Lesson Review - 13/11/14

Harmony and I were given a section of the prologue, in which we had to create the staging of a taxi driver and the passenger that wasn't the conventional staging of the driver i front and the other passenger behind. We decided that Harmony would be the taxi driver and I was the passenger who had been out all night and was coming home after a party. We used the section given to our advantage, playing on the fact that I "come out at night", referring to my partying. Communicating my character was quite hard, especially as there was not much time. I wanted to add more depth to my character by expressing to the audience that I party quite a lot and maybe like having a chat with the taxi driver at the end of the night. However, due to time and also confusion of the task, I was unable to do so.

Our section was:

No

Nocturnal

Yeah

Yeah thassit

Nocturnal

Sleep in the day

Come out at night

For the staging, Harmony stood up and faced one way while I sat down against the backs of her legs facing the other way. I really piked what Ella, Sarah and Alex did. Alex stood on a box and Sarah and Ella were stood on the floor beside her. It was effective because they made it obvious they were in a car, for example if Alex lent left, so would Sarah and Ella so it really looked like they were talking a left in a car. 

Hot seating is an effective technique to use on rehearsals because people ask you questions about the character that you wouldn't find in the text. It is a quick way of coming up with your characters history. For example I asked questions like "what school dod you go to?" And "do you have any kids?"    When I was the one being hot seated, through the questions I asked I learnt the drive was 35 with a baby on the way. His father owned a taxi business and thats why he became a taxi driver. 

As a group we became the taxi driver, we all had the freedom to give our driver a different personality to the typical east end taxi driver. I had my legs quite wide apart for a more manly stance. I also leant forwards and rested my elbows on my knees. Vocally, I kind of let go of my diction so I didn't pronounce ever single letter. A lot of people took on a similar physicality, however Benji made his driver much more camp. He sat with a straight posture, his legs were crossed and his hands rested on his knees. His voice went up slightly to emphasise the fact he was camp. As an ensemble I think we worked really well. Especially when we were asked to become Alex's taxi driver. Within a few lines we all managed to take on her physicality and have the same rhythm and tone of voice as her. It was really interesting to see how, as a class, we could all just sense when and how to say each line just by observing one person.

When we read through tale 8 in groups, we had to underline word that suggested location, weather and atmosphere. The tale is very focused on the eerie atmosphere of this dingy back alley. I think Kennedy wanted to pain a picture that conformed to peoples assumptions of east end alleys. Aiming to create just the feeling of the scene, we had to create a small piece focused on the atmosphere and sounds. I think in the end my groups piece reached the target of creating an eerie and dark atmosphere, by saying our lines on at a time and surrounding Sarah, who was fearfully in the middle. We also kind of whispered so it seemed more scary. I do think our physicality could have been more imaginative, but we decided as a group to focus on the sound.

Due to the fact we didn't perform our atmospheric scenes i can't answer the second set of questions.