23/09/2011 Berkoff

We began with warm up games 'Banana Game' and 'Funky Chicken'. These helped prepare me for the lesson as they helped me focus and use my physicality. After warm ups, the tutor split the group into 7 groups of 5. I was given the role of Eddy in the group, with the other available roles being the Chair, the Waitress or the Table. For the role of Eddy I need to deliver my lines in a cockney accent and in a sexually suggestive way. One thing I think was good in my performance was my accent. I had never attempted that accent before, so being able to deliver it reasonably well surprised me, although I know it will still need some work to be perfected. Each of the 7 Eddys and Waitresses had to deliver their lines and perform their actions in Unison. This is something I don't believe I did so well as I don't think my own voice was synchronized with the voice of the other Eddys. I hope that in future lessons, I will be able to be more precise in my timing. Although I cannot see the full performance as it is, I believe that the group and I made a good start to this performance piece. After a few more weeks, I'm sure that I can help create a good performance.

23/09/2011 Stan Theory

We began the lesson with the focus game 'Sign Sign'. We were then given the task of hunting for four packets of haribo hidden round the room. We were then told to recreate the search as Stanislavkian theatre is all about recreating real life. I think this exercise would have worked better if the group and I had been more familiar with Stanislavski's techniques and if we were told what we would have to do before the initial haribo hunt as we would have made more effort to remember our own and other people's reactions. Next, our tutor told a story about how she'd rescued a bird and passed a piece of paper round the class after describing how the paper was actually a bird. I had done a similar exercise two years ago where I had learned how I myself would react to this situation. With the bird/paper I reacted little, but treated it carefully as I had had experiences of handling small animals before. One positive thing about this exercise is that I think it helped the group understand naturalism more and how it is usually uninteresting. One negative thing about this exercise for me was that I had trouble believing that the paper was a bird due to the back story that she had rescued it and bought it into college. I knew it was unlikely in real life that she would rescue a bird, smuggle it into work and then let it be handed round a class. However, I chose not to raise the point as it may have ruined the exercise for everyone else. Next, we did an exercise where we were all in our individual kitchens and were cooking a meal for ourselves. The given circumstances were then changed to being in a posh restaurant kitchen cooking for a VIP guest. It was then changed again to being in our home kitchen cooking for a girlfriend. I found this task useful as it challenged me to improvise a meal from a kitchen I had never set foot in before. I think I performed both parts of the task well although I found the home cooking circumstances easier as I was more familiar with where the ingredients and equipment would be. Next we were tasked with individually enter the room after an event had happened, to practice 'Action With Purpose'. I chose to enter the room soon after being told that a close relative had died. I locked the door with real keys and after a pause while keeping a neutral expression on my face, took my phone apart to prevent anyone from contacting me. What I think worked well about my performance was that I used real props and furniture when performing as opposed to miming and that I tried to appear as though I was in shock, rather than burst into the room crying. What I don't think worked well with my performance was that I had not experienced a similar situation in real life so I am unsure if that was a naturalistic interpretation of that event. I think the exercise helped me as I learned from other people's interpretations of situations that appeared natural and how the audience reacted to them. Later, we passed round a blank piece of paper on which we had to imagine a letter and how we'd react to that kind of letter. Advice given before the task started was to feel the emotion, not play it. I think this helped both the group and me as I think we all convinced ourselves that what was on the letter was genuine.

22/09/2011 A Dolls House

We began the lesson with a long physical warm up. We then split into short groups and performed a section of A Dolls House within our group. We all swapped roles regularly we all had a chance to play different characters. When I was reading I implemented Received Pronunciation which I had learned in more detail in a Voice class I had had earlier in the week. I believe that this suited the part because the play was written in the late 1800s and had characters from a middle class background.

22/09/2011 Berkoff

We began reading a section of the script Greek by Steven Berkoff. We then split into small groups then given the task of recreating the Cafe scene. One of the first ideas I put forward was for the actor playing the chair to carry the actor playing Eddy. I believed that this would give the actor playing Eddy the freedom to move their body and the actor carrying them to move around the stage. However we thought that this may prevent the chair from becoming a character so we instead decided to have two actors playing the chair characterized as horny men along with me playing the table who would describe the cafe's cheesecake and take the weight of the enormous cheesecake when it was bought out. One of the group's ideas was to reverse the genders of the the two performers playing humans resulting in her playing Eddy and Lewis playing The Waitress. This worked well as it was non-naturalistic, stylistic of Berkoff. A problem with this though is that an audience may get confused as to the actual gender of the characters, leading to confusion in the plot. Another idea of the group's was for me to describe the cheesecake in the style of an advert. I disliked this idea as I thought it would be difficult to deliver the whole speech while keeping the audience interested as I would have little opportunity for vocal or physical variation. Instead I delivered the line in a more sexual way as the dialogue uses emotive language and contains sado-masochistic themes. It also gave me opportunity for sexually associated physical actions where at the end, I immediately reverted back into a table.

22/09/2011 Non-Naturalism

We began the lesson with a few focus and energy warm-up games. We were then given a refresher on Brecht's main methods of theatre. One method I contributed was his misuse of music to prevent the audience from suspending their disbelief. We then split into groups with the task of creating  a short bit of Brechtian theatre based on current events. Our group chose to create ours based on the riots in August. In our group, we discussed which Brechtian techniques we would use in creating our performance. Brechtian techniques we used while rehearsing for our performance were use of music, freeze-frames, multi-role-playing, direct audience address, use of exaggeration and use of stereotypes. Our plot was in three stages, one where a group of youths try to convince others to riot and loot, one with freeze frames with riot police and looters and one with a child looter being tried in court for the theft of a Curly Wurly. I think this task helped our understanding of Brecht by allowing us to interpret Brecht's theory's ourselves and apply them. Had we performed it to the group, I think that it would have been a good short piece of theatre.