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.