Further work on presentations 8/12/16

Run through of second half of Mother Courage - 6/12/16

My character is only in one section of a scene in the second half, then I am the third soldier for scene 11 so I wasn't really needed much today. With the spare time I had, I took it upon myself to continue to write music for my song in the play, which I was told need to be quite rocky and up beat, because it will contrast against the horrible lyrics which will bring out comedy. I came up a classic blues riff in E minor, and then the way I sing/talk in tune will be the main element that brings out the Comedy. I also made sure that I sing with the voice I use for Eilif, which I have now decided will be an english accent but with a slight northern tweak to it. I found this quite hard because I have never really sung with an accent before, and singing and playing this song at the same time is hard anyway because of the strumming pattern, let alone doing it with an accent.

Scene 8 - this is the scene where find out that Eilif murdered the farmer's wife and he is being taken to be executed; here I play Eilif very fed up and angry with everyone because he could possibly be annoyed and angry that he got charged in the first place, showing that his egotistical side thinks he can do whatever he wants and get way with it, so when he doesn't he is obviously going to be angry. To portray this, in terms of Brechtian techniques I think I need be more over the top and possibly be louder and more full on in terms of reactions and speaking to people. I am finding applying Brechtian techniques to performances very hard because I prefer the serious and naturalist drama, whereas epic theatre is very over the top and unnatural, so applying these techniques is a challenge for me.

Scene 11 - Although it went a lot better than the last run of this scene, I still think there is a lot of room for improvement; the comedy is only portrayed when all the lines sound normal and are conversational, with a quick consistent flow from start to finish, so when  we do stop completely for comedic effect (like when the farmer says about chopping trees) it is more obvious and it makes it all the more funnier. Also, the more normal the dialogue sounds, the funnier it will be and in terms of Brechtirian techniques, it will trick the audience into think everything is normal so they will be more suspect to laugh, and then so when Kattrin dies at the end of the scene, the audience really get that shock feeling of  "we really shouldn't have laughed", that realisation of what they have just watched. I think we all need to work on our movements and physicality, and the use of the stage space because for the majority of the scene, the soldiers are on one side of the stage (stage left) and the farmer's family are primarily stage right, leaving a huge gap in the middle of the stage and we end up blocking each other and from an audience visual, it just looks odd. We need to move around the stage a lot more and integrate more, and add a lot more energy and constant pace to improve the scene as a whole.

Presenting and watching Brecht question presentations 1/12/16

Whilst watching the other presentations, we came to a discussion centred around the question 'would you rather watch a Brecht play or be in a Brecht play'; my response to this was I'd rather be in a Brecht play because if I was watching it, I'd get quite bored because I wouldn't understand what is going on because Brecht's style of dialogue is very jumbled and hard to understand because of his lack of emotion inducted in the scenes and dialogue which takes away the emotional attachment of the characters to focus on the message he tries to convey with the play, and I as an audience prefer to have some sort of emotional attachment to a character or characters to be able to be more interested in the performance. If I was in the play, I can pick the play apart and analyse it and fully understand it - both the story and the characters - and thus becomes more enjoyable for me. For example, when we started Mother Courage, I really didn't like it because I couldn't understand it at all, but once we started to analyse it and take it apart, I began to take a liking to it. 

Brecht question "How can Brecht's themes relate to today's world?" presentation 28/11/16

Today's lesson was primarily research and discussion on the practitioner, and we were split into groups and each given a question to discuss and research, and ultimately create a presentation on the topic. Our question "How can Brecht's themes relate to today's world?", we started by discussing and pointing out the main themes of Brechtirian plays. His main themes included government oppression, fake/false leaders and people surviving in the times of these. Obviously his themes were related to the events and people of WWII (Hitler, the Nazis), and we thought of other world leaders that these themes could be applied to: Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump.
We came up with the idea that all these leaders are very similar in the sense that they all abuse their power - leaders tend become arrogant with their position, so they'll make empty threats, and/or say but not do.

Just by looking these world leaders from present day, we could already see that Brecht's themes can absolutely relate to today's society.

Attempt to run through of all so far - 22/11/16

Scene 1 - Today, I think scene 1 went quite in terms of individual performances - everyone seemed to have a much better understanding of their characters and it was clear that people had been reading their script in their own time to familiarise themselves with their lines and trying to learn them (me included). I have been working individually to improve on my physicality because sometimes I look a bit hunched over and don't really embody the character in terms of physicality, so to work on this I had researched my character further and watched national theatre and university productions of Mother Courage to see how the actor who plays Eilif incorporates physicality to the character so I could get ideas and inspiration, but also mix this with my own interpretation of the character so that I'm not just copying someone else's performance because that wouldn't really help me to improve and progress in ALL areas. From this research, I had observed that Eilif's general look is very confident (perhaps too confident, definitely traits of arrogance) - when he walks he uses strong and confident strides (as a pose to small and awkward steps and stumbles) and when he is not moving around specifically, he is still mainly (a few wonders around in a small space - possibly out of boredom); most of his movements are big and confident - so this means, for example, when I say "Swiss Cheese too, he wants to be soldier too!" I really stretch my arm out onto his shoulder and pat it fairly hard to bring the attention to Swiss Cheese, instead just a simple point which would a) not do very well in terms of bringing the attention to Swiss Cheese because it is such a small gesture, and b) not embody the character well because, again, it is such a small and awkward gesture. I think to further work on my physicality, I need to analyse more of my lines and figure out what they mean in terms of subtext and then use this to make a decision on how to incorporate some sort of movement/physicality to that line and make sure it serves it's correct purpose.

Scene 2 - This scene was pretty average today, it was clear that a few people are still cite reading their lines, which really doesn't help because it takes that pace and flow away from the dialogue and it hard to keep fully in character properly because it makes you think "why hasn't he said his line yet" or "he's/she's saying the line slowly and there is an inconsistent pace in his/her voice" - you start to critique them in your head and then you loose character; the inconsistent pace in the dialogue also makes it hard in terms of characterisation because it takes away that conversational element of the dialogue, thus the lines sound very unnatural. This is simply just a case of people familiarising themselves with their lines. Because I have a lot of lines and chunky paragraphs in this scene, I felt it was best to work focus on voice when doing this scene (of course, still including my ideas about my physicality), because I still struggle with my Scottish accent and the chunky paragraphs really challenge me here. Aside from the accent, I think that is very loud (confident kind of loud) and very over top (mainly when he is telling the story about killing the farmers) because he wants to be noticed and he wants the attention.

Scene 3 + 4 - I'm not in this scene so I took it upon myself to use his time to annotate my script

Futher work on music - 21/11/16

Today Me, Henri and Alice were not needed for the scenes they were working on so we were told to work on the last song in the play which is about Mother Courage realising that she has just lost all her children and she is kind of left with nothing - the song is supposed to be quite depressing. I put forward a song that I wrote a few months back that I believe sounds quite depressing and suits the song quite nicely, but Henri and Alice did not feel the same which is fair enough. So Alice started to try and write something on the piano - at this point I for some reason found it very hard to contribute to the making of this song, possibly because I am not a pianist and also possibly because I'm not very good a writing melodies, so most of the credit for this song goes to Henri and Alice. I think the song we have fits well and the melody fits the lyrics perfectly. I think I could have maybe made a bit more of an effort to contribute to this song because I kind of just sat back and let Alice come up with something we can work with, however I do feel that better cooperation and communication between the 3 of us and an equal share of ideas that are all taken into consideration would have been better for us.

Breif of next written assignment - 17/11/16

In today's lesson, we took a break from Mother Courage and we were informed of our next written assignment for Unit 2: Developing Skills and Techniques for Live Performance, with the title: Being an Actor. We were shown a presentation example which would only achieve a pass if submitted; this is due to the lack of explanation, analysis and evaluation of points (however all the points are relevant and correct). The types of things we need to touch on a research include rehearsal skills, personality traits, employability skills, training/education, connections and more.

Working on music for the play 14/11/16

In today's lesson, we decided to work on scene 3 and since a few of us were not in this scene, we were given specific tasks to do for the play. Me and Henri have been assigned to write the music for the play and our first task was to work on the first song, which is kind of Mother Courage's entrance song. Miss Cordell told us that she wants it be quite rocky and upbeat, with a live band onstage including me (guitar) and Henri (Bass guitar) - I am really excited for this because it will give me my first actor-musician experience which is what I aspire to pursue as a career. When writing the song we came up with a number of possible guitar/bass riffs, but we decided to go with one that has quite a punk feel to it, and is definitely a track that not only really opens the character of Mother Courage, but also sets the feel of the show right at the start; this also adds a sense of Brechtirian atmosphere to the play because the audience think they're coming to watch a 'standard' play, but then get given with this fierce, rocky, punk opening song that really takes the audience by surprise - it's just another reminder that it is not reality, it is just a play (especially because I randomly pull a guitar out of nowhere!).

Focussing on subtext - 8/11/16

In today's lesson our main focus was subtext - subtext is basically reading between the lines, understanding what the character is saying and why they're saying - and we performed the first scene, but every time we have a meaning underlying our line, or a line that isn't what they actually feel, or in reaction to someone else's line, we clap and say what we really mean but still in character. For example, on my line "The war doesn't scare me." the subtext behind this is that he is actually quite scared of war but he is always trying to prove that he's tough and fearless - his egotistical nature always gets the better of him. This really helped me understand the first scene a lot more because I understood the reasoning behind my lines and I was able to think of what my character thinks about what others say and my reactions accordingly, thus it was easier to act. I think subtext and understanding/ interpreting scripts is one of my main problems within drama so I definitely look forward to doing more work on this because this lesson really helped me on it.
After this, we each chose a scene that our character is in and we annotated it, referencing subtext. This also really helped me because I was able to breakdown each line bit by bit in my own time so I was able to understand it fully to the best of my ability. I will be doing this to all of my scenes because this really helped my understanding of not only the script, but also my character too. *insert photo of annotated scene*
As our plenary, we had to come up with a controversial quote that describes our character - for example for mother courage we was given "Courage is a business woman because of her children. Courage could not be a business woman because of her children." Essentially, this means that Mother Courage uses her children to put in positions of trade but they also drag and slow her down in the profession. My quote that  I came up with was "Eilif's downfall: His ego or his mother?" His ego brings him down because he thinks he's tough and a 'big man', and because of this he gets himself into life threatening positions - like the war. From what I've analysed so far, his mother
 likes to big up Eilif (as mentioned in detail in my previous blog entry) and doesn't really help his egotistical ways, it just makes him think himself even more tougher than he is and again putting himself in more dangerous positions that he cannot survive.

Rehearsing scene and going into detail - 7/11/16

Today miss Cordell wasn't in so we had my brother, Tom - an ex-A level PA student, cover us. He wanted us to back to scene 1 so he could see it and give us feedback and criticism. The main thing he emphasised on was adding energy and comedy to it - he said when we need to move about more but with purpose instead of just sitting or randomly walking in a small radius; for example on my line "Mama, can I punch this ass hole in the mouth please?", Tom suggested that I get up and start towards the recruitment officer but then mother courage holds me back and pushes me back to where I was; I think this starts to show that Eilif thinks he's tough, thinking he can stand up to an army officer, so mother courage stops him before he gets hurt. Also, a few lines down, mother courage saying to the recruitment officer "watch out, he's got a knife sheathed in his boot!" Which shows she likes to big up Eilif a lot and make him look dangerous, so I suppose she doesn't really help with his egotistical nature.
This lesson really helped me grasp that really self-centred trait of Eilif and being able to apply it to more of the play. I am also struggling to uphold my Scottish accent because sometimes I slip into like a traditional farmer accent, then back to Scottish, so I really need to do further work on this independently at home.

Scene 2 - 3/11/16

In today's lesson, we began to work on scene 2 of the play. In this scene I say a lot more than the first, so I found it easier to act in and didn't feel awkward. Eilif is boasting about how he killed a load of farmers and I think he exaggerates the story a bit to make him look better and show off - he is very egotistical. The scene also then sees Eilif reunited with his mother after some years apart due to Eilif being in the war - we see here that Eilif tough man look is just an act and he is really no different to another soldier because mother courage clearly has the dominant hand in this part of the scene; she slaps him round the face and inflicts pain on Eilif - this dominance could also be just because she is his mother, though.
At the point where Eilif is telling the general and the chaplain of how he was 'butchering peasents', I decided to go very over the top with it, and make it look like my character is re-living the moment, all to add comical effect and to add more of an egotistical nature to the character.

Processes and stages of a performer and skills they would need when in them 1/11/16

Today we discussed different skills an actor should have and what elements within that specific skill are crucial. I found this task very useful because it widened my knowledge of each skill and has forced me to really focus on each element of the skills to make sure I am confident that I can apply that skill to any performance and any character.
*Insert photos of the sheets*
After this we began work officially on our play, Mother courage - I have been given the part of Eilif. Scene 1, I found very confusing at first because I still find it quite hard to follow and plus I don't say much in this scene so I felt quite awkward at some points because I didn't really know what to do, so I need to do some independent work on this scene and figure out what I'm going to be doing and decide how my character feels about what is going on in the scene, and apply this ti my performance. I also need to do some research on my character so that when it comes to deciding on how to act in a certain scene, I have an easier way in because I know his mindset.

Mother courage scene 11 20/10/16

At the start of the lesson, we were given half an hour to rehearse and finalise what we blocked last lesson for scene 11. Whilst watching the other group perform, I mentally noted a couple of things: they were a lot less aggressive and they more or less stayed in the upstage left corner for the majority of the scene. I prefer the way we did the scene, because we were a lot quicker and fluent with our own lines and in conversation and it really did add the comical effect - also just some of the ideas we had for the scene we really quite good and funny; we also used the whole stage space which is always a positive and it made me feel a lot more comfortable doing the scene because I was free to move around as much as I liked.

Mother courage scene 11 18/10/16

In today's lesson, we were split into two groups to work on scene 11. I was with Hugh, Callum, Alice, Joe and Tyler. When being briefed about the scene, we were told to make a performance of it - hence why we were given a whole double lesson to do it. We made sure we focussed on energy and comedy, and keeping the audience engaged a all times. I think by being given a whole double to do this, we were able to easily keep the audience engaged because we became more familiar with the script and were able to try various ways in which to play our parts and we felt more comfortable in our roles - in turn, this helps the audience to follow what's going on and thus keeping them engaged. I believe with this scene it was much easier to bring out the comedy because it is very hectic and loud, and there is the opportunity for stupid kind of slap stick humour because of some of the lines and the way you can play some of the characters. It was a classic Brechtirian scene - it is very funny in a dark way as it Kattrin dies at the end but the whole scene is very funny. The scene is about Catholic soldiers threatening a farm - whom Mother Courage had left Kattrin with - to show them the path into town. When they go, Kattrin tries to draw attention by drumming up in the watchtower really loudly, much to the soldiers rage. I think we did this scene very well as we really did bring out the dark comedy and it was very entertaining - we used the full space of the stage and we increased out voice dynamics as it got more hectic.

Rotten rhymes and Mother Courage scene 3 13/10/16

In today's lesson, were given about 30 minutes to continue working on our Brechtirian rotten rhymes - unfortunately, we lost the second page to the poem so we had to kind of improvise. We decided to have to majority of the poem narration, but acted as if it's dialogue so that it still feels like a proper play/performance, but also so the audience still get that sense of Brechtirian atmosphere. We were then told to do scene 3 of Mother Courage, but with the same amount of energy we had doing the rotten rhymes - from doing the first task, then applying it to the scene, I finally realised what makes Mother Courage so funny: the energy. So when we were rehearsing the scene, we really focussed on the energy of the scene, moving a lot more, hand gestures and the like. But mainly, we decided to use a lot more space of the stage. I was with Taylor (played Mother Courage) and Joe (The cook) and I played The Chamberlain. Whilst playing the Chamberlain, I decided to play him as a very neutral character, and very chilled and relaxed at first glance - which is exactly how he is supposed to be played so I was told by our teacher. The addition of all this energy made the scene a lot more fun to do and watch, so in the future when working on Mother Courage, I will make sure I put in a lot of energy.

Gestus and further work on Brechtirian techniques 11/10/16

Today we were split into two groups and given some gestus' to create. A Gestus is pretty much a physical metaphor - so a hidden message within a tableau. We were given the following Gestus titles:

• War makes a hero
• The waste of war
• A trustworthy politician
• An insincere politician 

I found creating these quite hard because I couldn't really figure out what actions/tableaus would create a certain image and give a clear message without being too obvious that it's not very good.
*insert pictures of gestus* 

We were then split into groups of four and we were each given a 'rotten poem', but we had to create a performance of the poem in the style of Brecht. I was with Owen, Chloe and Warren, and we were given Jack and the Beanstalk. We used Brechtirian techniques such as placards, multi role-ing, comedy, and talking to the audience. Our main focus was narration - this is a very good Brechtirian technique because not only just talks to the audience, but it informs them what is going on in the story; so it kind of kills two birds with one stone - it breaks the fourth wall whilst also helping the audience understand the storyline. 

Mother Courage scene 2 - 10/10/16

Today we were put into different groups and told to work on scene 2 again, but really focus on the comical elements of the script, and really focus on other Brechtirian techniques. I was with Taylor, Warren and Owen. I played Eilif, Warren played The General, Taylor played the Cook and Owen played Mother Courage. To focus on comical aspects, I put on a very strong Scottish accent and played everything over the top, and I believe I understood and grasped the comical aspects. For example, one of the lines is 'I put my business foot forward' which is obviously a figure of speech, but on that line I put physically put my foot forward to show that Eilif actually thinks he has a 'business foot' which clearly shows his stupidity.

Mother Courage and her children - scene 2 workshop 6/10/16

In today's lesson, we were given the scripts for scene 2 of Mother Courage. This scene is about Mother Courage trying to sell a Capon to the cook on a dodgy deal, and Eilif is boasting about his battle adventures. I was in a group with Hugh, Alice and Tyler - I played the Cook, Alice played Eilif, Tyler was Mother Courage and Hugh was the General. To add a Brechtirian atmosphere, we used chairs to make the tent and used placards to label it as 'the tent' - we also used a placard to label the Capon. We also used soundscapes which helps the audience understand that the performance isn't real because the sound effects are coming from the actors. This scene, like the first, was very hard to understand what was going on at first, but after a few read throughs, we got the jist.

'Mother Courage and her Children' Scene I 3/10/16

In today's lesson, we were split into two groups and started to read though scene 1 of our first play called 'Mother Courage and her children' by Brecht. In my group, we decided that I would play the Recruitment officer. This scene is about finding people to recruit for the army to fight in the war, and the sergeant and rec. officer come across Mother Courage's children, who are fit and healthy and the rec. officer wants to recruit them, and if he doesn't he'll kill himself because he hasn't recruited anyone. We all found it very hard to read through the script at first because we had no idea what was going on and the dialect was very strange, so when we said our lines they didn't make much sense because we had no idea how each character was feeling, nor did we know anything about the characters. However once we done some research, we understood the script much better and it all began to make a whole lot of sense.

Brecht techniques presentations 29/09/16

In today's lesson, we each presented our presentations. From watching other presentations, I additionally learnt the following:

• Brecht used very basic props, for example for a car do, there would be a sign held up by an actor/actress, that reads 'car door'. Also, there would be a lot of multi rolling, and females playing male parts and vice versa. And he would usually use simple white light for lighting. This is all so the audience are constantly reminded that it is not reality it is only a play.
• Most of his plays were set in and about many years before his time, merely to cover up the fact that they were obviously about the Nazi party and Hitler - this was because if they had directly been set and about the Nazi's, he would have been killed.

Terrorist or freedom fighter? (final performance) 22/09/16

Inn todays lesson we performed our 6 hour project piece 'Terrorist or freedom fighter?' - I feel it went very well, and a lot better than we thought (this could be because prior to the performance, we changed a couple bits to fill in the gaps within the movement piece and made the transitions smoother within the movement piece). I think the addition of 9/11 news reports on projection at the start in the dark, really helped set the scene for the audience and definitely portrayed how terrorists are shown/exposed by the media. The movement piece went very smoothly as like I said we improved and worked on our transitions and added a bit more character to us in the piece so that we don't just look like people in a movement moving from one movement to the next. This definitely helped make the piece more believable and perhaps more enjoyable and easier to watch.
In the second part of the lesson, we split ourselves into 3 groups, and we spoke about generally what makes a good performer. We said that a good performer needs to be confident and believe in themselves in order to give a good performance, have a good use and mix of voices tones and know when and to use different tones, controlled movement, ability to take criticism, ability to take direction, and versatility.

Brecht techniques - 27/09/16

In today's lesson, we were given the task of researching about the techniques of a drama practitioner called Brecht. We had to create a presentation of our research: