Diary
Week 1
Wednesday 27th February
In this session we decided to peer assess each other’s work, we started of by having some rehearsal time to properly remind ourselves of our nuances, spatial awareness etc. We then went onto performing our peices to the class.
Here is my feedback from my peers:
- Slow down so that the words can be understood (practise diction)
- words need to be clearer
- hands together limits gesture
- good body language
- thought processes are clear
- self aware
- good reactions
- The piece was engaging
- I made use of the whole stage space (engaging and stimulating for the audience)
- I was demonstrating what i was saying (it was more understandable)
- I kept eye contact with the audience
- I had great rhythm
- I was already off book (can tell it's well rehearsed)
- it was creative (the voicemail part)
- good characterisation
- strong use of gesture helps portray characters story
- voicemail retains the natural fluidity of the scene
- Clear contrast between 2 phone calls to friend shows the struggle he has with his own personality, almost being 2 people
- expressive
The feedback I was given during this session helped me develop my characters in many different ways, this is because it gave me an audience perspective of what I am doing. While watching back the video above I could see where the constructive criticism came from. For example 9 seconds into the video I begin to stumble on my words because my pace was too fast. The main things that I need to work on is my pace, diction and gestures.
The main reason I need to work on my pace is that if I learn to slow down I would have less of a chance of stumbling on my words thus giving me less of a chance to corpse my character. Another reason for me working on my pace is so that the audience can catch every piece of information that my characters give to them. To work on my pace I plan to rehearse lowing down my monologues but still keeping them at an optimal pace. I may also work with a spoken word soundtrack to help with my pace. The reason I need to work on my diction is to help the audience understand the whole story. To work on my diction I will start every rehearsal session with a diction related voice exercises (such as tongue twisters). The main reason I need to work on my gestures is so that my gestures don't leak into all the characters I will portray. This helps me to separate both the virus and Arinzé's character. To do this I will need to give each of my characters certain gestures and nuances so that the audience may distinguish which character I am at any given point.
Thursday 7th March
Today we went to see 'Do Not Pop' by the Studio 3 Arts company. Our teacher was also apart of this performance. I enjoyed this play because I felt immersed in the world of the play. I believe that this play is very important for my research into youth culture. This is because I thought one of the characters was the embodiment of the virus (Lucas), the name of this character was Tunes. I would describe this character as a Roadman. I have learnt, through growing up around people from East London, that Roadmen have particular traits that Lucas shows in the play. For example, riding bikes with at night, Smoking marijuana etc. Today was also the day that I had the opportunity to showcase my first monologue to a group of professional actors. These are the main points I got back:- work on diction
- slow down on longer words
- make sure the points are clear
- stress eye contact
Wednesday 13th March
Today we each worked on part of our productions. I worked on scene 3 of my production, 'Apparently'. To start off I performed what I had originally prepared for my second speech but I was given direction from the class on how to make the piece more effective in the sense of immersing the audience. This is the time where I learned of Lucas' conflict. Before this point I didn't know that, in the monologue, Lucas talks about Jade ('his friend') having a miscarriage. From what I gathered from the script, no one knows who the father of the child is. So I decided to have Lucas believe that the child was his (at least want to believe). This gives me the insentive to show conflict in this character. This is because having these thoughts shows that Jade isn't just a fling but a real part of his life, which contradicts everything he says.
Friday 29th March
I started off today by running through the first two to make sure I remembered what I had previously learnt. Once I was comfortable with those monologues I moved on to learn my third and forth monologue. Since I had already annotated my movements and nuances when I was going through my script for character creation, it was quite easy for me to run though these monologues. I wasn't able to finish learning the two monologues but I think that my previous research (mainly into black culture and youth culture). I was able to gather that the virus was very apposed to blood cells 1.) because of the context (blood cells vs viruses) & 2.) because of my experiences in a black African household.
Wednesday 3rd April
To start off the day, I decided to go through all the monologues I had already learned as a warm up. This helped me learn my lines, warm up my voice and also practise my articulation. We then got a visit from one of our tutors. I thought that this would be a really good opportunity to get feedback from a tutor and a member of the industry. I decided to showcase my first and second monologues because these were the ones I was most comfortable with. The main two points of constructive criticism were:
Emotion on the other hand was mainly directed at the second monologue, 'Apparently'. The main part that this note was directed at was when the virus is talking about Jade (before he gets to her house). In this part of the monologue, his 'friend' Jade has a miscarriage. What we learnt before this is that the Virus and Jade had been having sex, this observation comes from the line 'She lets me beat it up' (youth culture). Originally I played it as a 'hood man' trying to hide his emotions. So every now and then my character would have a small outburst but also be quite giggly at the same time. According to my tutor and other class mates this didn't give enough detail about the character's complexity. Basically I was taking the easy way out. That is the point where I decided to give this character a conflict. I was inspired to do this because of my research into youth culture in education.
- ARTICULATION
- Emotion
Emotion on the other hand was mainly directed at the second monologue, 'Apparently'. The main part that this note was directed at was when the virus is talking about Jade (before he gets to her house). In this part of the monologue, his 'friend' Jade has a miscarriage. What we learnt before this is that the Virus and Jade had been having sex, this observation comes from the line 'She lets me beat it up' (youth culture). Originally I played it as a 'hood man' trying to hide his emotions. So every now and then my character would have a small outburst but also be quite giggly at the same time. According to my tutor and other class mates this didn't give enough detail about the character's complexity. Basically I was taking the easy way out. That is the point where I decided to give this character a conflict. I was inspired to do this because of my research into youth culture in education.
I thought this was necessary because it gives me incentive to make the monologue seem more emotional. Also I found that the part of the virus was a bit too stereotypical and I wanted him to break the stereotype. Since I was unable to use emotional memory (because I've not had someone close to me have a miscarriage (in my lifetime)), so I had to get creative. Instead, I decided to think up a situation in which I would feel deeply hurt. This was to simulate the hurt the Virus would feel if he thought the child was his, that is the direction I decided to go in. To do this I had to imagine if this happened to me and my girl friend. I also had to explore ways where I can make it absolutely clear to the audience what is happening (because the script doesn't sat she had a miscarriage). I had some help from the 'girls' group with ideas on what to do, such as picking up the 'foetus' and using as much care as I can. I took in this feedback and decided to mix it with the 'thuggishness' of my character. I called it Thug-love. This is because this part of the script reminded me of maternal/paternal love. I didn't really think that the virus would be the paternal type so I created a new type of love. Now by my definition, and what I've seen growing up, when someone like the Virus wants to show that they care without loosing their status they get angry for the person. this means that instead of crying because he lost a child, he would get angry at the world for making it happen. This is a big example of toxic masculinity.
After the session in the morning we went to see a play at the Young vic called 'Jesus Hopped the A-train'. This play was very important to me because it was a very good research point for my play. This is because some of the actors were able to break the forth wall and talk to the characters, this included the main character, Angel Cruz (played by Ukweli Roach) and his lawyer, Mary Jane Hanrahan (played by Dervla Kirwan). Here is the synopsis of the piece:
Jesus Hopped the A Train tells the story of several inmates of Rikers Prison who are awaiting charges for murder. Angel Cruz is a young Puerto Rican man incarcerated for shooting a cult leader after said person “stole” his best friend. When the cult leader dies during surgery, Angel suddenly finds himself facing murder charges. Added to the mix are Lucius Jenkins, a serial killer turned born-again Christian, and Valdez, a sadistic corrections officer. [2]
The play was performed on a Traverse stage, this means that there was audience on either side of the stage (it is also known as a catwalk).
I feel like having the stage like this made the audience feel like they were in the actual world of the play. I believe that it was effective because it made me feel like an onlooker, by this i mean that I felt that i was in the world of the play but there was nothing i could do to change the events of the play. That's when I had the idea of making my show feel like this. I wanted the audience to feel involved but also feel a sense of helplessness. I also liked how the actors would switch from looking at each other to looking at the audience, this made the parts that they told us feel more important. The only thing I didn't want as a part of my show is the traverse stage. This is because since my show is a one man show at any given part one side of the audience would just see my back for extended periods of time and I feel like i would loose their focus for that period of time. Thus why I chose to keep the staging as proscenium.
Tursday 4th April
Today I decided to focus on the third monologue 'Locked out'. In this part of the play the Virus is talking to the people in the house trying to convince/threaten them to let him in. Eventually he gives up going on a rant about how his mother chose her blood cell (white) boyfriend over her own son. He then goes on to talk about how his younger sister would understand what happened in due time and she will come to join him because his mother has not really been apart of her life either. Again I realised I don't have a memory to relate to this scene, but I do have friends who do. So I talked to my friends about their own instances. Most of them didn't really mind being locked out because they had a friend lived near by so they could 'crash' at their house. I also found out that most of these instances happened while coming home late from a party. That's when I realised that there were two things different about the Virus' story:
- His clothes were thrown out as well
- He had something inside the house to fight for (his sister)
Since these things had a lot to do with caring (both about what people think and for others). Therefore I had to bring the Thug-Love back. while going through the monologue I began to realise that this monologue needs to embody a multitude of different emotions. This lead me to the 5 stages of grief. These being:
- Denial - The 'It's not that bad' stage
- Anger - The #&*^%$&# stage
- Depression - The 'It's all meaningless' stage
- Bargaining - The 'I can fix it' stage
- Acceptance - The 'okay fine' stage
For denial, we blatantly see the Virus deny his situation at the beginning of the monologue by saying
'Okay, this ain't funny no more, Trace I beg you tell mum to come and open the door'. Here we see that the Virus thinks it's a joke. We also get a gist that this has happened before (maybe not to this extent) by his use of the words 'no more'. This thought is made firm by Lucas saying 'It wasn't the first time, but like, I knew it was serious cuh all my stuff was in bin bags outside'. For anger we see him getting angry at two people in particular, His mum and his step father (the blood cell). We get this from the part in the monologue where he says 'You pick him over me yeah, you, him and trace one big happy fucking family yeah'. Here we get a statement that shows that the Virus really has respect for loyalty/absolutely despises disloyalty, this being 'You pick him over me yeah?'. I believe that this shows his disbelief of his mum sticking up for her white boyfriend rather than her own flesh and blood. Now in the monologue, depression comes before anger where the virus says 'How can I win though I'm on a slipping slope cause everything I do is a sin though'. This quote shows that the Virus does care if he 'wins' in his mums eyes. There wasn't really anything showing that there was any bargaining involved. This was probably to show his 'tough side', basically a way for him to say 'I don't need you, you need me'. Acceptance was also a stage that came earlier in the monologue. It was portrayed by the Virus saying 'Ight that's cool with me yeah...'. this again shows his need to show everyone that he is independent. I think that the research into the 5 stages of grief has really helped me to pick apart this monologue and add more of a background/character to my character (the Virus).
Over Easter
Over the Easter I decided to focus more on the production side of my show. Firstly I began by writing down all my lighting cues, including spotlights and mood lights. This was to make sure that the audience would be able to get the inner monologues of the characters (even if they aren't being portrayed in the acting). I then started to mark out all my sound cues, including marking out SFX (such as ringtones and gunshots), marking music cues (for example the song for my first monologue) and highlighting all the lines that I planned to have pre recorded. Now I already knew that my tech would be a lot because I had chose to do a one man show with multiple characters. But it was only after I had finished marking out my cues that I realized that there were over 80 cues (both lighting and sound).
There were other problems that I had to deal with over the holidays. First of all I had to finalize weather I wanted to have someone onstage to say some lines just so that the technicians aren't swamped with all my cues. Another reason I wanted someone on stage was to add some things that were in the script to the play. That's when I realized that I wanted to make the play entirely my own. By this I mean that I wanted to do the performance by my interpretation of the lines and the story. So to fix this problem I had to make sure every line from a seperate character was prerecorded. These being:
There were other problems that I had to deal with over the holidays. First of all I had to finalize weather I wanted to have someone onstage to say some lines just so that the technicians aren't swamped with all my cues. Another reason I wanted someone on stage was to add some things that were in the script to the play. That's when I realized that I wanted to make the play entirely my own. By this I mean that I wanted to do the performance by my interpretation of the lines and the story. So to fix this problem I had to make sure every line from a seperate character was prerecorded. These being:
- Raymond & Donna
- Producer
- Sister (the email)
- Dimples
Another Problem I came across was finding something to help me to signify scene/character changes. This is because I found that it wasn't as effective for me to just change my character's characteristics and take off my hood to switch characters. Using the scene objectives and the scene's plot, I picked out a few lines from the preface to use to switch my scenes. For example, I used the line: 'I've been told to write a preface, so I guess I'll just launch right in and tell you how Misty came about.' This line both related to my Scene objective ('to get you to understand') and the scene-plot of the virus laying out the scene.
Tuesday 23rd April
Today my plan was to learn the last two of my monologues, these being the one that leads into the talk with dimples and the one that leads into the end of the play.
Wednesday 24th April
Thursday 25th April
Today I was finally able to get into the recording room to record my sound cues. This time was very insightful into the voice actor scene, for example I was able
recording experience
recording experience
started to learn monologue 6
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