Homework - 20/11/14

Today I think I worked at a merit because at the beginning of the lesson it took me a while to gain focus, especially since the vaccinations were today. At the end when we created a response to East End Tale 6, I felt I contributed to the task and was able to come up with a response. I was also able to develop the characteristics of the daughter who lived in America. Though the small amount of information given in the script, I was able to infer her appearance, what she thought of herself and what people thought of her. 

Unfortunately I can't do task 2 because I was getting my vaccinations at the time.

We had to look at tale 6 and find all the character mention, I found:

the narrator

brother

landlord

warm tired women

hand sly man

his mum

his baby daughter

daughter in america

In our group of 7, we split ourselves by the character we chose to explore. We stood in a line in our little groups, in a freeze frame so when someone finished their scene they froze and the next scene starts.

Susanna was the mum and i played the daughter in America, we performed a phone call between them in which she phoned me and I refused to make the time to talk to her. Once our scene was done, we froze and Sherene and Tara began performing. They were hard sly man and warm tired lady, they had a conversation expressing their feelings towards their daughters. After they completed their scene, Taffy and Daniella set their scene at a pub where Daniella broke off into a monologue about how she missed her daughter in America.

The performance as a whole used freeze frames which is an effective technique. In my scene, we used a variety of drama skills. I displayed the rush and chaos of a university students life and showed how usually at this point in someones life their social life becomes more important than anything else. Meaning my character didn't have time or didn't make the effort to find time to talk to her mum. My character was unaware of how much she was upsetting her mum, I think she assumed her mum would be busy with her own life and maybe was relieved to have her out the house so she could get on with other things. Having a social life that over rides anything else, means my character doesn't even recognize the upset in her mums voice when she says she doesn't have time to talk to her. This was displayed in the way we staged it. Susanna was sat down on a chair and I was moving around her as if getting ready for a night out, I did't even take the time to pause and explain to my mum why I couldn't talk to her. Instead, I carried on doing my own thing and brushing off any sadness in Susanna's voice.

As a character, I felt I could have worked on my physicality more. Although I understood my characters personality and her past, I needed to display that through my stance. Thinking back on it, I could have shown how she was young and bouncy and how appearance is an important thing to her. How I froze after finishing my scene could have also shown this, I needed to put more thought into what the audience would see of my character, rather then the lines I was saying.

I think when we performed ours, it went as planned. Although, looking at other groups pieces, such as Rosebys, we could have created more of a group piece. Because split the group up, it was more a collection of different scenes, I think if we had more time, we could have brought the scenes together by making a physical theatre piece at the end to show how our characters connect or are similar in some way. Most groups used freeze frames because it allows everyone to have their own moment, and for the audience to focus on one person and understand their character.