and coats tucked away in the cabinets. We always checked our feet to make sure that they were parallel with our shoulders, our backs were up straight and arms down by our side so we don’t fiddle with our hands. Usually we imagined that there was a string hanging from the ceiling attached to our head to help us stand straight or we were imagining as if we were holding heavy shopping bags to keep our arms down by our side and not moving.

Another warm up we did was expressing our vowels and consonants such as ‘K’, ‘G’ and ‘T’. This benefited us with our pronunciation and articulation of words for example, saying ‘Th’ in a word instead of saying it as an ‘F’ like the word ‘Three’. Usually people would pronounce it as ‘Free’ because they’re not articulating properly.  By doing this, we were able to control our breath at any pace and help sustain our diction. This was useful for our Greek play we were doing where the words and phrases were different to the normal modern language so it was a challenge for us all to pronounce words. When we breathe in our stomachs go out and when we breathe out our stomachs go in which means that it is the result of our lungs expanding in order to sustain long breaths and have good projection in our voice. From doing this you will know that most of your vocals are from your diaphragms instead of your vocal cords because they can strain and hurt. Moreover, in order to help with our articulation we did tongue twisters such as ‘She shells sea shells by the seashore’ and ‘Red leather, yellow leather’ repeatedly three times.

First Day at College

In the beginning, college seemed exciting to attend but quite frightening too. I feel as if I started a fresh new life surrounded by the diversity of the college and the different personalities of the people in the college. Being able to socialize with people I've never met before and learning new things about them and about the college is just fantastic and I love it. 

On the day of my audition I was quite nervous and uncomfortable because I didn't know anyone at this college apart from a few in the year above. 

I was a stranger to this college but being able to still have confidence and perform my monologue to a different group of people instead of the same people in my secondary school. 

I'm very thankful that I made it into the college as I am now able to do drama full time as it is my passion and being able to work with others who share the same passion and are very enthusiastic. So far, I am enjoying my classes and I can’t wait to see what the college has in offer this year.