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.

BLOG- Thursday 20th November 2014

The exercises we done in class today helped us to develop our East End accents. The first warm-up game we played was called Zip Zap Bong. With this game we included our East End accent. Everyone talked like they were from East London which helped us to practise our accents for our performance. Another exercise we done was more of an improvisation game.  In this game two people were given a scene to improvise. This was a good way to test our improvisation skills however our scenes mainly consisted with the environment of East London streets.

Later on in the lesson we were put into groups of 4. I was put into a group with Logan, Thiago and Stacey.  We were given Tale 1 which was about a young, 18 year old mixed race boy, and we had to draw a figure of a person on an A3 piece of paper and we had to write down all about the boy’s emotions, personality. We learnt that this boy is 18 years old he is mixed race and is very hot. He has a good body and he is sporty, he has spiky hair and a bit of dark stubble. He is unemployed, however he does go to college, but he stills prefers to go and play football of play station. However this boy had a dark and secretive side as well, when he lived at home his dad used to smoke and was abusive towards him. So he hates cigarettes because they remind him of home. He moved out of home at a young age, he became very independent and grew in to a scary, hard character who could stick up for himself. He looks like a scary character who no one should mess with however deep down he is a broken child who needs to be loved because he wasn’t loved in his childhood.

With this tale our group had to make up 4 images that we repeated to describe our characters emotions and physical descriptions. We included 2 physical descriptions in our piece of theatre and 2 emotions. Our homework helped us with this exercise because we got a better understanding of East London streets, so we could include our research on our character because we could relate it to the research we gathered.

With our character we included his cockney accent. When we acted his emotion we made sure we showed it through our body language and facial expressions. This helped the audience understand the feelings the character was feeling, including height and levels in our piece also helped give the audience a better understanding of what we were trying to perform. When we showed the emotion of insecurity and depression we made our levels lower and isolated.

All of the class groups performed their pieces to the class; my favourite group was Amaia’s. This is because even though Amaia (small and a girl) played the part of the boss man (tall and a man) she still used body language, voice and facial expressions to show the sex of the person and the personality of the man, that he was in charge of everyone and he was the boss of everyone in the town.  It was effective because you could see clearly who was in charge of the scene and who was the man person (even if they weren’t talking or didn’t use words) we would still know Amaia was the boss through her body and face. There wasn’t too much going on in the scene either it was easy to understand and it was quite comedic.

This scene helped me get a better understanding of the man in Tale 3. I learnt that this man was in charge of everyone; everyone was scared of him and done what he said when he told them to, no one back chatted and no one argued because they knew he would beat them up. He was scary and he likes his character too much, he had a big ego and was filthy rich.

What I found interesting on The East End Tales

Thursday 13^th November 2014

Today, in class we were given our scripts for the up and coming play we are going to be performing. My group got given East End Tales 4. We read through our scene and started to put our scenes together, having a different narrator for each stanza.

The things that I like about our scene and working on this project is that the tales are written with a rhythmic pattern, all the stanzas have a beat to it and I like this because I love music. The play has a beat which makes it a different and unique way to perform a play. Not many plays have a script written out like this, most plays just write a story with no rhythm but this play has a rhythm which can also express music and dance as well as theatre. I also like working on East End Tales because you get to work with the cockney accent. I was born in East London in Whitechapel and I like the idea or performing something from where I was born because I can find out more information about my birthplace as I only lived there for a few years.

At the moment I don’t really have any reasons to dislike this project because we have only just started working on it. I think I will need a week or two to decide if I am enjoying this project or not. Currently I am, and I am finding it very interesting to work with. I am looking forward to the future lessons to discover more about the play as well as about the East End.

I think this play is going to be challenging to perform because it isn’t only lines you have to remember, it is about remembering the beat and the timing of your lines as well. For next week, my group and I are going to focus on creating and developing our scenes to create an atmosphere of the East End. I will also be working on my tone of voice to make sure that when I say my rhythmic lines they sound like I am from The East End.

5 Facts on The East End

Thursday 6th November 2014

5 Facts on the East End

• The East End is the North of the River Thames
• In the East End there was a lot of crime committed for example; theft and no police force operated in London before the 1750’s
• East End was where people such as Jack the Ripper and the Craig Brothers committed their crimes.
• Entertainment in the East End mainly was theatres. Inn-yard theatres were first established in the Tudor period (1557)
• Brick Lane. Brick Lane is an extremely famous street in East London. This is where I used to live as a baby. I was born in Whitechapel Hospital which is just down the road from Brick Lane.

These facts can help me get an understanding of the East End and this will help me to include this information and ideas to my tale and my character. I watched a video about the east end and this video helped my to understand the community and society in east London, which I can later corporate in my tale and help stage my tale.


The play "East End Tales"


This play was set in the East End and perhaps my idea is that the writer

had seen life in the East End and had noticed things that were happening in our world today, he wrote the play in a way of expressing how our world is changing fast and scary, in the play he informs his audience about crime, loneliness and abuse. These are common things that are taking place in our society.