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.