Lesson Review - 10/12/14

In our performance we will be using thrust staging. An advantage of thrust staging is that the audience have a more rounded perspective and it allows actors to engage with the audience more. Because the audience is closer to the actors, they will engage more and also feel the atmosphere more. In scenes where there is a lot of tension, the audience will be able to feel that because of how close they are. A disadvantage is that depending on where you're stood, one part of the audience will be viewing the back of you. So in some tales, one area of the audience will be getting a better view than others.

Personally, I think vocal projection will be a challenge for me. Because unless I'm stood at the top of the stage, there will always be someone behind me, so I need to make sure they can hear me. The staging will challenge me, also when doing physical things because I will need to make sure it looks good form all angles. Also, i have to be more aware of how and where I am standing in order not to block and audience members view.

We have staged the prologue so that we are in groups of 4, one person is the taxi driver, two are the front headlights and one is a light behind. Every group is placed facing a different way but each group is staged the same, with the taxi driver sat on a chair, two people infant being headlights and one person stood behind. This staging allows each taxi driver to have their own personality. The lights are all turned off and the only thing lighting the drivers face, is the light from a phone, this creates quite a mysterious atmosphere as the audience don't know where the next taxi driver is going to be.

For the first tale, each girls has about 2 or 3 lines which we chose whether we want to say it as a text message, on the phone, as a tweet or as a selfie. I had the lines "he'd rather play football", which I say on the phone and "yeah cool", which I say as a text. The first and last lines everyone says. We were challenged by having to give ourselves characters because we only had one line but needed to make that line as lively and interesting as possible. We are all playing young women, personifying the east end. Maybe using experience from their past or how they imagine the east end would be as a person.

It's been staged so all the lights are of and the girls have the flashlights on their phones so our faces are lit. It really allows the audience to focus on the words being said as it's in darkness, it also gives a unique perspective on the tale because everyone says their lines in a different way. So that it's not visually still, there are chairs where half the girls are sat who then get up and move to a position on stage when saying their second line. At the start we are all sat down, and on our second lines we get up and move to a different space. On the last line, we all shine our torches to the middle and then cover them so the rooms in darkness once the line has finished.

The strengths of this piece are the variations of tones in the way people say their lines, because it adds different levels to the piece and the pace keeps changing. How the piece is written is very conversational and quite girly so it's fun to perform as a group. To develop this piece, I think we just need to keep rehearsing. As we didn't know our lives this slowed down the pace and also people were unsure of where they were going. Once people know that, the piece will look much more fluid. 

Lesson Review - 27/11/14

For this lesson, we were asked to chose our favourite character out of the tales we had explored, and created a monologue as that character. I chose the daughter in America and decided to base my monologue around the day she finds out she's going to America and how she is disappointed with her mothers reaction. I felt I explored the character well and was able to come up with another character within the performance that effected the daughter. In the monologue I talked about receiving the exceptance letter from the school in America. I started standing up, explaining how I wanted to be a phycologist, when I said the line, "I'm sitting at the table, waiting for the postman", I sat on a chair to made it more realistic. However, once I found out I got in, I got up to emphasise the excitement. Vocally, I built tension by spreading up towards the end when I'm describing my mum. I decided to use rhetorical questions in mine because I wanted to let the audience know what I am thinking and also what I am confused about. Because the questions are quite insensitive and most people would see why a mum would be upset, it shows the unsympathetic nature of my character. Looking back I wish I had developed that more, I could have extended the character to really emphasise the fact that she can't see why her mum wouldn't be happy for her and how she fails to see anyone elses point of view. I do feel like i could have explored the character more, emotionally. I needed to create more of a past for my character and talk about my relationship with my mother and more about how I felt. My monologue was very much a narration of this event, and i feel like because of this I failed to show any personality of my character. I also didn't use my acting skills as well as i could off because of this. I focused more on cramming in as much into a one minute monologue and how I was going to stage it, rather than taking the time to develop my character.

MY MONOLOGUE:

When I'm older I want to be a phycologist

I applied for a college in America

The letter comes today - to tell me if I got in

I'm sitting at the table, waiting for the postman, waiting for what seems like forever

Till i hear the letter box and mum goes to collect it

I'm anxious, excited, but anxious

She hands me the letter, thanks

I'm surprised at how much I shake when i open it, but that's understandable right?

I skim over the words and...I got in

Mum I got in, are your proud of me?

I see her face

Mum, she smiles but deep down she doesn't wan me to go

Mum

What's her problem

She's so protective and needy and emotional

And I'm trapped, suffocating, struggling to get out, to get away

But she's pressuring me to stay, holding me back, keeping me close

And for what?

Why does she need me?

What about what i want?

I think the monologue task helped me understand the play because it allowed me to come up with a back story for my chosen character. And i could see how they came to that place in their lives when they appear in the play. It also helped me understand the mum, because developing the daughter and more of her story meant I now know what the mum has gone through and how her reaction to her daughter moving differs. 

Rory performed a monologue about an alcoholic who doesn't realise he killed his wife. It was successful because he wrote it as if he was being interviewed by the police. It drew in the audience because we didn't know what he was being accused of. He varied the staging by sitting down and getting up as his anger grew, his voice also got older at this point. His use of contrast in his voice displayed the split personality of his character. He would quickly go from being angry to softening his voice. When he realises he was the one that killed his wife, the change in his face is very subtle but realistic and is very touching. He performed this very well and didn't over do any emotions. Alex's performance was also very successful. Her monologue was about being domestically abused by her boyfriend. She built up the emotion very realistically and approached the subject sensitively. Her voice was shaky towards the end as she began to cry and staging wise, she was didn't move but that enhanced the emotion. She enhanced her character by adding more of an east end accent. At the beginning she was very casual talking about her boyfriend, and then she starts to tap into the parts of their relationship which is quite rocky and then she shares how he abuses her. The emotion displayed on her face tells the story, and it's as if as she is speaking she realises herself the way he is treating her isn't right.

Unfortunately we didn't get to task 2 in the lesson.

In this lesson, I felt I worked at a merit. I was focused during the class and thought carefully about my monologue, writing it in a way that was easy to say so it sounded natural. All of the exercises done in the pervious lessons helped with this task. Especially when we wrote about a character and what she thought of herself and what people thought of her. This really helped my monologue, especially since I did both on the daughter in America.

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.

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. 

Tale Two Character Research

My group were asked to explore the characters in tale two. This tale uses the creation of character as a metaphor for what the east end is like. It describes a young women who has a pretty ordinary life but what she really wants is to have a life like in the movies. where she falls in love, always has nice clothes to wear and doesn't have to "work to live", but instead lives to work.

If the tale was taken literally, it's describing a women who finds herself in a position where she is not really that happy but has to carry on what she's doing in order to survive. The line "words to live doesn't live to work", shows how she wants to enjoy herself and maybe had a dream of working somewhere else but now finds herself stuck. It also shows how she is drawn in by tv's unrealistic portrail of what life could be like. The tale talks about her wanting a romantic cruise, she wants a fairy tale love story which she knows is not real but she still hopes for it because her life isn't for filling her. She is also into materialistic things, there are a few lines where it expresses her want for "more shoes", "a personal shopper", this conforms to the stereotypes of women who are only interested in their appearance. I think the women would be average height, brown hair and eyes and probably quite slim. Goes on runs every now and then but isn't really committed to anything.

However, you could also look at the tale metaphorically. Personally, I think the tale is about how the east end could be nicer and more pleasant, but it's stuck within this stereotype of a dingy eerie place full of back alley ways. Because no one is helping the place to overcome this, it's stuck. So when the play talks about her watching tv and wanting materialistic things and having dreamed for a job she hasn't got. I think it's referring to the potential of the east end not being for filled because people are hoping and wishing for something to happen rather then taking it into their own hands and making it happen.

Research of the East End

When researching the East End, the first thing I found was an article explaining the characteristics of the place.

London’s East End has always had a dark side. On the surface, we imagine chirpy Cockney boys and flower girls, playfully peppering their sales patterns with rhyming slang. But beneath as you continue digging deeper you see a sinister side that isn't visible through naivitee, one of overcrowding, poverty, violent crime, grimy industry and social unrest. This is the East End that emerged in the Victorian Age and that lingers still in the popular imagination.

As the British Empire expanded under Queen Victoria, so did trade and heavy industry. In 1827, the new St Katherine Docks opened, and with it, the need for large numbers of dock workers. There was no shortage in the East End. Alongside a swelling local population, the area had long attracted immigrants fleeing political unrest and religious persecution: most notably, Jews and the French. Between 1870 and 1914 they were joined by thousands of Jewish settlers from Poland, Romania and Russia who fled to England to escape hardships.

The elegant Huguenot houses of Spitalfields were divided up into tiny, inadequate dwellings, and even newly-built housing soon became over-crowded and run down. Wages were pitiful, thanks to unscrupulous employment practices such as casual labour and piecework. Disease was evident : in 1866, a cholera epidemic swept the East End, killing 3,000 people.
Those who could claw their way above the poverty line soon moved out – aided by the arrival of the railways – leaving behind the highest concentration of the poor and underprivileged anywhere in London. 

Reading this made me think of the East End as a really dangerous place and quite unpleasant to live in. 

During the Victorian age, the East End was known as the melting pot of cultures. It attracted lots of immigrants. As the trade industry expanded, the need for dock workers rose, and these were found in the East End because the population was high. The houses in the East End were tiny, over crowded and run down. This part of London hd the highest concentration of the poor and underprivileged, leading to a rise in crime, violence, prostitution and gangs.

During WW2, the East End was targeted because the area was a centre for imports and storage of raw materials for the way. The effect of intense bombing encouraged evacuation of children and women, By the end of the war, the East End was badly battered, with large areas depopulated.

Now the East End is home to a number of attractions such as Brick Lane, Old Spitalfields market and various art galleries. In 2012 it was home to the Olympics and Paralympics, the idea was to leave a legacy of new sports facilities, housing and industrial and technical infrastructure that will help regenerate the are.

Banana Nyte is a social enterprise which is campaigning to tackle child obesity in the East End. It does this by showing local schools how to create their own healthy eating campaigns using digital media. Banana Bytes has also had celebrity endorsement by the likes of Rakesh Nair, a chef who showed his cooking skills to children and mums in Poplar's Woodmore Primary School.

http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/education/celebrity_chef_rakesh_ravindran_uses_banana_bytes_to_fight_east_end_s_child_obesity_1_3835420

In the fifth tale, domestic abuse makes an appearance, there is an organisation called The Retreat, in the East End working to prevent this from happening. Recently they have received a grant of £75, 250 which will be used to support bilingual services, including a hotline counsellor, logic advocate and general counsellor. 

Response to East End Tales

East End Tales is a collection of 10 stories, the play presents different events and how people deal with them. Often, someone is telling the story of another person and adding their own opinion. For example, in tale 5, the story is about a women who is being domestically abused, however it is told by her neighbour. By having the neighbour narrate the events, it allows the audience to see what happens whilst seeing how outsiders deal with it and also how they feel themselves about how the situation is handled. The tales cover many topics such as drugs, abuse and racism, which infers that it is part of everyday life in the Eat End. But in tales 1, 2 and 3, it allows the audience to realise people aren't that different, as the characters described are ones most people would come across. I think the plays are very unique and cleverly written, because they are so honest and because they are written as if someone is actually speaking. Each tale is quite different as it takes on a new subject and perspective, but they all have a similar rhythm which brings them together.

I liked the first tale as i thought it was really clever to create a person out of a place. I think it's an imaginative way of describing the East End because it tells you the kind of people that come from that area and you can refer the characteristic of the person to the characteristics of the place.

i had no knowledge of the Eat End prior to Thursday's lesson. I didn't know of any places in that area, I only knew about Eastenders which I was sure wasn't a good representation of the place. I now know the are is very mix cultured and there is a sense of community. Like may places, there are pubs and corner shops and it;s not particularly dangerous as you would often see children from local schools playing on the road.

My group and I did Tale 8. It started with Sarah as Michelle on one side of the room, and Daniella as John on the other side. I was in the middle as the narrator. Because the scene could only be two minutes long we had to cut out bits from the tale. I read the first paragraph introducing the characters and then John and Michelle came to life. Michelle lit a cigarette and John was writing notes. I then became the person who stole Michelle's bag, I skipped to that section of the play and read through whilst weaving around the room as if I were running with her bag. When it came to the line, "but guess where he's going. Yeah. Towards John", I then bumped into John as he snatched the bag back. Michelle then grabbed it from John and says, " I didn't need you fuckin 'elp. Now fuck off Policeman Plod".