Weeks 5 - 8

The day started off with a few vocal warm up exercises and a game of ‘Yes, Let’s…’ then we were put into groups of six; I was with Zulaiha, Sally, Josiah, Jireh and Tarkan. We thought of the idea of coming up with a story by saying one sentence and then your partner will continue your sentence. From this, we created a piece of theatre which we rehearsed a few times and cut out any unnecessary gestures and actions we didn’t think were needed in the piece. The next day, we sat in a circle with our groups and brainstormed ideas for what our workshop should be about. We were told it was a workshop for GCSE drama students. I suggested to start off the workshop with a name game to get to know the students in the drama class, then we decided to play a game of splat. After the game, we’d get into an exercise where we split the class into small groups and appoint each group with a well-known actor at which point they would create a 30 second fragment of a movie of their choice to then perform to the class in which they had to guess the name of the actor and the movie. After all the brainstorming, we tested it out on the class to see if our ideas worked out well in which they did. On Thursday, we each went round and evaluated each groups workshops and gave feedback on what went well and what could’ve be done better. The main feedback that was given to my group was the fact that the class really enjoyed the last activity with the actor and the short trailer which really helped use their brain. However, for the name game they didn’t particularly like so much because it was quite tedious and they suggested we make it more lively and fun by adding to it. I thought the feedback would really help in the future when we officially start our devising pieces with our assigned groups.

After having two weeks off college for half term, we came back to finally start off our devising. We were put into chosen groups for devising and we allocated jobs for each other then we began brainstorming random ideas about what our devising pieces should be about for our performance to secondary schools in January. In the image below you can see that I was assigned the role of doing the research of where the schools are situated and managing what transport we would need to take:

As a group we all liked and agreed on Tarkan’s idea of a crime mystery theme and we decided to name our devising piece American Noire. Our devising piece is based around two English detectives who are sent on a mission to America to solve a very difficult crime. We jotted down some of the styles of performance we would like to use such as physical theatre, flashbacks, props and set and make-up. We discussed what characters we would want to have in our piece and we each came up with our own names for our characters. We then later discussed what activities we would like to do in the workshop and a few of us came up with the idea of playing ‘Wink Murder’ to set the theme of the play. In addition, we came up with the idea of staying in our characters throughout the whole workshop because we thought this would be quite unique and a way for the students to look forward to our devising piece/

During the last two weeks, Dulce had written a finalised script and we began highlighting our lines, rehearsing and finalizing scenes. Tarkan went ahead and bought a few props for the detectives and the forensics which was really helpful because we could use them during our rehearsals instead of having to pretend it’s there. After everyone agreed with the way the script was set, all we had to do next for the half term is learn our lines and think about a few techniques we could add. The final week of devising, we performed to the rest of the class as a draft to show them what we had been working on. After watching everyone else’s pieces, we sat in a circle and gave each group feedback on things we really enjoyed and a few things that could need improving. For example, with my group, the class really enjoyed the ending of our play because it really got them to think as they were only given one chance to guess who the murderer was and whoever they chose, the characters had to give a short monologue talking about whether they are the murderer or if they are not. However, something we could improve on was having more depth in our character by developing it more and thinking about their backgrounds and their relationships with each other.

Weeks 1 - 4

After a long holiday, the first week of year 2 started and we partnered up and we talked about one thing that happened during our holiday which was a great way to re-connect and just ask how everyone’s doing. With our partner we had to memorise their story and get into a group of 5 and tell them your partner’s story then we were given the task of re-enacting a story and we decided to go with Peter’s story told by Chris. We were given 10-15 minutes to talk about it and to rehearse it so we can perform to the class. After our performance, we were given feeback by the audience which was to create more dialogue between characters because it looked quite awkward on stage and to not talk over each other as much considering we had a divided scene where there was more action upstage and more dialogue downstage. On Tuesday we were given a brief introduction about what year 2 would be like by Mike. Then, later during the day we had a talk with a member on staff who came to talk to us about UCAS accounts and Universities. In addition, we were then given an explanation of what we were going to do for the rest of the year. Wednesday was quite a short day because Rob wasn’t in so all we did was join the musical theatre class and watch Peter Pan on Netflix. We were also given the script to read. On Thursday, we sat in a circle and read through the whole script with the musical theatre class.

The second week was different compared to the first week because we started a new topic on Devising and last week we did Peter Pan which is the show we’re performing in December. We were split up into groups and we were given quite a lot of time to come up with a story about anything we wanted. In my group there was Josiah, Stephan and Tarkan and we decided on the story consisting of a school drop-out who wanted to pursue his dream of being a rapper and getting signed by the biggest music producer. However, he goes down the wrong road and ends up drug dealing and getting sent to prison for 5 years.  In Rob’s lesson on Wednesday, we watched a Brekt video and Rob set us an assignment to do by December. Later in the afternoon, we joined the musical theatre class and we got into groups and drew a brief plan/draft of what we think the setting, music, props, characters, costumes etc would be. Thursday was the day of auditions and we had to prepare one monologue that we believed would suit our character and I chose to do Tusk Tusk by Polly Stenham, it’s a play based around young children and because I wanted to be the character Michael, I thought that that play was perfect.

In the third week, on the Monday, we were given a quote, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” and we were put into groups of 4 and we had to create a short play based around that quote. My group decided on basing the story around a shopkeeper who walks into an off-licence shop and a homeless man walks in and begs for some bread but the shopkeeper say no and the homeless man gets a gun out. We decided to make the end of the story multiple choice for the audience to interact, the first choice was for Josiah to either leave the homeless man to rob the shopkeeper or the second choice which was for Josiah to intervene. The audience decided on choice two and Josiah ended up dead. Even though that was supposed to be the end of our short play, the audience determined to see the other choice so we showed them which none of us wanted to show because it created suspense and it left the audience thinking what could’ve happened if they picked the other choice because in life you can’t go back and re-do it, you just have to move forward. In the first choice, the shopkeeper went for the silent alarm under the desk and the homeless man shot her. Either way they both got shot. On Tuesday, we continued on with our story however this time we were given the task of created 3 tabloids showing the most important parts of the story. The first tabloid was a still image of Jireh begging for money to Chris and Josiah buying a chocolate bar from the shopkeeper. The second tabloid was Jireh beginning the shopkeeper for money and the third tabloid was the shopkeeper lying dead on the floor, Jireh holding a gun and Josiah and Chris being very shocked. The last thing we did was a physical theatre which had to be really melodramatic. The first time we did it, we were told it was too naturalistic and it looked boring so I came up with using the third tabloid and having Josiah as the bullet coming towards me and Chris came up with the idea of making it slow motion by having a trust fall to show my death which worked really well.

In the fourth week, Rob gave us a task of “what is a model student?” and we could come up with anything we liked. In my group, we decided to make it as cliché as possible, we first set it in the classroom and I was given the role as the “model student”. My character really liked Kieran however Zulaiha was flirting with him which made me really jealous and without realising I had reacted and my books fell on the floor and the whole class was looking at me. The next scene was super cliché but fun to do, Kieran and I walk towards each other pretending not to see each other and he bumps into me and knocks my books out of my hand and we both go to collect them and I accidentally put my hand on top of his making it an awkward moment as we look into each other’s eyes with Jireh’s romantic music playing and flashlights around us. The scene ended with Kieran being taken away from me by a crowd of his friends. The fourth scene was me sitting alone and Kieran sitting with his group of friends who encouraged him to come and speak to me and ask if he wanted to “Netflix” however as the model student I was I turned his offer down and continued revising. The last scene was Kieran having a party and enjoying himself whilst I stayed at home and studied until Kieran told me to come over but I said no and I told him to come over to my house so we can study date and he left his party for me and we studied. Due to the amount of time we had left, we were told to perform our “model student” plays on Thursday.

Evaulation of Last Summer performance

The 19^th of May was our performance and we were all really excited about it. We had two performances that night, one at 2pm for college students and the other at 7pm for family and friends from outside college. I’ve never performed for a full hour, I’ve always performed for 10-20 minutes so this was a challenge for me especially because I was the main character and I was on stage throughout the whole performance excluding 2 scenes that I wasn’t in. My initial thoughts on both of the plays was that they both explored quite sensitive topics that are not spoken about because not many people agree with it or are embarrassed to speak out, especially the topic of FGM. However, my initial thought of ‘Last Summer’ as a play was that it’s hard to share something so personal to your family or your closest friends as we can see from both Sareeya and Jas keeping things from each other and Maisie because they’re scared of the outcome. People are afraid to be judged and that lowers their self-esteem to speak out and change things. As I read through the script, I noticed that there were hints and clues slowly being revealed about Sareeya and Jas after scenes.

Before the performance started, I had a feeling that we would all perform really well and no one would stumble on their lines and I believe that overall the performance went spectacularly well however I felt as if we could hurry up the cues more because it felt as if some of the scenes were dragging. Also, I thought that Grace and Donna were unprepared even though they knew what to do, I felt as if they weren’t clear with their task for example, in scene 2 I was supposed to talk to pedestrians walking by as if it was a shopping centre and they came on really late so I had to improvise and I spoke to the audience. To add to that, there was an awkward moment where they didn’t know how to push the podium into the centre ready for scene 17. It created a weird mood with the audience because I didn’t know whether I should stay in character and wait for them to place the podium in front of me or break out of character and help them so it wasn’t so awkward. In order to seem more professional, I stayed in character and improvised my actions. In conclusion, I thought that everyone did really well and they all maintained their character, nobody slurred any of their words and improvised well when they had forgotten their words. However, from the feedback given by the audience, they felt that we should be louder and position ourselves differently so that all areas of the audience can hear what we’re saying. I didn’t expect for us to get any laughs from the audience because it was quite a serious play whereas if you were to compare it to Pronoun then that play has humour added on purpose to get a reaction from the audience. Also, I wasn’t expecting people to shed a tear in the last scene where Maisie speaks her monologue so I was quite astounded that happened.

From the point of view of being on stage, I felt a bit nervous and shaky because this was the first time I did a big production in the college so I didn’t know how the audience would treat the performance i.e. would they be respectful? Laugh at the right moments? Understand the story?                                I was very focused and put 100% concentration into the performance. I felt as if I knew my lines so well that I didn’t have to think about what the next line was, but I would just say it automatically. I was very confident because this wasn’t the first time I had performed in front of an audience. I think I portrayed the character of Maisie really well; she seemed like a very bubbly and caring person which really suited well with my personality so it felt like I was actually Maisie in real life. Moreover, I think that the play went extremely well and I can’t wait for next year’s final project. I really enjoyed being a main character even though I’ve usually been a main character in all of my other productions outside of college, but I felt that it was a challenge to maintain the confidence to go on stage and perform for a whole hour and remember every single line in the script.

Here's the video to my performance. Enjoy! 

                                        

Final project

For our final performance of the year, we have been working on the screenplay Last Summer by Heather Speake which we have turned into a play. At first the whole class sat in a circle with Heather and we began to read the screenplay, we each took turns to be a different character and speak the lines. This was a great thing for us because we had the advantage to ask Heather questions about why she wrote what she wrote and to tell us about the characters in the play whereas Pronoun didn’t have the advantage to meet their play write. One of the questions that was asked in the circle was “Did you create the character of Maisie to be yourself?” Heather kindly answered by telling us she didn’t and who Maisie actually is. The screenplay Last Summer’s main topic is FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) and Heather spoke to us about why she decided to base the screenplay on FGM and she explained what it is, some of us knew what it already meant and others were quite shocked and grossed out. FGM is a big topic to explore because it happens in many countries such as Egypt, Nigeria, Somalia, Ethiopia etc.

Although we couldn’t search online for information about Last Summer because it’s not a published play, it’s just a first draft that Heather has written; we looked at the main themes the play explored which were FGM, cancer and homosexuality in a religion.

In order for the class to understand more about FGM, we had an hour’s workshop with a woman who came into college just to speak to us about it and to give awareness. During that workshop, the process of FGM was explained and the reason why FGM happens, I learned that FGM is carried out for cultural and religious reasons within families and communities. For example, it is considered a necessary part of raising a young teenage girl to prepare her for adulthood and marriage. People believe it makes you pure and a real woman but all it does is make you really ill. I think having this workshop really helped me with understanding my character more and why she wanted to do everything she could to help her best friend, Sareeya and prevent her mother sending her younger sister to get circumcised.  

For my own knowledge, I researched what some of the symptoms are for brain tumour to understand what Maisie was going through towards the end of the play. I found out that Tonic-Clonic is the loss of control of body functions in this case, Maisie tells her mother that her left leg hurts and it feels numb and weak. This is the first sign that we hear about her cancer spreading. In addition, being homosexual and being Muslim is forbidden in Islam and that it’s going against Allah. At the beginning of the play, Maisie finds Jas asleep on the wasteland alone with a black eye but he doesn’t tell her why he has a black eye then later on when Jas accidentally spills out that he is gay, he explains that his brother and cousin, Bash and Omar beat him up because he told them he was gay.

As a group we didn’t do warmups before we started rehearsing because we were so into starting straight away so we could finish earlier as some of us sometimes needed to leave early or were really tired and had no energy to carry on especially because we’d stay until around 5pm every day just so we could rehearse. However, every Friday morning with Rob we would come into class, stand in a circle and repeat a dance move for 10 seconds for the class to copy and we’d all go down the line. This was a great warm up because it got all our bodies loose and awake so we were ready to be fully energised for rehearsals. Moreover, as a class we would do tongue twisters to help with articulating words so the audience can understand us clearly. In addition, we were all so dedicated to perform a perfect performance and be 100% ready on the day, we all gave up our day off to come in and rehearse every week until the performance.

During rehearsals at first we just read through our lines before deciding on how we were going to set the stage. We thought if we read through it we would be more comfortable with the script and if necessary cut lines out or add lines in. As Jireh was our assistant director, I thought that with his help we got a lot done in rehearsals, although Rob wasn’t there to direct at the start because he was busy with directing and helping the Year 2 Level 2 drama class, we managed to do a lot and then show Rob at times when he was available. When we got our scripts we were told we have until around the end of May to learn all our lines in time for our performance which then was about 5-6 weeks away until Rob announced that we would be performing earlier than the end of May. We were all upset with the late announcement because at that time we had less than 3 weeks to learn our lines, discuss costume and props, and think about how we were going to stage it, and do technical run-throughs in the theatre as we only had a day to do a whole technical run-through . However, we all managed to work really hard and get everything done by then.

At the first rehearsal with the script we were all unfamiliar with the lines and the stage directions so we decided to go through scene by scene and be clear with the stage directions between lines or during line reading. If the stage direction didn’t seem right or the line wasn’t necessary to be said we would all tell our ideas to Jireh and he would confirm with Rob to change a line or erase it. For example, one of the stage directions we agreed to add in was in Scene 1 where Jas sees a spider crawling along his arm was that I run over to cup the spider into my hand and place it onto the floor whilst saying the lines “It’s a distinguished jumping spider. They’re endangered. There’s only about two-thousand…”

At one point during one of the rehearsals, we all sat down at the table with our scripts and a pencil and started going through the script from the beginning. From page to page we discussed as a group which lines to cut out, add in or leave the same. Heather kindly told us that she was more than happy for us to change lines from the script to suit ourselves which was nice of her to allow us to do. We were annotating beside lines and adding an action or an objective for the character so it would be easier to remember rather than trying to remember it and forgetting it after. I think that my character comes across many objectives in the play however Maisie’s main objective was to help Sareeya stop her mother from sending Jamilah off to her aunts. The reason why I think that’s her main objective is because Maisie runs home to get help from her father and begs him to help stop Sareeya’s mum even though he declines to help and tells her not to interfere, her stubbornness helps her get what she wants and her mother decides to stand up for herself and help her daughter. She also runs over to tell Jas about Sareeya so he can help her too but then she sees he’s in a drunken state so she takes him to her house to sober up and be taken care of by her parents. 

One of the words we changed to suit the character of Grandma who we changed to Grandad because the character was being played by a male, Peter. We agreed to change the word ‘darling’ to ‘Maisie’ because we thought that the word ‘darling’ is not a word that would suit Grandad and that he isn’t someone who would overuse the word. Moreover, we changed the original line “Thank you, Grandma. Can I look through your mum’s suitcase and choose that dress today?” to “Thank you, Grandad. Can I look through the other stuff in the attic and choose that dress today?”. The reason we changed this line is because it didn’t make sense as there was no longer a Grandma because we changed it to Grandad and it would suit the situation more if we didn’t mention “mum’s suitcase” because that refers to the Grandma’s mother, in this case we made it as if Grandma had died a while ago and Maisie only has a Grandad from her dad’s side. In the play, we are not aware of any grandparents from her mother’s side because Heather didn’t mention any of that. I think sitting together as a group and working together on the script worked really well, there were no arguments over lines and stage directions which I was very pleased about. We all seemed to agree on the same things to make the play more suitable for us and easier.

 Being the character Maisie and seeing the amount of lines I had in every scene felt like a mouthful, although I didn’t mind learning all those lines but at the time we didn’t have much time until the performance so I don’t think I would’ve been able to learn everything in less than 2 weeks. As a group we decided to cut most of Maisie’s lines that were unnecessary. This really helped me learn my lines easier and in time before the performance. Jireh had the idea of merging scene 10 and 11 together so that we wouldn’t have to keep changing over scenes. We decided to add scene 11 between when Bash takes Jas to a night-club hoping he would be straight again to Sareeya calling Maisie explaining to her that her mother is going to take her little sister to her aunt to Omar meeting up with Bash and Jas at the club miming over the song Blurred lines by Robin Thicke.

In order for my class and myself to understand Maisie better, I was practised being hot-seated as the character of Maisie. In one of Sharron’s lessons we were all split up into two groups with the people in our play and we wrote down questions to ask each other. A few of the questions I was asked were:

What is your favourite food?

Ooh well, I really do love spaghetti Bolognese but I liked the special recipe my mum makes which is sooo delicious. She doesn’t tell me what it’s called or how she makes it when I ask her because she says that it’s a secret for a reason.

Are you as religious as your father?

To be honest, I sometimes don’t even believe that there is a God out there. Jas calls me crazy and tells me I shouldn’t say that but I don’t really care. If it wasn’t for my religious Christian vicar of a father I would probably be an Atheist.

Can you describe yourself in 3 words?

Caring. Adventurous. Independent.

One of the main scenes we focused on during rehearsals was scene 9 which was the longest scene out of all the others. Scene 9 takes over many hours for example it starts with Maisie, Jas and Sareeya at the wastle land in the evening and then they take goes puffing on a spliff and time goes by and they’re stoned staring up at the stars sometime around midnight. In order to make it believable that I was stoned, I worked on changing the tone of my voice by making it quite slow and high pitched to show I’m not thinking straight to be speaking properly. For example, the words “It’s amazing” I thought about exaggerating it a bit and stretching out the word ‘amazing’.  This will help the audience understand how crazy I sound. In addition, when Maisie and Jas begin to talk about God, Maisie gets up and walks in front of Jas and looks up at the sky telling God to strike her down because she don’t believe him. I tried making a point to the audience that I’ve got no control over what I’m doing or saying. For a character whose father is a Vicar and family is very religious, for someone to say they don’t believe in God sounds quite crazy so I had the idea of playing Maisie as if she was psycho and just babbling about weird stuff that she probably doesn’t even mean. The action I used was swaying up and down and losing my balance at times to reveal that in my mind the world is spinning around and I clearly can’t stand still.

Production Design

If I were to design/direct a Shakespearian play such as Romeo and Juliet, I would first start off by researching the synopsis of the play, themes of the play and the analysis of each character. Moreover, I would watch the original play and then others people’s interpretations of the play to steal ideas or adapt the play and make it my own. From looking at the 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet, I would keep the location of the play in Verona, Italy and by doing this I would like the white screen in the theatre to be a picture of a famous street that featured in the original play by Shakespeare. In terms of the language, it would be formal modern-day English with a few famous phrases from the original play such as ‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ and a few others so it can be a mixture of Shakespearian language and modern-day language.  For costumes, I think I would keep the same type of clothing as in the original play however to show that there is a contrast between the Montagues (Romeo’s family) and the Capulets (Juliet’s family) I would like for the main characters to wear big bold coloured clothing such as gold to show their authority in the play so the audience don’t get confused. They would each have a gun as their weapon instead of a sword to make it more dramatic however; I would keep the famous dagger that Romeo stabs himself with. I would keep the lighting at a minimum and only during fight scenes I would like red lights flashing to show danger and violence and for scenes where the main characters, Romeo and Juliet are in a scene together I would like spotlights on them both to emphasize the characters importance in the play. Also, there would be sounds such birds tweeting in scenes with Juliet, gunshot sounds during fight scenes and loud intense music and slow contemporary music throughout the play. As set I would love to build Juliet’s balcony and a tree for Romeo to climb up and reach for Juliet. For props I would like roses to portray the theme of love and romance, guns and a dagger to portray the theme of violence and a bottle of poison as a symbol of death.

Why I chose the role I chose?

Pronoun is a play written by Evan Placey who is a Canadian-Bristish playwright. It is a love story between Josh and Isabella who are childhood soul mates and are meant to spend their gay year together. But Isabella has now transgendered into a boy and is referred to as Dean. This play explores the topics of transition, testosterone and James Dean; a cultural icon of teen obsession with self-image, feminism and social estrangement.

Last Summer is a screen-play which has not been fully published yet. It’s explores the topic of FGM, cancer and homosexuality. The protagonist, Maisie wants to help change The Meadows to make it a better and more environmental place for people to go and plant flowers. Sareeya is Maisie’s best friend who tells her experience on FGM.

After reading the two plays ‘Pronoun’ and ‘Last Summer’, I felt more connected to a character in Pronoun called Laura. She is a very fun and goofy character and I felt as if I can relate as if this character was made for me. Also, it wasn’t as big of a part as a lead role that I had in my Drama GCSE so I was fine with it. Laura’s also a caring character to Dean especially because he’s transgender and she just wants Dean to feel comfortable with who he is.

On the other hand, reading ‘Last Summer’, I didn’t really like the play as much as I enjoyed reading Pronoun. I thought ‘Last Summer’ dragged a bit and everything serious happened in the end so I didn’t really like that. Although it had a very great story about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) which can really educate students, I just thought it was quite uncomfortable doing a play on FGM where not many people know about it whereas Pronoun is on Transgender and that is a more open topic because many people are aware of it. The characters didn’t seem as interesting to me.

 After going around in a circle and telling Rob our ideas on who we wish to perform as and in which play, Rob thought that I’d be better playing a lead role in ‘Last Summer’ as the character Maisie. At first I wasn’t sure because the character Laura seemed a better role for me but looking back at the script and reading through Maisie’s lines, I thought why not give it a shot. I think the character Maisie is a character that is connected to all the other characters in different ways such as being a best friend to Sareeya and Jas, being a daughter to Ruth and John and being a granddaughter to Grandma. However thinking about it, performing the play people will know about it and remember that my group and I were the ones who informed them on FGM.

Evaluation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Shakespeare in Da House

Since my partner and I, and a few other groups didn’t get the chance to perform in someone’s house, I will be evaluating the performance I did on 11^th March.

Dedan and I performed the Shakespeare play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. I played the character of Speed and he played the character Valentine. Speed is Valentine’s servant and Valentine is deeply in love with Sylvia and Speed teases Valentine about it. We both really enjoyed playing these characters and exploring different ways in portraying our character. For example, I tried making the inside joke Speed says clearer to the audience that he’s taking the mickey out of Valentine. Whereas, Dedan explored the emotion of love by changing the tone of his voice at points in the scene to show he has not a care in the world for anyone else but Sylvia.

For costumes, Dedan wore a blue and white suit to show he has higher status and I wore a black blazer-jacket, a white top and black trousers to clearly show that I’m the servant. In our scene, Sylvia loses a glove and Speed finds it to give to Valentine thinking he lost it. The prop that we used was a glove and a love letter that Valentine wrote for Sylvia to read.

Rob directed our positions on stage so there were five groups on stage at once. The only lighting we use throughout the whole performance was a spotlight which was shown towards the front of the audience so you weren’t able to see the other groups on stage covered by darkness. As Dedan and I were first to perform, after we had finished we rotated anti-clockwise until everyone got the chance to perform and we took a bow and the second half of the class came on.

Since we had already performed to the same audience a couple of times we had gotten use to their immaturity and just focused on ourselves. I think Dedan and I performed really well and we told our relation between each other really clearly so there were no confusions. We both knew our lines fully although I missed a line I don’t think we noticed or anyone noticed because they were so into the performance. Personally, I didn’t find the language of Shakespeare very hard in my scene because there were no advanced type language however some of the meaning of the words were quite hard to understand such as “chidden” “follies” and “to relish a Love-song like a Robin-red-breast”.

The skills I have developed are being able to stand still throughout a performance because I would usually dance a bit or fidget with my hands so I’ve learnt to master the art of a neutral position and only move about when needed. Also, I’ve developed my Shakespeare vocabulary and understand a few words.

10 Minute Warm-up

My 10 minute warm-up consists of vocal and physical warm-ups.

3-4 Minutes

The vocal warm-up I will be doing is an articulation workout. Firstly, the students are to move their facial features around so they are nice and relaxed. This helps to get the face muscles working. Then, take the tip of your tongue out and draw small circles 5 times to the left and 5 times to the right. Now open your mouth wider and draw big circles with your tongue.

The next thing you need to do is get the tip of the tongue working so you start of by making D sounds (duh-duh-duh-duh-duh). Make sure to use the range of sound when you’re making the sounds. Now do it with the letter T (tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh). To make it more difficult try rolling your R’s (Rrrrrrrrrrr) – for those who are unable to do this at least give it your best shot.

For the sides of the tongue, start by doing the sound Ay-ay-ay-ay-a. Try this without moving your chin. Now using your face say Yo-ya-yo-ya-yo-ya

Lastly, for the back of the tongue, use 2 fingers to open your mouth (like a gun) and put the tip of your tongue behind the bottom teeth, take the fingers out and keep the space and start making the sound of G (Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga). Try this without moving your chin. Now try it with the letter K (Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka).

Try these tongue twisters after doing this exercise:

Easy: Black background, brown background.

Hard: The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.                                                         (According to the Guiness Book of World Records, this is the World's Hardest Tongue Twister)

6-7 Minutes

The game I will be teaching the class is called The Martha Game and it works best with a large group of 8 or more. The class will be divided into two groups. One of the groups will be the audience and the other will stand in a line alongside a wall.

One person runs into the space, forms their body into a statue and announces what they are for example, "I'm a tree." Instantly the next person runs on and forms something else in the same picture.  "I'm a bench under the tree."

The next person then runs and adds to the picture.  "I'm a bum on the bench.” or

"I'm a dog peeing on the tree." Do this until the whole group is part of the picture. This game is to go very, very fast without putting much thought in – just GO! Once the picture is complete and everyone is an object, tell the students on a count of three to become a moving picture or a moving talking picture.

What makes an Actor?

There are many actors in the world but would you consider someone who has a 2 second part in a film an actor? Or would you consider someone with no acting experience whose parents have the money to get them a part in a film an actor?

These are some of the things that make an actor:

·         Passionate – wanting to do something in the future to do with drama

·       Have been wanting to do drama from the beginning – inspirations/role models

·         Talent

·         Skilful – vocal skills (Change their tone of voice), physical skills, being able to play more than one role in different genres

·         Versatile – adapting to different situations in a play

·         Fully committed

·         Believing in yourself

·         Knowing your goal(s) – what you want to achieve and how to get there

What are drama schools looking for?

There are thousands of drama schools to apply to and they all look for similar things. Some drama schools are more advanced and look for actors who are willing to work at their full potential and be committed. Whereas less advanced drama schools teach students about the life of an actor and skills they need to learn.

Before applying to a drama school you need to do lots of research on many drama schools around your area or further if you wish to move away. Look at their courses and see which suits you best such as Acting, Musical Theatre or Technical Theatre. Most drama schools have a three year course and if you want to apply then you’ve got to ask yourself – am I ready to commit three years of my life to something I’m passionate about?

Entry requirements

You can find the entry requirements on the websites of your chose drama school, however they only give you a brief course outline and a list of names of successful alumni who graduated. In order to find out more information, many drama schools have open day events for you to see the school, meet staff and get an overview of what the three years in the course consists of. To get the full experience, attend a few plays or musicals performed by final year students from different drama schools; this is useful as it demonstrates the quality of teaching and professional guidance given from that particular school.

To expand your knowledge on your options of drama schools, research and gather a list of actors whose work you respect or you inspire from and are known to be good at what they do. These graduates might inspire you to join that drama school and become like them.

Audition and Interviews

In order to get yourself an audition for a drama school there is a price to pay which is usually around £50. You have 3 rounds and the last round is either accepting you, recalling you or telling you that you haven’t passed the audition. No matter how talented you are and no matter how much potential you possess, if you are not organised and fully prepared, the chances are you will fail.

You might think drama schools only want you to learn a classical and modern speech for your audience. Unfortunately it’s not that easy. You should prepare three contrasting dramatic pieces of your own choice lasting up to 2-3 minutes:

·         One from a classical play (such as Shakespeare, Jacobean or Elizabethan)*

·         One from a modern play  (after 1956, 20^th or 21^st Century)*

·         One should be a contrasting piece from any period.

A piece written by you or by an unknown or little-known author is unacceptable.

*The time periods depends on the drama school so be sure to check what they ask for you to bring at an audition on their website

Choosing a speech

- You should select a monologue that is age appropriate for you and allows you to express the uniqueness of who you are. Choose a piece that you feel comfortable in playing or have always known to be good at doing.

-          Think about the things we consider when discussing "type": status, energy, personality.

-         - An audition monologue should be active and in the moment, not a character telling a story or a memory. Choose a monologue in which the character is clearly pursuing an objective with another character as opposed to just telling a story.

-        -   Don't do a self-written monologue but choose a well-written piece from a play, and be sure to read the entire play so you understand your character, the situation, the relationship and all other relevant details.

-        -   There's nothing that ruins an audition more efficiently than delivering a monologue that's one long, shouted, angry rant or nonstop weeping. Neither yelling nor crying are impressive so choose a monologue that gives you the opportunity to show off your skill with transitions. Transitions is where good acting happens, you don’t have to include a transitions but if you don’t have a couple of good ones in your monologue, then it’s harder to tell that you’re a good actor.

-          - Don't choose pieces that are full of graphic violence, sex or offensive language. This gives a bad taste at an audition and can sound irritable hearing swear words a lot.

‘Be you when you walk into the room. Be you doing your speech. Be you when you talk to the panel people. Be you because they want to meet the true ‘you’ and see a considered, focused, in-the-moment speech.’ (Source: dramauk.co.uk)