East End Tales Evaluation

East End Tale Evaluation

On Thursday the 12^th of February 2015, my theatre class performed our East End Tales performance to our family, friends and teachers in one of our theatre rooms at school. It was performed in a unique way- instead of having backstage, there wasn't a backstage and all the actors were always on stage leaving us no time to break out of character. I enjoyed this topic because it was a different approach to acting, I got to test my physical theatre skills as well as developing them and learning not only new skills about theatre, but I also learnt new facts about the East End and how their community is in East London.

Style of the show

Toward the end of this project I did start to enjoy working on East End Tales. At the beginning I wasn't enjoying it because I found it hard to use physical theatre. As an actor, I find it easier to communicate through speech when I act so it was a real challenge to try and use my body instead to portray to the audience the tale.  However what I did instantly like about the play is that it had been written in a lyrical style. The play we studied was interesting because it wasn't written as dialogues between people and it was natural acting between people. Instead it had a lyrical flow and was more interesting for us to work with as a theatre company. Another thing I liked about the play was that it didn't have a plot in a story; it was just different scenarios of the East End, which was unique.

Ensemble work

My favourite part about this process was working as an ensemble. For this project we worked as an ensemble. I loved this because I got to work with other people and this project was also helping us to develop and test our communication skills and leadership skills. For example in Tale 1 it was an “all girls” tale.  This helped us to communicate with other people we wouldn't usually talk to in the class as well as helping us to work as a team and corporate with one another. In this tale we had to listen to other people’s ideas and never say no to an answer so this way everyone’s ideas were incorporated into our final piece. Also our class had to work closely to each other during this play, for example some tales when we used weather or noises or love, we had to be closer than we normally would to each other. In a way this project has really bought our class closer because we have had to work closely to each other. This has enabled us to feel comfortable with each other and hopefully everyone in our class now feels able to share their ideas with the class, as we have now had a project where it was helping us to develop our communication and team work.

Physical theatre

In this play we used physical theatre. This means we used our bodies to act and we didn't necessary always have to talk to the audience for them to understand what we were saying. This I thought was a new approach to theatre- previously in my old school, we had studied physical theatre, but not to this extent. Studying East End Tales has helped me to learn and expand my knowledge in theatre and I have learnt new ways to approach acting. You don’t always have to talk to the audience, sometimes let them work it out for themselves, and this can be more interesting and captivating for the audience- this is why I enjoyed this project.

Multiple roles& Story-telling & narrating

In this play we were not given specific and individual roles. We had multiple roles which we had to research and develop ourselves (which helped us develop our independence skills). This was quite hard as we had to think about how each character felt and act out different roles which was difficult because we couldn't focus on one character.
Story-telling throughout the piece was interesting, fun but also challenging at the same time. This was because, usually when you act (unless you are performing a monologue) it is a natural dialogue between two people on stage, therefore you do not consider the audience to be there, however when you are story-telling you have to actually acknowledge the audience and you have to talk to them so they are being told the story you are performing. This was fun because we got to involve the audience- however it was also difficult because it was sometimes hard to remember to look and direct my words at the audience when I was speaking because I am not use to story-telling.

Minimal use of props & changing of location

The idea of not being able to use props kind of shocked me at the beginning because props are such a useful and obvious thing in acting. You always see people on stage with props such as chairs or a table or a bag etc. But with East end Tales we weren't allowed to use any props. This was difficult at first because we had to use our bodies as props. Although, I did enjoy this challenge because it was a new and different was to act and I taught myself how I can use my body and voice as instruments.
Like I mentioned before, in East End Tales it wasn't a continued plot and the location and mood kept changing throughout. Therefore we had to change our location each time a new tale was introduced. I quite liked this idea because this was another time we were given to use our creativity. To change our locations between tales our class reformed ourselves into a V-shaped and done some key movements to describe the East End with some background music and each time we did this between tales it would set a neutral atmosphere for the audience to witness something new.

How did I use the play script to create and develop ideas?

I used the script a lot to help myself use physical theatre. For example with things such as weathering- I used the script to help me set the atmosphere of the tale. We were put into groups for our individual tales as I informed you on previous blogs. And in my group we used our script to set the scene. At the beginning of our tale 4, it mentions the weather of the scene, therefore my group decided to use our bodies and voices as instruments to create noises for the atmosphere in the tale. I used my script to help me to understand the atmosphere of the East End.

Development

At the beginning of this project our play was going terribly because everyone found it hard to approach physical theatre. However throughout this process on East End Tales we were able to develop our use of sounds and physical theatre and we also worked on group work and individual work which helped us to put our performance together. Also our use of research also helped us to create a good physical theatre performance. During this, I have learnt how to work well in an ensemble and I have developed my creativity and physical theatre. One thing that I learnt as my weakness is role of character, it was hard for me to find each character’s motive and I had to do a lot of research which took a lot of my time, so I had to make time to explore each of my characters. During East End Tales we I had to learn how to manage my skills. Rehearsals, focus in the classroom and learning my lines- I had to balance all of this to make my performance the best of its ability.

In the end our show really came together, although we were panicking that it was going to fall apart because everybody kept messing up during our ensemble lines, some people hadn't managed their time very well and most of us hadn't finished our individual tales on the day of the performance, it all came together and the performance was performed very well and slick. I am pleased with my performance and when our class did perform our ensemble lines it really sounded amazing as everybody’s voices and tones came together which gave moments of volume and captivated the audience.

Thursday 22nd January 2015

Thursday 22^nd January 2015

In Thursday’s lesson we worked on Tale 3 which is the ensemble Tale. This is where everybody is involved on the stage. My group consists of; Ellis, Gloria, Phoebe, Cameron and myself. Our group are East End plasterers & decorators. We made this as a class look really good as we said some words as a whole as well as dividing the lines out between the class. For example, some word we say as a whole company: “A bit of everything”, “Yeah cheers, London pride!” and “Looks like snow again dunnit” and we also had individual lines as well for example, my line is; “And then he’ll ask you for credit”. This is going to look effective to the audience because when one person is speaking it makes the audience focused to one person, however as soon as the whole company speaks it snaps them out of their focus and they realise the whole company is talking which gives the tale volume and good ensemble work. In my group I contributed ideas such as, what actions we could do for this tale. For example, Gloria, Ellis and I are painters and I suggested using different levels so that it made the staging look more interesting. I am on the floor painting the lower wall, Ellis is painting the middle of the wall and Gloria is painting higher on the walls. Cameron and Phoebe are decorators in this tale and they are standing up opposite each other decorating the walls.

After we worked on tale 3 as a class, we focused on the taxi prologue we started shaping last week. In this lesson my group decided to perfect as well as add improvements to our actions. This lesson we learnt and memorised all our lines and added in levels as well as running through our whole stanzas without scripts. We got our teacher to look over the work we had created and she gave us some tips for improvements such as: facing the audience, because we are telling the tale to the audience not each other. Therefore we took this into consideration and made sure we staged ourselves so that we are diagonal towards the audience.

At the end of the lesson we worked on our individual tales with our small groups. My group is (Natasha, Stacey, Max and Cameron). We have now finished our tale 4. We got our teacher to look at our Tale and Miss gave us some great feedback! Miss told us that she thought we included some great sounds of weathering and also great use of physical theatre and creating the emotions and background objects. However to improve Miss Lee told us to have a moment of silence to create suspense for the audience. This was really useful feedback for our group because we developed our tale further to make it better.

Thursday 15th January 2015

Thursday 15^th January 2015

This lesson we focused on Tale about the Taxi man. We were put into groups of roughly 8 and had to make a routine that lasted for our part of the tale. We had to make actions for each person. We got into a diamond shape and when someone spoke they would be at the front of the diamond. We kept changing positions in the diamond. Whenever someone new spoke they had to create a new action to describe a typical East End taxi driver. My group was; Michelle, Raneesha, Thiago, Chris, Zach, Clement and Nancy. We divided our group into two so on one side it was Michele, Clement, Zach and I. We made up our routine and whilst we were performing ours the other side of the group would be in freeze frame. After we said our part, the other group did their lines and then we crossed over. I thought this looked very effective because it made it eye-catching to the audience as they looked somewhere different every time. I contributed many ideas to my group’s performance, for example I gave my opinion to have two mini-groups and I also decided to cross over.

Our group has finished our piece and we have made sure we know our lines and we also included ensemble work in our piece. We had individual lines and lines where we said things as a whole, for example; “youknowwarimean?” In my group we included levels so some people were sitting on the floor some people were crouching and some were standing up straight, therefore it gave the audience something interesting to look at. Our group understands that we must co-operate with each other and nobody should dominate what and what not to do. Everyone is free to give their opinions and ideas and we all co-operated in putting our piece together.

Something our group needs to work on is our spatial awareness. Our stage is quite small to fit everyone on stage in their positions for this tale as the whole of our theatre company is on the stage at this moment. Our group is in the middle of the other two groups so it is hard for us to use our space when we are squished in between two other groups. We need to work on how we can make our actions less big so that we don’t look squeezed together and that it still looks good. We can do this by looking at different positions to stage ourselves.

Also we worked on our “all girls’ tale”. This is going really great! Our group have nearly finished our tale. We need to sharpen, perfect and finish this tale and then I am very excited to perform it. We used a lot of physical gestures in this tale and we all listened to one another and everybody contributed to the group. My idea that I suggested (that is in our piece) is the part where Nansi talks about the physical features of the man we are describing, “Spikey hair, mixed race, bit of stubble, but unemployed.” For this my idea was to physicalize the man’s hair. So our whole group gathers around Nansi and act as her hair. This is effective to the audience because they don’t see us as people anymore, but they see us as hair, which can be a different view on theatre/acting.

Three things we will develop as a group in our “all girls’ tale”

1.       We will finish our tale and we will also make the ending effective and eye-catching.

2.       We will develop our use of physical theatre so that we always have a theme of physical theatre.

3.       We will make sure everyone has an idea that we have included in our tale.

Thursday 18th December 2014

Thursday 18^th December 2014

What decisions did we make when we were planning our all girls’ group performance?
All the girls worked really well together. Everyone listened to others’ ideas and everyone contributed in the conversation and decisions we were making. No one said no to an idea and we all helped each other understand and perform to our best ability. In that lesson, we didn’t finish everything we wanted to, however we did get some work and ideas down of what we are going to do for our performance. We have a basis on what our tale will look like.

We decided to give everyone approximately 2-3 lines each, therefore everyone would have something to say. We made a shape like a diamond with everyone involved and we added group actions to make the piece effective. This would be effective because it would be as if the audience is watching one person move. We made sure that the person who spoke next was not next to the person before so that the audience would have to keep looking in different directions quickly, this would keep them captivated in the performance and they’d always be watching and wondering who’s going to speak next.

What is working well?
Our communication is working well, everyone is able to speak and everyone listens to other people. Also another thing that is good in our team is our ideas. We always have new and exciting ideas to help make our tale really good and interesting for our up and coming audience.

What needs improving?
To improve I think our team needs to be louder and at the same level of performing, because some people weren’t putting enough effort into the acting which let everyone else down which was a shame. So for next lesson I think everyone needs to try their best and get more involved and speak louder, so our audience will be able to hear.

What section are we going to focus on next?
Next lesson we are going to work on practising adding more physical theatre to our tale e.g.: actions and body language. Also we are going to give out more lines to people and set the rest of our tale.

How are we communicating it in Physical Theatre style?
We are doing this by involving our bodies in our tale; we make sure we include lots of body language and not only use our facial expressions but communicate to the audience through our body. This is helpful because it is exploring new types of theatre and can benefit our learning and understanding of different areas of theatre. In our group we include actions with the words we are speaking to make it more interesting and understandable for the audience.

How are you delivering the lines?
When we are speaking we are speaking how our character would speak. Our character isn’t very quiet, she is outgoing and speaks with a purpose. This is why we make sure our voices are loud and meaningful.

What ideas do you have for staging the rest of your tale?
We haven’t agreed on how we are going to stage the rest of the tale, however I would like it if by the end of the tale everyone is spaced out from each other and not all still in the diamond shape, because this will show all the different sides that the ‘East End Person’ will have to it. Everyone says different things about this person we are creating of the ‘East End’ so to be spaced out from each other by the end of the tale shows the ‘person’ has different sides to him and different emotions etc.

 

Thursday 11th December 2014

Thursday 11^th December 2014

My monologue I performed in class was the one in my other blog:

“So I was born in Bangladesh. Me nan and that still live out there. Moved ‘ere when I was what 18? 19? Sum’ink like that. Became a cab driver- driving ‘ere and there, round and about. I travel round the ‘ole of East End you’know. I love my job. Sorry, sory, you see people fink I wtalk too much. Can’t help it, its how ive always been. Got a baby on the way. Wanna call her Lilly, wanna know why?

I once ‘ad this old lady about 80 odd. She wan’ned a lift somewhere. Poor woman I could tell she was really desperate she was scared- bless her. She ‘ad some young boys behind her absolutely pissed outta their brains swing bottles round their heads lke hoolagoons. (impression of the boys) So you’know done her a favour, and gave her a lift back ‘ome.

You see this lady was so, so, so inspiring to me.  She taught me a lot about life that I never knew in my 38 years of livin’. She helped me control my anger. I have anger problems youknowwarimean?? But it’s not my fault- I swear and I apologise deeply if anyone ever has to witness my anger.

The problem is that when I was a child my dad was abusive. He used to hit my mother badly, he used to smash (stand up and throw chair across room) her against the wall and pound her until she was bleeding from every paw. He was a drunk. An abusive drunk. And as soon as my mum had to go into hospital, it was my turn. He did the same to me. That’s what the scars are from. Him. You see, I’m just a broken child. A scared, broken, little child.”

 

Question 1
What choices did you make when staging your monologue?  Think about how you used your voice and physicality.

When staging my monologue I made sure my character was quite cut off from everyone. I made sure my character was in a corner alone. This helped show that he didn’t feel involved with everyone, he felt like he was different. This staging I used helped the audience understand that my character wasn’t very confident and wasn’t in charge as a main role in the East End society. My voice had an average tone which showed he was a typical east end man and my physicality was mainly casual which showed he didn’t have a lot of authority and wasn’t a main man around town.

 

Question 2 How did the monologue task help you to understand the play further?
The monologue helped me understand the play further because it helped me get a background to the man I was playing. Having a story behind his character helped me to create a basic understanding of the role. It also helped me develop my acting skills of being an East Londoner. Studying and practising my body language and voice helped me to develop a better and wider understanding of the East End and how people talk and act around there.

 

Question 3 You performed and watched your peers' work:
What monologue performed by a peer worked well and why?  What had they written about?
My peer, Max, had written about the lady that had been abused by her partner. His monologue was really good and he used a range of voice and projection. This was great because he could be heard by the whole class and his tone of voice showed his emotion. However to improve he could have added more body language to make us feel his characters pain. Also he could have learnt his monologue off by heart so it made it more realistic to his audience, because most of the time he was looking at his paper.

Question 4 Who performed their monologue successfully and why?
My favourite monologue performed was by Frankie. Her piece was amazing! And I was always engaged in what she was saying and doing. Although she was only standing still in one spot and just shuffling on her feet for the whole of her monologue, it was extremely effective because she made sure her tone of voice, body language and hand gestures were effective, and she succeeded. Her monologue was about the lady whose partner died (the woman who bought cigarettes from the corner shop). She created an amazing background story on this woman and her ideas for it were fantastic. I found myself with my mouth open quite a few times during her performance, not because I was shocked or surprised but because I was effected and moved by her performance.

 

Question 5, 6 & 7

You then continued to work on your tale in your groups.
What was effective about how you brought the characters, atmosphere and location of your tale to life? How did you use the Physical Theatre style? What ideas do you have for staging the rest of the tale?
We bought our atmosphere to life be showing levels our piece showed that the woman was upset because not only our facial expressions were sad but our heights were lowered to show her sadness. This is because in everyday when someone is low and isn’t tall it is usually because they are in a bad mood and this was an easy way for the audience to tell the mood and atmosphere of our scene.

Like always my group like to include a lot of physical theatre into our scenes. This time we focused on making the shape of an eye, as the text was about a woman’s eye and how she was so upset. We tried to bring the eye to life and make it as abstract and physical as possible by using our bodies to try and create an eye. Although our piece didn’t go as we planned, it was still a very unique and individual idea and we might change our idea a tiny bit to make the piece look more believable and understandable, however we shall try and incorporate as much physical theatre as possible not only because we enjoy it but because we want to try and train ourselves to be better at physical theatre.
I am looking forward to continuing our East End Tales because I want to include more abstract and physical theatre to our tale. Next week I hope to include a range of theatre skills to make my piece as effective as possible.

 

 

Thursday 4th December 2014

Thursday 4^th December 2014

Task 1- Monologue
So I was born in Bangladesh. Me nan and that still live out there. Moved ‘ere when I was what 18? 19? Sum’ink like that. Became a cab driver- driving ‘ere and there, round and about. I travel round the ‘ole of East End you’know. I love my job. Sorry, sory, you see people fink I wtalk too much. Can’t help it, its how ive always been. Got a baby on the way. Wanna call her Lilly, wanna know why?

I once ‘ad this old lady about 80 odd. She wan’ned a lift somewhere. Poor woman I could tell she was really desperate she was scared- bless her. She ‘ad some young boys behind her absolutely pissed outta their brains swing bottles round their heads lke hoolagoons. (impression of the boys) So you’know done her a favour, and gave her a lift back ‘ome.

You see this lady was so, so, so inspiring to me.  She taught me a lot about life that I never knew in my 38 years of livin’. She helped me control my anger. I have anger problems youknowwarimean?? But it’s not my fault- I swear and I apologise deeply if anyone ever has to witness my anger.

The problem is that when I was a child my dad was abusive. He used to hit my mother badly, he used to smash (stand up and throw chair across room) her against the wall and pound her until she was bleeding from every paw. He was a drunk. An abusive drunk. And as soon as my mum had to go into hospital, it was my turn. He did the same to me. That’s what the scars are from. Him. You see, I’m just a broken child. A scared, broken, little child.

Task 2
In our scenes in East End Tales, my group is very abstract in our performing and we like to act emotions, weather and the atmosphere more than a realistic scene between people. So for each of our performances they are mainly acting out the atmosphere and we do this by using our body and instruments. For example; patting our feet to create a drum noise or using our mouths and voices to create rain etc. Therefore our performance was quite effective and it was mainly up to the audience of what they interpreted the performance as. Three skills we used in our piece were sound, body language and abstract theatre.

Task 3
We communicated our sound and movement by using our body language and voices as instruments to create different atmospheres and sounds. This was effective because it was something different than to acting I have performed in the past. I enjoy acting more abstract theatre because I find that you can incorporate dance and music with the theatre and I enjoy music and dance as well, so it is very fun and energetic.

 

 

BLOG- Thursday 27th Novemver 2014

Thursday 27th November 2014

This lesson we focused on Tale 8 and were put into groups of 5. My group was Raneesha, Zac, Chris and Natasha. Tale 8 was about a girl called Michelle who liked to be alone, she was the lioness of the town and no one messed with her, her place where she liked to stay by herself where nobody went was down a dark alley way surrounded by tall dark buildings. We had to highlight all the point is Tale 8 that described the weather, atmosphere or location.  Examples of words we highlighted were words like “death”, “eerie”, “hailstones”, “thunder”, “darkness”, “alley” and “tension”.  After we highlighted all the words in the Tale, we decided on a scene to develop it further. We chose the stanza “Imagine. There’s a clap of thunder. And suddenly you’re in the wrong place. It’s early. Eerie. Just before sunrise. And hailstones bombard the darkness.”  We were asked to focus on the weather, atmosphere and buildings to create our scene. We made sure our stanza had a lot of keywords that we could develop. For example; “thunder” and “hailstones”.

We then shared our work with the class, my favourite group was Michelle’s group because their piece was really effective and created a lot of tension inside of me. The sounds they used were quite minimal; they had a narrator reading the stanza whilst others made the occasional bang or thud. Which was good because it wasn’t too much noise so it made the scene quite mysterious. The movement was slow and this was effective because it created tension and suspense. They also moved as one, they looked like they were the alley-way and they were the buildings and including this, made me feel like I was in the alley-way with Michelle. The work kind of made me feel sorry for Michelle because she was so lonely surrounded by not people but litter and tall dark buildings, it made me feel isolated and alone. Further developments for this group would include adding slow motion to each transition made the piece even more believable and effective. Hardly any groups done the same thing, mostly people chose different stanzas to work on and every group had a new and different piece to share, I liked this because it showed me that everyone has a different view on the Tale. It definitely has an amazing effect on the piece than just reading it. Just reading it without adding any acting I’d say would be quite boring and it wouldn’t interest me but acting it out in a more abstract way and including sound effects really catches my eye and I am instantly more captivated the just reading the text.  

After that exercise we moved into another group of 4, and read Tale 6. This Tale was about a man and a woman who were talking about their life in a pub, however this man is very scary and everyone is scared of him, he is obviously violent as it describes in the text, however he has a soft spot for this lady and they talk about his past and hers. We had to draw the outline of the man and write down all the emotions and feelings he has inside of him as well as his appearance and what other people say about him. We developed the scene where it talks about him getting done for dealing the day before his daughter birth; this was an effective part to develop because it contained a lot of emotion that we could show through our body language. We used skills such as; body language, facial expressions and vocals. Our character had a harsh voice to show his power and anger inside of him however he had moments of cracking and becoming his softer and caring side where his voice changed and became less harsh and his body became less broad and became more shy and closed.

We then shared our work with the class and the other group’s performances were great! My favourite group was Gloria’s group because their piece was very effective they developed the stanza where the narrator is telling us that he doesn’t want the man to hit the woman and telling us how much tension there was in the pub at that moment. At the beginning of their work I was instantly drawn. It started off silent with only the voice of the narrator talking, four people were walking around Amaia who was stood up on a chair- obviously playing the man’s character- this was obvious to me because their use of levels. Because Amaia was standing on the chair it showed me her character had the higher status and was in control and more important than the others. This scene helped me get a better understanding of the man in the scene because it told me about how he has a temper and is the boss.