Tuesday 30th October: We started this term by going over the work of Stanislavski and his theory called the system, we got given a worksheet where we had to match the meaning of each part of the system. We then continued the day with Sharon we were told to separate ourselves into the groups that we were going to work with based on what we did and that's when we found out who was going to be in which group based on who was doing which script. The different script were the seagull, the cherry orchard and the three sisters all different from each other had different genres such as one was a comedy drama and etc, although they were different in style they were written and directed by the same person Anton Chekhov. My group consisted of Katie, Maya, Ben, Mya, Madalina, Favour, Roman, Tristan, Kadie, Jean Paul and Me. We were all doing The Three Sisters however we didn't know who was doing which part so we just chose to read the lines of any character so that we all understood the story even though we were given the script to read over the half term which I did, we only got to the beginning and that was ok because it just gave us the appropriate information needed to know about every character. The challenges in this were of course some people knew more than others and at the same time we researched the play but we managed to get through it well.
Wednesday 31st October: We began by separating into our groups straight away we all had different times to come in and work with Sharon as it was a better environment to work in and everyone that was in the room had the same mindset and knew what each person was talking about. We all sat in a circle and talked about the Russian play the three sisters and what we liked and didn't like about and how excited we were to do this play some of us were honest and said that it was a boring play and there's not that much things interesting about it and some 'who didn't read the script' just said they were very excited and confident on doing the play however, when we all talked about the different characters and the events we found out that they were interesting and we just had to look at facts and interpret them in. When we were talking about which character we found the most intriguing and which character we prefer on doing, my answer was that Andrei Provorov ( the brother of the three sisters) I said that he would be a character that I would find interesting to act as and making that character come alive this was because of what happens to him. He is a very quiet character and does nothing, he's married a woman named Natasha and she's very annoying and bossy so it would be a challenge for me to act as someone who is obedient and loyal through everything that she says and who "praises" her every word (well that's how I saw him)
After talking we got into pairs and brainstormed/"brain dumped" our ideas and what we knew about the play already so everyone was 'on the same page' as everyone else in the group.
Thursday 1st November: We started with a range of activities and exercises to warm us up and get us ready for challenges, this was because we were given the task of one person being a shop keeper/ employee and the other person a customer who had the objective of getting their money back, I was partnered up with Ben and from experience I thought it was a really hard task because no matter what I said, Ben would block my idea and change it, this was challenging as I tried so many techniques starting with being a polite customer which then had to resort to being angry and impatient due to not accomplishing my objective of getting a refund.
We were then finally casted as the characters from our plays and were told which scenes we were going to do and how we were going to them, because it was such a big play we had to cut out some bits and characters so that it made sense, in my group we were told to work from Act 1-2 from pages 203-216 and 223-232. The cast was Katie as Olga (act 1), Madalina as Masha(act 1), Mya as Irina(act 1), Jean Paul as Andrei(act 1), Roman as Tuzenbakh(act 1-2), Tristan as Chebutykin(act 1), Ben as Vershinin(act 1-2), Maya as Masha(act 2), Kadie as Irina(act 2), Favour as Natasha(act 2), Me as Andrei(act 2) and Jean Paul as Ferapont(act 2).
WEEK 2: We went over the script and did a run-through the selected scenes and worked as a team, we just read over our lines with a person reading the stage directions to help. We did this so that everyone in the group was aware of what we were doing, whilst doing this we annotated the script to fit our general ideas that we chose, we did this for most of the week but sometimes we thought that we needed to work on our scenes separately which would be more productive towards the group so we split the acts however some cast was needed in both so Me and Favour worked together as we were only cast in Act 2. Me and Favour just did a general run-through our scene which as the beginning of act 2 which involved Andrei and Natasha just having a conversation however it was more Natasha speaking and Andrei listening to her every word. I decided that we would only read through the script however Favour was so eager so we added some actions and started to improvise the scene as we saw fit.
WEEK 3: We began the week by working with Rob and showing him what we had devised so far for the first act as it was the longest one and it was the beginning so we needed to make it good, however as my group was performing the first act, because I wasn't in the first act I became the audience I saw that it lacked life and it was boring which it was however as an actor no matter if the script is boring it's up to the actor with the help of the director to make it interesting and bring it to life. So Rob decided and told us to make it our own so we added things, bits and bobs to not make it boring. We then showed our devising pieces to each other and gave each other feedback from skills that we came up our selves.
WEEK 4: By week 4 we were still working on polishing each act to make it interesting and our own, we decided to separate the group again but this time focused our time more on act 2, me and Favour showed our piece to Rob and he told us to make it interesting again and gave us a few pointers that could help us, this time we managed to finish the beginning scene of act 2 as it involved Jean Paul as Ferapont when we worked with Jean Paul the scene looked better but still needed polishing as some of us didn't know our lines. So because of that Me and Favour helped each other remember our lines but I mostly helped her by making her repeat them again and again so that it would sink in to her head. And by the end we managed to do our scene 5-6 times by heart, off script and it felt amazing to help and work as an ensemble.
WEEK 5: We finished and did the scene again and again off script and it looked "professional" just in time for the day of our performance. On the day of our performance we everyone was nervous and scared of messing it up but we all agreed the show must go on so we helped each other get over the fact that it could go bad or it couldn't if we just had the confidence of standing on the stage and performing and we did. By the end the performance went amazing and me and my group were happy. However there was always room for improvement. To evaluate I thought that everyone did their best and really gave it there all nevertheless there was issues such as members of the group not being able to make it on the day due to issues of their own. I thought that if the whole group was there and present we would have done an amazing job but still we were able to work through those issues and put on a fabulous performance. To evaluate myself I thought that I could have been better I could have been clearer on my tone and projected my words more so that the audience understood me more. I thought that I was still a big nervous however the lighting that was used blinded me from seeing the audience which made it better for me not seeing the audience as it calmed my nerves.
WEEK 6: We were given our feed back on how we did for our performance, we first went to each other and told each other what we thought they did well and what we had improved on, in the end it made me feel so much better about myself and how I am as an actor.
- You are focused
- You have subtext
- Stage moves improved
- Good articulation
- Confidence
- Projection
- Very in the moment
- Space awareness
- Voice projection
- Emotions
- Facial expressions
- Good energy
- Articulation
- The way you get into the character's skin the way you connect with the character
- You were very confident
- Made it your own
- Good energy
- Listening was superb
- Good reaction between characters
- Keep eyeline up to show focus (avoid looking at the floor no matter if your looking into "space"
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