Week 16 Blog ( Week 4 For Shakespeare )

Week 16 Blog, Monday 27th- Wednesday 29th Of January 2014

For the start of this week, our teacher had brought us to a computer room, we were given the task on the computer, to start our written work for the Shakespeare Assignment. She gave us all an hour of the lesson to complete as much work as possible until our time on the computer ends. After this session, we had returned to our classroom to continue with rehearsal's for the assignment. As always, before we start a rehearsal lesson, we perform a warm-up to get our bodies woken up for the day ahead. We did the 'Rubber Chicken' warmup, which I have mentioned/explained in a previous blog.

When we completed the warm-up, we continued on to the rehearsal's. Unfortunately, my partner who was performing as Valentine with me for my part as Proteus in ''The Two Gentlemen Of Verona', was absent for today's lesson, so my teacher decided that we should look back at this play when he returns from absence. I instead was to rehearse for the Actor's scene which is seen in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', where I perform the role of the character 'Puck'. Unfortunately, our teacher spent a lot of time choreographing movement's for each character in the different plays, and we were not able to reach my part in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in time before the end of the lesson. Obviously, this isn't good for me, as I don't know what my teacher wants me to do physically whilst on stage. To counteract this, I have thought about my character's whilst watching others perform their role, and I have acted out my scene's differently each time with personality changes. These personality changes can range from some overexcited character, scaling down to a more serious character. Both these personality's I have chosen, in my eye's, perform well, but for next lesson, I would like the opportunity to use my 'Overexcited' personality, since I do prefer using this whilst saying my lines to myself. Also, seeing as all the play's we are doing are comedies, I think it'll be good if there was a character that was overly excited and cocky in a sense. And I also noticed that my teacher hasn't used that kind of personality for any of the character's we are performing as.

When we reached the end of our lesson, we were given our daily note's to include in these Blog's:

The first Blog note was to say how I applied skill's/technique's I have learnt so far into the rehearsal's. Honestly, I haven't thought about the skill's/technique's I have used since I change up my performance each time to keep thing's fresh for me since my teacher hasn't given me any sense of direction for my character's in rehearsal's because my partner was absent for 'The Two Gentlemen Of Verona' and there wasn't enough time in the lesson to reach my part of Puck in the Actor's scene for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.

The second Blog note was to say if I had engaged with the language and why. For all rehearsal's so far and for my line learning, I have fully engaged with the language Shakespeare has used in his play's and reacted to each line with, in my opinion, the right use of expression. I do this because it will help me much more when it come's to the rehearsal's so it show's my teacher that I have gone through my lines understanding how I should react to other character's in the scene, and since we get marked in rehearsal's as well as the real performance, I thought this would be a good thing to include, also giving my teacher various interpretation idea's for my character's.

The third note was to say if I had any new idea's for my character after today's lesson. As I previously stated, I have personality change's that I give to my character's to spice thing's up a bit more whilst I'm learning my lines and using Physicality along with them. Since I didn't do much for my part's in the rehearsal for today, it has given me more time indeed to revise on my character whilst observing other actor's interpretation's for their character also.

The final note was to say what I had inputted into today's lesson. Since this was a rehearsal session, with me being with other member's of the group suggesting different idea's as to how we should physically perform our line's, there wasn't much that I have inputted since I was given the time to revise over my character whilst the other actor's in the Actor's scene were performing their line's, since my character for the Actor's scene, Puck, is offstage for the first half of the scene.

After our break, we all arrived to our Singing lesson. Today our teacher wanted us to go over our self evaluation's once more to prepare for a recording session afterwards in which our teacher would ask us, individually, question's about the different attribute's we had used in the assessment for 'Season's Of Love', these attribute's include Tempo, Tone of Voice, Rhythm, and multiple more attribute's we had used for the song. Unfortunately, the lesson ended resulting with me and several other people in the group not having our self evaluation' recorded, but this is good, since it give's me a whole week to think about what I am going to say to the different question's being asked to me.

For Tuesday's lesson, we continued with another Warm-up, to get our bodies woken up and to also improve our vocal's for the line's we are to perform. We then moved on afterwards to our rehearsal's for a short time before our teacher called us in so she could choreograph our Physical movement's along with the line's in the script. Once again, Unfortunately,  we ran out of time when it came to be choreographing my part in the Actor's scene, my teacher did come up with an idea with me being on stage with a beer can and cigarette's whilst sitting on a bench, whilst the other actor's were not to acknowledge my character being there with them. This idea was good, but I had my own idea as to how I was to come on stage for my part and I want the opportunity to show my idea in next week's lesson. And once again, my partner for our partake in 'The Two Gentlemen Of Verona', was absent from the rehearsal's, so I couldn't work on that scene since he isn't there to receive any choreographed movement our teacher suggests to use in the scene.

Once again at the end of the lesson, we had received more 'Blog Note's' to include in these Blog's:

The first note was to say what type of Warm-up we performed in today's lesson and how it would be effective for us to do before rehearsing. Once again we did the 'Rubber Chicken' Physical Warm-up to get all or bodily function's working, since this Warm-up involves our whole body to be moving in a quick motion. Afterwards, we had performed a Vocal Warm-up were we had to say a rhyme in different tone's of voice for each line said in the rhyme. These two Warm-ups are both effective for the rehearsal's since it really doe's help in saying our line's more vocally, so it's not one tone of voice for the entire part. And 'Rubber Chicken' is there to make ourselves show more Physicality whilst on stage, so we are not standing in one spot for the entirety of the performance.

The second note was to say what choice's I have made so far on my character's Vocally and Physically. For Puck, I would like him to be a loud character and to also be cocky with the way he would talk to the other character's in the scene, I feel that doing this would give the performance more interest for the audience since having a loud person on stage can be exciting and since it's a comedy play, how I say my line's might make a few laugh's come out of the audience. Puck, Physically, I would like him to be moving around the stage a lot more than the other character's in the scene, and I would like his movement's to have unique status, so he is much more different than the other character's on stage, resulting in him getting more attention from the audience since he is one of the main character's in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' .
For Proteus, Vocally, I would like him to have a more posh accent in his voice, since he is a one of the Gentlemen of Verona, hence the title of the play. I find it hard to say if he should be a loud or more quiet character since in the scene, me and my partner were given, Valentine and Proteus are having a conversation about a woman that they both happen to have fallen in love with, except that Proteus knows who Valentine is talking about and when reading the script, I caught the scene of sarcasm in his word's, so I can try and implement that in the rehearsal's in some way later on. For Proteus' Physicality, it's hard for me to imagine, since he is having a long conversation with Valentine and I can't see how they would move whilst talking to each other. Since I was thinking about this in rehearsal's, I feel that perhaps watching another person's performance of this scene may help me interpretate what I can do Physically in this scene.

The third note was to say how it was learning line's with no emotional connection at all in term's for our rehearsal session's. It was really easy for me since I have done this technique in the past for other performance's such as 'The Tempest', which is also a play done by Shakespeare. And I also used it for our 'Scaramouche Jone's' assignment which we had performed previously. I continue to use this technique as it doe's help me learn my line's a lot quicker than adding emotion when first learning them.

The final note was to say what I had inputted into today's lesson. Once again, I didn't have much input to give, since we didn't have time in the rehearsal to reach my part in the Actor's scene where I would of inputted several idea's as to how Puck would perform on stage Vocally and Physically.

Scaramouche Jones Assignment Evaluation

Development Of The Production

To lead towards the best performance possible, we ran into a number of developments in each actor’s performances, along with chorus staging and free movement whilst on stage.  When we began the assignment for the first time, reading through the script blindly was considered difficult for many members of the group. The reason partially was the fact that the character ‘Scaramouche Jones’ uses very descriptive words in order to depict dark and dull moments within his whole life, each member of the group admittedly, needed help in understanding the words he was saying, so we all knew how to pronounce them with emphasis and tone of voice, and also understanding what they meant. 

Other than trying to understand the descriptive words that Scaramouche Jones was saying, reading through the script and trying to understand the plot of the play at first hand was hard for most, however, having another read through of the whole script by ourselves whilst also discussing with other members on their opinion of the play, we managed to get a bigger understanding for the basics of the plot.

To ensure that each member of the group can understand the dialogue Scaramouche Jones was saying whilst they were to be talking aloud on stage, we began to look deeper into the more descriptive words and phrases in the script.  This resulted in us looking up the words using expert's knowledge, and also to take notes of each word's meaning in our own scripts. We all managed to get an understanding as to how we can pronounce the dialogue whilst on stage.   

 

Next on the agenda, was to look at the use's of accents we could use for other character's described by Scaramouche Jones in the play. When it came to describing other people which weren't from the same country as Scaramouche Jones, accents were used to paint an image for the audience for the fact he wasn’t describing himself, but another person he had met in his life.  Again we looked up how to pronounce the accent along with the dialogue written in the script using real people from these country's as Key Figure's. Although each member of the group's version of the accent wasn’t entirely perfect, it still worked, and also gave comedic value towards the performance since it's funny for people to mispronounce an accent.   

 

Because the script is written to only have one man onstage for the whole performance, so that the actor playing 'Scaramouche Jones' can give give his/her own impression to the different character's being described. This resulted in each actor in the group giving their own imperfect impression towards another character being described, making it more convincing to the audience that we are all being in character, and the events that were happening to Scaramouche Jones were real to both ourselves playing the character, and knowing how much of an impact it had on him for how much he remembers from his dark past.

After achieving the pronunciation of descriptive word's, we all began working more improved than we did on the first read through. Our next task to work on the staging. To begin with, we all improvised our stage movement's to see if it would work in the space we were given to perform in.  This task started off more downhill than we were all anticipating. To begin with, we knew very little about how our own version of Scaramouche Jones was going to move and present the dialogue whilst on stage. So to begin with, the first actor performing the lines had just read the lines out loud and improvised little movement's to keep the flow of the performance.  Although the section of the dialogue where he says “Fear and Delight”, I noticed that the movement's he used on this line was borrowed from the Pete Porstlewaite’s portrayal of Scaramouche Jones (which we had watched in a previous session). Our teacher suggested that the actor along with the chorus, should collapse on stage along with the opening line “God, what a day!”, to show exhaustion after doing Scaramouche Jones' last circus performance. This idea worked well, as the chorus was to be portrayed as younger version's of Scaramouche Jones leading up to the older one giving the first set of lines to introduce the character, therefore they will always know what he is feeling and thinking, resulting them in acting the same. When we performed the first section of lines, we began to develop towards making a slow walk, for the actor playing Scaramouche Jones at the time, towards a chair on the side of the stage, then having him collapsing and then standing up in mid-sentence to get the audiences' and chorus’ attention.  The chorus’ movement in this scene was mostly discussed before and improvised, especially with the use of hand gestures on the line “clucking round their kiddies”. These hand gestures were to show the clucking of a chicken, however most of the chorus’ other movements had a good purpose in the whole performance overall, such as interacting with the actor on stage to portray a prison cell, the gypsy camp that Scaramouche Jones grew up in, and many more other area's only just using our own bodies to imagine what would be happening and to show the area's that Scaramouche Jones had come across to the audience to show more realism and a sense of imagination. The significance of  doing all of this, was to see if we were all capable of using our own imagination to make the performance intriguing, interesting and also entertaining for a new audience. This also worked along with us starting with a very dull performance, to becoming one of the best performance's we have ever done in our career as a group.

 

The Character Study Of Scaramouche Jones

 

A key strategy for an actor’s performance, is to understand his/her's character inside out. This could range from knowing the age of the character being played, how the character would move on stage, and how the character would respond to certain events that had happened in his/her's life. This was another element in the development of our performance as to begin with, the character is both lifeless and boring to the audience. We weren't giving the impression that this man on stage was ninety-nine years old, but that he is a clown that just came out of his last show, and has a really interesting life story to tell the audience. The development of Scaramouche Jones' character began in our Physical Theatre lessons.

 

In these lesson's, we began meditating, to get our own thoughts to focus for when our teacher would ask us question to tell us who we are and where we are. He was telling us how we are this old clown, who has been in hundred's of shows, and is tired of his life, since he has traveled far and wide across the globe. When we finished meditating, we all stood up and began to walk around the class room showing the age of Scaramouche Jones, understanding how he would walk at different stages in his whole life. The best way to portray Scaramouche’s walk in my opinion, was to have the top half of the body pointing leaning towards the ground, giving the impression that he is old and tired, alongside this, the walk required the legs to be locked in place and to have the feet spread apart, to give an interpretation of an old clown. 

 

We next had to use our own depicted clown chosen by our Physical Theatre teacher in a previous exercise. My clown was a Naive mixed with Surreal.  A Naive-Surreal clown is partially shy, clumsy, sensitive, always considered happy, and try to make it look funny when they make mistake's (such as tripping over on the pavement and starting to do a dance to cover it up etc). I felt it would be best to have myself portray as my version of a clown for ‘Scaramouche Jones’, since he has been through all these tragic moments in his whole life, and yet he is able to still live on happily as a clown to show that these events had happened to him prposely. Alongside the movement of the character, the facial expression would be very sad to make the audience feel sorry for Scaramouche Jones as he tells his life stories before his hundredth birthday. 

 

After imagining how the character of Scaramouche Jones would walk, the next step was look at how you would react to objects and other people in the real world. Again, this was to use our own imagination as our teacher was describing what scene the character was going through whilst staying in character the whole time. Our teacher described how we were to be walking down a street and going into a random shop and wanting to buy a random object, the object could be anything we imagined at the time, our teacher said that we all wanted this object desperately, unfortunately not having enough money required to purchase the object. Our teacher then told us that we were to show our character facial expression after realizing he/she had no money to purchase the object, which resulted in desperation and disappointment. Our teacher then made us imagine how our character would react to an unexpected audience. This group of people would know who the character is and wanted to see him do a performance. We all managed to improvise all these events in character; knowing we all needed to show the characters thoughts and feelings using facial expression's to create our own portrayal of the character.

This lesson would help us in our rehearsal's for 'Scaramouche Jones', since we now knew how we could portray his character when it came to performing our lines also.

 

The Performance Evaluation

The performance's are finally over, but our idea's could still be improved. Since both performance's from our own eyes resulted in a success, watching it from an audiences point of view resulted in us seeing the whole performance in a whole new different way (a video camera was placed by our teacher at the back of the theatre behind the audience, recording the whole performance). Since learning all our individual lines and staging movement's wasn't a huge problem, there were many other moment's in both performance's that could have been improved in order to make it a perfect performance. ‘Scaramouche Jones’ is all about the life of an old man telling a story that made the audience use imagination to depict what he had went through his whole life, until the performance comes to an end by having the stage light's turn off whilst all variation's of Scaramouche Jones were standing next to each other. The Set used for the performance in the audience's eyes, was the back stage of his last performance in front of children at the circus, Scaramouche Jones also breaks the forth wall by telling the audience that he is only hours away from reaching 100 years of age, also telling the audience that when the clock strike's midnight, that is when he dies. Whilst using very descriptive dialogue to show imagery to the audience, he tells his life story from the second he was born to the current moment where he is standing in front of the present audience. He tells us all how he had become a clown, which was his destiny, and how a white clown mask had fused onto his face in order to complete his destiny of becoming the clown known as Scaramouche Jones.

 

Whilst reading through the script learning my lines and understanding the language used, I had realized that the play was well written, and very interesting to tell a fascinating tale of this old, lonely and dark character. Our director's plan was to have each member of the group to have at least two pages of the script to memorize off by heart, and to say the dialogue aloud whilst on stage in both rehearsal's and the real performance. Whilst the actor was announcing his/her part of the script, we had the rest of the group performing in the background as the characters chorus. The Chorus was to present the characters thoughts and feeling to different situations throughout the whole play, which worked extremely well when the character uses descriptive language to paint a tragic and dark picture in his life. Since our version of 'Scaramouche Jones' had a number of deleted scenes, partially due to the fact that two members of the group had left the Btec Level 2 Performing Arts Course, we still managed to get the basis of the plot to make sense, so when each actor performs on stage, they were to announce important moments and events in Scaramouche Jones' life. My role in the play was to perform as a younger Scaramouche Jones (about 10-15 years of age).  The character that I was portraying was just a young gypsy boy who is waiting for his father to return to him by the dock's, and he was to look out for an Elder Dempster (a large ship). Unfortunately, this Elder Dempster that Scaramouche Jones was looking out for, never appeared. I then went to talk about how Scaramouche was kidnapped by a slave trader, and was later sold off abroad. After this, I transitioned to become a member of the chorus, which resulted in the next member of the group to perform their segment of the script. Whilst the next actor was performing the next few pages of the script, I would partake along with other members of the chorus to whisper key words and/or act out certain events and to also represent certain characters Scaramouche Jones had met/seen in his past. Later in the performance, we came back to the ninety-nine year old version of Scaramouche Jones to conclude the story and performance. The way I used my character study was to give the impression that I was a sad, lonely character, I felt that my character didn't use too much energy, since the part I performed in the play was a very sad and tragic moment that had happened in Scaramouche Jones' life, and I expected the audience to understand that this was indeed a tragic moment and feel sorry for the character in a sense. As well as showing my own interpretation of a clown, which as I mentioned was a Naive-Surreal clown. Since the whole group had discovered and performed their own clowns, they were all mainly performing them in the chorus,  because the chorus were portrayed as the ghosts of Scaramouche’s past, also sharing his thoughts and feelings, resulting the chorus in representing an audience who knew exactly what he was going through; and are able to keep the audience entertained throughout the whole performance. Combining all the elements and techniques I had learnt in this assignment, I managed to give a portrayal of my own clown that was capable to tell the audience of a tragic story that had happened early on in Scaramouche Jones' life.

Whilst the whole group and the director were developing this play, we also had many Physical Theatre lessons, in which we explored the characteristics of Scaramouche Jones and discovered how we could present the origins of his clown within our own individual characterisation. This is impotent for an actor when learning lines, because when an actor knows their lines and the plot given they are to also understand the characters origins along with his/her thoughts and feelings to an event which has occurred. Once I had learnt my lines, I understood what Scaramouche Jones was saying and why he was saying it as he was, giving me a better understanding to know how I could pronounce my lines whilst on stage.

If I was to evaluate my own performance after watching the whole production on tape, I would like few changes to be made. When it came to my vocal skills, I was concerned that I needed to speak up at moments during my time on stage. I would of liked to to be a little louder for the audience (especially if there were older member's watching), and I felt in both of the actual performance's I wasn’t loud enough, this is mainly because I tend to be shy and hold myself back too much, I realize that I need to express myself more in the future, this is definitely one target I’ll set for the next assignment. When it came to vocal cue's to include the Chorus, it looked perfect on the video, which was good, it show's that when I was performing my lines, they were clear enough for the Chorus to understand and initiate their cue's on time. When it came to my Physical Ability, I, again, was holding myself back too much and standing in one place for a large period of time, but there were moment's    were I did step to the side of the stage as much as I could, since my director told me that I needed some movement for my time on stage, and I realized that when I wasent moving as much as I thought. I was also using both my arms and body to emphasize what I was saying to give it more meaning. Also I had an interaction with another member of the group which was when I went to join the Chorus after my part in the performance, it was good since we both knew when the transaction had to take place, the transaction resulted me in going through the other actor's legs whilst they were spread (each member of the group had different way's of joining the chorus once more). I felt the relationship as a whole between the whole group was positive, as we had all worked very well and hard together to get the whole storyline of ‘Scaramouche Jones’ to be entertaining to the best of our ability, and also understanding each of our individual/group cue's to give a better performance overall.

The mood and atmosphere of our production was to be both dark and dull to show the audience that we were to present a  dark tragic life story. We had Dark colored lighting as well as a brighter light behind our curtains to show that we are backstage. Set design consisted of a mirror with several make-up product's for the last minute preparations before the audience came in for the performance; as well as a mirror frame, which was used for several transactions in changing actors onstage from the chorus. Sound effects were used to begin with a sound as if there was an audience, who had just watched Scaramouche Jones perform as his clown, also announcing that the play is set and telling the backstage audience who is onstage at the time of the performance, which is obviously Scaramouche Jones. Sound effects were also used to support the chorus’ mimes for multiple scene's, a ship at sea, a moving train and a fireworks display on New Years Eve, which was the end of the play. This gave the audience a better picture of what is happening on stage in these descriptive flashbacks that Scaramouche Jones announces in his dialogue. The key aspect that created the dark/dull atmosphere of the performance as a whole, was the fact that all our individual performances were linked in with each other. Since the older variant of Scaramouche Jones was more confident and positive about his life at the moment, other member's of the group had to show negative and sad emotion's as he reflects on the more tragic and saddening events in his life. Having a dark atmosphere also created a terrifying image, although the chorus were trying to make the play as uplifting as possible to kept the audience entertained, it was the actor playing Scaramouche Jones who made the audience feel sorrow for this character and to know what pain he has been through his whole life.

The elements we included in the performance were used successful, especially during the          chorus/actor transaction's. One element we used for the chorus, which hopefully the audience understood, was that they could see all of the variant's of Scaramouche Jones behind him as he is telling his story, but in reality, Scaramouche Jones has no acknowledgement of them being there, since this is a one man play and we had to incorporate 10 people to perform in this production. Also the chorus had provided an entertaining role of providing a slight comedic interpretation of all the events that Scaramouche Jones had been through, using all the elements within a real clown’s performance. Along with the audience having to understanding that each member of the chorus was an actor who was going to come onstage at a certain point of time, this is when our director came up with the use of 'transactions'. The transactions used from the audience’s point of view, was when the actor changed with someone in the chorus to signify a flashback in Scaramouche Jones' life, and they would take over the role of the character. These Transactions were again pulled off successfully, as there were different ways in which each actor would switch from Chorus to the role of Scaramouche Jones, the main one was using the mirror frame on the right side of the stage, used at least four times throughout the whole production. Alongside the mirror frame, some actor's would simply switch positions on stage so one actor who is on the far side of the stage from the mirror frame dosent have to awkwardly walk around the back behind the chorus to reach the frame to go on stage, and as I have already mentioned, my transaction was to move between a chorus members legs. This was to also show that within the script written, Scaramouche Jones had some weird ways of traveling from place to place throughout his life. There were many other successful elements we had used in the production, but above all, these two elements stood out the most in my opinion.

If there was anything I would improve overall, I would say we have to improve on timing for both line giving and chorus cue's, and also have some dialogue spoken clearer by some other actor's. As well as improving on my own vocal and Physical work. But after all, I would say both performance's for ‘Scaramouche Jones’ were quite successful for the entire group.

Creating A Chorus of Clowns

 

Since the performance was well decorated with dark color's to represent a dull image, the main element we had on stage also was the chorus. The main purpose of the chorus was to present the character, Scaramouche Jones, whilst he was onstage, his thoughts and feelings to certain events that occurred in his life. Our chorus also blended in many other elements. Our chorus was created with nine members of the group whilst one member was to be performing their part of the script as Scaramouche Jones, the chorus showed they were a part of Scaramouche's inner thoughts and feelings by acting out descriptive words he would say throughout the performance. This was because the chorus was representing a part of Scaramouche so that when the performer on stage has to show emotion, the chorus can help by reacting to the line also, knowing full well what Scaramouche is feeling at the time as they too have been through these emotions before, since every member of the chorus is a ghost of Scaramouche's past. The other main purpose of the chorus, is to entertain the audience, because since 'Scaramouche Jones' was written to be a one man play, it can be very dull and boring to watch one acting student for the whole duration of the production, to counter this from happening, our director divided the whole script fairly amongst ten people. Because the chorus was to also be portrayed as a clown, our director thought it would be best if we made the chorus entirely out of our own individual clowns.  When I say "our own individual clowns" I refer back to the Physical Theatre lesson in which we discovered what type of clown we were.

    
In this previous Physical Theatre lesson, our teacher gave us a simple task to stand in front of the class and tell any joke we could think of off the spot. When we told our joke, our teacher looked very carefully at how we reacted by telling the joke and asked us if we thought it was a funny joke or not, whilst we gave a reply, he would examine any hesitation or anxiety whilst giving the reply. Then afterwards when everyone had told their joke, our teacher would tell us what type of clown we are by how we had told the joke, and if we found it funny. When it came to telling each of our joke's, we stood on stage and told the joke a number of times, in which resulted in some people mixing up the words a couple of times as panicked by trying to say the same thing over and over repeatedly. This exercise resulted in my teacher telling me that I was a Naive-Surreal clown. This was because after I told my joke, he asked me if I thought the joke was funny, and I told him that it was the funniest joke I know of, which resulted in the room going quiet and nerves start to kick in, which made me turn more shy whilst standing alone on stage, this moment is what helped our teacher depict what type of clown we were. Since our teacher didn't tell us why he was doing this, we couldn't make up our own clown off the spot. So after all of us knowing what type of clown we all were, I felt it would help me more with this assignment, because we used it in the chorus so that all of us would be representing a different variation of Scaramouche Jones throughout his life as a clown. Combining all these elements helped to create a vision for the audience which is called 'The Elephant In The Room', the audience can see the chorus of clowns, but the character of Scaramouche Jones knows them only to be his thoughts and feelings, and also the ghosts of his past. This is one main thing that was keeping the audience entertained and interested throughout the whole performance.
                                                                 

Week 15 Blog ( Week 3 For Shakespeare )

Week 15, Monday 20th-Wednesday 22nd Of January 2014

To start off the week, we all returned feeling refreshed from our break, and also returning with our homework from the previous week, to learn our lines for the script's we are going to perform in March. I had returned having memorized one full script of lines and sadly hadn't gotten around to learning the other script, but I was instructed to learn all these lines at home for tomorrow's lesson, instead having learnt half of them during lesson time, which was handy.

Our first task for today's lesson was to announce to the group what we have memorized from our script, I had managed to say all my lines without any hesitation/train of thought to the words. We had all managed to do this homework effectively, some people found it hard to do, this was strange to me since I could learn lines very easily since I've done so many production's in the past for an Acting Company, and they had given me so many techniques to learning lines, which I have also continued doing for my college work.

After this task, our teacher had asked us to go with the partner's we perform with in the script and show what we had learnt from both the lines and the character. Our teacher was checking in on each group to see how we were performing our lines to each other, some lines were new and other were new since I hadn't learnt them.

After completing this task after a period of time, our teacher called us in for a discussion. Again we started looking at everyone's lines, but we were to try and understand the word's that Shakespeare had written for the play's to get a better understanding of what was going on between the character's and how we should perform our lines with a certain attitude later on in these lesson's.

After having looked at nearly all 3 of the play's, we had come to the end of our lesson, and once again, our teacher had given us more 'Blog Notes' to include in these weekly Blog's to show what we had learnt from today's lesson.

Our first Blog Note was to say how was it to learn the lines for both my script's with no emotion's and inflection's on my voice. I can only say that I have done this for learning lines many times before for the Acting Company I volunteered at, and also for my Secondary School work when I was doing Drama for my GCSE's.

The second note was to say why our initial understanding of our script's was impotent to when we come to our rehearsal session's and the performance itself. Understanding the script, and what the character's are actually saying to each other, would work particularly well on our Physical Theatre for the production. And it also goes towards the tone of voice our character would be using, to show the emotion's of the character in reply to what the other character's are saying to them.

The third note was to include what I have learnt so far about both of my character's through the script work. I understand that my first character, Puck from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', is a man on a royal quest by the King of the Land, to search for a certain flower which would make two people love one another when it's scent is put into their eyes, when the character's have their eye's scented, they fall asleep and later on waking up to loving the first person the lay eye's on. From today's lesson, we didn't delve into what kind of character Puck is, I don't know if he has a nice personality, if he is rich man sent on this quest or he is a peasant sent on a royal errand. My second character, which is Proteus from 'The Two Gentlemen Of Verona', is a man who is love with a woman called Silvia in the play. I had heard from our teacher that Proteus is already in love with another woman, but Silvia is the woman that Proteus want's to be with. My script is Proteus talking to Valentine about Silvia, Proteus is pretty much asking Valentine what he should do about his previous love to then go after Silvia, to then discover that Valentine is also in love with Silvia, rendering Proteus to be very mad with him.  Proteus and Valentine are also the Two 'Gentlemen' of Verona, which explains the title of the play.

The final note was to say what we Inputted into today's lesson. I had inputted various idea's in the task where we had to try and understand what the character's are saying to each other in the Shakespearean language. Most of my Idea's were wrong but partially correct, it helped towards other people's answer's to crack what the character are actually saying.

After our break, we returned to our Singing lesson's to watch our recording's of the group singing 'Season's of Love' from the previous two session's. We were given a sheet before watching the recording to evaluate our Vocal's, Rhythm, Flow of the Song, The Melody, Tone and various other thing's to do with singing. I performed alright, but this song was hard for me to sing, my teacher also saw how I sung in the recording's, since 'Season's of Love' is such a high pitched song, it was harder for me since I one of the people in the tutor group that has a much deeper voice which is sensitive to a high pitched voice, and resulting in me sounding a bit off. Luckily, I managed to get a Pass on this assessment, which I was impressed by since, in my opinion, I thought I sounded terrible, but that may be the recording's fault.

Week 14 Blog ( Week 2 For Shakespeare )

Week 14, Monday 13th-Wednesday 15th Of January 2014

To start off the new week, we started with a warm-up. We did this same warm-up on the previous week, it mainly helps to get the blood flowing throughout our bodies and to get prepared for a full day at college. After this warm-up, we were given our first task of the day. Our task was to complete a quiz which our teacher had made for us, this was a recap quiz, to see if we could all remember the facts about Shakespeare and his life which we learnt on the previous week. This was an easy challenge, as I remembered most of what we learnt on the previous weeks lesson, and I managed to score a 9/10 on the quiz, which is pretty much what everyone else in the room had achieved also, which was good. The only downside to this task was that there were two people absent on last weeks lesson, and they had no idea about Shakespeare's life or anything else we had done on the previous week, including the play's we were going to perform in March for the Shakespeare Assignment.

After completing the quiz, we moved on to our second task. We were all, again, given a sheet of paper with objectives to complete on it. This sheet was about the Iambic Pentameter. The Iambic Pentameter is a type of speech were the actor would speak in a rhythmic beat as they were saying their lines. There should be at least 10 beats you can use in a line to be able to use the Iambic Pentameter properly, but this isn't always the case, these 10 beats have to be 5 'Stressed Beats' and 5 'Unstressed Beats', so the rhythm would be: "de Dum de Dum de Dum de Dum de Dum". The Dum beats used in the Iambic Pentameter, are known as the 'Stressed Beats', these beats are used with more emphasis than the other 'Unstressed Beats' in the line given, for example: "The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace", this is a line from one of the play's we have to perform which was also written on our Iambic Pentameter task sheet. I will show an example of how to use the Iambic Pentameter for this quote, the words I underline are the 'Stressed Beats' whilst the words not underlined are the 'Unstressed Beats': "The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace". You may have noticed that in the word 'lesser', I had only underlined 'less' rather than the full word, I did this because if I had underlined the full word to be a 'Stressed Beat, the rhythmic beat is lost and doesn't sound right. Therefore having the 'er' at the end of 'lesser' as an 'Unstressed Beat' would keep the rhythmic beat flowing until the line is complete. The Iambic Pentameter comes in three forms of language:
Prose: Ordinary speech with no regular pattern/rhythm.
Rhymed Verse: Usually in rhymed couplets.
Blank Verse: A recognizable meter, known as the Iambic Pentameter. ( Used this form for task sheet )

After completing the task, we moved on to another task also related to the Iambic Pentameter. Our teacher had split all ten of us into groups of two, our task was to create 5 lines for each person to say using the Iambic Pentameter to announce the lines written, still using the 'Blank Verse' form of language. My partner and I had to create a scenario where we were both in a restaurant, we both decided that I play as a Waiter, whilst my partner was playing as a Customer.
This was my group's end result to this task:
Partner: Have you got my table ready yet sir?

Me: No, it's covered in lots of sticky blood!

Partner: I don't mind, because I am a vampire!

Me: Holy Cow! I've seen all the Twilight Film's.

Partner: That's just a film, it's not real life, I'm John.

Me: We have your table ready now, go in.

Partner: This has been a barrel of laugh's, goodbye.

Me: I really loved you in the Twilight Film's.

Partner: My name is not Robert Patterson, San!

After Completing our final task for today's lesson, our teacher gave us some more 'Blog Notes' to include in these blogs to show what we learnt from the lesson and to tell if we took part for most of it, or if we didn't. The first note is to explain what type of warm-ups we did and how effective they were, and also to explain why we did it. The types of warm-ups we did were Rubber Chicken, which is when we flick both hands and feet quickly eight repetitions for each body part, then doing the same for four repetitions, followed by two repetitions, and finally reaching one for each hand and foot and after going into a full body flop whilst shouting "Rubber Chicken!". I thought this warm-up was effective to get us to wake up a little more since it was early Monday morning, and it also gets our heart pumping blood faster so we can be a bit more hyperactive for the lesson. We did this warm-up to, again, wake ourselves up from a half week break ( for me ) off college, and to come back ready for all the lessons today. Our second warm-up involved using our vocals, this warm-up was to basically to help with the Iambic Pentameter task's we had to complete for today's lesson. For the warm-up, we were to say the phrase: "Why fly so high? Said Naughty Nora, Whilst eating an apple, With Zoe the Zebra in the Zoo. For each phrase, we were to use different tones of our vocals to pronounce the lines properly. The first line we say with a high pitched voice, for the second phrase, we blocked our noses so the way we spoke was more comedic and partially deep, the third phrase we pronounced was with a more 'posh' voice, and for the last phrase, we had to say it at our deepest tone of voice whilst doing a 'Guerrilla Emote' where we smashed our fist's into our upper chest. This warm-up was effective as it helped us with the Iambic Pentameter task partially, but mostly, it actually helped me with my singing lesson later on the same day. we did this warm-up since, as an actor, we have to have different tones of voices at our disposal, and this was a way our teacher could hear these voices in action. Our third and final warm-up was at the end of our first lesson, we were instructed by the teacher to lie on the floor and find a point in the room to focus on or just close our eyes, and we were asked to breathe in through our noses and out our mouths still normally breathing as we would, and we were asked after inhaling to tense the part of the body our teacher asked us to tense and then exhale whilst at the same time relaxing the tensing of the body part. After a few sets, we were asked to crawl up into an embryo shape ( tucking our knees into our torso ) and then to spine roll up until we were standing up straight. I thought this warm-up was effective because we had a chance to relax for a few minutes after a three hour lesson being fully focused for the whole of it, and it calmed all of us down since some people during the lesson were more hyper than others. We did this warm-up mainly to relax everyone seeing as they were getting a bit hyper after the lesson and needed help to relax and calm down since we still had a few hours left at the college.

Our second note was to briefly describe the Iambic Pentameter and how it will assist us in the future. I had already briefly described the Iambic pentameter in the second paragraph for this Blog. To be honest, I wouldn't know how it would assist me, other than to use it in Shakespeare Play's since the actor's in the Elizabethan Era/Golden Age may have used the Iambic Pentameter in Shakespeare's play's. But I haven't used it enough yet to decide how I could use The Iambic Pentameter for future projects other than to say that I have had history with the form of Shakespearean Language.

For the third note, I have to say if I had engaged in today's lesson. I did take part in almost all of the lesson again, as Shakespeare is one of my favorite subjects to come across in Performing Arts. I was also asked on how I could apply this to rehearsals, well I can say now that if I think I'm focused non stop in lesson's, than I'm sure that in rehearsals, I will be more focused than I am now, hopefully resulting in a higher grade for this assignment.

For our final note, we have to say what we inputted into today's lesson. The thing I remember imputing into the lesson is when we did the task where we had to make up a scenario using the Iambic Pentameter from a conversationalist's point of view, since I offered most of the line's me and my partner were to present to the class.

After our break, we had our Singing assessment, which I would say went well for me since my singing teacher gave me signs of good vocal work for the song we were singing whilst I was doing my solo. And for next week's lesson we are to get the grade our teacher is willing to give us for using vocal work, breath control and to see if we could hold the notes for the song.

After Singing, we had moved on to our final lesson with our tutor. As I may have mentioned in the previous week's Blog, Me and my partner had given a presentation about Greek Theatre and the Origins of Both Drama and Physical Theatre to the rest of the group. We came to the lesson today viewing everybody's presentation's, which admittedly, wasn't as long and detailed as me and my partner's presentation, but nonetheless, they still handed in the power point our teacher had asked us to complete for several week's now and now we can finally put that behind us.

On Tuesday, we came back to yet another warm-up which we had done previously, The Rubber Chicken. After this warm-up we played a couple of games which was a nice treat from our teacher. After at least an hour of playing these games, our teacher decided it was time we did some actual work. She started off by giving us a question sheet with five questions written on it, our task was to answer these questions in a short amount of time. This task was easy for me since, after writing yesterday's Blog entry, I had grown my knowledge of the Iambic Pentameter, which is what the question sheet was all about. Thankfully, everyone in the room had got 5/5 on the sheet, which means that yesterday's lesson had still been stuck in their heads.

After hearing the answer's, we had a sit down with our teacher in a circle formation. She then went on asking us how we learn our lines for each script/monologue we perform for an audience, I stated that when learning my lines, I would use repetition for all the lines, and then I read through the whole script, for if there is a reason that I forget a line, I would look at the script and learn that line using repetition once more, and then I would read through the whole script again until I've completed it. After discussing our method's of line learning, our teacher had told us about the 'Corpesing Method' which is what many actors use when they perform in rehearsal's. This method is used if at any point where you would forget your next line, you would just stand still with a blank expression, and then repeat the line you have said once before until you know what the next line is, then you can move onwards. I have seen this method done before when I watched a pantomime when I was younger and it was very interesting hearing it come up. She then after went to talk about the 'In The Moment' technique that most actor's don't realize they do until they have performed all their lines. Many people in the room had shown that they use this technique, as well not knowing they have used it in the first place. This technique is basically like photographic memory, picturing the script in front of you when it really isn't, and you would perform these lines later on not remembering yourself saying them. I thought this was a weird technique, I have no knowledge of using it and I have never heard of it before until now. Our teacher said that we can use these technique's if we were to struggle learning our lines for the assignment.

After these technique's were given to us by our teacher, we moved on to our second task, which was to get out our scripts for the part's we were going to perform for the Shakespeare assignment in March, and we were instructed by our teacher to say our lines to ourselves but with a blank expression also with no emphasis involved on certain words, which is the 'Corpseing Method' our teacher had told us about before. I performed this task very well, learning half of my lines for one of my script's in less then ten minute's, which was very surprising but familiar since I do this in my spare time when learning the lines anyway, but I do it with emphasis and expression.

After this task, we came to the end of our lesson, and since it was the end, our teacher had given us the 'Blog Notes' we were to include in this week's Blog. The first note was to give my thoughts on learning any lines I have done in the past and also the ones I'm learning now. I can simply say that learning lines is a breeze for me, since I kind of have a photographic memory about it, and it doesn't take me long to learn them off by heart either ( At least 2 days maximum, with my experience in learning lines ).

For the second note, we had to briefly describe the 'Meisner Technique' which our teacher also demonstrated to us in our sit down earlier on in the lesson. The Meisner Technique is when you do a response to another person's character whilst looking at them, for example: There is a man looking at an attractive woman, the man would smile at the woman and she would give her response to the man's smile with anything from a giggle, to a smile back, or can even go to complete rejection from the woman to the man. Also she asked us to include how it would help us in the future, Again, much like the Iambic Pentameter, I haven't performed anything using this technique, so I wouldn't know how it would help me, until the point if I'm asked if I have knowledge of the Meisner Technique.

For the third note, I have to say what I engaged in for today's lesson. I mostly engaged in the Corpseing task, as when I was done with the task of learning at least 4 lines from my script's, I helped others who were struggling with this task, and demonstrated how to them how to say their lines with any expression or emphasis, much like a robot's voice.

For the final note, I have to say what I inputted into today's lesson. The only thing that I inputted was when we were sitting with our teacher in a circle formation, and we were asked how we learn our lines outside the classroom. I inputted by saying how I learn my own lines using repetition and hearing my voice playback on a Dictaphone, which is what one other person in my group does also.

After finishing our short break, we went to our movement lesson. Since there were two people absent the week before, they had to complete their assessment for the dance's we had learnt before the Christmas Holiday. After this we moved on to learning how to Balay. This was hard for me, since my co-ordination is terrible, but I will work on this dance outside of class in my spare time.

On Wednesday, we had our Physical Theatre lesson. We returned to the lesson starting with a couple games with our teacher that required us to think. The group had to stand in a circle, and our teacher would give us a category to answer to another person whilst walking towards them, the category's ranged from different Super-Heroes, Famous Actors, Book Author's and Film's with an Actor that appeared in them. After this game, we moved on to our task for today's lesson. Our teacher had us, since last week's lesson, to research an animal, which we had close relations towards, and to act exactly like the animal in front of a camera. We had to move like it would, having the same Tempo of Movement, and to act exactly like it would to our best ability. My animal was a Meerkat, so I had to act aware all the time and when on all fours, move quickly along the floor. After introducing to our teacher what animal we had chosen, we had all performed this task at the same time in front of the camera, only then after showing our teacher and students the act alone. After this task, we had to imagine how our animal would be acting if it were human. This ranged from how it would walk, how it would talk and what it's attitude would be in social life. I had pulled a very nervous, quiet voice which sounded squeaky for a 'Meerkat-Like' Human Being. After completing this task, our teacher had given us more homework for next week's lesson. We had to work on our animal's turning into human's, we had to speak like it would, walk like it would, giving it's personality, where it work's and also not forgetting it's own name to our own choosing.

Week 13 Blog ( Week 1 For Shakespeare )

Week 13, Monday 6th-Wednesday 8th Of January 2014

To begin with for the new term, we had a new teacher for Performing Arts, still having our older teacher as a tutor. This new teacher is very kind and very excited to be working with us for this term and I'm sure everyone in the group as well as myself  like her and are willing to be working harder for this new term. We started with a simple warm up exercise. This warm up included with us being very focused and calm, beginning with all of us focusing on our breathing, listening to the speed we breathe, and how deeply we breathe to give full relaxation and focus.  The next exercise had us working our upper body strength, the purpose of this exercise was to warm up our muscles to physical work after a two week break for Christmas. The warm up consisted of our muscles to stretch along with our arms from the sides to the air, whilst inhaling and exhaling our breathe calmly.  I felt that this warm up helped me very much getting through all of today's lesson's.

Once the warm up exercises had finished, we moved straight into the main task for today, our new assignment. The topic was Shakespearean Plays, to begin with, our teacher had us looking up some interesting facts about Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Era with a treasure hunt. Three teams were to find a piece of paper with a clue on the back leading to the next one and so forth, there were 3 papers to find for our team, for other teams, it was more. After finding all these pieces of paper we had to fill in the blanks of words on the front of these papers to reveal an interesting fact about either Shakespeare's Life or about the Elizabethan Era in general. Using the internet as guidance, we found out many interesting facts to do with the life and career of William Shakespeare himself and what an impact his work in theatre had upon the world and history.  One fact we all learnt was where and when he was born which was in Stratford-Upon-Avon, in 1564, and we also find the date of his death which was April 23rd 1616, this date was actually his birthday, so Shakespeare died at the age of 52. He was married to a woman called Anne Hathaway and had conceived three children together. Also, we learnt how his plays broke away from the traditional theatre from Ancient Greek times, as well as his use of certain elements in Drama and Acting which became a huge development in the English theatre over the ages. I felt this was the perfect way to start the assignment since many of us in the group knew quite a lot about Shakespeare's plays already, with me performing The Tempest twice, once for a Secondary School assessment, and the other being a company show with a live audience. This task did give me more info about the famous play writer and delving into his life is very interesting since Shakespeare is one of my inspirations as an actor. We also categorized what genre each of Shakespeare's thirty seven plays were, ranging from Tragedy, Comedy to Historical plays.

I think of this lesson being very interesting and engaging for the whole group, as well as a great start to an interesting assignment, focusing mainly on the greatest play writer who ever lived.  My input to today's lesson was introducing what I have experienced in the subject already in the past years and how much I already knew William Shakespeare's play's.  I have performed Shakespeare monologues and as I have stated before, I performed in a real modern adaptation of The Tempest for an Acting Company a few years ago from now. And I have also delved into many of his other plays. I feel very positive and exited for the upcoming lessons for this assignment as I already know that I'm going to enjoy it very much.

For Tuesdays lesson I came back very excited for what our brand new teacher had in store for us for the next installment of our Shakespeare assignment. To begin today's lesson, our teacher started by spiting the class into three groups, for each group were given cards made by our teacher which on them had a brief storyline for three of Shakespeare's play's, these three plays were: Taming of The Shrew, A Midsummer's Nights Dream and The Two Gentlemen Of Verona. I noticed how these three plays were in the comedy genre in our previous lesson. My group was given A Midsummer's Nights Dream, and our task was to arrange the cards given in order to show the story written for the play. We had a bit of trouble with A Midsummer's Nights Dream as I have never watched the play myself fully, but I had a brief knowledge of the storyline. This resulted in our group finishing last to complete the order of the cards, even having our teacher and the aide for the day to come and help. After finishing with the cards, we began to move on to our next task which is related to the previous task. We were all given this time three sheets of paper which had, on one side, all the character names in the three plays on the cards, and on the other side a short description of their role in the play. Our task was to find out which character fitted which description for all three plays. This task took some time as we had to read through each of the cards for each play very carefully to get the right answers. I luckily had only few mistakes by the end when the answers were revealed but I thought I did a good job overall. For our third and final task for today's lesson, we were again split into groups for we were all given different scripts, but these scripts were the same plays we had before in the previous tasks. I was in two groups with two different scripts, I was to play as both Proteus from The Two Gentlemen Of Verona, and to also play as Puck from A Midsummer's Nights Dream. We are to learn these lines for our Shakespeare assignment in the coming weeks to perform them.

To end our lesson today, our teacher gave us more 'Blog Notes'. Firstly, she asked us to briefly summarize the three plays we worked with today. Starting with A Midsummer's Nights Dream, the play is all a love story with comedic humor at certain moments. The love story is actually interesting since nearly everyone in the play is madly in love with each other and is later resolved to conclude the ending. Taming Of The Shrew is also a love story with comedic humor. This play is all about Petrucio, a character in the play whose description entitles that he is A gentlemen of Verona, and suitor to Katherina, as he goes on his journey to simply put 'Tame The Shrew', Katherina is the Shrew, and also older daughter to Baptista, who is a rich citizen in Padua, the place where the play is set. And finally The Two Gentlemen Of Verona, which is also a love story with comedic humor. This play is about Two Gentlemen called Valentine and Proteus, these two men, to my knowledge which isn't high for this play currently, is that they both love the same women and for the whole play I'm guessing there is some sort of rivalry. Also everyone else in the play seems to have another romantic interest.

Secondly, she asked us to talk about our 'trailers' which we made in the lesson, and the techniques we used for them. She split the class again into two groups, and my group were given the task to improvise a trailer for A Midsummer's Nights Dream. We started by giving some narration as all trailers in modern day films have, such as 'This Summer', 'Coming To A Theatre Near You' etc. We included and acted some points in the actual play to the best of our ability, which turned out to be quite humorous to watch from our other classmates perspective. All in all I think we did well on this task, it was also recorded by our teacher so when we come to watch it, I already know its going to be funny.

Thirdly, She asked us what parts of the lesson we engaged most in, and I can say very briefly, that I engaged in a lot of today's lesson with all the tasks given as this assignment makes me want to work harder since its something I enjoy doing a lot.

Finally our teacher asked us to include about what we inputted for the lesson, ranging from the trailer and the previous tasks. Again, just like the previous 'Blog Note', I thought that I inputted a lot in this lesson in all the tasks we were to complete, and in general I had a fun time doing so.

On Wednesday, we returned to our Physical Theatre lessons. In today's lesson we started with a focusing exercise to, again, get our brains working nice and proper from after the Christmas holidays. This focusing exercise had all of us catching tennis balls in a rhythm, our teacher had us all shape in a circle and paired us up with another member in our class to throw a ball to each other. We threw the balls one pair at a time, this resulted us in creating a rhythm which eventually our teacher wanted to get faster and faster. This exercise helped a lot as it did actually help me focus more in the later parts of the lesson. After the focusing exercise, we moved on to our regular leg exercise's that we already performed on previous weeks. Once we had finished our exercise's, our teacher moved on to our first task for today's lesson. Our task started with me being picked by the teacher, and he instructed me to walk around the room just like I would normally walk everyday, after asking me to say the phrase, 'Good Morning', to another person in the room just like I would normally say it in everyday situations, and after asked me to lie down on the floor for a second and get back up on my feet, just like how I would normally do it. For each of these steps, our teacher asked everyone else in the room to try and copy my movements with the same posture and tempo at which I moved for each of these steps. From what I could see, no one could exactly copy my movements, since I was so used to moving my own way, and them focusing on me the whole time to try and copy me exactly probably resulted in them trying to hard and doing it wrong. After all of this our teacher would compare us to an animal that we had the same characteristics as. My animal was a Meerkat, he explained this by saying that I'm always very aware and I also looked tensed as I moved around the room, and I was also quick with my movements. This task to me was another focusing exercise, as we had to look at each person's normal movements and the tempo at which they do the movements in, to eventually copy them after. But also this task did help us in our next task which was also related to animals and how they moved with a unique tempo.

Our second task was to create our own animal and later on perform to the class as this animal. To complete this task we could use other real life animals to picture how this new creature would move or we could make a completely new animal with our own imagination's. The animal I wanted came to me as our teacher was explaining the task to the rest of the group. The animal I created was to be aware, just like a Meerkat, which is what my teacher compared my own characteristics towards. And as this animal moved, it would bobble side to side using it's arms as support its stability. I then thought of it's diet, I was very unique with my animal, as when we came to perform these animal's, I was the only person to say that the animal changes it's diet seasonally. I explained that in the Spring and Summer seasons, my animal would eat more healthy foods, such as fruit and vegetables, and in the Winter season, when the Earth starts to get colder, my animal would eat more meat to stay warm. Our teacher, after everyone had performed their animal, gave us his thoughts and opinions of the animal created. He thought of my creature again to be like a Meerkat, but at the same time, a rabbit, since at one point, during all of our performance's, he asked us to eat food like our animal would eat it, and he thought my creature looked very rabbit like when I ate the food that I had imagined at the time, which was an apple that fell down from a tree.

After this task, our teacher gave us homework to complete for next weeks lesson. He asked us to go look online or watch nature channels to pick an animal and find out how it moves and performs in the wild, this could be on how it catches its Prey, how it protects itself from its on Predator etc.

Week 9 Blog ( Week 6 For Scaramouche Jones )

Week 9, Monday 11th-Friday 15th Of November 2013

We arrive to our final week for the assignment of 'Scaramouche Jones', we begin the day with our final rehearsals before the main performance later on in the week.  These rehearsals consisted of us having a full fun through, without any hesitation, and making any final tweaks towards our final production.

 

On Monday, we began with our normal timetables again, although our main focus was drawn onto the performance.  To start with we prepared ourselves by putting on our costumes and putting all scripts to the one side, and we simply started by seeing how far we could go without any mistakes.  The lessons today consisted of minor errors when a member of the cast would forget their lines, or chorus members would forget their queues.  However the groups confidence didn't change, it never has since the start of the assignment, we just had to have high hopes that these people would start being more serious about this performance and learn their lines more thoroughly.  All these errors were resolved by taking notes in our scripts once more and rehearsing with them as much as our own lines.

 

Tuesday consisted of the whole day being near same as Monday, full on rehearsals until the end of the day.  While yesterday we managed to succeed in running through the whole play with minor mistakes to lines given, the only problem was that members of the cast were missing rehearsals due to illness. However today we had a full cast. We began our rehearsals again in costume, in the theatre, and no scripts.  We did manage to go through the beginning to the end of the play; but again there were some minor errors which were the same as the previous day, if not more than before this time since previously we didn't have the whole cast come in for rehearsals the previous day.  The only problems everybody had were to keep up with the lines which lead to the chorus queues. Our teacher helped the people who struggled with lines, prompting them with a script to perform with for now, along with the other members of the group still going script less.  The day ended with these errors needing to be fixed for the next day since time is running out until or real live performance on Thursday.

 

Wednesday was our final rehearsal day, therefore consisted spending the whole day in the theatre,  with full costume, and a video camera to record the final production, so after we could look back on these videos and see the development of how we progressed to making this performance more intriguing and entertaining for our audiences. Again, much to our teachers annoyance, we had minor mistakes with the same people such as forgetting lines and chorus queues. And sadly not the whole cast were attending on this day.  We managed to perform play of ‘Scaramouche Jones’’ life and show the plot to a teacher who was going to attend with the audience in the main performance.  And his review of this rehearsal ended with happiness since we finally got it done, but not completely, since we still had the main performances.  The day ended with all of us going through some more notes and with helping people who still had problems with the pronunciations of some words.

 

Thursday was the day that our performance began in the college theatre.  As each member of the cast did show up for this day. We started by preparing the stage for the show and getting props needed for the start of the play, and we brought costumes and make up together to prepare for this evening’s performance.  After a couple of hours preparing time, we began our last rehearsal. This was by far the best rehearsal in my opinion, for many reasons including the fact that we had a full cast attendance with both the uses of props and make up.  Although there were again minor errors, which included lines and timing but they were almost unnoticeable to the teacher since she asked us to skip ahead if we were to forget our lines or chorus ques.  When it came to the final hours before the main performance, we had another run through; but this time with an audience.  The audience were the Btec Level 3 Performing Arts students, again there were some mistakes in lines and ques, but once we finished the performance, the students and teachers gave a positive review. They mentioned how we worked well as group since we tried supporting each other if someone were to muck up, and how we created a great performance with a great and interesting story.  After an additional sweep of the stage, it struck 7pm which meant it was now performance time. The performance was very successful in my opinion, our last performance with the college students in my opinion was the better one, but we still did the whole thing to good standards, and hopefully on Friday, we shall do the same, if not, better. 

 

Starting on Friday after a very successful first performance, the second performance was to have high hopes and surely won't disappoint.  The day began preparing the stage for this afternoon's show. However, we had no time to do a final run through before our final performance .  As soon as we were all prepared in costumes and make up and with our props ready, our Physical Theatre teacher came to see us and gave us a few warm up exercises to help in getting us prepared and to calm our nerves. Finally we had a conversation about certain moments in the play when people struggled with timing and we looked at how the chorus would move and react, and how the actor should pronounce/perform his/her lines.  Giving the chorus time to think for when they have to move forward for the times when they do forget their lines. The audience entered and then we finally began the second and final performance of ‘Scaramouche Jones’.  This Performance wasn't as good as the last one in my opinion, thankfully, no one did skip ahead forgetting their lines, but I felt that the performance was slower than previously and didn't have much life as before, but hopefully the audience got their moneys worth as after all the hard work in these past few weeks, we are finally finished.

Week 8 Blog ( Week 5 For Scaramouche Jones )

Week 8, Monday 28th-Wednesday 30th Of October 2013

For the start off to this week, we began with our second to last full rehearsal of our 'Scaramouche Jones' assignment. We began with finishing incomplete monologues that some people hadn't memorized yet, and focusing on them for a large portion of the lesson. We were especially looking at how the actor was to present their lines and be positioned on stage, since the actor was not moving a whole lot whilst performing in rehearsals, meanwhile, the chorus was to analyze and once more read through the script and if there was any way we could present the performance better.  Again, all of this took up a large portion of our first lesson, but this was all helpful for our next rehearsal the next day. 

 

For next lesson, we were looking at the opening monologues and seeing how much everyone else had remembered their lines, and making sure we were all making notes in previous rehearsals to help us rehearse alone away from the classroom. There were a few times in this lesson, moments when actors on stage had forgotten their lines and certain people that were away on the previous week in the chorus had forgotten their movements and was obviously introduced to new ones. Our teacher prompted us to keep going if we were to forget our lines to keep the flow of the play.  

 

When we weren't rehearsing so people could go over their lines, the rest of us had a talk to resolve the chorus' issues and how much we could all remember together, then take notes that we didn't know on our scripts so we all know what we were doing in both rehearsals and the real performance in November. So to end the day, we had a final hour to decide what our costumes were going to be for later rehearsals and the real performance.  Our teacher took us into the costume department in our college promptly called 'The Make-Up Room', and we all tried looking around for bright colored clothing to visually present our own clowns. To start off with, I checked with my other classmates to see what colors they were mainly looking for. No one had said the colors green or yellow, so I tried looking for these colors in 'The Make-Up Room'. Luckily, I did find a green coat which no one had taken yet so I decided to wear that as my favorite color is green, and no one else was wearing green for their clown, so I had uniqueness to my clown. I also decided I wanted to wear this green coat with light brown trousers, since those two colors go together well in my opinion. During our last few minutes of the lesson, we had all found the clothing we wanted to wear for the rehearsals and the real performance.

 

The next day, we began with our teacher taking us into the theatre in our department, and we were to do a full run through of the play in the costumes we had chosen the previous day, working in the theatre gave us a better knowledge of the space we had on stage to ensure all of us were at peak concentration. Again like the previous day, we started working a little bit more on some peoples monologues, after spending about half an hour on their monologue, we began another full run through.  This session was more successful as we managed to go through nearly all of it without slip ups before we ran out of time in the lesson. People were also suggesting we had the chorus mime more through out the whole performance, but since we were so close to the real performance and mostly everyone had memorized the mimes, we disagreed on this idea.

 

For the last day of the week, all of us were off timetable and started earlier than usual and stayed later; starting at 11:30am and finishing at 8:00pm having full on rehearsal for the whole time. This session was tedious but helped all of us a lot, especially for the people who still hadn't memorized their lines yet. We were back in the college theatre and again dressed in our costumes starting from the beginning all the way to the end and we were to focus more on how much we remembered for both the role of Scaramouche Jones and the chorus. The first run through lead to a number of pauses for script prompting and chorus discussion, but we still managed to go from the beginning to the end of the play. Our teacher then after had a discussion with us of how we should conclude the performance. After a short break, we took notes on our scripts on all of these new movements for the conclusion to the play and memorized them all as much as we could. We started the play a second time, this time our teacher was writing down notes and was later going to review us when we had finished to tell us our pros and cons. After another break, we returned to receiving our teachers notes and took a few minutes to look ahead of time to see how we could improve the performance for when it came to another full run through.  This final run through didn't last long as we ran out of time, but all in all the huge rehearsals to the long day at college will surely help us in the real performance.

For next week, we shall begin with the final rehearsals until we have the main performances, on Thursday 14th at 7pm and Friday 15th at 1pm.

Week 7 Blog ( Week 4 For Scaramouche Jones )

Week 7, Monday 21st-Wednesday 23rd Of October 2013

To begin our forth week in preparation towards our 'Scaramouche Jones' assignment, we started off with a slight change. Two members of our tutor didn't arrive to lesson on time, and it was later reveled to us that these two students had left Btec Level 2 Performing Arts. Therefore leaving only ten members of the group which then resulting with more editing to be made to the script. With certain scenes and dialogue being cut, in order to have a fair amount of time for the performance and have each member of the group to have an equal amount of lines to learn so we all have a fair amount to do. As well as having to split two monologues in the script, which were to be said by these two members who had unfortunately left the course. This resulted in certain members having to say more than one piece of dialogue in the script, which is just like having to learn two monologues.  

 

My part in 'Scaramouche Jones' remained to be the same, this was lucky since I had nearly learnt all of my lines and wasn't a waste of time, unfortunately, for other members of the group, they had to switch lines in the play much to their annoyance as I'd think they spent some time learning their lines also.

     

Once the editing were complete, we continued with the rehearsals. This weeks rehearsal was to simply focus on people who hadn't practiced their lines outside the rehearsals whilst they were on stage, and also to explore the dialogue more in-depth to see how we could present the chorus effectively. Alongside this was that the members of the chorus had to be focusing more into the use of movement and speech whilst performing. After observing a chorus at work in a video footage we watched, in which they had a lot more use of speech and movement, we decided to experiment on certain lines in the script. These lines were said and we all would have a group discussion on whether we should highlight this line through use of speech with a silent whisper, also the use of movement was to be used a lot more in certain lines spoken, such as the use of physically which was to change the actor playing Scaramouche Jones' position on stage; moving him from front center stage to back center stage more often than standing still and giving lines, which would be boring in front of an audience.

 

Sadly this whole week was taken over by a huge amount of editing to the script and more rehearsing to ensure each member of the group would be able to give the best performance possible.  Whether they are on stage representing Scaramouche Jones or playing as part of the chorus. Along with looking at how to highlight their individual personality's to show the audience that the chorus is just like the characters inner clown and presenting his/her's thoughts and feelings.  As well as looking at how Scarmouches' dialogue is more interesting and intriguing to the chorus, which will catch the audiences attention. This week was helpful as with the constant rehearsals, it will insure that we are all fully prepared and organized for our main performance in November.

Week 6 Blog ( Week 3 For Scaramouche Jones )

Week 6, Monday 14th-Wednesday 16th Of October 2013

The third week of preparation for our 'Scaramouche Jones' assignment began with the main focus on each tutor group members lines in the script, and to looking in more detail as to how we were to do the staging for the performance. This was to help us in the understanding and meanings of certain words in the play, and the purpose of Scaramouche Jones saying them and how the chorus should react to these words said. As well as starting to learn our individual lines, off by heart, so in upcoming rehearsals we would be able to speak aloud rather than read off a script with hesitation. 

Our first session began with a simple run through of what we had done and learnt on the previous week, as we had the actors read their lines and also to take notes in our own scripts as to how we could present the characters thoughts and feelings, or even mime out the event they're describing with the chorus. We all came up with different ideas that required many different use of speech repetition and staging for each member of the chorus, but in the end we came up with a good use of staging in the each actors part of the performance.

For the next days rehearsal, we began with taking more notes in our note book given to us in our first week as well as the script. We also watched a video of a chorus at work on screen in a real performance. In the footage we watched, the chorus consisted of about twelve people, much the same to the amount we have in our performance, and their performance used more speech than Scaramouche Jones, the actor and chorus were speaking lines at the same time a lot during their performance, also the chorus we watched had less physicality with the character on stage and kept their distance more than us, as we were at certain points within Scaramouche Jones, required to go near the actor on certain lines spoken. This all gave us the idea that the chorus in a performance is not always the same, but they always have the same purpose, to portray the characters feelings and emotions as well as painting a picture for an audience.

The next half of this lesson consisted of us rehearsing on our group monologue which was near the middle of the play.  The group monologue was added in by our teacher, who thought it would be interesting to have every member of the group on stage performing one monologue together, and then returning to their individual roles in the performance. It was a scene where there was two characters being described on stage, and having the whole group come up stage to perform this was to represent more than one person in the descriptive monologue. We staged this monologue by splitting the cast members into two sections where one represented Scaramouche and the other represented the extra characters being described by the actor playing Scaramouche at the time of the performance.  And we were to stage this to have the two groups on both halves of the stage but meet in back centre stage, so we made a massive 'V' shape.  This was to show us staying in contact, just like a chorus should do.


I think it was very well done, as each member of the group had a good amount of lines to say and there was a fair amount of movement on stage also, and in the real performance I think the audience shall receive a good image of the described event.

For our Physical Theatre lesson we started looking a little more at our own individual lines and came up with a plan as to how we could learn them off by heart in time for the real performance, as well as to highlight certain words we didn't understand and had to look them up on the internet to find out their meaning and how to pronounce them. This lesson allowed us to look in a little more detail for the next rehearsal lesson next week.

We ended our lesson with some Physical Theatre practical work to get a much better knowledge of Scaramouche Jones. The task our teacher gave us was to close our eyes and look at the characters origins story, and think of what the character would say, how he would walk around the stage, and also how he would breathe. Our teacher then asked us to act out an improvised scene, in which our teacher made up on the spot for us to act out for our character in the play, Scaramouche Jones. This was helpful as we managed to get a real physicality to how this old man, who has been through a lot in his life, is still a famous and still performing clown. We all came up with different uses of Movement, Speech, and Physicality for Scaramouche Jones, and all of this will come in handy for when it comes to the rehearsals and the main performance in November, as we will all be able to portray the character in many different ways to keep the audience entertained.