Wednesday, 25 February 2015

Devising - Week 6

Class Feedback

To start week 6 off we did performed our piece to the other groups. This was good because it meant that we could get another perspective on our work. Our group was given this feedback: Refine Physical Theatre Movement, Great Tense scene between the boys, need to work on the movement technique, Don't come out of character, add some music and have more Berkovian style scenes. This constructive criticism was really helpful to our group as it meant we could work on things that have been noticed to have not been as good as other scenes. 

We also got feedback from Deborah, she said how the boys fight scene between Lewis, Joe and I needs to be more slick and at a better pace. We took this advice into consideration and took out the back rolls that Lewis and I were doing, we knew that there had to be a moment between mine and Lewis' character which showed a connection and partnership against Billie Joe. We tried a variety of movements out that would show this while also getting Lewis in a position to start his fight with Joe. I had the idea to catapult Lewis into near where Joe was standing. However this wasn't enough by itself and looked quite lacklustre. We showed this back to Deborah and she agreed that it wasn't enough, she gave us the idea that after Father has broken up the fight between Billie and Brother Taylor that both Lewis and I run at each other and stop and link arms, after this we both lean back holding each others weight and use the momentum to swing, we the did this again to get Lewis to near where Joe was standing, this idea was great as it showed the connection, got Lewis in position and wasn't too challenging to do. We also were told that it needed to be at a better pace, for this me and Joe rehearsed this scene many times to try and find moments to slow it down. We came to the part where Joe has jumped into my arms, for this we were told to slow it down, this was great because it gave the scene more intensity and also showed the opposite style to the fast movement of before. The slow part also shows a moment of peace between the two characters. This juxtaposition creates a lasting impact on the audience. 

Deborah also helped me recognize how  my emotions weren't being portrayed in this scene, I was annoyed at myself because I wanted to be believable in my portrayal. After this I decided to identify and write down the emotions I will be feeling in this scene. I did this as I feel I am a Method Actor, Method acting was a device taught by Constantin Stanislavski which in summary the actor recalls emotions from his own life to put into the scene. I identified that I first feel hatred towards Billie when seeing him with Donna.  To feel this emotion I thought of someone I dislike very much from the past and imagined this was Joe. This I felt worked as I expressed how I truly felt. 

I also got advice on my scene after the fight with Lewis when I question who Billie is. In this scene I'm meant to be superior to the father because of my money and reputation. However I wasn't showing this. Deborah and people in my group gave me constructive criticism. I was told to be more horrible towards Lewis' character. I took this into consideration and thought about making a short script for me to say when doing this scene. This will make me more confident when performing it and will also help me to find moments of pause to show tension. The script reads as follows:

"Who is he? Why is he with your daughter? Does he have money like I do? Does he have a reputation like I do? She's disrespecting you. She's disobeying your orders. are you the man of the house or are you just a coward? Are you going to look at me when I talk to you? Look at me. Look at me. LOOK AT ME."

For this I wanted to make it obvious to the audience my status and so I mention things like reputation and money while also showing how Billie has a very low status. I also play on the mind of Lewis' character by asking whether he is the man of the house. I show my superiority in this line by calling him a coward and suggesting that he is inferior to his daughter. For the last bit of this speech I say 'Look at me' three different times. I get louder with each 'Look at me', to show how by each one I am getting more angry because I'm being ignored. I finally push Father to his limits and he glares at me, at this point I look scared as if I'm about to be hit yet Lewis' character stops himself as he thinks about what Brother Taylor can bring to his family if he marries his daughter. 

Joe's Monologue

On Wednesday we decided that Joe needed a scene so the audience would understand how Billie was feeling after the break up. We thought we wouldn't make it kind of like an interrogation and as if he was being asked questions. We asked him such questions as where did you meet?, how long have you been seeing her?, do you love her? All these questions were good but they weren't telling us anything new about this character. We made up new questions more deeper question to understand more about Billie, we decided to make it quite abstract and do the monologue after he died and ask him such questions like 'why did you jump off the bridge?' these questions got greater answers from Billie and made the audience question what had happened. After this we decided that we wouldn't ask the questions and so the audience would just hear the answers making it more enthralling.

I thought we progressed well this week, next week is performance week and I think with some refinement we are ready to show.


Monday, 23 February 2015

Devising - Week 5

More Scenes

To start off week 5 we did a warm up to get us ready. Unfortunately Kennedy wasn't with us today so we had to do scenes around her. After we had done our warm up we noticed that we had scenes that were refined but we didn't have enough scenes. I asked Phoebe to see her book as she had the most up to date scene list. I looked at it and we only had about 7 scenes. I said that we needed more scenes after Brother Taylor proposes. A scene I suggested was that Bobbie would tell Billie that she was getting married to Brother Taylor. I felt as if the scene couldn't get started so I told Donna to imagine that she loved someone and that they were snatched away from her. After I said this, the scene started to develop, but it was still difficult to get it really going. I also wanted to think about more scenes for our piece but I couldn't get any inspiration, I decided to do another warm up to try and get some energy and creativity, but everything that I thought of wouldn't work in the piece.

Character Development

In this week I wanted to get to grips with who my character was, I already knew that Brother Taylor was a religious man who has a lot of money, has a great status and is seen as a great guy by many of the elder generation. In this case the Father of Bobbie Sue. My character is also involved in an Arranged Marriage, he is set to get married to Bobbie Sue, yet it's obvious she doesn't want this marriage and how it's the fathers choice to marry them so that they can share the wealth of Brother Taylor. As soon as I started to think about my character, I immediately thought of West Side Story where Maria is arranged to marry Chino. In this Maria and Chino are both sharks a gang that is new to the streets of New York City, there rival gang the Jets has a man called Tony in it who meets Maria at a dance and they run away together. This is similar to our piece as Bobbie much like Maria has to hide the relationship from nearly everyone. I would say that my character is a lot like Chino's as he is approved of by her family. We also see in West Side Story how, Maria can only tell her sister about how she doesn't love Chino, this is shown in our piece where Bobbie can only tell her mother that she doesn't want this to happen. The character of Brother Taylor, to me is very religious and is seen as a antagonist in our piece. This I found easy getting to grips with, as societies views on certain things have changed so much that Religion is not the most important thing any more, in 2011 a UK census showed that 59 % of people in the UK are Christians. 24% said they had no religion at all. This shows how many people have gone off the idea of Christianity mostly due to many different ideas of life itself. For example Charles Darwin. Society are also noticing how homosexuality was noticed as an abomination in the Bible, and how the public's view on this subject has changed while the churches has stayed the same. This is another reason how I found it easy getting to know this character. Many Brothers in Catholicism are quite old, however I saw Brother Taylor to be about 43. I think to show that he needs to be this old to show how he is a sleaze as he is getting married to a girl much younger.

Objectives

On Thursday we didn't have much time to rehearse because of another unit. In the time that we did have, we decided to come up with two objectives so we could use the time effectively, The first objective was that we worked on Bobbie tells Billie that she's getting married to Brother Taylor. I suggested this to be one of our objectives as I felt we needed to work on this scene as it had lacked the attention it needed, as it shows how Billie's love is real for Bobbie and how this scene eventually kills him. Our second objective was to work on Joe's final suicide scene. So far we have only worked on this once so we need to rehearse it to make sure its great, at the moment its not running smoothly as its so new. In this scene we are trying to convey Billie's last thoughts before he jumps of Tallahatchie Bridge. This scene is the last the audience see so it needs to be our best. From this session I think we made sufficient work on Objective 1 however it still needs a lot of work. We didn't really get to starting Objective 2 as we implemented more into the Bobbie and Billie Scene.

In week 5 I thought we did really well, we made a new scene and refined older ones. For next week we hope to work on more scenes and the ending.

Saturday, 7 February 2015

Devising - Week 4

Constructive Criticism


To start this week off we had Deborah, she wanted to see what we had created. We showed several different 'bits', that we had worked on. First was the wedding scene. The feedback was that the vocals were good but it needed to be louder. This we took into consideration and we decided to put a rating system on how loud we are. 0 being silent and 10 being a shout. we said that we could go from 2 to about 8 to show how this scene was getting more intense as the wedding progressed and that the emotions of each character were getting stronger. 

We then went to the scene where the girls are dancing in unison. This came straight after the wedding but didn't really work as we haven't really met any of the characters yet. The scene which was in unison didn't convey the message we were trying to portray as it looked like the three girls all had the same feeling or were all the same character. 

Our group then showed the boy bit, in this we see a fight style movement between me and Joe and Lewis comes to break it up. Our feedback for this was that she liked the introduction of Lewis, but at times it was quite clunky, and it was overall bringing the scene down. We decided to look at this again and make it slower in an attempt to make it seem less clunky. 

The last bit we showed was a new scene where Father introduces Bobbie to Brother Taylor, in this scene Bobbie tries to escape but Father pushes her towards me and then I do a perverted dance with Bobbie to show the horrible character of Brother Taylor. In this scene while dancing with Donna, Father is watching them in a proud manner. Kennedy who plays the mother comes in and tries to stop it because its not what Bobbie wants. Yet Kennedy's character is stopped by the father and hit. We thought this was good as it showed the abusive relationship. However Deborah suggested we take it out as this abuse has already been shown, and there is space to show something else instead. We took this into consideration. But haven't thought what we might put instead. 

Laura's Lesson

Kirsty was unfortunately ill for this lesson, but we had Laura. In this lesson we noticed that we needed a scene before the confrontation between Billie and Brother Taylor to show how the fight ensued. In this scene they are dancing and then it ends with a kiss. I thought this was great as it set the scene and showed their passionate love while also giving something Brother Taylor to be angry about. It was really useful that in this scene I am supposed to be angry about a certain relationship as I have encountered a similar emotion before in my life. This was good as I could use affective memory a Stanislavsky technique to portray my emotion. I felt my acting was really good in this scene and I felt I portrayed the emotion that my character was feeling in an outstanding manner.

Another positive in this lesson was the rolls I did with Lewis in the confrontation scene. It felt so much more fluid when executed properly. Unfortunately we found it quite difficult but we have practised a lot to make it look good. Even though we have been having a lot of trouble with this move we are eager to keep it in as it shows a strong connection between these two characters and their hatred towards Billie. Before this part there is a bit with Joe and I. We worked on this a lot as we wanted to make sure that we were fluent in the movements and made it look less clunky by making it slower. This worked for a lot of the scene and also gave more moments of tension.

In this lesson I also noticed that Frank was very disciplined in his group, I noticed how he got things done and that he achieved a lot in each lesson. I aspire to be this disciplined in the lessons to come, so our piece can reach its potential.

Organisation

We wrote out a rehearsal plan today so we could keep on track and stay focused. In this lesson we looked at linking scenes together and also work on the ending. For the ending of our devising piece we wanted to have a visual of Billie falling off the bridge, we had the good idea that the other characters would help Billie fall to show how they are letting him down. We were given the idea by Laura that Joe could do a forward roll into our arms, we did this and it looked a lot more smooth than the idea of picking him up. It also got Joe in position for us to let him down. 

I felt this week we made good progress and it was vital that we got feedback on how we could make our scenes better and where we could go with it. 

Sunday, 1 February 2015

Frantic Assembly

An Introduction

Frantic Assembly are a contemporary physical theatre group that aims to create theatre that is enthralling, energetic and unique. Started in 1994 this company has become a big name in the theatre industry. 

Physical Style

Frantic Assembly mix naturalism with the physical aspect of dance. For example in Lovesong they have scenes where the couples are talking before going into a dance in the next scene. This theatre group style is very physical and one of their artistic directors once said 'the more physical, the better'. They've been described as 'high octane' before, this can be seen in many of their performances. The play Stockholm is about an abusive relationship and how this couple are either one of two extremes, either they are deeply in love or they hate each other. This is relevant to many relationships however not in such an extreme way. There are some very physical love scenes in Stockholm. This is Frantic's trademark. That there work represents something that the audience can relate to, for example the theme of Love and Abuse. Frantic have described love and say how its 'a leap of faith'. 

Another Frantic piece showing the theme of Love is Lovesong. In this many different mediums and devices are used to convey a greater message about the themes being portrayed. Devices such as a flashback are used to show the elderly couple looking back to their younger relationship. This is shown with a physical piece to show young love. Frantic also described that with each piece they have to find a new 'Physical Vocabulary', and that it needs to suit the cast. For example an elderly actor isn't as physical as a young actor. They also need to find a new vocabulary as they are conveying a different message in each piece. 

Blend With Naturalism

In many of Frantic's pieces they blend their physical side with Naturalism this is good because they can entice a new audience through naturalism, as well as having many physical aspects which attracts a different audience. Their story of Lovesong also works with naturalism as there is an older couple who are likely to be less physical and so they can have more dialogue and be more naturalistic than the young couple, this shows a nice balance between both naturalism and physical theatre.

Frantic Assembly's high octane work means that it gains a lot of popularity. This Theatre Group are different in their own unique way. 

Jacques Lecoq

Introduction

Jacques Lecoq was a French actor, mime and acting instructor. His most notable work is in the field of Physical Theatre, movement and mime. He taught most of his work at the school he founded in Paris, L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. 

Impact on Physical Theatre

Lecoq taught Physical Education for several years. He later went on to act. He worked with a company called Comediens de Grenoble. He also worked a lot on Commedia, this introduced him to Mime, masks and the physicality of performance which he would later use as his own. He also worked with Dario Fo a famous actor, playwright and clown. He opened his school in 1956 in Paris, where till his death he worked and perfected his trade.

Lecoq had quite a specific teaching style. He aimed to teach actors that encouraged them to investigate ways of the arts that suited them best. He wanted to nurture the creativity of the performer instead of giving them a specific set of skills. This was good otherwise we would only have one type of performer and not a variety. Lecoq never told students what was right he just encouraged them to try new avenues of creative expression. His training however did involve a lot of masks. He often used a natural faced mask so the emphasis was put on the physical expression of the performer. After he felt his students had mastered the physical mannerisms he would make the mask smaller while also encouraging them to keep the physical behaviour. This was a great technique used by Lecoq, as it allowed the actor to focus on one thing at a time, making it easier to get both the facial and physical expression to the best it can be. 

This great practitioner also set up a part of the school that looked at stage design, Sceneography and architecture this was great as it gave the performers a chance to collaborate with stage designers and also get a feel for that part of the business. 

People he Influenced

Because Lecoq encouraged that students followed their own path instead of being given a set of skills he managed to teach and influence a variety of different people in the industry ranging from comedians to directors to choreographers. Here are some of the people he influenced:

Steven Berkoff. Actor, Theatre Director and Writer. 
Geoffrey Rush. Actor.
Ariane Mnouchkine. Theatre Director and founder of  Théâtre du Soleil.
Philipe Gaulier. Actor and a Pedagogue. 
Rene Bazinet. Actor.
and many more great names. 

Lecoq influenced many different performers in the arts industry, through his mime and physical work and through his teaching. 

Steven Berkoff

An Introduction

Steven Berkoff is a practitioner who is best know for theatre directing and acting. He has acted in such things like the James Bond movie 'Octopussy', he also starred as Lt. Col Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II. He also is an author and playwright. Steven Berkoff is best known because of his impact on Physical Theatre.

His Theatre Work

Berkoff's work in theatre is enthralling, grotesque and very unique. A big influence on Berkoff was the great mime artist and practitioner Jacques Lecoq, this was great for Berkoff because he go the best training, much of Berkoffs work is derieved from Lecoq, for example the mime and melodramatic style movement. Even Berkoff's first theatre work was exceptionally unique and Lecoq like. His first piece was an adaptation on 'Franz Kafka's: The Metapmorphosis', he starred in this and brought the grotesque clockwork style into the piece. Many different techniques were used by Berkoff in this adaptation, for example the clockwork style nature that each movement is very static and has no flow. We also got to see the cast break the 4th wall which means looking out to the audience this element is great because it makes the audience feel uncomfortable and so they will remember it and it portrays the eerie life of Gregor Samsa. Another great method by Berkoff is the lack of facial expression when talking to the audience as the audience don't know what the character is feeling making them less human. His work has been described by a critic as 'The language is usually filthy', 'At its best, this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces the audience to react'. This is a great description of Berkoff's style is because its was so unseen and pushed the barrier of modern theatre.

Workshop

The first workshop we did on Berkoff was a piece from Agamemnon which Berkoff was in. This piece is grotesque and was very stylised which is Berkoff's forte. We were given a script as our stimulus and got into groups. I was with Sophie Adams, Brandon, Jake and Joe. I was happy to have Joe in my group as he had done work that was very grotesque before called Butoh, this type of theatre is Japanese and is very riveting to watch. We started off by devising our own piece using the script we found it difficult to start as it was such a difficult script to understand. Our group wanted to capture the clockwork, grotesque behaviour, sound scape and breaking the 4th wall in our piece. I felt that we eventually started to make progress through an idea by Sophie. The reason we weren't getting anywhere was because we were rejecting early ideas. I said that we should be in a circle around Brandon and that Brandon should be the speaker of the text. I thought Brandon would be best suited to this role as I feel he could be very emotionless and scary in front of the audience. We created a diamond around Brandon and on each line we would do something together in unison, and we tried to make it as static as possible to show this Berkovian style.

We did a second workshop on Berkoff, in this we did a Christmas clockwork piece. As it was around the right time of year we thought we would set our theme as Christmas. For this we got in a circle and did things that represented the presents being made in Santa's grotto. I was with Issie, Hannah, and Sophie A. For this exercise we focused on sound scaping. This effect is the process of making sound effects to match what you are doing, for example if I threw a ball I will make the sound of the ball going through the air. For this though, we thought that we would do a naughty and nice list. Hannah and Issie would stamp a sheet saying if they were naughty or nice, Hannah for naughty and Issie for Nice. After this happened Issie would pass Nice to me and Hannah would pass naughty to Sophie. When I got the sheet I fully opened my arms and gave the sheet a big kiss then to put it in the pile. For the kiss I used a sound effect to show one of Berkoff's many techniques. I also made my movement very static.

I enjoyed Berkoff's work as I found it fun and quite easy to do. As I find it fun to be over the top as it gives me energy.