Lesson 5

Rehersals, this lesson we were rehersing our short play and timed it, i think the approximate time of our play was 7mins. By this time we had learnt our lines at home and we were running through with the layout sorted, it was all about getting into the minds of our charicters and thinking about costume changes and how to show the change of set.
I decided i will simply change hats and take off my jacket, pull out a cloth and place one over my shoulder to show a change in my clothing and also to show where i work by mis-en scene and props.

lesson 4

In lesson 4 we read through the scripts and decided as a full group that the scenes we chose were not the best scenes to show off our dramatic acting skills therfore we decided to change the second scene to the bar scene where eddie is the waitor (me) this scene was quite short but yet we thought it would allow us to show a strong charicter change. We started to read through this scene as a group and then plan the staging for it.

Road part 2 research

The nation endured a deep recession throughout 1982. Business bankruptcies rose 50 percent over the previous year. Farmers were especially hard hit, as agricultural exports declined, crop prices fell, and interest rates rose. But while the medicine of a sharp slowdown was hard to swallow, it did break the destructive cycle in which the economy had been caught. By 1983, inflation had eased, the economy had rebounded, and the United States  began a sustained period of economic growth. The annual inflation rate remained under 5 percent throughout most of the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Lesson 3

Lesson 3 we had a read through of te script togeather and double checked that these were the scenes we wanted to do, we were quite sure that they were the right scenes to play, although there was a twist in the fact that i would have to play a women. Depending on the leval of detail, we may have to alter the scene or change it. This was a problem to me as i realy do not feel comfitable having to go into drag.
We then decided our roles for the play IF we were to continue with this path.
Carol - Emma
Brenda - Molly
Louise - Me (Alex)
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Proffessor - Me (Alex)
Laine - Molly

Lesson 2

Lesson 2, we had emma to join our group this lesson and we had to introduce the play to her and help her through what it is about, we then had to deside on what scenes in the play we are going to do, we chose to do the 2 scenes instead of 1 as they are quite choppy and short. We chose to do pages 5-7 & 12-13 we then wrote up a short essay about what the play is about and what we plan to do with it, mollie mainly wrote this as i was helping emma with the play, we then joined at the end and showed what we had got through. I feel asif we could organise the play and get it done for just after half term, next lesson we were to deside on a performance date and our rehersal plans.

Road part 1 research

Lesson 1

we were introduced to our topic of Jim Cartwright plays, We had the option of doing the play 'two' or the play 'road' We had to take into concidoration that experiences from previouse years, e.g. i had done the play 'two' in year 11 as my exam piece therfore there was no need for me to do it all again, I was placed on the play 'road'. Louise has been away previouse to this lesson and still remained absent so therfore purdy and theo were chosen to do'two' and me emma and mollie were doing road. Emma was away for the 1st lesson we were doing a read through, so me and mollie went away into the small room so that we could read through the play and get idea of what we had to perform. This helped as i got a favrouite charicter in mind strait from his 1st line (scullery) he is abit of a peado and trys to chat up all the women. this is quite funny and made me smile as some of the sayings he comes up with are... lets say origional.
After reading through we were told that we were to go away and prepare for a performance in a couple of weeks time. So i cracked on with the research.


Road

P.S

i am unsure how i am going to print all this off

Conclusion

Our play was a major success in bringing something new to this school, it was not a normal everyday performance which i thought was the major attraction about it, it ran so smoothly and there were only very minor hick ups and 1 costume malfunction that couldn't have been prevented. We feel that we did the best we could in the time we had! 2 weeks is a respectable amount of time for what we produced and taking it away we had only several hours in lesson time. We all stuck to our commition and to the contract and stayed after school, in almost every lunch, it was hard going but we got there! We got great feedback from the audience and i feel that we got an educational message across clearly. For a story telling TIE piece it was bang on market to me.

Lesson 10

This lesson was to plan everything out and go through any final preperations needed such as what time to get there etc and how were getting our make up and stuff. After all this we were finally ready to chill.

Lesson 10

RUN THROUGH, RUN THROUGH, RUN THROUGH !

Lesson 9

Putting it to practice, we had done rehersals through the play before but after we had done a run through to both rachel and sarah we had some good idea's that were now taking place. We had a smoother performance to be shown and we were feeling confident of our production. We were now practicing to the music and with the lights in full costume. Doing this made me feel more comfitable in the clothes i was wearing and doing a run through seemed less 'strange' This was the 1st real rehersal that we did we were now to polish the play by just simpily rehersing as often as possible!!

Lesson 8

We had to fit in as many run througs in this time and finish off sorting little details, e.g i had to arrange with Beth getting myself a policeman's hat from the costume coupboard. This hat was later not used as it was decided that it was abit 'corney'. The music was sorted by this lesson and at the end we showed rachel a run through. She offerd constructive criticism to help the girls along with ther mono logues and with how i act and help guide the audience around, This would be helpfull when it came to the shows as i feel the audience might not know what to do and where to go if i did not use the techniques shown by rachel.

Lesson 7

Lesson 7 we showed Beth the layout of how the play is set out and she arranged spot lights and put up red wide lighting to set a spooky atmosphere, while Beth was doing this we were also looking for spooky music to go along with the play, we had arranged a friend to do the lighting for us and sorted out how the lighting order would go. By now we had the Lighting sorted, the Costume sorted, all the Script sorted and now we just need the music on a disc, and to do our run throughs to polish the show off.
We all had to learn our lines and set the task of doing  run through without script in the next rehersal which was at lunch time.
In the time inbetween lessons we had stayed in almost every lunch, after school on a couple of days and practising lines at home.

Lesson 6

Before lesson 6 Theo, Molly and Lou had arranged meetings with Beth for costume and by the time we got into lesson 6 we were immediatly thrown these brilliant fitting costumes and props. All of the costumes were brilliant, but when it came to the girls trying the dresses on it seemed that they were all to busty for the dresses, so Theo and Mol went away this lesson and arranged another meeting with Beth.
While Theo and Molly were away we sat and thought up of an ending pro logue of how i can conclude the play, We knew it would have to be educational to refresh there minds of the  facts the girls had in thier mono logues.
As the group were thinking up of facts to put in it, miss said it can't be too long so therefore quite a few of the facts were shortend or wern't mentioned so with all the information we needed i thought up of putting it into a rhyme, the rhym fitted brilliantly and left the audience with a spooky thought on thier minds.

Lesson 5

In lesson 5 i had gone away in my own time and thought up of a script to introduce the play, and to end the play. I shared this with the group when we were sharing our progress to each other on how we were getting on, The group liked my introduction and said it was a spooky yet involving pro logue.
The rest of the group had got on well and had there mono logues sorted out, thier mono logues were very factual which was fitting to our piece being a educational performance.
We then sat around and discussed how we would be able to link up all of these mono logues and get round to the final pro logue to close the play.
I thought of introducing catchy little rhymes to the play to let the audience know that they would have to follow me, these were very poopular with the group.
Our next thoughts were on lighting and costume.

Lesson 4

While being assigned the role of the tour guide i did some research on tour guides from around the tower of londen and other spooky tours. I had to devise my own script, i had no facts to go on, it was all made up. I had to think of a spooky introduction to the play and then introduce the 1st victim. To help me think up of what kind of things my charicter would be saying i did a role on the wall, inside feelings and how i would have to seem on the outside. This was useful as when you are making a charicter from scratch you will have to have a background, and a target to get across. So i decided that my charicter was meant to be a resemblance of Mr Lusc and my target was to make the audience feel spooked by me but at the same time, they were meant to be trusting me so i had to devise a cunning script, and use lines in the correct manour.

Stanislavsky Methods of acting

Stanislavsky

Research on Methods of acting

Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud

researching tour guides

Lesson 3

This lesson we decided on doing a play about the white chapple murders/jack the ripper, Jack the ripper is a good story line to focus on, we spent this lesson doing our research and thinking out charicters, the story on jack the ripper was perfect, it included 5 murders 1 jack the ripper and a tour guide. We had to work around only having 6 people but it was easily done. once assigned our charicters we ha to think up of a costume to start to collect. This is where we assigned each other roles, emma purdy and theo on research for each charicters and story line and the rest of us doing costume and thinking up of mediums. We did this for about half an hour, and having the research sussed out in time we could begin to put charicters into place and start to think up of arranging lighting meetings and how we were setting the stage out according to this.
We each set ourselfs homework of researching your own role in depth and thnking uo of your mono logue.
I was the tour guide, the main part of guiding the audience around the story murder by murder.

Lesson 2

This lesson we were informed that young children may be watching so therefor it didn't seem appropriate to do a drama about the murders of young children. So we went back to research on differen murders etc. We looked at several different horror story's that would be good for a drama, we made a final 3 from a book named murders in britain and we looked into each one. We all had a favrouite but we had to see how it could be done. By this time we had ruled out doing our drama on the morse murders. We all still realy liked the idea of promanad staging so we decided to keep that element in it. Then we got told that only two rooms were available but instead of ruling it out in our own time we stayed in to figure out a way of working around it.
We had to think it over untill the next lesson.

lesson 1

Lesson one we were deciding on our project that we were going to follow through, we new that our topic had to be educational but we didn't want to make it all corny so we decided on doing a scary piece.
Our initial idea was the morse murders, and doing it like a cludo game, we would have 1 person on each podium and in different rooms. By leading the audience around from stag to stage this is called promanad staging. When the year started and we found out the exact numbers of our class so therefor th cludo idea just became harder by trying to figure out who would be who and how we would get the audience to move around.
we had to solve ths problem by the next lesson.

starting up

I am starting my diary blog for my B tec drama course.