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.
