Final assessment

My final assessment went much better than the first, I didn't forget any lines, well apart from a very small stumble. I had been working on my characters physicallity (movement) for a couple of days before hand which payed off during the assessment. I gave my character more things to do (such as laying backwards when the character Nina was thinking) and felt more confident with the way I was moving and the outcome. I still got very nervous beforehand but I managed to control it more effectvely and use the nervous energy to improve my monologues.
I have learnt that when I manage to control my nerves, I can use them to my advantage (if im careful), yet if I let them get the better of me they have a negative effect on my performance.
Overall I think I managed to improve my monologues from my previous attempt and I received good feedback from Georgia, which proves that if you act on feedback you can improve. I am very happy with how it went and I hope I can continue to improve on the monologues for future auditions.

Wednesday 24th October

We worked on our devised piece based on the tube train. We added in the character monologues and flashbacks to make it more meaningful and to give the characters a story. We split up into two groups, of which one all had monologues and the other flashbacks. We worked on what order to say our monologues and how to move between person to person, we decided to stay completely still when we are not saying our peices and when is nearly our turn we interupt someone else using movment or words (e.g James throws Kirstys book on the floor), this helps it to flow more smoothly.
The flashback group all worked together on one piece, which involved a troubled home and a youthworker, this will go before the monologues.

Overall I think the day went well, we all worked together and were honest with feedback which helped us to improve. I did alright I think as I shared ideas, although I think my monologue was too long as I felt like It may have been detramental to the group as I was taking away other peoples opportunitys to speak: Im not sure though but I'll have to talk to my group about the length. I also think I was still holding back in the performance which will have effected the urgency of the scene, yet I did do better than the last rehearsal so I am improving. :-)

monologue assessment

On thursday we were all given a time slot in which we would perform our three monologues to our Tutor Sonya and to Georgia who teaches other acting courses. My slot was at 4:10 so I had a while to wait, I used this time to go over my monologues and  ..well to worry allot aswell, which I shouldnt have done as this effected my performance quite badly :-(.

How do I think I performed?
I am quite unhappy with how I did as I know I messed up lines during two of my monologues and my movement was very wooden.

• I did my shakespeare monologue first (Hero from much ado about nothing) - This was alright, but I missed out 3 of the lines in the second paragraph, which I am annoyed about as I know this monologue inside out! I dont know whether it was noticable to be honest as it still made sense and I didnt pause, but It still effected it and put me off slightly when I realised.
• I performed my contempary monologue next (Alex from as we forgive those) - This was the only monologue that the script itself was all correct, but I remember missing out allot of the movement I usually do, I think this was down to nerves and the fact that I dont like to plan that much blocking as I like it to be spontanious and in character, but sometimes I dont plan enough and I believe this to be the case with basically all of my current monologues.
• lastly I performed my monologue by Nina from The seagull - I have been struggling to learn this monlogue for a couple of weeks so was concerned about lines, I practised this the most the previous night for this reason and I knew it all the way through. But becasue I was so worried about the lines I didnt really think about movement so once again I didnt really move!. And annoyingly I still forgot the lines halfway through and had to pause to think about them before I picked myself up, but I did stay in character when I stopped which is a positive at least.

On the whole I know my vocal skills are quite good and I understand and feel what I am saying, but I am not very good at portraying this through movement. It seems that whenever I get nervous I just tense and dont think straight which leads to mind blanks with lines and restricts my movement. I know I could have done allot better if I didn't let myself get stupidly nervous. I will have to work on improving the way I control my nerves as it really effects the way I perform and think. I am going to think about the way I move and keep on going over my lines, so I will hopefully perform better during second marking.

devised piece - 7/7 london disaster

During our wednesday session we worked on our group devised piece which after some stimulus we decided to base on the 7/7 disaster.
It is set on a tube train that gets caught up in the bombings, and is about how people cope with the situation,  and how their past influences them in the present. First of all we took some time to chat about the scene and listen to everyones ideas, this was easier said than done as everyone wanted a turn to speak but we were all talking over each other! in the end though everyone had their turn and we started to work as a team quite well. There were some really good ideas, shroom came up with the idea that there could be a count down which can be heard in the background that the characters are oblivious to but the audience can hear: this makes it more tense for the audience as they are wondering what its leading towards. I thought that the light could go out during the crash and come back on when everyone was on the ground to give the audience a shock, but then Victoria made a really good point and said that the way we all fall is really effective as we do it at the same time, so we changed it so the light would go off after we fall for a few seconds, and this would give a better effect. We started rehearsing the scene a few times, but it just wasn't really working, nobody was in the moment when the crash happened and it just didnt seem real and fell flat, I think we were all too embarrassed to simply go for it and act completely in character. We stopped to have another chat about how to improve it and decided to add some unaturalistic aspects,  we decided to have character flashbacks and have Matthew as a symbol of fate/death or whatever the audience percieve him to be, we do this by adding him in the background of all the flashbacks, and making him present on the platform and on the tube but nobody really notices him, this makes it more interesting and forces the audience to think about what it could mean... for example has fate been following them?, could it have been anybody who ended up on the train?, was he a symbol of death?. We then went through it again and it worked much better but it still falls flat after the crash as I dont think anybody is in the moment still. So for next time we have been asked to either come up with a flashback or a character monologue which will hopefully make us think about our characters and how they would feel which will make the scene more interesting and as we will understand more about our characters it should be easier to act them spontaniously and believably . I have been asked to do a monologue and I have come up with the idea that she will be confused, therefore she keeps on changing the subject without thinking, so its a muddle of her fears, thoughts and memorys.

 This is the video we watched for stimulus, its really emotional and made you think about just how terrible it was and how scared the people involved would be feeling

Thursday 11th october

We started off with some focus games-

• We all had to lay on the floor and either close our eyes or look up to the ceiling, the aim of the game was to count to ten but only one person can speak at a time, so if somebody says one you have to think about when you can say two because if more than one person says a number you have to go back to the start. This was suprisingly hard and I never got a number right even though I was trying really hard to focus.
• We then did some eye contact exercises, which involved standing in a circle and if you made eye contact with somebone else you had to walk towards them and they would then have to quickly make eye contact with someone else and move before you reached them, this was hard as sometimes you didn't make eye contact with someone and they would walk towards you anyway, and then people would look away from you so you couldn't move fast enough! but this did mean you had to be focused.
• We played a similar game but this time if you made eye contact with someone else you had run towards them and one person would jump and the other would roll, but you don't know whos going to jump or roll so you have to judge what the other person is planning by body language very quickly so sometimes you end up doing the same thing, I went in the middle a fair amount and managed to chose correctly each time but once I went down to roll and somehow forgot to actually roll! so I nearly got squished but I didnt so it was all good :-).
• The final game we played involved walked around the room, two people were given wooden sticks and if they made eye conact with somebody they had to throw the stick to them while still walking, then the person who gained the stick would then do the same thing and so on. You had to be focused as you had to catch it carefully and make sure you throw it at the right time to the right person.

After this we went to the dance studio to show back monologues. We didn't get a choice about performing infront of everybody this time so I had to show mine back, but to be honest I am happy about this as I havn't pushed myself enough to do this yet and I sort of wished I had, so this forced me out of my comfort zone which is what I needed. It actually went quite well and it wasn't that bad, I got positive feedback about my vocals and I feel relieved that Ive got past the barrier of performing infront of the first years for the first time.
Finaly we (second years) were sent to another room to work on a devised piece of our choice, we decided after some debate to base it on a tube crash, we actually worked really well together and we all seemed to listen to each other and share ideas. We performed what we had back to everyone at the end but as it was still a work in progress it was all improvised and didn't work to well, we will have more time to work on this next week so we can improve it further then.

Much ado about nothing- helpful videos

When I was researching Much ado about nothing to understand more about "Hero" I found these video's which explain more about the characters and the plot :-)

monologue contrast and appropriateness for auditions

Appropriateness for auditions-

Hero's monologue from Much ado about nothing- I chose this monologue because The character is close to my own age, so I can portray her believably. Its also by shakespeare, and many auditions require a shakespearian monoologue. It will hopefully stand out as its not an overdone monologue in comparison to some of shakespeares other plays. I also like her point of view as I get angry when people can only see the bad aspects of a person, so I can relate to her opinon which will make it more believable.

Alex's monologue from As we forgive those-  I chose this for my contempary piece (many auditions require a contempary monologue). Its not very well known yet it is from a published play, so I will be allowed to use it but it won't be overdone. I can use the "magic if" to help me relate to it as I have a sister and know how terrible I would feel if I had hurt her, but I also know what its like to feel anger towards her as we have argued in the past, so in auditions I should be able to show feeling through the monologue. Its also lasts around 1 minute 40 which fits in with most of the specifications. The character is also in my age range and has a similar accent to me. This piece would be suitable for a serious audition but not for a pantomime or a childrens theatre audition etc. 

Nina's monologue from The seagull- I chose this monologue as it contrasted to the others as it was written in 1890, the monologue itself is very abstract as its being said in a play within the play!, and its quite odd and hard to grasp but this may make it interesting to a panel. Once again the character is within my playing range and I can use my own accent for it (as I can't do accents). its the right length so it wont take forever to perform and it changes emotion throughout so it won't get boring and I can show different emotions through it.

contrast-

1. They are all from different timezones-shakespeare, contempary and 1800's
2. They contain different styles- serious, abstract, naturalistic and angry/comedic
3. The dialect differs- old english and modern
4. The characters are all very different- they live in different times and their personalitys vary from troubled and angry to sweet and innocent.