Unit 8 - final performance (fugees)

Wednesday 18th April

Recap

Today we had a recap session. To start off the session we talked about the things we liked about the script and the things we think would be hard for us to portray. Personally, I like the fact that we were now working on a modern piece because since the start of the year we have worked using old scripts (e.g. Romeo and Juliet, Three Sisters (Chekhov), etc.). The other thing that I liked about the play was that the characters came from all over the world, this would allow us to work with culture and traditions around these different countries which would add to our skill sets as actors. The main thing that we all thought would be difficult about performing the play was the transitions from scene to scene (because there are a lot of flashbacks in between scenes). We thought of ways to overcome this problem and here's what we got:

• blackouts
• split stage
• projection of landscape

We got into 2 groups and talked about the significant parts of the play. The scenes my group thought were the most significant were:

• The starting scene (everybody around a man who is bleeding out)
• The passport control scene
• The uncle giving him a fake visa scene
• The meeting all the refugees scene
• The Kojo faces the councillor scene (with translator) n
• The scene where Ara teaches Kojo English 
• The scene where Kojo has to leave the refuge
• The scene the child soldiers kill his family

this helped us to understand the play in more depth because we could see how others understood the play which allowed us to add to our understanding of the play. This exercise also helped us to see how we could block and transition scenes.

Thursday 19th April

Today, after understanding the play a bit more, we got into groups and wrote down all the scenes (with a summary of what happens), characters and themes of the play.

After this, we switched up the groups and picked a character each and a theme for the group. My group consisted of Kamal, Georgina and myself. The characters we picked were as follows (in order) Market Trader, Cheung, and Kojo. The theme we chose was 'upbringing' because these were the characters and theme we chose, we decided to do a scene where we see Kojo working for the market trader and then having Cheung take Kojo away and talk about their past and how it differs from their current situation.

Tuesday 24th April

Today we devised some more scenes that were not in the play. We chose our first choice characters and got into groups of four. My group was Ilonka, Molly, Georgina, and Myself. Our characters were(in order) Roza, Ara, Cheung, and Kojo. The scene we devised was based on the theme of 'street smarts'. In this scene Roza, Ara, and Cheung would pickpocket people on the street while Kojo stood around looking bamboozled (he doesn't understand how they do things), after this, they group together and tell each other what they had gotten. Roza, Ara, and Cheung have gotten quite a lot after they are done bragging about their haul they look at Kojo expectantly to which Kojo replies 'I found one penny on the floor' portraying his innocence. they all then go into a shop to buy some snacks and in the shop we see Roza taking Kojo away from Ara and how Ara gets jealous when Roza is alone with Kojo.

One of the other groups that I liked was Abe's group. The thing that I liked about their group was that because they had 2 people auditioning for Cheung, they had one person playing Cheung and another playing his thoughts and they switch mid-scene. This helped the audience see what goes through the refugees' mind when they get to the refuge centre. This helped me in my character analysis because the character I want is a new refuge (we sees his entering the refuge scene).

Wednesday 25th & Thursday 26th April

We started auditioning with scenes from the play. I was paired with Jaychelle to do a scene with both Kojo and Ara. We picked the Scene where Ara meets Kojo because this is where we first get a glimpse at the relationship between the two. I was then paired up with Lola who was also auditioning to be Ara. We chose to do a scene later on in the play so we could show the change in the relationship between the two.

Thursday 26th April

After everyone had done their audition scenes we started to bring each scene off the page from scene one. Here we could see how transitions and scenes would play out (since we were quite sceptical about the transitions). This also helped us all think about our character analysis because we were able to see how different characters interacted with one another. We were also able to see how Kojo fits into the scenes that he's not physically in but tells the story (like a narrator).

Tuesday 8th May

Now that our audition process was over we read through the script as our given characters. I was glad that I got the part that I initially wanted because I had already been learning the lines. When we did a read through we got to understand why the characters say and do certain things (their objectives).

Wednesday 9th May

Today we worked through the street scenes so that we could fit in the whole ensemble into those scenes. We wanted not just to show the naturalistic side of things (the street) but also the non-naturalistic sides of things (like Kojo's memories). We chose to use physical theatre to show Kojo's memories because then we show that it's not in the natural. We also chose to keep in the freeze frames where Kojo and the other actors speak directly to the audience because it shows that is not apart of the play they are in but their characters thoughts.

Monday 21st May

Today we did a run through of the play. In our first session with Rob, we worked on scenes 1 - 20. By going through the scenes we were able to make the transitions smoother because the company was starting to get when they had to be on stage and what props (chairs) had to go on stage in certain scenes. The main struggle for me right now is remembering my cues for my smaller lines, especially if I'm starting off the scene because if I don't get my cues right then it could throw off the other members of the cast. Rob's main feedback was that we need to play the intentions, even though this is a Brechtian style play it doesn't mean we need to forget about what we learnt with Stanislavsky.

Tuesday 22nd May

Today we ran through the transitions from scene to scene because we had a little trouble thinking up how we would do it because of the amount scene changes and flashbacks. This session not only helped us to know how to transition but also what we could use (in terms of lighting and sound (and other technicalities)) to make our scenes stand out more, to help us show the audience where we are at any given moment. It also helped me to grasp which scene comes next because Kojo (my character) is either in or starts off most scenes, this could make it confusing for me and other members of the ensemble if I don't know the order of the scenes.

Wednesday 23rd May

Today in the morning we did a normal run through to remind ourselves of the play. We began to realise that the transitions between scenes were quite slow and sloppy so we started to work on different transitions one by one. To make them faster we decided to give people certain jobs (bringing things on and off). After we got all the transition looking good we then did a speed run to make sure we could smoothly execute the transitions, it also tested how well we knew our lines and our thought processes for each scene. I feel like this speed run helped me to give a more emotional performance because it made me think about the emotions more and they started to stick in my head to certain scenes. The speed run also helped me to learn the order of the scenes, at the start of this project I found it hard to learn the order because the story wasn't told in chronological order.

Thursday 24th May

Today we did a tech run (cue to cue). In this tech, we (the actors) got to suggest music for our scene changes. For the African scenes, I chose the song 'premier Gaou' because it reminds me of my own African roots and since all the African scenes were flashbacks into Kojo's life I thought it would be good to have something that reminds me of my African roots. This tech run was the first time we rehearsed in the theatre so we could see what worked for transitions, we thought that having a split stage wouldn't allow us to use the lighting to create the setting because the two different setting colours could really clash. We also realised that projecting the setting behind us could distract the audience, especially if the tech team gets it wrong. So we decided to use lights and go-bos (stencils) to create the different scenes. For example, we use go-bos to create trees in both the park and African scenes, to separate the 2 we used different colours (red/warm colours for Africa and green & warm colours) using the parcan lights at the back of the stage. I think using the lights at the back of the stage was quite effective, for example, the red in the Africa scenes shows the heat of Africa. It also shows how Kojo remembers his home and the distinctive features of his home that he remembers.

Tuesday 29th May

Today we did a full dress and tech run, this was to see if costumes could be changed during scene changes (this mainly applied to people who were playing more than one character). This allowed us, actors, to know where our costumes should be at any given time of the play or who should be bringing on our costume (if needed). Through this run through we learnt that some props were not needed because actors would forget props off-stage but out miming still allowed us to show the objects that we needed to show.

Wednesday 30th May

Today was our first Show day. We started off the day by doing some vocal and group bonding exercises, such as tongue twisters and the 'that is not a book' game (a game where you have to act like an object is not its original object, for example, using a pen as a spatula). After this, we began a dress run with the Wednesday cast (we had two casts because multiple people wanted to play the certain characters). Though this we able to get our character relationships in check before our matinee show. One of our cast members was not in for this morning rehearsal, therefore, we had to get a stand-in so people could revise their character relationships with the stand in.

Matinee performance

Our matinee performance was quite good for our first of four performances. The feedback we got was that our thought processes and character relationships were good. There were some unfortunate problems with lines during the show because the cast member who had not been in for rehearsals had come in to perform a couple of minutes before show time. There were also a few problems with the lighting which off-put people's cues, But over all, it was a good first show. After the show during our break, I went to talk to some of the audience about the show, most of the audience said that the character relationships were believable and that they could really empathise with the children because of the amount of emotion we put into our characters. One piece of feedback I specifically got was to be more 'lovey dovey' with the actor playing Ara. To do this I had to tap into my emotional memory, I remembered a time where I was in love and how it made me feel, so then when I had remembered those feelings I added them to my character towards the actor playing Ara.

In-between shows

In between our two shows, we practice our transitions and some of the whole ensemble scenes (such as the street scenes and the child soldier camp scene), We needed to learn how to work with the lines so that all our actions were in time with the lines. We also spent our time asking for feedback on our show so that we could improve ourselves for our evening show.

Evening show

Our evening show was way better than our matinee because the whole cast was in by our in-between show break so we could have a full run with our full cast. This made it easier for us to remember lines and cues because everyone who played 'main' and 'supporting' characters were around when we did our in-between show rehearsals.

Thursday 31st May

Today was our second and last day of performances. We started off the day by again doing some vocal exercises and movement exercises (things like filling up the stage). This was to help us with our projection, articulation and our usage of the stage. We then did the 'That is not a book' game again, this time we had to make the object things that were apart of the play. For example, I used a pen as a gun (representing the guns of the child soldiers). This helped us to focus on the play more an start to remember the important parts of the play. We then did a dress run through with the Thursday cast. Again some of our cast members were not in for the morning rehearsal so we had to have a stand-in for their characters or find a way to act without those lines. for instance in the scene with Kojo, the translator and the councillor we didn't have the translator so we had to act around his lines.

Matinee performance

I think that up to this point this was our best show because of the energy coming from the audience, they got all the jokes and really uplifted the cast because they could understand the character relationships as well. I was more comfortable acting in love with Jaychelle (Thursday Ara) because I had practiced with her more so we got our character relationship from earlier in the project. Also as I've had to act in love in our earlier performances it was easy for me to go back in my mind to get the correct emotions to show the love that Kojo has for Ara but I was able to suppress it a little because Kojo doesn't show his feelings as much as Ara does. Again after the show, I began to ask the audience about what they thought of the show. They all said that they all really enjoyed it and that the emotions seemed very real. I was really pleased with this feedback because that shows that I was able to show all the sides of Kojo because he doesn't stick to one emotion throughout the play (like the social worker does) but his emotions hop around a lot. For example in the first park scene, with Cheung and Ara, Kojo is very distraught by the end of it yet in the very next scene it's his birthday so he has to be ecstatic. so the switches were hard but I'm glad they came out well. I didn't really get any bad feedback as an actor but for all of us as an ensemble, the feedback was that we should tell the story to the audience when we break the fourth wall.

In-between shows

In-between the two shows we decided that the ensemble scenes needed a little bit of work because we discovered that sometimes the actions are off-beat to the lines. For example, the truck scene, as I (Kojo) say my lines the supporting should be acting out what I say. For example when I say 'they hit me and beat me' they have to freeze in a position where it shows them hitting and beating me. We also practiced the transition from the tree scene into the councillor scene and the transition from the dream scene to the street scene this was because these transitions were slow and thus made people wait to say their lines even though the lights had come up, it's also because people (who weren't in earlier rehearsals) were missing their cues.

Evening show

Our Thursday evening show was our best show by far because the energy was up from our matinee show. This helped out our thought processes during the show, not only because we had a bigger audience that we wanted to impress but also because we had more experience performing this play on the stage. The audience in this show was also very engasging therefore our energy was up even more. Another thing that I think affected our performance was the fact most of our families/loved ones were there so we wanted to do our best for them.