07/01/19

During today’s lesson we started off with a couple of warm ups which then lead us into learning about Mike Bartlett as will be aiming towards investigating and learning about his play which is called ’13’.

This performance is based around the war in Iran as it’s involvement is with Britain and the USA is set in 2011, as it’s based around being a modern life play.

as we ended up joining into groups which then we was to look into information about him and which we all then started to share with one another.

Mike Bartlett is 38 and was born in Oxford, he’s written around 20 different plays and 5 various drama’s on television; he has also won 3 Bafta awards.

14/01/19

In today’s lesson we begun reading into the first of 13 which was rather tricky as I wasn’t able to easily understand the whole concept of scenes and not to mention the points behind each bit, as then was given a chance to identify some information about individual characters which was quite hard.

as it seems the theme’s are based around war, religion and politics yet the characteristics and goals of each character was rather hard to identify as I found it difficult to understand who they we’re and why they was doing it?

Once we finished with reading through the first act we had to split up into groups then creating notes per unit of the story as it was broken down into twelve parts just like we did before with ‘The Crucible’ by creating some sort of a synopsis; as we was also asked to do ‘Act 2’ for homework to bring in next week.

I would like to enhance my skill for identifying the context of the story as I found it slightly more difficult to understand by breaking it down; I am hoping to improve this by next session through practicing breaking down selected past monologues

21/01/19

In today’s lesson we returned with our Act 2 synopsis which then we started off with more normal day warm ups with helping to develop our focus and then we started to read through the second act of ’13’ as this was to ensure that everyone within our class has completed the assigned task that was given to us last week as well so we can pass information to one another via the board.

We’ve been told that If we wanted to look into it at our spare time that there was a performance uploaded somewhere or some possible way to watch a bunch of professionals who have already executed such play.

before next week we’ve been assigned into pairs to create and develop a successful performance based on ’13’ and why we have chosen this as I was paired up with Leyla and a couple of other peers for which we agreed upon that I will be doing the Staging.

we looked over the third act breaking it down into units as well as then we started to discuss as a class about what we think all of the act’s are about and what’s happening which then we did an overall synopsis from Act I to Act III

28/01/19

Today’s lesson we was ready to perform our presentation to the class as I was working on the staging for Act I and how It would transition between another as well what would be the triggering point for certain parts of the scene.

I could’ve gone simpler with this as there’s a lot more I could’ve done; as I was only able to think of the basic staging and how they’d begin or where they would stand as well props which was colour coded.

I’m hoping that some point in the future that If I get a chance I’ll be able to create something much more advanced as one of the peers did which was a colour coded interaction sheet which connected all the relationships, characters together in some way as they broke down every bit about them and that I would also like to develop further on with being able to deliver a much more successful presentation.

11/01/19

In this lesson we went through the final part of ’13’ which still caught me off guard as I couldn’t still piece most of it together since one point it jumps from a very passive based play to something much more sinister like based around bad events and also lawyer cases.

I found out that I was still missing certain parts of the context via the synopsis so I had to improve on my analysis by going over it again through reading it from Act 1 – Act III

25/02/19

In today’s lesson we started to rehearse in our peers for our script as I was playing the lawyer as I was paired with with Leah who was playing my assistant and I found this rather enjoyable yet a challenge since I wasn’t able to get a strong grasp of the performance and how to set out the scene at all; so I decided to try and let it come naturally whilst rehearsing my lines.

04/03/19

In today’s session we started to look at our characters more in depth by doing doing an exercise which was produced by Stanislavsky, we had to find somewhere in the room opposite to wall which then we stood with our natural stance hip width apart; as we had to close our eyes and kinda image what type of person they are and what did they look like, what did they wear and how tall as well big are they?

I ended up thinking of the classical stereotyped suited worker such as a young skinny fairly nice suited guy with a tie and watch; so we had to attempt once more but try to explore the character more often to something we wouldn’t exactly expect to realise.

after trying again I ended up visualising a broad guy with brown plain shoes and a buttoned shirt, however he didn’t have the best of clothing neither hair style for fact it made me want to laugh somewhat however was interesting to imagine someone who I wouldn’t usually suspect to work as a lawyer or even business wise.

11/03/19

To begin the lesson me and Leah started to rehearse our scene as I wasn’t really getting any kind of vibe or even interesting feeling towards the language and how they spoke to one another; so I ended up finding it rather complex at the time to get a hang of finding a method to suited me or even helped with adjusting to the type of character or theme until I sorta resulted back to trying the walking back and fourth idea or even the method that we was taught in Matt’s lesson about choosing a word that gives the sentence or phrase a meaning.

So for awhile after giving a couple of practices it felt better which then we was trying to work out how we could even position ourselves through out the scene and what actions would make it feel much more comfortable or even understandable when coming to what’s being said such as “A toothbrush a new shirt and a double espresso, what’s his name?”

This made me assume that my character was doing some sort of listing towards his partner or colleague which made me come to a conclusion that he needed to played as If he was walking in with them or interacting with them some how as if he’s questioning about the requirements or even what’s needed such as reminding or even telling them what they need.

This sorta helped me to understand whether I was testing my colleague or not during the scene as I would be asking them certain questions one after the other as it allowed me to identify some sort of more bold personality for them.

18/03/19

During today’s class Emma passed us some kind of booklet with questions and facts involved on it about Mike Alfred which we had to get into pairs and start filling certain information out however some of the class was rather competitive which was sorta interesting as it kinda invited some sort of keen or goal for everyone to identify or challenge ourselves with knowledge to see how much we knew already.

I found this rather exciting as whether it was a competition or not we was still able to share off one another through different methods of identifying information which could be useful or even help us with further source about the elements were currently working on.

He has an interesting view for some reason such as mixing Brecht as well Stanislavsky which I thought wasn’t possibly easy since I would question due to the contrasting views on how you’d do the performances and that they had completely different individualised views for the audience when engaging and how to deliver messages.

We then started off with some intriguing improvisational scenes as I get paired with Chelsea and one of the scene’s was based around a Pub for where we was freely allowed to speak about anything life related and it felt completely natural since we’ve certain matters during life in common; so one of the conversations was about work and we’ve ended up with that one customer who is always demanding something or extremely rude so when we had the chat at the bar it made me think as If I was having a real life conversation with someone I just met.

the next one was to do with the bus shelter and this one was quite easy to adjust to since you’d naturally always wait for a bus that never shows up most of the time so we found it quite funny and enjoyable to do; however when it came to dealing with tickets on the train since we always assume that there will be conflict between the staff and passengers.

We was asked to also answer a couple of questions such as:

1. Do you think these scenes were realistic ?
2. Did you try to force the action ?
3. Is it possible not to force the action ?
4. Is it possible to be realistic in an unrealistic situation ?

I found out that only the train scene was rather force and that the others came quite naturally since we’ve all usually had something like work, shopping or something negotiable related to talk about.

25/03/19

In our final session for our performance we got to work on our scene’s which Leah and me decided to completely explore methods of performing it and how it could be staged and what happens if we played with the way the characters speak towards one another as well relations.

It didn’t look right at first so eventually Emma came around and decided to observe our scene as we performed it and so she gave off some advisable ideas such as what happens instead of me walking in and listing stuff, If I just simply sat on the chair facing towards my desk or something; a complete opposite direction from my assistant and at certain points, I would turn towards her.

This would only happen on moments when she would say something completely absurd or something that my character wouldn’t agree with and eventually the chair motion worked since I was steadily feeling a connection with my character for when it came to swinging in certain ways and adjusting how I sat down with crossed legs or one leg over the other.

I found it quite enjoyable and in the future I would like to be able to improve on my characters eye contact and connection with the other character more without moving too much by exploring further in with the sub context.

As soon as our assessment arrived when then got into our position and every flowed smoothly between me and my partner as I felt like there was an actual subject to speak upon and it was quite easily negotiable from my end since I could feel that I was trying to push a point across when needed, in the end I felt like that the performance was rather good and that If I could take it further on I would like to explore other ways of positioning the scene as well playing with the heights, levels and status.