Unit 9 - 'A Christmas Carol'

Week 1

Wednesday 12th September 

In our lesson with Sharon, we watched a 1951 film rendition of the book 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens. It was very different from other more recent versions I have watched, such as 'The Muppet Christmas Carol' and 'Bah, HumDuck' (the Looney Tunes rendition). I enjoyed the contrast it had to the different renditions of the performance. The main things I liked about this rendition is the contrasts between the comedic parts and the serious parts. I feel like this helped me to stay engaged with the storyline because in some parts I could laugh and at some, I was really feeling sorry for the characters. For example, the contrast between when Scrooge is with the ghost of Christmas yet to come and when he finally awakes from the visitation of the spirits.

 

Thursday 13th September

we started off today's acting lesson by reading through a synopsis of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'. We then began to draw out mind maps of the things we enjoyed about either the book or the movie since my group finished early we also did a mind map of themes.

These are some of the themes we came up with:

• Greed - Scrooge shows his greed at the beginning of the play be refusing to give money to the solicitors when they come to see him about the poor.
• Family - We see family sprinkled all over the film/book starting with Scrooge's nephew and how they differ. It also includes how far from his family Scrooge is and how close other families are, for example, Bob Cratchit's family.
• Clouded Judgement (idolism) - In the play, we see that Scrooge puts his work (getting money) before his fiancé, which causes her to leave him and at that point (in the past) he is not phased. 
• Change - The whole story is about how Scrooge changed from a miserly old man to a joyful old man, but there are also changes that Scrooge makes happen by changing himself, for example, the fact that Tiny Tim recovers and stays alive.

After this exercise, we chose a theme and made it into a still image. My group chose the theme of poverty vs wealth. We chose to show two poor children begging Scrooge for money and depicted a spirit trying to show him the error of his ways. We were then told to create a short improvised scene around the still image. For this part, we showed exactly what was in our image ( two poor children begging Scrooge for money and depicted a spirit trying to show him the error of his ways), so in this aspect, our piece was a little boring.
The group I liked the most was Brad's group because they showed a still image of the iconic Charles Darwin evolutionary depiction. It was very apparent that their theme was 'change'. I also liked the way they used lines from the play to show the evolution of Scrooge's Character which made their piece non-naturalistic. I also liked the fact that it explained Scrooge throughout the whole story.

We then got into groups of 5/6 to remake the story of 'A Christmas Carol'. My group decided to modernize the story by adding modern songs (such as This Christmas -  Chris Brown) and adding modern dances (such as the 'shoot' dance).

Here is what we produced:

Part 1

Part 2

Songs:

• This Christmas - Chris Brown
• Man in the Mirror - Micheal
• Look Alive - BlocBoy JB and Drake
• Sikiliza Kwa Wahenga - Michael Abel
• Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - Destiny's Child

I feel like if we had enough time, we could brush up both our voices our transitions. But overall I feel like our improvisation performance was quite good for a first draft. Our movements fitted the songs and the songs fit the story so all were coherent. We thought that the want/ignorance part should be done more abstract because it shows a metaphor and not something real.

I thoroughly enjoyed the other group's short rendition of the play because they made theirs around the idea of 'dungeons and dragons'.  Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D) is a fantasy board game that is controlled by a game master and each choice is decided by the roll of a dice if the dice comes up higher than a certain number the suggested notion goes through if lower then the notion fails. Here's what they came up with:

I really liked their use of a Game Master because it puts a different perspective on the story of Scrooge, instead of being miserly out of his own free will, he is being controlled by a 'greater being'. I thought that this could be a fun aspect to work around because it will make our work different to the basic re-telling of the story.

Friday 14th September

In today's lesson, we did a read through of the play with the musical theater and dance students. Before going into this lesson I had my mind set on auditioning for Tiny Tim (Bob Cratchit's son), but I left the lesson feeling like that character would not challenge me enough. So going through the read through I tried out many different characters (the Narrator, Scrooge, Martha Cratchit etc.). This was so I could get a flavor of what character I would like to be in the long run. I have chosen to audition for both the Narrator or Scrooge. The Narrator would challenge my acting capability because of the number of lines one has to remember. Scrooge would also challenge my remembrance of line but also my ability to act miserly because up until now most of my character's baseline attributes have been either upbeat or very loving (with the exception of Kojo (Unit 8)).

Week 2

Wednesday 19th September

Today we worked with the musical theater/dance students on tableaux. Tableaux is the proper name for a still image. These images tell a story while frozen. Our first exercise was to walk around the room and when Sharon called out a number we got into groups of that number. We were then given places and emotions. We were then mixed up into three groups, we were given the task of talking about what we thought was the main theme of the play was. Before we went onto the next exercise we tested out the effectiveness of our tableaux. We did this by getting given a particular place to show (either naturalistic or non-naturalistic) and we had to see if the rest of the class. We were then given feedback to increase the effectiveness of our tableaux (e.g. levels, spacial awareness etc.). This feedback really helped us produce tableaux about our themes. It helped us to know how to effectively show our theme in an interesting way. My group's theme was refection. We tried to look deeper into the story to show how Scrooge's actions reflected that of his father, and how Scrooge's father's dislike towards him reflected Scrooge's dislike of his nephew. here's what we came up with:

We created it like this to show how Scrooge's hatred for happiness (mainly Fred's) reflects his father's hatred towards him (how his father blames him for killing his mother). I felt that although it was an effective tableau, it didn't capture the whole story. Personally, I would think that a good representation would be how his reflection changed him into the loving/caring man he ended up as.

The next exercise we did was merging all of our tableaux together to create one large interesting tableaux.

Personally, I feel like this tableau was much better because it left room for the audience to pick it apart and find their own opinion of the story as a whole.

The next exercise we had to do was create a tableau of a party scene in the play, we got into two groups and created tableaux of both Fezziwig's and Fred's party's. We then had to bring them to life (as in create a moving party scene). This was our version:

I think that we did capture all the aspects of a Victorian party (e.g. eating, serving, dancing, etc.). For this exercise, I had to learn how to polka dance which confused me at first but I got the hang of it through practice. Personally, I thought that our party scene was quite sparse but that moved us on to our next exercise. We merged both the groups together to create a large tableau and moving image and to me, this felt more realistic because we were using the space well and filling up the stage space. Here's what it looked like:

I feel like this was much better because the stage space was used much more effectively. Personally I think that the one where the drunkards/eaters were on the outside because it would have been more realistic, because in Victorian parties there would always be a dancing space and an eating space.

Friday 21st September

Today we did our auditions for the play. We had to sight read a passage from the characters we wanted and we could choose if we wanted to audition with a song or not. I was auditioning for the part of either the narrator or Ebenezer Scrooge. So for The Narrator I read the opening passage where they introduce the play as a whole. I had some problems because some of the words were unfamiliar to me but if I get the part I could practice on my enunciation of those certain words. Also since we are adapting the script we may change some words because certain members of the audience won't get it either.

For Scrooge I auditioned with his argument with the solicitors, since anger is one of my weaker emotive skills I did have trouble so it may not of been the best choice for the audition but I wanted to go out of my comfort zone. For an audition I thought I did quite well under-pressure. I also did a song with my audition, I did 'Hallelujah' by Alexandra Burke and since my voice is quite deep I thought that it was quite a contrast to the original song, but I also thought that that bass would fit the emotion of Scrooge. 

Week 3

Tuesday 25th September

Today we made improvisations around the 'ghosts' scenes, Ghost of Christmas past, present and yet to come. To start off the session we made timelines of what we were planning to do coming up to our performance.



This was to help us realise where we needed to be at the end of each month, helping us set our own goals. This way if we aren't meeting those goals we will be inclined to work harder because those goals were set by us. After this we were split in it to 3 groups. Each group was given a specific ghost to look at. My group was given the ghost of Christmas present. We decided to have a Narrator telling the story of what the ghost was showing Scrooge, instead of acting it out. This allowed the audience to imagine their own version around themselves. What I mean by this is that by playing Scrooges reactions out to the audience we could bring the audience into the world of the play, as if they were the things that Scrooge was reacting to. Personally, I don't think that this was very effective because the audience had to work twice as hard to think about what was going on so therefore they weren't focusing on the actor's reaction. For example the audience was either focused on the narration so they worked more trying to see the scene (in their mind's eye) or they were focused on the emotion of the ghost and/or Scrooge. If we had more time I feel like it would be much better if we incorporated some acting out of the scenes so that the audience won't have to focus on one aspect of the performance and focus on the improvisation as a whole.

Wednesday 26th September

King Lear

Thursday 27th September

Today we got our characters. Although I didn't get the character I auditioned for (Scrooge), I was still quite happy with the characters I got. Some people had multiple roles because our cast wasn't big enough. The two characters I got were Jacob Marley (Scrooge's deceased partner) and the ghost of Christmas present. These characters are completely opposite from each other and Jacob is very different to my own persona (overly confused, romantic or energetic). Jacob is a very lamentable and Present is Jolly, complete opposites.

Friday 28th September

Today we went through pages 1-15 of the script. Now that we had our characters we began blocking out the first few scenes. This included:

• The entrance of the play (tableaux, snowflake dance and opening narration)
• Scrooge's scene with the solicitors
• Scrooge's scene with Fred
• Scrooge's scene with Bob Cratchit
• Scrooge's scene with Jacob Marley  

Since we didn't have the whole cast we had to distribute the characters amongst the cast members so that we could give them notes next week. In this session we added little nuances in different places to better explain what the character means/ the nature of the character. Such as at the beginning of the play where the narrator introduces Scrooge, all the people on the street (the ensemble) scatter showing everyone's fear/hatred towards Scrooge. This not only helped us as actors get to know our characters but it also gave the audience clues as to how the should feel about certain characters. For me, acting and reacting was a big part of this session. This is because I was confused as to how to play a sorrowful ghost (Marley) and having that 'yes and...' mentality helped me to push through. For example, if the character playing Scrooge was showing fear my first reaction would be to become more and more intimidating at that point, balancing out the fear and sorrow factors of my character. I feel like this would be my main challenge for this unit, that and being able to switch from the sorrowful Marley to the jolly Ghost of Christmas Past.

Week 4

Tuesday 2nd October

Today we went through what we blocked out on Friday. We could now add in the people who were missing that day. This helped me a lot because I could now act on how the actual character would act. This helped me because then I was able to go home and practice using the knowledge I had gained about their acting style with Scrooge. It was also a chance for my to try out new voices for Marley. I started of by using a generic ghostly voice (wailing) but I played it down because i didn't want to go over the top. Here's an example of what I mean:

I was then told to use that to my advantage, to over play it so it can be brought down later to a more manageable level. I suggested to use a microphone to add reverberations/echoing to my voice to give it more of an non-naturalistic sound.

Wednesday 3rd October 

Today we went to Westminster Kingsway Soho centre to practise our monologues in front of camera. This allowed us to get a feel for the film/TV aspect of acting. This is because we had to under-play the roles of our monologues, we also had to look straight at the camera (director's instruction). This was a bit strange for me because during my monologue (contemporary) my character is speaking to multiple people. I also feel that under-playing our characters was strange for most of us (in theatre) because we are mainly told to go over the top with our characters so that we can bring them down to the correct place. But personally I feel like watching and listening to myself saying my monologue would help me improve it if I need to because I can  hear were i stress words and I can also see my nuances that I may need to remove from my character, to distance myself from the Character.

Friday 5th October

Throughout today we went through the whole script without stopping. This was a very informative rehearsal. This is because we got to learn who hadn't started learning their lines at all and who was actually putting in an effort. We also got to see who was enthusiastic about the characters we got. This is the point in time that some of us began to lean that we should be contempt with whatever role we had got (as we learnt from the Hamilton cast during our Q&A session). Personally I found that being contempt with the Characters I got helped me to learn my lines easily. I still found some things hard, for example how to create the ghostly,lamentable character of Jacob Marley. This is because I'm more of a jolly person so for this character i really had to distance myself. I found this kind of strange because with The Ghost of Christmas Present I could use my own persona as a basis for the creation of the character.

Week 5

Tuesday 9th October

To start off this session we started to move around the space as our character. I chose to move around as Marley because this was the character that I needed the most practise with.

From acting experience, i have leaned that when people are in a state of sadness they usually drop their head and lead (when they walk) with their forehead. So that's what I began to do but I wanted to add something more. That's when I remembered that Marley wears chains, so I began to make my steps slower and heavier and made my strides smaller, I thought that this would simulate the heavy chains that Marley wears.
We then had to improvise/recreate a day in the life of our character while making our way around the room. For me, that was quite easy because all I (as Marley) had to do was walk. This is because Marley was 'Doomed to wander' and since he was a ghost he didn't need to eat, work or sleep.
After this we got into a circle and talked about words and gestures that described our characters. My word for Marley was Lament, I thought this would be a good word for Marley because I thought that he would have regretted his actions during his lifetime because of his more eternal punishment. My action to describe Marley was a stressful type of head in hands, like this:

This not only helped me show the lamentable nature of Marley but also the stress/pain ridden side of Marley.

After this we went back to the first exercise but this time we thought about our words and added in our actions. As we went through the exercise our tutor shouted out numbers (from 1-10) giving us a level of 'over-the-top-ness' that we had to portray in our actions and movements. To over exaggerate my movements I slowed my strides even more, I also dropped to my knees 'in pain' about every 10-20 steps to show how much pain Marley was in as he wandered the earth with those chains weighing him down. I also made my steps heavy and loud while also adding ghostly moaning as I did each gesture of falling down and putting my head in my hands. We ended the session with some hot seating, the outcome of my hot seating is with the rest of my context.

Thursday 11th October

We started today off by talking about what we want from the audience. These were the top three things we came up with:

• we wanted them to believe what we were doing
• we wanted to make them feel immersed
• we wanted them to react

The main thing that I think that we have to do to achieve these 3 things was to make the whole play as believable as we could, and we all knew that it was going to be tough. We knew it was going to be hard because their are a lot of fantasy elements in this play including, the Ghosts and the idea of time travel(to some extent). To do that we had to put our skills of emotional memory to the test. For me this was pretty hard for me since most  of my recent memories are of happy times so I had to dig deep within myself to find a memory that would help me make my character of Marley more believable. Once we make our characters more believable, the audience would be able to connect to our characters more, this would help them to feel more immersed in the world of the play because they will be able to relate to the characters and if people can relate, they can react. 

Friday 12th October

Today we actually began to block out parts of the play up until around the middle of the play (The Ghost of Christmas Present). We mainly blocked entrances and exits because we couldn't block out everything, mostly because either people weren't around or hadn't learnt their lines. So this is what fuelled our fire for tomorrow.

Tuesday 30th October

Today we did a line run. We sat in a circle and said our lines, no scripts, seeing who actually had been doing work to meet the deadline for no script runs. I feel like I benefited from this session because i was able to learn my ques in an under-pressure type situation. It also help us as a cast to practise catching our ques instead of asking 'is it my line?'. We still came across a reoccurring problem though, we still had some of the cast absent so it was a little harder to pick up on ques but with a little bit of perseverance we were able to get through the whole play in one sitting.

Wednesday 31st October

We started off today by doing a run-through of the whole play with the musical theatre cast as well. I feel like this run-through was actually quite good because we started to get used to working without certain people. We had 10 cast members out of a total of 16, but even with that small numbered cast we were still able to get through the whole play in one go.
In the afternoon we began to practise dances that the dance students choreographed for us. One dance for the Fezziwig party, one for the Fred Party and one for the end of the play. I found it very easy to pick up on the different moves even though i did make some mistakes, like slipping (probably was not a good idea). Here are two examples:

Fezziwig's party

End of play

Thursday 1st November & Friday 2nd November

On Thursday we ran through the play off book. I found this rehearsal to be one of the worse ones yet, not many people had actually met the deadline of learning our lines. For me it was about learning the lines of The Ghost of Christmas Present. Because I had been so focused on perfecting Marley up until this rehearsal, I wasn't giving enough attention on Present. I did, however, manage to learn half of Present's lines before the run through. Since I was focusing on Present for today I had started to lose my Marley mannerisms, I began to bring myself back into Marley (through both voice and body language), which rendered weeks of work pointless. So I figured that I needed to balance out how much time I gave to each character. To do this I ,first, needed to learn the rest of the lines for Present so that I could start working on mannerisms and nuances. Then I had to re-imagine the character of Marley to better create a sticking character (by sticking I mean one that I can easily remember and portray)

Tuesday 6th November

Hamilton 

Wednesday 7th November

We started off today by playing some Performing related games, including WAH! and two lies one truth. This games helped us to come together as a cast because lately our teamwork skills have not been up to speed. I'm thinking it's because the cast members that have been coming to all rehearsals are feeling like those who constantly have been avoiding rehearsals. This helped me to learn that being present and punctual is a very important thing, especially when working with other people. In the afternoon we did another run-through of the play with songs.

Friday 9th November

For our session today we did an over-the-top rehearsal. This helped us to get a more solid grip on our characterisation. Since I first wanted to make the play a pantomime I found this session quite exceptional. This session definitely helped me to grasp a more in depth basis for my characters (especially Marley). It helped me to get a grand overview of my characters so that I was able to bring it down a bit for the show.

Tuesday 13th - Wednesday 21st November

Over this week period we did run through after run through to improve on each and every run. This was very helpful because we were able to learn how to improve with the notes we got form our tutors and peers. My main notes were to put my character into both my voice and my movements, This meaning I should lose Jeremy (my nuances and gestures) and completely give myself to my character. On Tuesday 20th November, we started to think about costume and what our characters would wear. The first thing that came into my mind ,for Marley, was loosely fit clothing (that of the working class in the Victorian era).

This is because I had the idea that since he was wealthy in his life, and didn't care much for those worse off around him (I got this idea from the fact that the Narrator says that Scrooge was his "sole mourner" meaning no one else enjoyed his presence), so I thought it would be a good idea to make him the thing he hated/feared so much. But then I was thinking to put Marley should be lower than those he hated/feared ,I got this idea because Marley says he is "Doomed", thus why I wanted to make it as bad as possible. So I got to researching. I found the term "underclass". These are the people that are poor and unemployed. These people would wear rags because they didn't have money to buy clothes. The chains reminded me of being slave to something and I believe that Jacob Marley is slave to his greed and selfish ways. He says in Act 1 of the play "From those in need I tuned away I turned my back" which shows that he doesn't care for the people who are under him in social & financial status.
For my character of The Ghost of Christmas Present (TGCP), I decided to go with my research into the character rather than the period. Through my research I found that TGCP is often depicted as a 'jolly, fat man' much like Santa Clause. So I decided to focus on the Christmas  part of TGCP. So at first I began to focus on Santa, so having the stereotypical red suit with white fur/lining, but as I began to research the character more I began to see that having the red and white may be too comical or may confuse the audience of my character so I decided to differentiate. I did this by wearing oversized clothing that had golden fur and wearing a wreath around my head (as depicted in pictures of TGCP).

On Wednesday 21st November we had the acting certificate students in to come and watch our rehearsal. Since we didn't have the whole cast in the rehearsal with us, it was very hard for us to keep on time with ques and to complete dances properly. We had to rely on people on stage to give the lines of those who were absent. This helped us learn that being at every rehearsal is important because if we aren't it seriously decreases the level of performance and also makes the ensemble work a lot harder because people begin to separate and teamwork isn't as effective. During this rehearsal time morale began to drop, the cast was not as enthusiastic about the show at this point. So we began to talk amongst ourselves about attendance and things began to change in the weeks coming up to the performance. This helped us to build our teamwork, leadership and problem solving skills which really helped us to build the overall atmosphere of the performance.

December 1st - December 13th (Show)

Coming up to the show dates we ran through as much as we could with the amount of cast members that we had, focusing mainly on the weaker parts of the show (the Cratchit scenes and entrances and exits). We started off  doing tech runs in the theatre on the 1st. At this point not everyone had gotten their costumes so we mainly focused on tech in the theatre. Our main focus was to get positioning sorted so that the tech team would have a much easier job while lighting our show. That meant that I had to map my movements on stage, especially for Marley. This is because every time Marley was on stage he had a following spotlight. Personally I found that while rehearsing as Marley I was following the spotlight rather than it following me. This was both helpful and troublesome. I found it helpful because it helped me to keep my 'Marley walk', how I walk with heavy small strides making my walk much slower. The spot light helped me to pace myself and to pace my lines as well. The spotlight also helped me to work on my stage mapping skills because usually I change my style every performance to fit the type of audience and how I want the audience to feel, but with the spotlight I had to remember my movements as much as possible so that I could stay in the spotlight as much as possible. I also found the spotlight troublesome because at some point during rehearsal the spotlight would move in an opposite direction to my character, therefore I had to adapt in the moment and fit in the my movements into my speech. I found this challenging because I felt that I would be focusing more on where the spotlight is than focusing on staying in role and my characters words. 

Evaluation

Matinee #1

Our first show wasn't our best. I feel like because people saw that the audience was small they didn't really give the energy that was required for the show. The places that we messed up the most, according to our notes, were the dances (especially the Fezziwig dance and the end dance). My main note/criticism for our first show was that I lost my wailing, ghostly voice. For me this meant that I brought myself more into the character instead of distancing myself from the character, which was my plan to begin with. Another note of mine was that I should make Present less camp. By this I mean that my Present was a bit too flamboyant to effectively show the importance of Scrooge's change. I decided to make Present flamboyant as a sort of comic relief for the on coming dark scenes. The most reoccurring piece of constructive criticism I got from both my tutors and members of the audience was that I was a bit too quiet when saying my lines. To fix this, before the next show, I will try and do vocal exercises to help me use my diaphragm to help my voice to reach the back of the performance space. Personally I believe that we succeeded in making the audience feel immersed and helped them to feel connect to the characters. The way I did this throughout the show was to throw out glitter to the audience, as Present, so the felt like they were apart of the world of the play. Coming on through the audience, as Marley, was also one of my ideas to help the audience feel involved in the world of the play. I also feel like I succeeded to help the audience connect to the character of Present by talking directly to the audience (when throwing glitter) and also doing dances that the audience would know, including the gun lean and the dab.

Matinee #2

I felt that this matinee was much better than our last because this is when everyone knew they were going to filmed. We also had a bigger and more engaging audience, including secondary school students and students from around the college. I  enjoyed this performance much more than our first, not only because high energy was shared throughout the cast  but also because the audience understood where we had jokes and really connected with the world of the play. For example, students from the secondary school asked Present to sprinkle his 'peculiar flavour' on their classmates and teachers. This gave me incentive (other than wanting to pass the course) to bring more vim into my characters and connect with the audience more.  Things that I improved on from our first show were:

• Increase of volume (for Marley)
• Staying in the spotlight (for Marley)
• Decreased flamboyancy (for Present)
• Increase of connection with audience (for both characters)
• Increased quality of characterisation (for Marley)

I found my morale very much boosted after this second show, even though there were still a few slip ups (mainly in the Fred's party scene) we still pulled through. The only downside to this performance, I would say, was that I forgot to increase the volume for Present which really brought down the quality of my performance, because of this I went into our evening show thinking about what i needed to improve on. This being:

• Keep exaggerated characterisation (for both characters)
• Increase volume (for Present)
• Increase quality of character interaction 

Evening show (last show)

This was our best show of the three, everyone effectively used the time between shows to rehearse what they wanted to improve for evening performance. For me, that was doing vocal exercises (such as tongue twisters and throwing my voice across the space). This helped me to remember to use my diaphragm to project my voice instead of straining my voice by trying to use my throat to project. We could see that everyone had done their fair share of rehearsing for the show during the show because all line ques were picked up on and we were able to hear everyone delivering their lines. Although we did have so technical difficulties during the show, actors on stage were still able to keep focused and stay in character. The dance ques were also slowed down for us so changes (costume) could be done properly and people could be on stage ready for the start of dances/songs. One place where this was effective was during the Fred's party scene, people were able to get into position for the beginning of the dance which allowed the dance to flow smoothly. I also enjoyed the audiences engagement in the play. It helped me to relate more with the audience (in character) which also helped us to reach our goal of making the show more immersive. Something we can all take from this experience is that we always need to show up to rehearsals. This is because we found that where people were not at rehearsals there were 'quality gaps' in the play (places where the quality wasn't as high as other parts of the play).