To start off on our third week we began with another set of monologue performances for our Acting Skills and Techniques lesson, since last week, we were assigned homework, to learn a new monologue given to us by our teacher, and perform it to the class for this week. My monologue was from the play called 'Chatroom' Written by Enda Walsh. Just the same as the previous week with our own monologues that we rehearsed, two students were to review another student and rate their positives and negatives in the performance. The purpose of this is the same as last weeks monologues, to see a student’s performance skills and techniques whilst on stage and also to see if the reviewers understanding of drama strategies are correct.
After a short break, we came to our third Singing lesson and for
this lesson also we had more homework like the previous week, but this one was a little different, but it still had the same purpose, a great exercise for your vocals before you sing.
The homework was to research into the five singing vowels. The singing vowels were very similar to the
literacy vowels that we already know: A, E, I, O, U. Except these type of vowels are similar in the
sense that they sound the same but the method that singers use in their songs is to put more enthusiasm as they
sing them whilst performing. The purpose of this
was to get a understanding as to how a singer would pronounce their strong
words, and identify certain skills and techniques whilst they're singing.
Our final lesson of the day was our third Art Industry lesson. For this lesson we had to look at some important
techniques for Drama in general. Such as looking at
character analysis and development, as well as taking notes for when it comes
to our own performance's later on in Btec Level 2 Performing Arts. Such as
knowing the time period of the play, much like our 'Scaramouche Jones' play we have to perform is set on new years day 1998. The authors intentions and plot of the
play that is written. All of these notes are very important for each performance as it helps the actor know their character more in-depth, as a result this would give a better performance.
The next day we began with another lesson of Development of
Drama. In this lesson we were
looking at the development of Physical Theatre, such as looking at what it is and how it originated. Just the same as Acting and Dramatic Arts, Physical Theatre came from Ancient Greece and has evolved and expanded over time. But Physical Theatre only started to become more popular when the
actor Jacques Lecoq became famous for his use of Physical Theatre in his performance's, and then he
founded an Acting school in Paris called, L’Ecole Internationale De Theatre Jacques Lecoq, which was created in 1951. As well as its origins we were to look at its
methods, how the technique's behind Physical Theatre was for an actor to perform a mime and also make the story given by the mime
believable for the audience. This would help when it would come to our Physical Theatre lessons every Wednesday,
understanding a little bit more about where it originated from and how the
technique's are used by an actor in performance and rehearsals.
After all the written work, our teacher then gave us some practical work. Our teacher gave us a
task to see if we were capable of performing a monologue with a small group of people. After she had split the class into two groups, our
teacher gave both groups a monologue from Greek Theatre.
In our group we were to reflect back on our notes previously to decide how we were to perform it and how to present our
lines. This was a task to see how
our Team Building had developed since our first week of Btec Level 2 Performing Arts, and also to see each students
understanding of Drama strategies in order to present the monologue.
Our last lesson for the day was our third
Movement lesson. In this lesson we began
with our warm up exercise which we had learnt in the previous two lessons. Then our teacher started to show us some new dance
moves which we needed to practice for our next lesson.
For our first lesson on the last day of the week we had our third Developing Physical Theatre
Performance lesson. For this lesson we began with some different tasks. We began the lesson, like the two previous lessons,
with the warm up. Then we had a challenge were we had to really focus and think about our inner clown and we all simply had to tell a joke in front of our teacher and the whole class. Our
teacher called us up one by one and he asked us to tell our joke, and after we told it, he marked down some notes, which he did not tell us at first what he was marking us on. And without any explanation at all, he told us to
repeat our joke in which he kept making notes. Once every student had gone up and told their joke, we then after sat in a half circle, and then our teacher revealed what he was making notes on. To begin with, he started telling us about the three types
of clowns in Physical Theatre. The first type of clown was called, 'Naïve'
– a type of clown that is more childlike than the other two variants, and is more anxious and sorry when he tells a
joke that no-one is laughing at. The second type of clown is called, 'Auguste' – a clown
which is more angry and arrogant after he tells a joke which no-one may like or not getting more praise than it should. And the third type of clown is called, 'Surreal' – a type of
clown that is the most insane of all variants of clown, and is so crazy that anything he does, he/she finds funny. Our teacher, after telling us all these types of clowns,
lead him into showing us what he was taking notes on... What type of clown we
are after telling our jokes. The type of clown I was revealed as was a Naïve clown with a bit of Surreal, this then leaded on to our next task for the lesson.
Our task was to prepare for our first performance
of this unit, which is a play called ‘Scaramouche Jones’. This play
tells the story of an old clown who had performed his last performance and is telling us that he is about to die, and so he goes on telling us of the events he had encountered throughout his whole life. Our teacher was telling us that to prepare for this performance, we were to act as the clown given to us by him in our performance and throughout all the rehearsals and we were to be marked on how we would portray Scaramouche Jones as our own individual type of clown.
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