Performance Workshop 16/09/14

In todays lesson, we focused on all the skills we have learnt over the past few workshops to apply them to our performance of 'The Cherry Orchard'. To start off with our lesson, we began to explore Laban efforts. We started with a worksheet on the Laban Movement Analysis.
 

 

Each movement enabled whether it would be direct, indirect, heavy or light. This enabled me to understand the characteristics about the way a movement is done. We did this exercise to develop a clear understanding of characterisation.The attention to the strength of the movement, the control of the movement and the timing of the movement are very all very different.
Once we had picked an effort, we had to travel around the room deciding our walks and hand gestures in order to create a certain character. This helped me to understand how different movements can create such different characters. We then found a pair and created a mini scene were we both used a movement, For example; I chose to become float, therefore I would lightly pounce around the room using my arms beside me to make it look like I was floating. Lauren chose dab, and acted out as a teacher to create a character. Laban helped me to create a whole personality just out of one movement which I found really interesting because I had never thought that such tiny movements could effect a character and their mannerisms. In my opinion I think for me this was a really exciting part of the workshop, as it educated me a whole new method on how to develop my acting skills further. Creating a character just by using efforts, times and directions in space helped me to really explore different aspects of my character that I chose to be. I think the Laban exercises have truly inspired me for my character development.

Video of Laban efforts which I found useful.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ArKgQUPPas
  Once we had finished our exercises on Laban, we moved on to be casted for 'The Cherry Orchard' which we will be performing in week 8. I was casted into Group 2 and Group 6.

Group 2

Anya - Sophie

Ranyevskaya – Willa

Varya – Imogen

Gayev – Michael

Dunyasha  - Maria

Group 6

Yasha – Billy

Firs – Beau

Ranyevskaya – Robin

Anya – Sophie

Varya – Sachelle

Dunyasha – Andrea

Yepikhodov - Felix

 

Due to the fact I was casted into two groups, I had to use my initiative to even out my contribution to both. I play the part of Anya, a young, warm-hearted girl who has a very close relationship with her mother. The family arrive home with Ravenskaya. They first enter into the nursery where Ravenskaya meets Dunyasha after five years. The scene is extremely positive and emotional. When Ravenskaya, Varya and Gayev leave, Anya and Dunyasha share a close scene where they are gossiping and laughing whilst Dunyasha does Anya's hair. I particularly like this scene because you can see the close relationship between them both, and I am also able to really explore my character and her personality towards people she likes. Half way through the scene, Varya, Anya's sister enters and gives Dunyasha instructions, almost spitefully. She takes over Dunyasha and starts talking about Paris with her sister. In this section, you can see the contrast between the sisters relationship with Dunyasha. Anya is very close with Dunyasha and treats her like a friend, however, Varya treats Dunyasha to be nothing but a maid and could even be slightly jealous of her sisters relationship with her.

My part as Anya

Scene in bullet points

• Family arrive home
• Exploration of the nursery
• Dunyasha and Anya share a moment
• Varya enters, Dunyasha exits

I also feature as Anya in Group 6. In this scene, everybody is dancing. This scene is also very positive,until Anya breaks the news about the Orchard being sold. I find this scene very interesting because I think that it portrays the social change in Russia during the 20th century. The family are gutted and Ravenskaya breaks down into a state.

Scene in bullet points

• Everybody is dancing
• Anya breaks the news about the Orchard being sold
• Ravenskaya is devastated and the dancing stops

In both of my scenes, I feel that I have a major opportunity to develop my character further. Since acting out the part of Anya, I feel that I have a much deeper understanding of her personality and her objective in the play. We got into our character groups. My group consisted of myself and Tia in which we discussed our character, Anya's personality and objective. Firstly, we both did some research on her character on the Internet. We found out that Anya is a loved character in the play, who is wise and enjoys reading to pass her time. She also is very flirty towards Trovimov, who she may be having a romantic affair with. Myself and Tia decided to use the Laban effort in our character. Taking into consideration that Anya is young and flirty, we decided for her to walk with 'float' which represents her innocence. We discussed how we thought Anya's objective is to care for her mother and develop intelligence throughout the play.
Together we discussed the way we would portray Anya. I found this interesting as myself and Tia both had a different opinion and personal interpretation of how she would be played. Tia decided that she thought Anya was quite flirty and innocent, whereas I thought that Anya would be more calm and content. We both agreed that Anya had feelings for Trofimov and was an intelligent and confident character. Analysing this character helped me to progress as I was able to see how I can develop my characterisation skills and understand how others may perceive a character.

DEFINITION OF SUPER OBJECTIVE: The overall OBJECTIVE that carries the character through the whole play.
We then looked at three key questions on which we had to use to help us develop our character. I found this really interesting because I was able to develop my character from all different aspects and understand how others perceive her as well as myself.

What other people say Anya?

What does Anya say about others?

What does Anya say about herself?

 

We worked on creating a short opening, introducing each character to a piece of music. We begun with Firs entering alone at the beginning of the performance, then individually, each character would enter. We decided as a whole group on any improvements that needed to be made and how we could create the performance to be truthful. 

Once we had completed the beginning of our performance, Sarah helped us to block our groups scene. The first scene we blocked was the arrival of the family, in which I lead the family into the nursery. This helped me to understand how Anya would feel when she arrives. I learnt how she is a very happy character who is excited for the arrival home. In the scene between myself and Maria (who plays Dunyasha) I started to develop a relationship with her and how our characters are together on stage. In the scene they are very close which enabled me to develop my characterisation skills further and helped me as an actress for my understanding of onstage relationship. Blocking our scenes gave myself and the group a better understand of our characters, therefore without Sarah's help we wouldn't of understood how to interpret them properly. Taking on Sarah's advice really helped us as a group, and also helped to create a truthful performance. In our scene, I feel that Anya's objective is to welcome home her mother and to excite the family. In my opinion, I think due to the fact that Anya is very much family orientated, I feel that her motivation is her mother, she seems extremely excited for the homecoming. Blocking the scene and being the character made it a lot easier for me. I feel that this performance workshop has really benefitted me as an actress as my knowledge and development towards my character has really improved. I also really benefitted from learning the Laban efforts. I took them into consideration when rehearsing The Cherry Orchard scenes.

 

 

Performance Workshop - Melodrama 2/09/14

We began the lesson by understanding archetypes. We were given an archetype to be, analyse the key features of them then create them in a still image. We had to exaggerate each character which made the exercise fun to do. Understanding theatre people would've been experiencing during Stanislavsky's time was really interesting and enabled me to obtain a clear understanding of them. Melodramatic theatre's consisted of these characters; The Damsel in Distress, The Hero, The Mother, The Villain, The Henchman and The Prince. These characters are all overplayed to a dramatic extent. The reason Stanislavski wanted to introduce a change into the theatre is because it became quite repetitive and purely just for entertainment, where as theatre nowadays can be used for education. When performing melodrama we needed to portray loud voices, confidence, body language and characterisation at a level 10 standard. 

 

• The damsel in distress - A stereotypical princess or damsel. I portrayed her by using my hand to hold by my face portraying a sense of vulnerability. My facial expressions being shocked, representing that I may be in need of help.
• The villain - I found playing the villain really interesting as I enjoy being able to play somebody unlikeable. Bending over my back and making my hands crippled together portrayed how the character was planning something evil. I also scrunched up my face to make it look nasty and creepy.
• The henchman -  I found portraying this character was a little bit more difficult as he follows around the Villain. Some groups decided to create the henchmen to be a clueless follower who did as he was told, which added a comical edge when watching the performances.
• The hero - The hero was exciting to create. Standing tall and proud with my chest out and hands on my hips showing off and exaggerating my positivity.

 

 I found this exercise enjoyable and helped me to develop my understanding of melodramatic characters. Once we had done this exercise, we were put into small groups to create an act. I played the character of the 'hero'. I was excited to tackle this character because I find it exciting to be able to exaggerate somebody's personality. Once we had decided our storyline, acting as the hero was actually more difficult than I thought it would be. I had to be constantly proud and smiling which made it quite difficult to maintain focus, however I feel that I developed my acting skills because I was able to be bold and enthusiastic. In my opinion, my favourite group to perform was Haydn's group. I think him and Josh portrayed the villain and henchmen extremely well adding humour and creating the characters to the point, exaggerating their walk and voices. I think as a whole group we managed to prove a clear understanding of melodramatic characters.

 

To understand Naturalism, we got into small groups to create a totally natural scene from day to day life. My favourite scene was Chem's group, as they used a natural scenario (watching football with the lads) to show their understanding of Naturalism. The style used in The Cherry Orchard is Naturalism, therefore we developed our understanding of the play through learning about it. In our small groups, we made acts. In my group, we decided to have a scene where a brother and sister have an argument over who had the iPod last. We thought that this would be a comical and natural scene which a lot of people can relate too, especially if they have siblings.
Watching other groups scenes allowed me understand naturalistic scenes. This included analysing how the character your playing would sit, walk or stand.

After this we took our naturalistic scenes and used the idea of 'realism'. As a group we found this quite difficult because our act was already quite simple. Therefore, we cut out as much speech and made it faster and real as possible. One we had performed these scenes, we were put into different groups to create a short scene showing the main events in The Cherry Orchard. The main events are Ranevskaya returning home from Paris, the informing to the family that the Orchard has to be sold, thirdly the dance where the family are told about Lopakhin buying the Orchard and finally Fir's death. In my opinion, I felt that our group added in the essential key elements to display a clear understanding of each essential part. Many groups made Fir's death a comical scene however in the book it is an emotional and sad ending. Overall I developed a clear understanding of Melodrama, Naturalism and Realism in the lesson which I found extremely helpful. I particularly liked Naturalism because its a useful skill to have when performing for television. 

Performance Workshop 29/08/14

At the beginning of our performance workshop, we begun looking at 'The Cherry Orchard', analysing the themes such as; social change and memory.
We discussed how memory effects us and how certain things can trigger memories such as places or songs. Analysing memory was enjoyable for me because its something that I can relate too as we all have memories of somebody or somewhere, which is personal to us. We were given a line each to remember which related to the theme of memory. My line was 'Memory can take in vast amounts of information'. I particularly enjoyed this exercise because I learnt a lot more about how memory works. We got into groups and were given an act to analyse. We decided as a group that we would contrast ageing to symbolise the play. As a group, we wanted to make our act emotional and also symbolise the key themes of the play.

We focussed on the idea of a tree in the centre stage whilst each person in the group waters it at different times in life, showing how the characters grew up with "The Cherry Orchard". We used the idea of the Orchard's trees. We thought it would be effective if we were to show the tree showing growth through time. The next morning, we had slightly more time to rehearse before performing to a solid audience. After practice, our piece finally came together and we were able to run it smoothly. Our play consisted of no speech, only music, which I think was effective it was almost like the audience were able to watch memories and visualise them rather than hear about them. At the end of the performance, we involved the audience by picking someone out, asking them to close their eyes and draw what we would describe as the most beautiful place on earth. In my opinion, involving the audience at the end added something special to the performance and made it enjoyable for me to involve somebody else.

 

Watching other forms do their performances gave me a better understanding of other themes in the play such as Freedom. Without realising, Freedom is actually a huge theme in the play. Social change effected freedom very much so, as well as the freedom to express ourselves and our ability to learn.

Another form looked at the theme of social change. They portrayed social change through music and dancing which I and the rest of the audience enjoyed watching. The freedom in which they had was that they were able to enjoy themselves and dance together, however the social change occurred due to having a dictatorship who was played by Haydn who stood on a high level stage to represent his power and authority over Russia, therefore it was easy to interpret the change. At the end of their play, every actor started to work, which symbolised the falling economy in Russia.

 

Ending on a negative note helped me to understand and think about how people used to survive. I feel that my understanding of "The Cherry Orchard" developed massively because my knowledge of the play increased. I was able to understand characters, themes, history of Russia, and how the social change effected so many. Having this as my first performance workshop, it really inspired and motivated me into what was going to come in the following lessons. I felt good leaving the lesson knowing how much I had learnt about "The Cherry Orchard" and how I had a clear understanding of each theme.

Scripts from 9/9/2014

The first script we looked at was the first scene of The Cherry Orchard (Act 1) I paired up with Soloman to annotate the script and characters. We used given circumstances to work out the characters objectives. 'When, where and who'. We discovers how Lopakhin's objective is to boast about his wealth and prove his authority over others, where as Dunyasha's objective is to satisfy and do her jobs. E.g. To seek approval by preparing for the familys arrival. Doing these excersise enabled me to obtain a clear understanding of each character from a different perspective. The next script we annotated was when we got into new groups to figure out objectives of each line. E.g. 'Hello' would be.. (To greet). I feel that doing this excersises are crucial for an understanding towards acting. 

Quote

"Love art in yourself,and not yourself in art" - Konstantin Stanislavski

Given Circumstances

Performance Workshop 9/9/14

Today in our Performance workshop, we begun with a famous Stanislavski method used in the System; Relaxation. Stanislavski had a theory that relaxation enabled your body to become a relaxed actor who can move more effectively. It also enables you to access thoughts and feelings of that character. Learning about how relaxation can improve a performance helped me to understand how to prepare myself before a performance and I have decided that I will be using this method in the future. Once we had relaxed our bodies by carrying out actions such as; laying on the floor or rolling to align our spine, we moved onto a game. As a group, we created different situations and gave them to someone to act out to which we would respond whether we believed it to be truthful or not. Rhianne was the first person to act as a young Muslim girl who had just found out she is pregnant. I analysed her facial expressions and actions which I think she portrayed really well. We decided as a group that her performance was truthful. The next person that went up is Josh, who was acting out as if he was in the middle of a heat wave. At first Josh came in and went straight into his performance, which made it untruthful and unrealistic. We decided that it would be more effective if Josh actually made himself hot which in the end became a much more truthful performance. This game enabled us to see how the person performing felt a sense of vulnerability on stage when in the moment. I feel that they both received constructive criticism. However, we all had different opinions on what we felt was truthful as the audience had different perceptions. Once we had finished this exercise, we moved on to a new exercise. I had to pick somebody that I had seen today on my journey to school. I decided to choose an upper class business woman who seemed to be in a rush. This enabled me to improve my skills in characterisation. I tried to find the character physically and pick out elements of their attitude and make it become part of me as an actor. Sarah gave us situations e.g. Finding a ten pound note or stepping in dog mess, in which we had to respond in our character. This relates to the 'Magic if' which is another part from the System. Asking myself 'What if this person did this' helped me to understand the character I was playing clearly as I was putting myself in realistic situations. After we had finished this task, we got into pairs and created a scene where our two characters would meet. I paired up with Tia, who played a young teenage girl with an attitude. I think that this helped me develop an understanding of contrast and how different personality's can be portrayed. We had to use only four lines each in our conversation. We then looked Want,Do,Feel, a simple version of Stanislavski's system. Want was about the characters objective which means what the character wanted. For example, if somebody is at a train station, their objective would be to get the train or to get work. Do was an action they would follow out, and feel is what they would be feeling at this moment in time.  I took into WHAT with most consideration. I asked myself questions such as 'What kind of person am I?" and "What is my upbringing". This helped me to develop my character further. We watched each others groups and tried to explore each characters objective which I found very interesting to watch and helped me by watching others for inspiration.
I found actioning very interesting because I think it helps to build an understanding of how the character would be. We looked at a variety of scripts and created actioning verbs to ensure a better understanding of how they would be said. I had never heard of a subtext before we learnt about it today, which made me feel very positive about learning new things which would help me in the future. Subtexts have an impact on how you say a line. Lastly, we analysed the beginning of The Cherry Orchard and applied all the things that we had learnt, which in Stanislavski's system are called 'Bits'. In my opinion, this lesson really helped me to fully understand different aspects of Theatre.