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.