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