On the first day back we had to get into pairs and tell each other one story from our summer holiday. Then we had to find another pair and tell them our partners story paying close attention to details.
After we finish telling each other everyone stories, we then had to devise a short play using one f the stories or joining them together. My group focused on one particular story which and did our best to developed it. We chose one story because we wanted to focus on details and the specifics of the story.
After everyone performed their pieces we then gave feedback back to everyone , which everyone used to improved their work. then they showed the class the new and improved version.
My group consisted of Me, Chris, Brunilda, and Zulaiha and we decided to focused on one story about one of our friend going on a date. The piece was about a guy going on a date and then realizing he doesn't have enough money to pay for the food so he pretended to go to the toilet then he left.
When we first performed the piece there was a lot of things that we could have done better and when we got our feedback our fellow actors and peers pointed it out for example we could have used spacing more and add more dialogue.
This was a great exercise to do because it showed us that we had a long holiday and haven't been acting much so we forgot some of the techniques that we had learnt over the pass year. By performing the piece then getting feedback and improving them feedback was a great help in refreshing our memory.
Week two
We first had to created a trailer about something that we were passionate about. Me and Sally created about trailer about a guy that was basketball but he got injured during the semi finals and couldn't play basketball anymore, but he got a doctor to help him get back on his feet and help him to recover because he didn't want to give up basketball.
When we created the trailer it was around one minute long and we just showed some key scenes for example when he got injured and when he ask the doctor for help.
After creating the trailer we had to turn the trailer into a five minute piece.
Some feedback we got about our trailer was that we gave the audience a bit too much information and that we could project a bit more in some scenes. So we took this feedback into mind and worked to make our trailer much better.
Week three
This week we had to get into
groups and create a short story base around a quote that we were given the quote was "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing", we created a story about a guy that wanted to impress his friends and he done a dare to break into someone's car and he got caught and was in a lot of trouble also he got badly hurt during the process.
Then we had to make three freeze frames from our short play, we chose to show the three made turning point in the play for example the first one was the scenes were all the friends sat in circle and was daring each other to do dangerous things, the second freeze frame was when I broke into the car and joseph was taking a picture of me, the third freeze frame was when I was on the group and the guys car who I broke into was standing over me.
We then performed our piece to the class then our next exercise was to have one person narrating the story from the start and someone take over from them and carry on the narrating and while doing this everyone had to be doing the same actions.
After we performed this to the rest of the class and everyone showed their work we then had to turn our images into physical theatre which was interesting because we had many ideas on how to show our work in this style.
For our first image we done a scene where me and Stephan we pretending to be chairs and sally and joseph were sitting on our back then from their we went to the scene were I had to break into the car and for this scene sally pretended to be the door and joseph pretended to be the car wheel we thought this was a great way to show physical theatre and for our last images we put joseph on Stephan's back and sally on joseph's back and Stephan was standing over me this was to show that Stephan had a lot of pressure on him because his car was broken into.
I feel like showing these images in such a abstract way made it different to showing it as normal piece and caused the audiences and us the actors to look at it in a different way that we did before. We then gave feedback to everyone as a group.
I believe by doing all this devising work it will help us in the future for when we start devising our pieces to take into secondary schools. This is giving us more experience into devising because some people may not like devising while some may not like script work so by doing as much devising work as we can now before starting that project is giving us an advantage and will be really helpful.
Also devising is a great skills for an actor to have because it can always come in handy when acting especially if you are a young actor in college.
week four
This week we had to create a short piece about a model student, the piece my group done was about a guy who was a nerd and got bullied by his fellow classmates but in the end he became successful.
We are doing this work as practice for when we start our main devising project, all of this is to give us as much practice and experience devising as we can.
We also did a workshop with a lady from the Donmar theatre called Debbie, we did some group work and a bit of solo work for example we done a exercise where she was standing in the middle and we had to keep her in the center but moving as an ensemble with her so when she walked to the left we would too.
I thought this was a great exercise because it brought the group together and we really had to come together and work as one to do this task perfectly which we did.
Also another exercise we done was that we were in groups and Debbie gave us a piece from the Tempest and we had to read the short script and give our interpretation of it. Everyone had one part of the script to do.
week five
We done a exercise where we had to get into groups of six and create a story using one sentence each and then we have to bring that story to like life. My group done a short piece about telling a story and we done it in the style of sitting and looking at the audience.
we also had to create a 10 minute workshop to do with our class, my group decided to focus our workshop on improvisation and devising. We started off our workshop by getting everyone to stand in a circle then everyone would take turns to say their name and a random fact about them, this was a great way to start because if we are doing the workout with a new group of people it would be a great way to get to know their names and something about them, this game was lead by Kieran. Then we went on to play the clap game that I lead to get everyone ready and focus and that lasted about one and a half minute from there we got everyone to play the game 'Yes Lets' which was run by two other members of my group Grace and Stephanie.
After play two games we then put them into groups of three and gave them a task, this task was run by Jamie another member of our group, their task was that their were given three lines to be use as script and they could only use the three lines that they were given and they had to make a short story with theses lines.
This workshop was very helpful as it helped us prepare for when we actually go into schools and give them a 20 minutes workshop, also apart from giving us practice it help us get a feel of what it will be like running the workshop and all the things that we would need to consider while planning it.
Week 6
This week we started planning our 20 minutes devising piece and we decided to create a crime mystery piece. The name is American Noire and it will be about these two detective trying to solve one of hardest crime in their career, we started planning our ideas and talked about characters and the story line.
We have also allocated different jobs to everyone to make sure everything runs smoothly for example my secondary job is time and stage Manager.
Also as well as creating a short piece to perform to secondary schools we also have to create a workshop to do with the students, we also started the planning for our workshop and it will be base around the same theme as our play which is crime and mystery.
week 7 and 8
In the past two weeks we finished the script and have been rehearsing and finalizing scenes. Now we have a good foundation with the script and we know what direction we want to take the play in, the only thing left for us to do is for us to learn our lines and to think about what style we could do the play in and what other techniques we could possibly add.
We performed our play to the rest of the class as a draft not the final piece, we received feedback back from everyone and we are going to take the feedback we are given and improve upon them for the next time we perform our piece. Some feedback we got was that we needed to develop our character a bit more and go into more depth with our characters.
week 9
This week we went to a secondary school and done our workshop and performance our piece to year 9 drama students. we decided that it would be best if we done our workshop before our play because it will give the students some information of what our play is about and some context in why we chose that topic and so they would know what to expect from the piece.
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