Unit 2, Task D - Review and reflect on development of skills and techniques for live performance
A specific action and target that I would like to undertake whilst in class is my punctuality. By doing this I know arrive to every lesson five minutes earlier before it actually starts so I have enough time to get everything ready for when the lesson starts. Another action and target of mine is something outside of class. This is working on me as a vocalist and musician. To help myself progress onto this I now spend extra time looking online and off line for opportunities that are available to me. Furthermore, I need to remember that as a vocalist I have to use my diaphragm when projecting and breathing.
I prepared myself to be physically active during working on the script and for the final performance by doing various physical warm up’s. I completed these warm up’s to undertake a health and safety precaution which would help prevent any injuries that could have been made during our performance. E.g. during the battle scene there was a lot more of extreme actions taken place so we needed to be careful that we didn’t hurt ourselves. To help demonstrate our physical skills through our showcase we included a fight scene as our very beginning section to show what happened during the first part of the play which was a war. We slowed down and picked up the pace at particular times when walking around the stage to show the intense moments between the characters.
The relationship between the battle was portrayed by the winners standing on one side and the losers standing on the opposite side just before we started walking around on the stage. When the moment came to us fighting one another we had a specific partner where one person would end up being killed from the loser side. One of the actors shouted “stop” at two different times which then signalised us to stop moving wherever we were on the stage, turn towards the audience and stood in a positon holding strong postures which showed our levels. The relationship between Raina and Catherine was also distinguished through the proxemics between us. For example, this is evident due to the fact that Raina sat next to Catherine consistently whilst on stage.
The practitioner who I used when getting into character was Stanislavski. The reason for this was because it helped me develop more into my role. However, in the performance Brecht was used by Nicola who was played by Orei. She broke down the fourth wall when welcoming Sergius and Bluntschli on stage by using the towel she was holding.
Throughout our rehearsal process I have been completing vocal warm up sessions in order to prepare my voice for singing and projection. For the actual showcase I made sure I did extra warming up during the time we had to rehearse on the day of our actual production as it was our longest rehearsal. I did have a lot of parts of sing to different songs that were quite challenging to sing due to having to hit specific notes and the correct tuning so by warming up I was ready to hit the notes more easily. By doing vocal warm up’s it also helps with my ability on how I can use my voice more significantly e.g. through projection, diction and intonation. I had to make sure my diction was efficient enough for the audience to understand as it had to be in a professional and in an actor’s way of speaking because if I spoke to the other characters the same way I speak to my friends on a daily basis then it wouldn’t have helped with my characterisation as my character was upper class.
In the Christmas showcase I had to sing two songs which were quite challenging due to the tempo and pitch. However, I made sure to warm up first to restrict any chances of straining my voice and harming it. In ‘Santa Baby’ myself and Millie had to pause quickly and turn around towards Louka and Nicola who were stealing presents from a sleeping Santa and make a sharp loud sound which made Louka and Nicola freeze. The sound had to resemble that me and Millie were shocked and if it wasn’t in time then it wouldn’t have had the same effect.
To demonstrate myself being able to interpretate specific skills towards the showcase I used the knowledge that I had from my character and tried to develop more of an understanding on the characterisation, mannerism and the impetus movements for myself that I could display when in my role. For example, in order to be more like my actual character Raina, I put some effort into researching the clothes that she wore and the presentation she gave to the others around her. Furthermore, this enabled me to better my characterisation as it was a guide for allowing me to get more into my part. Also her mannerism, impetus movements and posture had to be of upper class. This was shown in the type of movements, such as walking with dignity. Because of this her articulation and phrasing of words had to be effective to the character I was. For example, as mentioned before if I spoke to the other characters in the same intonation as I do to my friends, I could have given my character the wrong exposure to the audience. Moreover, I tried to determine the relationship that Raina and Catherine had as mother and daughter whilst sitting next to each other on stage and getting up to pour her out a cup of tea.
Personal management and discipline:
Not only in this unit but throughout this whole course there are obligations and personal rules that I have set myself to follow not only for myself but for my other class mates in Checkboard Theatre Company who I also work with. An example of a target that I should consistently make sure I am working towards is my time management. I need to always turn up on time to each planned lesson and every scheduled rehearsal. The reason for this is so that I can stay up to date with production that we are working on and not miss anything that may be important. Also, if I don’t attend lessons on time or rehearsals it means that my class members are possibly delayed to learning and are limited to time as they may have to do my part as well as their own. The disciplines that I have to give myself are making sure my characterisation is always punctual, expressive and isn’t basic. I need to give myself enough time to learn my lines and be willing to help out others in my class. Whilst working on this production, I have always given help to my class mates if they need help on how they should present their characters using facial expressions, gestures and dynamics using their voice. For example, I mentioned to Millie who played Catherine to act frantic when finding out that Captain Bluntschli had returned to their home to give back the coat. In our monologue work I gave feedback to Nelson. After watching his performance in rehearsal I said that he could experiment more with his use of levels as he stayed sitting in the same spot throughout so he could get up and come more downstage in the most effective parts of the script to keep the audience engaged.
I documented all my work on a blog. I preferably tried to update twice a week because it allowed me to gather all my work that I did during that particular week and present it in a way which showed my progress and what I had achieved in and outside of class. I also took notes in class, pictures, videos and a made a group chat on WhatsApp with everyone else in my class which was beneficial as we could all send in our pictures and videos to give everyone access to use them on our blogs as evidence.
Strengths and areas for development:
Looking back on our lessons and the showcase I am able to identify some of my strengths and weaknesses that I demonstrated towards the class and within myself. Something that I know I am capable to doing is being able to lead warm up sessions on my own without any guidance from a peer or teacher. This established that I was able to complete as I was confident enough, trustworthy and able to adapt to taking the responsibility to lead my class efficiently with my teacher in or outside of the actual lesson.
As a vocalist I am able to participant in singing with confidence and project clear and loudly so others can hear me. This helps because sometimes my class members may not want to do or take a specific part in a song because of the type of vocal range that it requires. In the Christmas showcase I sung two songs which I had to learn the lyrics to and were quite a challenge due to the pitching and tempo. I believe that I am proficient when getting into the correct characterisation.
From my previous lessons I found that I was able to adjust and respond to different stimulus’ not only when we did the hot seating in our characters for the showcase but also when using improvisation. When it class I network and have formed a positive relationship with all the members from Checkboard Theatre. During the rehearsals of our Christmas showcase I tried to give my advice to the other members on how they should elaborate and push themselves to deliver their character. For example, Catherine who was played by Millie had to be frantic at a particular part in the play so to demonstrate this I said she could have moved around the stage with panic and take off her apron and throw in off stage. Throughout the rehearsals there were times when I had to either prompt the script or fill in and take the role for other characters due to them being absent. I did this so we were able to get through rehearsals more quickly and allow the other characters that were present do their part.
I also realised some of my more weakened points about myself. One target that I need to work on is my time management when it comes to deadlines for my coursework because I don’t want to end up falling behind and leaving myself with too much of a work-load. Furthermore, for future work I should try and be more independent on realising my own mistakes instead of asking for help from my peers and teacher majority of the time. The reason for this is because of the fact my target grades are all at Distinction grades so I should try and push myself.
Long – term and short – term goals:
A Long- term goal that I have set I have myself to achieve is being able to develop further and progress on with my music and try to find open opportunities that are available to me related to the overall music industry. The course that I am doing now is helping me because it gives me confidence and enables me to network with others and work together with other people which improves my communication skills, team work skills and ability to perform into of other people. Also, I need to work on my soprano vocals as at the moment that I find that very challenging and hard to sing with.
A short – term goal that I have set to accomplish is making sure I am always on time to class and that I attend every rehearsal because of how important it is to know what is going on and the stages that the class is at. Moreover, I need to begin to use more vocabulary in the lesson related to Performing Arts when analysing myself and peers and also on my skills audit. In addition, I need to continuously meet work deadlines.
Use of feedback from others, e.g. teachers, instructors, peers:
As mentioned before I was given feedback from my peers and teachers. This consisted of my entrance as Raina, costume and my choice of stylistic quality of movement. From my teacher I was told that if I ever forget my lines I should do my best to improvise and say something that would make sense. I was also told that I should use method acting (Stanislavski) when getting into character as this would help me to put emphasis onto my character and explore with it and see what I could adapt to it myself.
Feedback that I got from my peers was to make sure I was delivering my lines with the correct expression and annunciate my words clearly otherwise the wrong message could have been sent out to the audience.
When we first started looking at the script judging from the first table I wasn’t exactly sure on how we were to perform it and how the performance would go until I started reading the script in more depth and started gathering my own research. My first thoughts towards the play were “Will people our age laugh at the comedic parts of the play as they might not understand what is going on?” However, once I got given my official role and we figured out how act 1 was going to be it made me feel more comfortable because once we finalised Act 1 we started practicing our lines for Act 2 and discussed how the set up would go. Once everyone knew what they were doing for act 1 (freeze frames and fight scene sequence) as Checkboard Theatre we started looking at Stanislavski’s 7 step method (method acting). This helped build my characterisation and it allowed me to see how my character would portray themselves through speaking and movement on stage. We gradually set up the stage and each time made a few changes and specific props and object differences as some were blocking the characters on stage (such as the table and the flower pot, so moved it behind all the characters (upstage.) Once we all agreed about the arrangement for the stage set up we spiked the stage so we knew where exactly to place all the props such as chairs and the table. After we had the stage fully set up and we started knowing our lines we started using inner monologues to develop and understand what message we wanted to get across to our audience and character you were talking to. Once I believe I understood my character, Conniba mentioned what our costumes would be (a long skirt and dressing gown with similar-like doll shoes.) This helped build my confidence with my character because I was able to get into my role of being an upper class daughter and potential fiancé as I believe it seemed a lot more natural.
During this process we started mapping out everything that would be included after the script (this consisting of a movement piece, devised work and singing). Going over the devised pieces after the script was a lot harder work as particular suggestions didn’t work according to plan. Once the plan for after the script was decided, the order of everyone’s performance was then arranged. We had a movement piece straight after our script (showing the relationships between Captain Bluntschli - Nelson, Raina - me, Sergius -Danny and Louka - Kelsey) followed by ‘Fairytale of New York’ being sung by Millie and Connor, a devised piece involving Connor and Danny (based on Christmas), another devised piece involving Louka (Kelsey) and Nicola (Orei) also based on Christmas. Then myself and Millie singing ‘Santa Baby’ while Kelsey and Orei stole presents off a sleeping Santa (Kajus), lastly finishing the whole performance with ‘All I Want For Christmas’ sung by me and Millie while Orei and Kelsey were signing to the song and everyone else joining stage to wish everyone a ‘Merry Christmas’.
We have to be completely involved in our character and use props to help create a more realistic feel giving it its natural look. Act 2 was based in the garden of a middle class Bulgarian family so we made sure this was displayed clearly by having a table set up stage, centre (but still visible) with a pot of flowers, a kettle, glass cups and a newspaper. We then had four chairs with two chairs centre stage, one chair down stage left and the other down right. All chairs were turned on an angle so that the audience could see the characters fully as well as it being clear that the characters were talking to one another. We also spiked the stage so that we could place the staging (chairs and the table) exactly where we all agreed on having it making it easier to set up during our transitions as well as everyone having more spatial awareness.
Evaluation on Monologues:
For my two chosen monologues I have to use different vocal techniques and the correct emotion behind the voice in order to display the characters efficiently. For example in ‘Bunny’ by John Thorne, the character is an eighteen year old girl who lives in Luton. And her aim is to try and make others around her see her changing into an adult and that she is tough. I would present myself to be loud, especially in the parts of the script that may be heard as quite explicit to the audience through what she says. In ‘Lady Macbeth’ I would have to put on a more stylish and high class accent as my character is more upper class. I could possibly find this difficult to accomplish as I’m not used to doing other accents.
Evaluation on progress - I believe that my assessment on my monologues went more well than I expected it to. The reason for this was I thought I wasn’t going to remember all my lines and pursue the right actions, facial expression, timing and intonation all the way through the performances. However, from my feedback it was found that I did do both the way I wanted to. Something that I need to work on is staying in character when the audience are laughing as I did find this very distracting and something that I didn’t think about enough whilst in rehearsal.
Style of performance - My monologues were performed using Stanislavski’s method acting, also known as naturalism. I believe that this was the best method to use as it helped me to develop, understand and get into my character more.
I performed my monologues on 24 March 2017. Before this unit I wasn't very confident in performing monologues as it wasn't really something that seemed to interest me. However, now that I have performed both of my monologues I feel a lot more better about performing them in the future and I wouldn't mind doing something like this again.
Overall, this was my most preferred monologue to perform as I felt most comfortable with it out of the both that I did. I found it a good challenge to conquer as I have never tried to perform a monologue like this before. The feedback that my audience gave me was that it had great humour and they thought I played the character of Katie really well. However, for improvement they mentioned that for next time I need to improve on staying in character despite any possible distractions such as the audience laughing as I did try my best to stay in character but during some points I did find it quite hard.
'Lady Macbeth - Act 1 Scene 5'
Personally, I don't like Shakespeare so I thought I would struggle learning lines due to my monologue being in the Shakespearean language. This was my least preferred monologue to perform as in rehearsal I kept forgetting my lines however in the real performance I believe it went a lot better than I expected it to. The feedback that I received from my audience was that my gestures and the way I used the space around me was efficient, however during the line of when I say "And my keen knife scene not the wound it makes" I did the gesture of putting out a knife and cleaning it and then throwing it on the floor. As a performer, I shouldn't walk over the place where I 'dropped the knife.' But I forgot and accidentally walked over the place on the floor ignoring object that was meant to be there.
What have I improved on by doing this task?
I believe by doing these two monologues it has enabled me to be and feel more confident in any future monologue work but I have to do.
Also by doing this task I applied Stanislavski's method acting to the characterisation of my two monologues. This helped me to understand what my characters would be like in more depth. I learnt how to find out more about my character by adapting Stanislavski's seven steps.
For example, - Lady Macbeth.
Dunsinane Hill is a hill on which Macbeth has a came. This is where he stays to await Malcolm's troops. The story of Macbeth takes place in Scotland, Europe
