Unit 1

Task 1:

A:

After thinking back on our warmups we’ve done these past few months I can think of a few that have really stuck with me, and I would definitely like to do again! 

The first I can think of is:

An exercise by the name of Who’s Line, where we had to incorporate a small line on a piece of paper into an improv scene! While there are many different versions of who’s line, this is the version I find is most fun! You must hand out a small piece of paper with a quote on it to each person playing.

They must then use that quote to join in on an improvised scene! Once they join the scene they must tap someone on the shoulder, letting them know they’re replacing them, saying the quote to solidify their place! The scene must then be continued until someone else jumps in with their quote, and so on until everyone has exhausted their line! I believe this exercise helps adapt players improv and helps develop a storyline which allows everyone to join in! The nature of this warm up also is great for getting people out of their shell! Speaking from experience, this was the first in depth improvisation game we did in front of our classmates and really helped us leave our embarrassment at the door! It really helped me realise my love for improv and can’t wait to do more!

Another task we have done in class that i enjoyed thoroughly was one we did quite recently by the name of Bus Driver! The way this warm up game works is one person volunteers to be a bus driver, which means they sit down with some space behind them and pretend to drive a bus. The remaining group then gets on the bus one at a time, showing a different emotion or performing a different action while they get on. Its then job of the driver, as well as any passengers on board to copy that emotion. In short, each time a different person gets onto the bus, the entire bus must copy what that person is doing until everyone is on the bus! It was really fun to see each of my classmates performing a different emotion or action and watching everyone else do what they were doing but in their own way! The warm up gets everyone to leave themselves at the door and helps get everyone engage with the readiness to learn and perform. 

B:

After searching for a while, I’ve come across a warmup I would love to implement into class named gibberish! 

To play, you must divide the group into pairs and ask one person from each pair to have a conversation as though it were in a different language. The goal is that the conversations presented must sound like a regular conversation, the players acting as if they were just talking normally to someone, even if what is said is ‘gibberish’. Encourage people to join others conversations and slowly make a central conversation! Keep the discussion going in class until everyone joins into one big conversation! 

This exercise is good for getting everyone engaged and ready to work! Getting everyone up on their feet, speaking and using their vocal acting skills early in the morning! 

C:

One of the skills I have developed over the tasks we have completed during our 'Lonely Hearts' and 'No Context' scenes would definitely be my confidence to act in front of other people, during our time as Lonely Hearts characters, I felt myself getting more and more into character each time we did it, leaving more behind to fully commit myself to being "Grahm". Being able to create an entire character from a small column of text has definitely helped me improve my character building skills and allowed me to get comfortable with all my classmates! It also made me reinvent how to play a character, it being my first time being someone else physically! 

I gave him a limp, even though he wasn't too old to signify his back breaking days of farming, a part of his backstory. Also the Irish accent i based off a famous band known as the Dubliners, which inspired me to make him in love with music! It helped that i could play the Ukulele and managed to fit the character perfectly!

Task 2:

Production Diary:

From the very first day of starting college i was nervous, of course its something I've wanted to do my whole life but have always been surrounded by the views and facts. "You're competing against people who have done this since childhood" "People pay for acting lessons from a very young age".

These are all true, and used to be the little voice at the back of my mind telling me I couldn't do it if I tried. In my free time I have never participated in any kind of acting lessons or productions of any kind, this would be my first time acting in any sense of a professional sense, and also the first time I would have done something I truly wanted to do. That feeling was stronger than those voices and i have not been disappointed in the slightest. 

Coming into our first production "The Ghost Light Tour". The first time we talked about it i was confused but excited, as people listed things they were scared of and we wrote them on a mirror i thought about how we could scare the pants off people and was immediately hooked. Once we entered the doors of the theatre we were to turn into a horror show, ideas were exploding left and right, I could barely contain myself! I pulled out my phone immediately and took as many pictures as I could of different areas, I thought about what i could put behind doors, in the ceiling, behind curtains, just out of view. But nothing could compare to seeing the list of characters and realising that the time was coming.

As i looked at which character i wanted to go for I immediately was drawn to Charles, he was a main part and i hadn't done anything like this in the past... STILL, I wanted to show that it didn't matter, I wanted to prove it to everyone and to myself that i could do it, and my god when we were walking down the corridors with the public, I knew it. This was it. This is what I wanted to do, forever, I wanted my life to be this feeling.

During the performance there was an enormous amount of improvisation that we did during downtime of walking up stairs or through corridors. Something i was initially a little afraid of, however that fear was cast aside almost immediately when i put the costume on, as well as being cast along side my brother and the banter we have with each other already, it was like we weren't even playing a character, its like it was just us, 100 years ago. Even though I am immensely happy with my performance, Im always looking to improve and will take the skills i have learned, both good and bad towards my next performance, whatever it may be!

It of course helped that Morgan was my brother, and the fact we were both brothers in the story was an amazing part I think we both played wonderfully! However, even though Morgan is my brother, he's also a shadow. He's the entire reason I know about the course in the first place, but I have a lot to live up to and a lot of work to do surpassing the student of the year! The part wasn't only something i wanted to do for the fun of being that character, but the fact that it was a main part told me i could separate myself from just being "Morgan's Brother" and be seen as an individual. I loved ever second of it.

In conclusion, the course as a whole is the best thing I have ever chosen to do with my life as of this moment, I feel as if i have finally found the place I'm meant to be, in the world of acting. The production and performance of the Ghost Light Tour was an impeccable introduction to this feeling inside me, as well as a second to none introduction to the acting of my fellow classmates, whom i love each and every one. Working on other projects, whatever they may be with the people in my class are an honour and I cant wait for whatever comes next.

Task 3:

Playing Charlie was an incredible experience, period. From the moment i looked at the first draft of the script, to the moment i was holding it in my hands, i was drawn to Charlie, the sweet eating, hyper old man gave me great interest into him. When auditioning for Charlie i was told by Kelly that i was the only one to give the character a voice, after reading the script, i took inspiration from my grandad. Even though he had some mobility impairments, he always retained his sense of humour, i took this into my performance and wanted to make him a bit of a silly old man.

When it came to the official performance, I solidified my choice to make Charles the less serious one, with Alfred being the "Big Serious Boss" so to speak. It was a miracle that when running my decision by Kelly, she had envisioned the same thing and we discussed about the future directions of my character. When brainstorming with Morgan, he had the idea of little white gloves that we could both put on at once in unison, signifying our connection almost instantly to the audience, while it was an incredible idea in premise, it seemed getting the timing right was near impossible, so we just went out with the gloves already on. From the starting room to the end of the tour we stuck to our characters, while performing i took small inspiration from Johnny Depps Captain Jack Sparrow, showing a little of him in my performance by the way i chose Charlie to run! As he was eating sweets a lot of the time, i envisioned him to be hyper, running while moving his arms and always moving his arms when he is talking. I made him very expressive and went by the rule that even if you couldn't hear what he was saying, you should be able to see what hes talking about by his expressions, arms and actions.

I believe acting this way gave a small endearment to the character, as audiences laughed once they saw the big scary Alfred being serious, and the slightly smaller Charles being silly and cute, but still having a great love for the theatre and his brother, wanting to impress these new guests that have suddenly shown up out of nowhere!

We made sure that even if we weren't the focal point of the current scene, we would always be performing: during the throwing up stomach part, me and Morgan were distressed, me running away from the blood while we got the crowd on the way with urgency! While the stage play was on you could see us both in the corner below the stage dancing and reacting to the music and acts, like we were part of the audience, we wanted to convey greatly that even though we owned the theatre, we wanted to impress these guests, making them feel comfortable and welcomed!

I believe from the moment you meet Charles, you see him the same way as his brother, both owners of the Theatre, both mean and authoritative. However, as the show plays on, you see the difference between these two, being very different from each other but from their banter (improv) you can tell almost instantaneously they're brothers. From what i could see, the audience seemed to stick closer to Charles, him being almost a bit of comic relief from the horrors happening around them! I couldn't express enough how amazing it was to play this character. 

Task 4:

A:

In a staging style named promenade theatre, the audience is made to move about with the performance! It is frequently used during tours to discuss a location's history. The audience goes around to view each of the performers stations where they have each been assigned. Since most promenade theatre is site specific, the organizations will only rehearse and perform in one location, allowing them to take full advantage of the entire structure. An example of a promenade theatre that is extremely popular is the London Dungeons! The London Dungeon was established in 1974 by Annabel Geddes. It was initially intended to be a museum of macabre historical events. Promenade theatre is one method used by The London Dungeon to demonstrate to its audience how horrifying historical events were. People genuinely feel as though they are in the time period represented by each "station" that the actors are at thanks to the use of this theatre style. The fact that the actual dungeons are so gloomy helps because it makes the audience forget about the light world they came from, allowing them to fully commit to being a part of the act and the time period.

From my research about Immersive Theatre, it seems the audience is not only a passive observer in immersive theatre. Regardless of how minor their part may be, they are vital to the narrative and part of the action. The audience takes on a role in an immersive theatrical presentation, whether it be as a spectator or a real character. They may be free to move around and investigate the performance area as it is being performed around them, choosing what they want to see and what they don't. They may be led from room to room so they can take in the important scenes. They may even be given the opportunity to take a more active role in the performance. Immersive theatre has its roots in the early days of modern theatre, in the 19th century. Long used in music, call-and-response adds a participation aspect when a leader issues a call and the crowd responds with a predetermined response. In the centuries that followed, items like haunted homes and murder mystery theatres likewise immersed their intended audience in a setting and gave them a choice in how they interpreted the narrative.

B:

During our time working with the Globe Theatre and preparing to perform there, we took all of our characters from history, most being from the Globes history. This means that we had to research our characters and their origins in order to fully commit to become said character. During my research for the role of Charles I found out that the Globe itself used to be nicknamed "The Pig and Chicken" due to the owners being butchers! There is so much history behind this huge astonishing building! During our little tour at the theatre, we learned that you should never whistle in a theatre, the reason being that ropes and dropped objects were controlled by whistling in a performance, which is why whistling during a random time in a theatre could lead to a deadly aftermath, we used this little fact in our stage performance, giving the audience a bit of tension from the anxiety of looking up and being worried something was going to fall on them. Another fact we used in our show was the Globes constant demolishment's and rebuilds in order to house bigger people, in 1925 the theatre was so successful that it was demolished and rebuilt bigger! it opened in 1926 and had 1,200 seats, a whole 800 more seats than the original 500, allowing more than half the original amount more people to watch the shows at once!

C:

Grotowski's method was developed through his directing and instructing work with small acting ensembles. It also resulted from his eagerness to test out many facets of the form. He would test the limits of the ritualistic, physical, and spiritual with his actors. In addition, they would question what it meant to be a performer as opposed to a spectator. This is why his method is regarded as the cornerstone of how experimental theatre is understood today. During of Grotowski's methods, he created "poor theatre," which begins a performance by getting rid of all the elements that could be deemed "unnecessary." Poor theatre has little to no fancy sets, props, or costumery. Grotowski instead depends on the acting skills of the cast. The way Grotowski tells stories is also very physical, depending on the bodies of the actors rather than the use of props or implied sets. 

Since Grotowski was had an extreme fixation on physicality with acting, using what you have as an actor instead of relying on other things such as props and set design I believe it fits perfectly into our performance at the Globe! There was very few props that we needed for our performance and since the tour was always moving, it was less about the environment, and more about the actual performance of the actors involved! Everyone did an amazing jobs and you could see the amazement on the audiences faces! I like the idea of his theory, stripping away everything to allow the actor to truly just be in their element. Being someone else, without relying on something to do it for you. Your prop isn't your character, you are.

Task 5:

In conclusion for the Globe piece, it was one of the most incredible things i have ever done, starting from a small room and feeling the excitement the moment the audience stepped inside was a feeling i have never felt before. I was in love with the with the character form the moment of reading their lines on the draft script. It was amazing to look audience members in the eyes during intense scenes, conveying a sense of "Leave" while being extremely happy go lucky on the outside. This was my first ever performance in my life and I wouldn't change a thing about it, even during the small moments where a line was missed or forgotten we were able to pull it back with improv and no one was any the wiser. Sadly none of my family or friends was able to make it, however i value the feedback of those that worked beside me just as much, i was informed that my act was funny and charismatic! My main supporter, my brother told me we were both incredible and i cant agree more, especially on Morgan's performance, it was the first time id seen him perform up close, and everyone's praise about him lived up instantly. I loved working beside everyone in this act, we all did an amazing job, commemorated by the audience! Who left comments on the website after the performance, expressing their enjoyment of the act!

I truly believe I have learned an incredible amount of skills while performing this piece and cant wait to bring those skills onto our next performance. These skills include: 

-My willingness to be myself in front of a crowd as well as be someone else, it was also jarring how amazing everyone was as a machine, each cog was perfect!

-Stage fright was something i was a little concerned about having never performed before, however being out there talking to people and performing right next to people unlocked something almost instantaneously inside me which allowed me to let go of everything and truly become "Charles Lewis"

I will be sure to add these learned experiences into my next performance, whatever it may be. For my evaluation I would like to add that this showed me what i want to do with my life, I am an actor, i knew i loved acting, but I have never explored it like this before, and i cant wait for more!