This week so far we have worked out the dance that the two main characters do when they first meet, we roughly choreographed this last Thursday but spent one lesson on Monday cleaning the dance and adding some more lifts in to hopefully make it more interesting for the audience, I think this dance is really good as it shows love at first sight with a more graceful and sweet way, its a slow elegant dance that isn't too long with some interesting lifts. 
We also worked on the scene that leads into the dance when Tess and Fin first meet, this is also quite a short scene as its set in a speak easy and we didn't want too much content before the dance as the dance and these two characters meeting is the main feature of this. 

Today we worked on an argument scene between the gang and Fin, the argument happens because Fin spends too much time with Tess, this argument ends up turning into a fight, in this we used stage combat, this is one technique that I wanted to look really good as there is nothing worse than bad stage combat, we perfected all the kicks and punches as much as we could and some of these look really real. 
The  argument scene is good but at the moment its not really an argument, we may need to spend more time working out how to make the dialogue of this scene more interesting and argument like instead of just questioning Fin.         

Brainstorm

Opening Scene

This is the first scene we have done on our new devising unit after choosing or idea, we wanted the scene to be pitch black to create more of a sinister atmosphere, we also wanted to have the lights come up after the gun shot to show the dead body in the chair with a bag on their head and blood on the bag, this would hopefully have an affect on the audience and show them that the gang involved are notorious and also good at staying in the shadows. 

Brain Storms

These pictures include all the brainstorms we made for coming up with ideas and developing them slightly, it includes some of our ideas like the gang idea or the stranded soldiers idea, it also includes research we did into our stimulus song chasing pavements.

New Ideas

In todays lesson my group did no practical work, we sat down as a group and discussed the existing ideas we had, we then tried to come up with new ideas of develop older ones. I came up with the idea that we could use the gang story with the love story entwined into that but have a more sinister atmosphere to it that was quite outside the box, I decided it might be good if we started with a silhouette of someone hanging themselves and then we went into the story of how this happened, I thought it would be better to not reveal who kills themselves at the start of the play and create some mystery and engage the audience immediately, the story is there was a sort of author/ puppeteer controlling these characters and stories as he has someone above him that is controlling him, the story the author is trying to create is a love story that ends happily but he slowly learns his story is doomed and can never end well, the love story ends badly three times (Break up, suicide and murder.) Due to the authors story ending badly three times and the pressure he is under from the mysterious person above him the author hangs himself, this is when the audience learn that it was the author who had hung himself at the start of the play.                   

The group then decided that I should play the author, this is going to be a massively challenging role for me to play as I have never played a character this serious with a huge amount of emotion behind it, I think I will be able to play this really well but I just need to gather the confidence and let go and really give this part my all to show that I'm not just the comedy boy. My main challenge will be showing this characters gradual break down and driven to kill himself but I'm sure with a lot of practise I can pull this character off and really create a moving piece.                                                                     

Devising

Today we properly started our new unit devising, we were split into our groups and we then had to come up with various ideas around the stimulus chasing pavements, one of the ideas was our piece has a old fashioned mafia gang to it and one person is trying to get out of the gang for a better life but the gang find out and kill him/ her, I really liked this idea and we had a few more brainstorm ideas off that idea so we already have a well thought out storyline for that idea, one problem with this idea could be making it seem childish or not having a well thought out story line for the reason of the gang member leaving and it not really making sense. 

Another idea we had was a group of soldiers get dropped in the middle of nowhere due to their mission going wrong and have to get back to civilisation, but there is a road that seems never ending and because of dehydration and lack of food they slowly grow insane and turn against each other. I had the idea that then one of them dies and this person speaks to the rest of the boys as a ghost and spurs them on leading the soldiers home, I thought this would be a good idea as it could get the audience emotional and it seems like something we haven't really done before. 

All these ideas were created just from the stimulus chasing pavements, we then started elaboration on this with never ending road and stuff like that and getting images off Google to try and develop our ideas even further, these are some of the photos we found

 

                                                 

These are two examples of the style and atmosphere we would want to create with our American style gangsters

 

For these pictures we say the first one as how the soldiers would see the road at first, full of colour and hope but towards the middle/ end when they have lost all hope this is how the road would seem, dull and lifeless, if we were to choose this I think we would have these pictures projected on the back wall as the play progressed so it slowly got darker and darker to show how they soldiers are affected.

27th November

Today we found out that our next unit is devising we were split into groups and given a stimulus being the Adele song chasing pavements. After a few minutes brainstorming I came up with the idea we do something fun and comedic and have a cheesy game show called chasing pavements, we had all our contestants participate in various stupid and silly physical games and included some audience participation. 

I felt today was fun and relaxed and my group took my direction well, it was difficult to get them all motivated and just improvise some small sections of the game show after me telling them a title to a section in the game, this was slightly stressful trying to work with people who just didn't care and didn't like the idea so didn't bother trying but never came up with an alternative idea so I found this frustrating and rude. I did appreciate that not everyone enjoys comedy as its not easy and having comedic timing is everything so some people do struggle with comedy, and even though this is my strong point I would have tried my hardest with something serious and dark as its respectful to the person with the idea. But some people clearly couldn't be bothered so just stood on stage doing nothing which made me think what was the point them taking drama if they didn't even want to try improvising tiny sections.  

                              

27th November

Yesterday we performed Curious Incident of the dog in the Night time, this was our first year 12 performance and I have to say I feel it went really well and I feel proud of everyone who was in it. There were only a few small blips but nothing the audience would have noticed so overall I think it was a big success. I am happy with how I performed as my parts I had were more on comedy side which I feel I am best at in drama, during the performance I got a good few laughs so I am pleased I was able to deliver my comedy to the audience and hope they enjoyed the performance. 

The feedback I gathered from the audience was all really positive and they all found the part where I played a cash machine particularly amusing, even though this wasn't intended to be amusing I'm glad they found it entertaining, and some other pupils in my class told me that their parents thought I was very funny and played my characters well.
I hope the audience realised through my performance that I was playing more then one character as playing five characters wasn't easy but it was a challenge I really enjoyed and it gave me a chance to show that I can play more then one character. 

If I was to perform this show again I think I would really try and separate my Punk character from my Information character in the train station, even though I think they were obviously different I still would have liked the Punk character to be more Punk instead of just ordinary pedestrian. 
If I was directing this show I don't think I would have made the decision to have all cast sit pretty much on stage in front of the audience but after last night I thought it was a clever idea and was interesting as its something I would have never considered before this show and now it might be something I would want to bring to another performance. it was also good for the people that weren't on stage all the time as they got to watch some of the show instead of being bored back stage.                              

Thursday 20th November

This week we have been running through the play and trying to perfect it as much as possible before Wednesday, when we perform it. This week has helped me develop my characters a little bit more, as I know the majority of my lines I can focus on the characterisation side of it instead of reading my lines. 

I haven't done much research but I have tried looking around school for gothic/ punk styled people, I wanted to do this as I want to see if they have any similarities in the way they walk or anything like that, I have noticed some of them have a slouch and they seem pretty laid back most of the time, for my Punk character I am going to try and add these characteristics but I have also added a more chavy voice to make it clear to the audience I am a different character as they might not pick up on all my body language. 

This week has been difficult for me as I have problems learning lines for some reason so I have just tried to keep reading them and make sure I am confident on most of my lines. My strength's this week have been remembering the sequences we have done and making sure I know my lines for the train station sequences.

London Train Station

This is our new London Station scene we worked on last week, as you can see we have music and various lifts to make this whole seem more overwhelming to Christopher. Things we need to work on are making sure we are all changing positions at the start at the same time so it looks as slick as possible and we need to make sure we are all saying our lines so the whole sequence doesn't muck up, we also need to make sure we don't drop Toby on the last lift.  

Thursday 13th November

Throughout this week we have been going back to scenes where the whole company is used and redoing them as they weren't up to a good standard before or they just weren't working. We started with the opening scene because it just looked a bit rubbish and half hearted, we split into three groups and all came up; with different sections we could use, we start off all in one block and we walk around the stage doing the same sequence, this is quite a simple sequence but should look very effective and clean to the audience. Now we have changed the opening it makes it seem quite exciting and will get the audience engaged and excited for the performance to start, we also set the opening to music from the actual Curious Incident soundtrack hopefully giving it more dimension then just walking round silently. Today we then worked on the London train station, we also set this to music used in the real production of Curious Incident meaning it gave us more of a time scale and beat to it giving it a faster pace which should hopefully make it seem more like London. This was quite difficult as this scene consists of the voices saying lines throughout the sequence and if someone forgets a line it can get messed up quickly especially as on certain lines people have to go into slow motion or lift Christopher. We had to change one lift due to the fact it wasn't working but then we had more time during the song we ended up adding more lifts in and extending this scene, I feel now this scene is as good as we could have imagined it and it should be exciting for the audience to watch. 

We haven't really done anything to develop our skills this week but the London train station has made me listen more to other peoples lines around me so I know when to say my lines and so I can react to other peoples lines. 

The research I have done this week was done in class where we watched clips of people talking about Curious incident, the making of the show and the relationship between Christopher and some of the other characters. This was quite interesting as we were able to see snippets of the show and how they perform different characters and then compare it to how we perform characters. 

This week has been really good as its allowed us to work on scenes that we perhaps not very good and now they are up to a really good standard. My strengths this week have been my ability to focus on all the small things we have to be doing during these scenes and making sure I am aware of everything around me. My weakness this week has been learning my lines, I struggle with learning lines and when it gets closer to performing I then get stressed out which doesn't help but I will keep reading through my lines everyday and I'm sure I will get them as I don't have a massive amount to say compared to other characters . 

I think the only thing to develop the production further would be to know what we are doing as a company and know all our lines and be really confident with it.                            

This week we have run through the whole of the show, we did most of act one scripts down and some of us did act two scripts down too, we particularly focused on all the train station scenes as these are quite confusing due to the fact there are quite a few train station scenes and also in some of them the voices have various things to say quickly and in different voices and this all gets complicated, we also focused on the script, most of us didn't have any annotations on our script and throughout the run through we were jotting down notes to help us so we know what to do for each scene we are in, this will also count towards our end.

At the start of the week were all instructed to walk around the room as one of our characters, I chose my uncle Terry character from act one, we were then asked to give this character a specific walk that differentiated it from all our other characters, I found this challenging as I didn't really know what to do but ultimately I decided to have uncle Terry's left leg turned in when he walked. This has developed my characterisation skill and then made me think about how my other characters should be walking and standing. 

The research I have done this week was goggling images of people I thought were close to how I think my character looked, this was helpful as then in the next lesson I had with drama I was able to visualise the photos I chose for each character and hopefully improved my characters as a whole. 

This weeks work has been quite exciting as we did a run through we were able to see the play coming together and it then highlighted the things we need to work on the most to make the show as good as possible. My strengths this week were made apparent to me by my teacher who said my characterisation for each character I play was very good as I had a different accent or voice for each of them and most of them all had different body language. My weakness this week has been not knowing all my lines, I now need to crack on and try and learn my lines as quick as possible as we only have around two weeks until we perform the show. 

To develop the production even further I think everyone just needs to know their lines and know all the small scenes we are involved in that could make the play look 10x better if it is all super clean and slick.                    

This is how I imagine my information character

This is how I imagine my London Policeman character

This is how I imagine my punk character

This is how I imagine my Uncle Terry character

This week we have mainly worked on running through the start of act one but without our scripts, as we don't have long left to rehearse this show we need to start learning our lines as quickly as possible so we can stop relying on our scripts. We also worked on the London train station scene a bit more to try and grasp all the lines the five voices say whilst we have to be in character and be conscious of lifts we are doing with Carl. I actually found this quite challenging as staying multi tasking all these things is quite a lot to think about at once but I'm sure with more practice and confidence with my lines I can get it.

We haven't done one specific exercise in particular to develop our skills but just running through the scenes is helping me get a better understanding of my characters and what I need to do to make them all distinguishable from each other. 

The research I have done this week is quite small but I have been struggling getting to grips with my Punk character, I only goggled images of punk and this gave me a rough understanding of what a punk actually is, I got a good indication of what my body language should be and how I need to portray this character. I am also doing character profiles for all of my characters which is quite challenging as all the characters I play are very small and don't have a huge amount of lines so I haven't got a good indication of their personality, but this gives me good free reign to how I want to play the character.

This weeks work hasn't been too hard as it's just been a run through of act one which I'm not in very much but my strength this week has been getting a better understanding of some of my characters, my weakness has been forgetting about body language when being a different character, I have been focusing too much on my voice I have forgotten about my body, this is something I can work on for the next few weeks. 

The only thing I would recommend to improve the show as a whole is making sure all the scenes where the whole company are on stage is we get all our transitions really tight and clean and make everything look really professional.
         

The Hustle and Bustle of London

revolutionarts2016: Christopher in London - creating the street

This is the piece we created for the hustle and bustle of London demonstrating skills like sound scape and multi rolling.

In todays lesson we worked on creating the atmosphere of a busy London street, we first start with a sound scape using noises created by only us actors that you would typically hear in London, things such as cars, road works, small stall owners shouting deals at you, people calling for taxis. Then we went into the actual hustle and bustle of London and had Christopher in the middle of all the action surrounded by tourists, stall owners and people late for work. We came to this scene by splitting the class in two and we both had the same task of creating the hustle and bustle of London, my group came up with a more stall owner harassing Christopher and tourists based scene where as the other group came up with similar things but they had a sound scape, so we combined the two and came up with that whole scene. This scene enables people to use a variety of skills ranging from multi rolling to using their voice.

This week we have mostly been running through Curious Incident, but I have five rolls to play, even though some of them only have a few lines I want to make sure the audience know I am a different person every time they see me, to do this I was having to think more on my body language as well as my voice (changing my accent or they way I speak) for instance when I am the information I need to make sure I don't have the same characteristics as when I'm the punk which is one of my hardest roles to play as it is a complete contrast to my actual personality.
  This week we have done some primary into what its like to be Christopher, we did this by remembering our way to school exactly, we then had one person tell us their route to school in detail, then we realised that all the stuff we don't see or notice Christopher would, he would count the amount of red cars and if there were a lot of red cars it would be a good day, he would probably know exactly how many cracks there are in the pavement on the way to school, this made us all understand the character Christopher a lot more and hopefully helped Carl who is playing Christopher develop his character further.

This weeks work was pretty good as we finished blocking act two and now we are well on the way to cleaning and perfecting everything. I would say my strength this week was being able to have a clear change in character by changing my voice, next I need to work on my body language so then my performance is as professional as it can get. my weakness this week was probably lack of confidence and lack of concentration, due to the fact I only have a few small roles to play I am mostly sitting on a chair at the side for the end of act two which is a little boring to do during the lesson but its not all about me its about us as a company and the performance, now that everything is set I'm sure we will be cleaning a lot of the things that the whole company is in.

My recommendations for developing the play further are that everyone commits to their characters (including me) and really makes sure there are clear differences form character to character. Now that everything is set and we know where we are going we can start working on what we are saying and how we are saying it to develop the performance and make it seem as real as possible.

Improvising off-script - The Police Officers

revolutionarts2016: Improvising off-script - The Police Officers


In todays lesson we improvised a small scene with all the police officers that encounter Christopher in Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time expressing their views on the character Christopher and go into a small amount of detail on what happened when we met Christopher.

My police man doesn't deal with Christopher directly, I only deal with Judy and Ed (Christopher's Mother and Father) so my impression of Christopher is quite narrow minded and uneducated.

Writing in Character

Punk

So I was waiting for my train like I do everyday and this weird kid jumped down onto the track, looking for his pet rat! First of all like WTF how dumb is he? Did he want to get killed? Second like why would you have a pet rat ffs, dumb kid.

I'm still in shock though but in the moment of it all it was well exciting! I was filming the whole thing and taking pictures for my Twitter. I have to admit I wish he got hit by the train because I would probably be on the news by now and I'd be Twitter famous, but this annoying man with stupid socks on kept shouting at the weird kid and helped him out. The disappointment was bare!

Anyways that kid probably needs to get some help, climbing on a train track, MENTAL!

Uncle Terry's thoughts on Christopher

Considering Christopher is my nephew I can's really say anything bad about him, he's family and I will always be here if he needs me but I can't deny he is a bit weird, although he is very smart. Not that I'm blaming Ed for how Christopher is but there is one thing that always puzzled me, Ed used to talk about how Chris would walk off in the night and Ed would be worried sick about where he has gone but surely Ed could of just locked all the doors and hidden the keys, now I know Chris isn't stupid and he might find another way out but at least Ed would stand a chance of stopping him leaving the house at night. Anyway I do like Christopher, his maths skills are very good and he always talks about space so he's an interesting lad, I just wish he would stop worrying about who killed the dog otherwise he will get himself into some sort of trouble.

In Curious incident of the dog in the night time there is a scene where Christopher and his Mum go from outside to in a house and then into a bedroom but because we cant have a lot of set in our production, today we were figuring out how we could make it seem like our bodies were the house and walls and the characters could navigate around us to make it look like they were walking into different rooms so this scene didn't just stay in the centre of the stage and the characters not moving but some how appearing in different rooms.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- Time

In todays lessons we started on the curious incident of the dog in the night time, we started with some walking around the room, then when we got close to someone we would push away and walk in another direction, we then put this into a sequence of doing this five times then the next five time ducking away whilst repeating a mathematical sentence. This represents the voices inside Christopher's (the main character) mind.
After doing this we then got our scripts and started rehearsing roughly to get a feel of the show and the various characters people will be playing as most people are playing more then one or two parts.