EVALUATION!!!

Show Day!

The day began with us all coming in a getting into our black/white t-shirts and sorting gout hair and make up etc. You could feel all the excitement and nerves flowing through the room like a massive invisible breeze, some of us looking threw cues, going back over lines and some doing all these at once.

We all came together and quickly ran threw sections 5-7, which surprisingly ran quite smoothly. After that we then individually took our journey threw the play step by step moving where we were ment to be moving sitting in correct places and going threw lines and cues at the same time. 

Following that Devan and Ashley ran a warm up session including the games Zip Zap Bong, Bang and a characterisation game.

11:30am performance
As the year 10's were entering you could feel the first performance nerves kicking in for everyone and all eyes were now on us. Kezia and Ruby kicked off the show with secret which was great and it just felt it got better from there. Not only was we performing this for the first time in front of an audience but it was theatre student we were trying to impress with our abstract play .
When we had finished you could feel a slight sigh of relief in the room. 
It was time for our feed back. Us as a group and Mr. Crowther were astonished and amazed by the compliments and constructive criticism  that the year 10's made. comments like 'You made a confusing play look naturalistic.' and 'Tighten up the transitions.'
With all this positive feedback we were all buzzing for that nights performances.

5:00pm performance 
I feel for me this was my personal best. I got my cues and lines correct with no mistakes and I loved the atmosphere that the audience brought to our 5:00 show.

7:00pm performance 
I thought this performance went okay but not as well as the first. All of our energy's were high standard and cues were on point, but I felt a few of us just went mind blank a few times threw the course of that show. 

After all the performances were finished it you could feel the air in the room cool down a bit and everyone started to go back to normal and feel a bit more relaxed. 

Overall, I am very glad we had the chance of performing Caryl Churchill's play, Love And Information. I Enjoyed every moment of it, from when we first herd of it and doing a bit of research and reading of the play to actually performing it in front of our peers and family. 

LINGUIST

Linguist 

When I fount out I got given 'Linguist' my first reaction was not that positive and felt a bit of sods law as me and languages are not a very good mix.
BUT I have come to love this scene and have had a lot of fun rehearsing, researching and performing it!

Linguist-A person skilled in foreign languages.

I could understand and relate to the character that I played , I utterly got where she was coming from with her fascination with her friend speaking all these languages.
"That's so fantastic..."

This conversation really made me laugh as it is not something you would normally think or talk about, even though when you think about it you can't help but try and make an explanation or find an answer for it. 


I felt that my character was below Kezia's and I looked up to her. We showed this threw our physicality where I started by sitting on the ground and kezia was sitting above me. I was looking up at her.
  

CHARACTERIZATION 

• Students 
• Flippant conversations 
• spare time
• stubborn
• looks up to her mate  

THE CHILD WHO DIDN'T KNOW SORRY

Although 'The child who didn't know sorry' was only only 5 lines it was one of my favourites.

I felt I could really relate to this piece being an older sister and have younger cousins and nephews, I have been in situations where I have had to tell them to say sorry for one reason or another.

This scene is not like a normal conversation where the child doesn't want to say sorry because they do not want to. This child can't the reason being she literally doesn't know how to feel sorry for something she's done or something that has happened,"I don't feel sorry." and I feel as the character of her mum I do not understand this or believe that she doesn't feel sorry and feel that she must say it in order to put things right.

There are a few way in interpreting this:

• Taking a calm approach to the situation and try to compromise with the child by genitally telling her "but you knows you hurt him".
• Or going over the top with it and not stopping at nothing till she says sorry. Getting quite frustrated at the fact she will not say sorry. 

CHARACTERIZATION  

The mother?- Sarah Gillingham
Occupation?- Office job
spends time?- Normally at work rarely with her daughter
Where did the incident happen?- In the play park.
Why?- Se pushed another child off the swings.
Personality?- Finds hard to prioritise what is the most important things in life. 

GRIEF

Grief was quite a confusing one for me to grasp and get to grip with I fount.
This scene was between Kezia and I. Kez was cheeking up on me to see how I was copy with either a boyfriend or husbands death.
Kezia - "Are you sleeping?"
             "Eating?"

She seems intrigued by how I'm feeling and wants me to talk and explain how I am feeling, but I am very evasive towards her questions and comments.
Me- "Oh enough. Don't fuss."
       "I'm sorry, I have nothing to say. Nothing seems very interesting."

I did a some of research on what people do while they are grieving and how effects some individuals.

I came across this:
 HEALING GRIEF THROUGH ART: 
ART THERAPY BEREAVEMENT GROUP WORKSHOPS
http://www.agoodgroup.com/drawntogether/healing.htm


While artist would paint how they feel and express themselves threw their art others would find it hard to even endure basic daily activities, like: Sleeping, eating or even talking to close ones around them.

I also noticed in this scene the character I play is a bit uncertain on how she is feeling or how she is going to cope/feel in the long run.
"Maybe, we'll see."

GRASS RESEARCH

Whistle bowing 

Whistleblower, a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities occurring in a government department or private company or organization.

http://articles.marketwatch.com/keyword/whistleblower

GRASS

Grass is defiantly on of my favourite scenes that I have, I think this is because I can bring a lot to the sketch. 
I am in this scene with Liam.

The title 'Grass' tells us that this scene is about someone being 'grassed up' (someone telling someone with authority, usually the police, on someone about something they have done).

Liam and I came to a decision that this man is grassing up a close neighbour. This neighbour had vandalised/damaged  another persons car who also lives down their street.
We thought this would be a good crime to base it around as it is not such a big crime but as the person is so close to them (living and friends wise) he and she are both very paranoid with the consequences of their actions.

The character in this piece seems like quite a scatty and paranoid person. She quite clearly has authority over the character who is a boyfriend or husband. She shows this by the way she cuts him off when he is trying to talk.
"what did you do that for?"
"I thought-"
"what do you think's going to happen to you?"
Also she implies that he is stupid and he does not retaliate and just takes it on the chin.
"...I'm not stupid"
"Well you are but ok..." 

With this character I feel that I can bring an element of myself to her. I could bring my urban voice more to the performance and youth like mannerisms and physicality.

I really enjoyed playing this person as I felt it was an easier character to play than the others. But as I fount certain elements of this scene easier than others, I  fount others hard, for example: I got given the stage directions to be pacing up and down, but I would either get too rapped up in the pacing I would forget to focus on lines or vise versa.

REMOTE

Remote was the first scene I am in, I do this with Shae.


From the title 'Remote' my first impression was that it would of been about a television or a remote control. What also sprung to mind was remote as in a 'remote area' which means a place that is distant from any people or activities or buildings. No nearby town. Or a town which is within an area that is far from any where. 
Funnily enough both of these assumptions were right.


"You dont seem to have a tv ." 
"You might have a reception problem there"
Both these lines link to the title to do with a remote control.

"It's quite here"
"...Or i think someone said there's a spot about two miles up the road if you go down towards the cliff.." 
Where these lines can relate to a remote area. Living in the middle of no where and having to travel very far to even get phone reception.

characterization.
This character was named Marie. She was in her late 30's early 40's and didn't have a job or get out the house a lot. So she stemmed her boredom with gardening.
The other character in this sketch (Shae) was a distant relative of hers, in her late teens who needed to get out of the city for a while for social and behavior reasons. 
For this character I fount it quite hard giving it a personality. I think this was because she is very different to me as a person, from what I gathered from the text. So I experimented lots of different physicality and personalities for her, from:

• Her not being  very interested in her distant relative. Constantly distracted by other things, not paying any attention to her.
• Her being quite shy and dismissive around the relative. Looking at floor and hands a lot.
• Her being a friendly and enthusiastic person. Tells a lot about herself through her hand movements and facial expression.

In the end I decided that 'Marie' would be quite a jolly person.

I feel this worked well in this scene because Shae's character always had to have one over Marie, and she just didn't rise to it and just carried on the conversation as normal. I think these subtleties made the character more individual and separated her from my others. 

we got given two scenes that we will be doing. I got given 'Grass' which I am doing with Luke and 'Remote' which I am doing with Shae. 

Remote
Shae and I were both equally excited about 'Remote' as there is a lot that can be done with it.
"You don't seem to have a tv." This is the first line of the piece which fits nicely with the title of it, but as you read on you find out its about someone going to live with what it seems a relative; its in the middle of nowhere and there is no reception or signal. This also relates to the tile as well, a remote area is an area that is distant from any people, activities or buildings.
As the characters do not have any background story we thought to make it easier for us to get into role we would give them some back ground. Shae plays the girl who has moved up to the country side to live with her Aunt who is a distant relative from the family. 
Shae has moved up here because she is getting into to much trouble in London and her mother feels she needs to be isolated for a while. I play the Auntie which takes her on for a bit and just wants her to be happy but i am also quite sarcastic "You'll find you can feel if it' raining ."

Grass
Luke and I haven't done much work on this one, but my initial thoughts about this are positive. I feel a lot can be done with this scene, its funny how paranoid this person is and all the solutions their making up in their head. The plot of this scene is simple someone had grassed another person up but we don't know why and who. I think the next step for me and Luke is for us to make up a reason why this person is getting grassed up and who this person is.

We read through the rest of the script today, we used the same technique as we did last week were we had different partner each time and they were opposite us.

There were 2 particular scenes that stuck out for me and i think the whole class as well, they were 'The child who didn't know pain' and 'Star'.

'The child who didn't know pain' 
This is a really interesting one to think about as it is a weird question thing to even think about. What is pain? How do we know how to feel pain? Are we taught pain? Or is it just human instincts? 
There's loads of ways you can answer it, you can get all scientific and say talk about the nervous system. Your reflexes moves a part of our body away from something that is causing pain, a crucial way of warning you of danger, and stopping you from repeating it.
Or
You can just say its instinct. You can't be taught about pain its just something you know like, emotions, happy, sad, angry, worried, excited, nervous etc.

Star
Star also gets you thinking as although it gives you the facts it doesn't answer the question.
"It takes the light two point eight million years to get here." - fact.
"It might not be there. It could have died by now." - they could just be looking at nothing and no one would know or be able to find out if it is nothing or not.

Aas a group we read through about half the script of 'Love and 

Information'.  We read trough it in a away so that we had a partner on the opposite side of the 

class, this meant that after we went around the class once everyone would end up with a new 

partner. this was an interesting way to read it was we got to work with different people each 

scene we did.


It was also really fun reading through the play again but with the class, as you could see the way 

someone else would interpret a scene differently from how you do personally just reading it by 

yourself.


One scene I fount fun reading was 'Recluse' (a recluse is someone who lives in solidarity and 

tends to distance themselves from society and the general public). This scene is one of about 3 

that has more than 2 character in it, this made it difficult to sight read at first and took us a few 

times to get it right. Ashley played the recluse which i fount worked really well, this is because 

he made his voice and personality nervous and edgy. 

PIG LATIN 

Basically did a bit of research on Pigs Latin and its actually a really easy language to learn!

the scene in the Random section of Pig Latin goes like this.

"Ancay ouyay eakspay igpay atinlay?" and in English this means 'Can you speak pig latin?'

The rules of pigs latin is simple.

• First move all consonant letters of a word to the end of the word.
• Stop moving letters when you get to a vowel
• What = atwh you move wh and stop at the letter a.
• Then add ay to the end of the word 
• what = atwhay

• If a word begins with a vowel dont move any letters and add yay to the end of the word
• enter = enteryay

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT_ECX816hQ

The previous week we'd all been given a scene out of Love and information, we got paired up and had to prepare them for this week. I was with Luke and we had 'Fired'. 

Both our initial response to it was positive as it was funny and we could interpret it however we wanted to. Luke played the boss who was firing me (an arrogant man who didn't really care about his employs feelings) "Why don't you speak to my p.a. and make an appointment". I played the worker who has just been fired by email, (a stressed women who just want her boss to tell her she fired to her face) "Just sat it, you're fired, just say it"

We started off the lesson with a warm up of Zip, Zap, Bong. I feel that this exercise motivates us as actors and encourages us to be an active audience, where we can give positive feed back to others. 
Both classes were together for our audition process so we also got to see a couple of scenes from the other play 'Decades', which is also a play with sketches. 


Luke and I were the first pair to show our piece to both classes, Mr Crowther and Elliot asked us to do it a few times but interpreting it different each time. One of the times they asked us to do it as if Luke fancied me and I could not stand him. At first it was really hard to just change from how we had rehearsed it, but was a fun experience. 

Mr Crowther and Elliot told a lot of us to interpret their pieces this way or another, so of them were completely random. For example, they ask Lydia and Natalie to perform theirs as if they were different zoo animals. First they were snakes, then monkeys. 

This audition process works as it keeps the the actors auditioning on their toes, as they don't know what they are going to be asked to do next. I enjoyed this day as it was good to see other peoples interpretations of 'fired' and seeing scenes from Decade ad well.

My first impression of reading the book was mixed feelings about it. Some of the sketches were easy to read and some of them weren't as easy. for example 'Fired' simple to understand and it comes under information, one that is quite a challenge to read and i didn't know if it was love or information or bot was 'The child who didn't know fear'.