Unit 9

Skills

I will be looking at how I am able to apply the knowledge from last year in this area of my performance. Last year I developed many skills that have already helped me to improve on my work such as characterization, articulation and awareness.

Characterization

I shall use characterization to improve my character by creating a full backstory. As he is a main character I will learn and develop the relationships between each character for example; I have already discovered that Charlie (My character) wishes to peruse romantic relationship with Sam (Played by Chloe Hawthorne and Harry Kelly) but due to his upbringing he doesn't know how to comprehend his feelings, which leads to a very different dynamic when Sam's life is put in danger in comparison to earlier in the play when Charlie is mean towards Sam. This also effects how Sam is portrayed, as the actors have to adapt to Charlie's emotional immaturity. Also throughout the play Charlie will grow and improve upon his emotional immaturity by eventually conferencing his romantic feelings for Sam. Besides this, I will be performing with two different actors of different genders portraying the role of Sam in different productions. This is something I have never done before. I expect that this will effect my performance due to how the characters bounce off of each other. Because of the difference in the portrayal of Sam by the different actors, I am unsure of how I will overcome this difference. This will be my main point of focus over the next couple of weeks leading up to the show.

Articulation

Next I will by looking at articulation. My character is from London and because I am not originally from London, I will be looking at ways to have a slight London accent while still being able to constantly say my lines correctly. Another area I specifically have to look at is the sarcasm of my character and how to say the lines that are sarcastic, and how to establish which lines are supposed to be said in a sarcastic tone. This will have to be done by a process of elimination by trying each line with and without a sarcastic tone and seeing if it works or not. Once this has been established I will be able to look at how sarcastic the line should be said in the sense of; Should it be subtly said or very over the top and obvious? For example: "No is it?" This line can be spoken in both way as he speaking about a 6 ft tall book which will be part of our set.

Awareness

This skill is particularity important for this show as we are using a lot of props and a large set. Due to this, I need to constantly be aware of what is around me, along with the elaborate scenes in the play, I will be likely to get injured if I don't focus. Being open and aware of my fellow actors' response in lines, their undertones and facial expressions is key, especially when the characters are lifelong friends and should know each other incredibly well for example; During the World War 1 scene, characters are going to be effected differently by the situation and I must pay attention so my character will pick up on and react to this.

Script Writing

Within script writing we have all taken the responsibility to put new ideas forward to improve the current script. These include; improvised lines, plot points and character developments. By doing this the class is all on the same page and everyone has an equal say into writing and developing the script. After this a few student me included we given the responsibility to the script fully to place joke and to create dynamics between characters. this process happens over 4 steps. To begin with we had a a base outline of the script to work with this was very basic and was more used as a point of reference so blocking could begin. The second step was to write a finally scene this was becoming a issue as it had not been decided by the class and after multiples discussion and lengthy conversations we all came to an agreement on that the Evil One would be arrested after the treat of bomb from said evil one. For the third step we only focused on act 1 so we could begin work much quicker and earlier instead of having to wait for the full script. Step 4 was to finish act 2 as it was all the was left to do.
looking back on the process I would change quite a lot as their was many avoidable errors and moments of stress the was unnecessary this includes;
Having a script before start to block as we did not have any form of script to begin with it made the work messy sloppy and all together frustrating as it also meant that once a script had been written people were going off book as they were doing what they had previously been doing instead of following the script.
Making the creative team who had an influence on the overall plot and script much smaller as having a creative team of 30 led to many disagreements and overall slowed the process of writing as any small change had to checked with everyone else to prevent this in the future there would need to be a team of approximately 5 people who are going through the script and plot.
Having multiple scripts for this I believe that there were many more drafts that could have been done as it was Clausius on some of the plot hole that were in the finally product as the writers hadn't realized that they were there until it was performed and then were told they weren't allowed to change the script and there was character arc that had been started and not finished.

Rehearsal Evaluation

To start of our rehearsal we sat in groups and were given the concept of 5 children at Christmas time. My group came up with concept of the book and to travel through time by going to places like the birth of Jesus, WW1 and the queens speech. The concept of this was taken and ran with but changed in areas to better the story such as the addition of  a Victorian era and removing the birth of Jesus. After this we began to improvise with the idea of the book time travel and the concept of having a strong overall villain whom controls the book. Throughout the process I have been able to devise a chasing scene in the play which can be found below. This helped me understand how to formulate scenes of a different variety as the are very little lines but comedic as well. which is unlike any other scene I've done before.
In the two videos below you can see how the scene has evolved over time. One of the biggest things that we have to take in to consideration is the fact that our rehearsal space is much smaller than our theater space as seen in both clips. This means that there are slight differences that make the amount of running easier on the actors for example; the dog carrying Charlie (My character). In first clip Charlie is on the dog's back 'piggy riding' style, where as in the second clip he is carrying him in his arms. The change was necessary due to how hard it was for me to safely get on my fellow actor's back. Therefore, we made the decision to change it.

Performance Evaluation

The first three performance went from good to great to brilliant everyone got sharper after each performance alongside plant jokes and line that we discovered worked better with in my opinion though the second performance that we did was the best performance I personally performed my best and I didn't alongside my best cast as there were multiple casts with every joke hit very well. However on the last show I hurt my ankle during the chase which is rather early in the play with no understudies for my role I had to go on with an injured ankle and hop around the stage with some of the cast not realizing they were then unable to assist me in things like moving closer because of this my energy drop alongside my focus this meant that I performed the last performance poorly but other than this I believe the show went very well with no major crisis expect of my injury I believe that this is the best show I have performed.