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!