Monday 9th October
Lesson 1&2 - Rob & Sharon
In this session we worked on scenes 1-5. We spent more time on the fight scene in scene 1. We talked about what actors should be like on stage and came up with this acronym : F.E.C ( focus, energy and concentration). This helped us make our scenes more believable and more interesting because it helped us remember to keep all of these things in mind when presenting a piece of theatre. The main thing out of this lesson was to always keep focus, energy and concentration up while performing because if one doesn't then it is much easier for them to corpse. In the second lesson we continued working/refining scenes 1-5. Towards the end of the lesson we moved to the theatre to practice with the technical theatre students for our performance of scenes 1-5 to the other performing artists on Wednesday.
Tuesday 10th October and Wednesday 11th October can be found in the post titled 'unit 2 : engaging the audience'
Tuesday 10th October and Wednesday 11th October can be found in the post titled 'unit 2 : engaging the audience'
Thursday 12th October
Theatre workshop
In this session we went to Conway theatre to take part in a workshop run by the Shakespeare school festival. We took part in this workshop with another school that will be taking part in the Shakespeare school festival. To start of the session we did a little vocal exercise game. It helped us to practice focusing on our pitch/annunciation while in movement. Here are the different exercises in the fruit game:
The next game we played was an instruction game. This game taught us to always listen to the director because those instruction my be able to help us make the performance more believable or could keep us safe. To start off this exercise we were given the instruction that if the instructor says 'go' we start moving around the space, and when the instructor says 'stop' we must freeze instantaneously. We continued for a while and then the instructor added the instructions 'clap' and 'jump' which were pretty self explanatory. After spending a little more time playing the instructions were swapped so 'go' meant ' stop' and 'clap' meant 'jump'. This got us to really concentrate on instructions.
The next thing we did get into groups of 4, two from our group and two from the other school. We then shared information about each play to the other group so we could get a grasp on what the openings may mean/represent. The other group was doing Macbeth, which is a very abstract piece of performance which does fit their opening scene because it is very abstract in the way it begins at the end.
After discussing about the two plays we both we performed our openings to each other. Our group can learn a lot from the Samuel Rhodes school. They created a opening that wasn't even scripted. They also created their own music for their abstract scenes. It started with the ghostly dance of the late Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, it then moved on to the war at the end of the play and then continued to the 3 witches at the start of the play. I really liked how they worked as an ensemble, they also kept the energy up from the beginning to the end of the piece. I also liked their physical theatre because it makes their non-naturalistic piece of performance that little bit edgier. We could take a lot of that back with us to rehearsals, especially the part about keeping the energy up through out the whole piece of drama.
Before we split into our two groups, the instructor (William) gave us 5 top tips to keep the audience engaged. I rearranged the tips to make the acronym L.A.C.E.S. this stands for:
After this talk we spilt into our two groups we stayed in the main hall while Samuel Rhodes school went into another auditorium. We started by doing some character building exercises. At first we walked around the space in neutral (this character building exercise was much like the 'stop go' game) when William said stop we had to stop while portraying our characters. We then stopped and closed our eyes and visualised our characters and their objectives in the first scene. This allowed us to start to become our characters and not just act like our characters. We then changed up parts of the opening such as where the character enter the stage from, instead of coming in from the back we chose to come in from the sides to make the stage look more like a street. We then skipped to the part with the prince where we played a new game. I call it the ad lib game. Each Character had to either say 'I hear ya sista' if they agree with what the prince says and 'nah way bruv' if they disagree with what the prince says. This helped us give our characters stories and allow us to portray feelings even if we are only ensemble. We then showed our improved piece to the other group of students. this concluded the workshop.
The next game we played was an instruction game. This game taught us to always listen to the director because those instruction my be able to help us make the performance more believable or could keep us safe. To start off this exercise we were given the instruction that if the instructor says 'go' we start moving around the space, and when the instructor says 'stop' we must freeze instantaneously. We continued for a while and then the instructor added the instructions 'clap' and 'jump' which were pretty self explanatory. After spending a little more time playing the instructions were swapped so 'go' meant ' stop' and 'clap' meant 'jump'. This got us to really concentrate on instructions.
The next thing we did get into groups of 4, two from our group and two from the other school. We then shared information about each play to the other group so we could get a grasp on what the openings may mean/represent. The other group was doing Macbeth, which is a very abstract piece of performance which does fit their opening scene because it is very abstract in the way it begins at the end.
After discussing about the two plays we both we performed our openings to each other. Our group can learn a lot from the Samuel Rhodes school. They created a opening that wasn't even scripted. They also created their own music for their abstract scenes. It started with the ghostly dance of the late Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, it then moved on to the war at the end of the play and then continued to the 3 witches at the start of the play. I really liked how they worked as an ensemble, they also kept the energy up from the beginning to the end of the piece. I also liked their physical theatre because it makes their non-naturalistic piece of performance that little bit edgier. We could take a lot of that back with us to rehearsals, especially the part about keeping the energy up through out the whole piece of drama.
Before we split into our two groups, the instructor (William) gave us 5 top tips to keep the audience engaged. I rearranged the tips to make the acronym L.A.C.E.S. this stands for:
- Land your lines
- Avoid the kiss or kill position
- Cheat with your feet
- Embrace the audience magnet
- Stay in character
After this talk we spilt into our two groups we stayed in the main hall while Samuel Rhodes school went into another auditorium. We started by doing some character building exercises. At first we walked around the space in neutral (this character building exercise was much like the 'stop go' game) when William said stop we had to stop while portraying our characters. We then stopped and closed our eyes and visualised our characters and their objectives in the first scene. This allowed us to start to become our characters and not just act like our characters. We then changed up parts of the opening such as where the character enter the stage from, instead of coming in from the back we chose to come in from the sides to make the stage look more like a street. We then skipped to the part with the prince where we played a new game. I call it the ad lib game. Each Character had to either say 'I hear ya sista' if they agree with what the prince says and 'nah way bruv' if they disagree with what the prince says. This helped us give our characters stories and allow us to portray feelings even if we are only ensemble. We then showed our improved piece to the other group of students. this concluded the workshop.
Comments
Post a Comment