Group sequence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yT1Ds_qQBM 



Here is a video of my groups washing line sequence. When watching it back we decided that our actions needed to be stronger and more clear as it looked a bit messy. We decided to stick to the same sequence here but put more energy into it hence making it more visually dynamic to the audience.

Beginning, Middle

We started rehersals by devising the beginning of the peice, we started by turning to our right and coming through the boys, holding our babies in our arms (bundled up shirts) and looking out to the audience. This scene was to represent all the women who had been left at home, with fatherless children whilst husbands where at war. I learnt from devising this section that by having people on different levels the audience get to see each individual actor, contributing to a more visually effective peice and by deciding to have some of the girls on the floor kneeling with their child and some standing with the boys at the back we could acheive this.

After that section we unfolded the shirts slowly and placed one sleeve on our shoulders and one sleeve held in our hand this visually created the idea that we where dancing with our husbands. In this section we hummed along to the song "keep the home fires burning" which Leanne sung once before we all started to hum along with her. This created an emotional atmosphere, which was extremely useful for all of us as we could respond to the mood and really perform a peice that could emotionally touch the audience. Being silent and focused enabled us to get on with our work and feel more connect to our characters. 

We then devised a smooth transition from the opening scene to the physical washing line sequence. From the dancing with the shirts, we danced into position forming a line of the girls at the back, holding our shirts up. Following Chloe and Kat, we shook out our shirts which was then a signal for the boys to lift the washing lines up. Next we decided that the boys should shout "Attention!"  this would be a que to run into position. This then led to the girls moving positions on stage, we did this to allow all of the groups scripted scenes and sequences to be seen by the audience.

Woking on Group Pieces

At the beginning of the lesson we split into our separate groups and worked on a new piece to add to our promenade theatre . We began by splitting into girls and boys. The boys began to devise a piece based around soldiers mannerisms, so they began to think about what type of clothes they would be wearing, how they would put them items on, how where they feeling ?

The girls split into groups, Me, Isabella, Rosie and Tsion worked together and created a short scene based around four women all dealing with men in their lives being in the war: Libby, Madeline, Agnes and Alison. Agnes (played by me) knows that her husband Henry has died in war and hasn't told Libby, Madeline or Alison yet, she is bitter, cold and cannot seem to sympathise with Libby, Madeline or Alison who are all missing their husbands/son. We wrote up the script and created a  small scene just to start to get an idea of the staging of the piece which will be improved as we research into the 19th century more especially on women.

We then performed our peice to the others and gained feedback. The most useful feedback was from  Ellis who said that we should research into the way women spoke in that period. I thought this was a good piece of feedback as I'm not sure how my character should speak, so this will help develop my character into a realistic woman of the time period.
We then watched the boys pieces, I liked Daniel's piece but felt there was too much in it, Isabella suggested to him to keep it minimal and just shave which was a great improvement once he began to put the suggestions made into practice. I learnt from this week that simpler is better because doing something over complicated can look messy and confusing, whereas doing something simpler enables you to define it and make a small idea, something big.

Working on Promenade

In today's lesson we prepared more ensemble pieces for the promenade performance. We spent the first half of the lesson learning how to waltz, we will use the waltz to set the scene of WW1 to the audience at the beginning of the peice. We created a waltz scene in which the people who where most confident to do the waltz where partnered up and put in the middle, I was partnered up with Skye to dance with and we all began to dance in a circular motion in the middle whilst others would surround us drinking tea and entertaining the audience. The boys ( all boys) would then gradually leave to signify the men going of to war, when they had done so Isabella would start to sing "pack up your troubles" in a gloomy way, after the first line, the rest of the girls joined in. By doing this small peice we show the audience the effect on women of the leaving of husbands, sons and friends (men). After this we split off into 2 different groups, one experimenting with showing the conflict of the war through dance, and the other experimenting with a physical theatre repetitive sequence of movement. I paired up with Elle and we came up with 4 main movements; holding hands, pointing into the distance, saying goodbye, sitting alone that in twined and where repeated. 

Solo and Duet work

This lesson was mainly focused on working on our solo and duet performances to do with WW1 and show at least 20 seconds of our pieces at the end of the lesson.

I'm doing a solo performance because i was unable and to get a partner but on the other hand i prefer working by myself because i don't have to rely on someone to help me make and complete the performance.

Watching some on the performances yesterday my favourite one out the ones i saw was sashelle's and Tiarn's .By all means it needs some work but i was able to see form what they showed that there performance could develop into something good.

I like the connection between them as a couple and the small uses on physical theatre but to make this better they could use the staging better this can be done by using the front of the stage more so the audience would

feel more involved and could connect better with how the characters are feeling. 

First lesson back ww1

This terms project is World War One this will not only help my development of emotional acting but it will improve my knowledge of WW1 making the peice I end up performing as believable as possible .Going back to theatre was strange, as we had had a long break but we soon got back into the rhythm of things, for the first lesson back we started by looking at our criteria for this term and then we got started with doing some physical theatre which might be put in WW1 piece.

We got into groups of three and where told to make a line then imagine we where in a queue each persons aim was to be at the front but the only way you could do that was moving around or through the person in front of you. This was a peice of theatre inspired by Frantic assembly.

 I was surprised how many ways you could get around, over, under and through a person and creative we could be, this peice of theatre was very much based on physical theatre and got us to use our body's to create dynamic movement.

In my group we tried to include lots of different movements making each move different to the other,  we created moves that where relevant to the brief so if someone went over someone else, the move would be dropping something on the floor, bending down to get it and then the other person stepping over them (taking every opportunity they could to get to the front of the queue).