Week 3 - Road

We've focused on our characters a lot this week and what we think of them so I've been doing a lot of thinking on my character Mrs Bald and Bald. I see their relationship as they've been together for quite a few years and are now getting sick and tired of each other. They don't really want to be in each other's company, well I feel like Bald doesn't want to be in Mrs Bald's company. I think Bald is the boring type and Mrs Bald wouldn't mind going to the pub and getting drunk where as he would and would probably stay at home. I feel like Bald wants to seem like the man of the house by really Mrs Bald is in charge which he doesn't like so when she asks him something or tells him something he doesn't listen and does the opposite. I feel like she really enjoys annoying him. They have a daughter called Chantel who Bald is very protective over but Mrs Bald does mind her going out, having fun and enjoying herself. I'm not really sure yet why their houses is such a mess that Scullery thought know one lived there. I had the idea that maybe their just messy people or have moved in and didn't unpack which would suggest why throughout the play their in their house because they probably didn't plan on staying on the Road that long. It could just be the fact their really lazy and have loads of junk they haven't got rid of yet.

 

 

 

 

I am finding it hard to find out more about Doreen then I did Mrs Bald as hers was all in the script but Doreen is a bit more of a mystery. I have come up with a few things for Doreen though, for example I think she might have a small job as she's not trying to get money off anyone and she's able to go out buy some drinks and later on some chips. I do feel as she is very loose and up for anything but not as much as Lane. For example page 16 with Scullery him and Lane just start kissing and as Doreen goes off she says "Snog anything she will. Captain fucking Pugwash" which suggests she has a bit of class in the way she wouldn't kiss any guy who walked past. I think after going through the scrip a bit more I'll hopefully find a bit more out. I have been looking a people who have previously played Doreen to see what they wore and everything so I can get an idea of what to wear as this play is set in the 1980's. In the picture below Doreen is the one on the left and this is the scene I was talking about. I knew that Lane was on the right from the way she's look at Scullery so I'm guessing their about to kiss. This picture also supports my idea about Doreen not being as loose as Lane because Doreen is wearing leggings and Lane is wearing a short skirt. Which shows Lane is more of a 'slut' then her because she covers up where as Lane likes to show skin.

 

 

From the clothing they're wearing I can tell that bright neon colours, hoop earing, ponytail to the side or big hair and scrunches' in their hair was the style which gives me a lot of great ideas for my costume. My ideas at the moment would be to wear bright colourful leggings with a white or pink crop top underneath and a denim jacket with colour badges on it and maybe wear some neon heels or maybe even trainers or converses.

 

We did do a bit more on our accents this week and Kirsty gave us a sheet which will hopefully help me and I know I'm going to have to constantly practise to get it right. I also learnt my lines to my first scene I just need to know when to say them and try and add the accent to them which I have done a little but I don't know how I would pronounce certain things still like "Trough" because I'm not sure if I drop any letters or if I have to say it differently so I'll find out next week. I think it's coming along nicely, I just need to go through my scenes with Lane with Kennedy and discuss our characters, how we should act during certain scenes and learn the rest of the lines.

Week 2 - Road

We starting blocking this week and discussing our characters and how they act. My character Doreen is a flirty character and I think she would show that throughout the play so everything little action she does would be flirty in someway. After going through all of the scenes and blocking them it has helped me get a sense of my characters and their relationships with the other characters in the play. For example Lane and Doreen are best friends in my eyes, the both like to have fun, be flirty and have a good old laugh. I would say out of all the women in the play they are the most loose, they're not really bothered if boys want something from them because they will give it to them. I made some notes on Wednesday when we blocked pages 14-40. I felt like the scenes switched from funny to serious to funny to serious again. There was real comical bit with Bisto and his scene which I thought is a great scene and Luke plays Bisto really well. It's important for us all the remember energy! With everything we say and do we need to put a lot of energy into our voices and gestures.

 

This play is sent in Lancashire which means we have to learn a northern accent. We started this week and I am finding it really difficult as I'm not good at accents. Laura was helping us by putting up words on the board and saying how some sounds or letters change with others. She said them first and then we repeated, I did find this very helpful but at this stage I still need someone to say it first.

 

 

 

After this we went and tried it with our lines I picked the line "Oooh eh look here!" which is a northern accents comes out like "ooo a look ere". The good thing about doing this is now I've said it with the accent I can't actually say it without the accent which means I am getting their slowly, just need to practise. Laura also put up the alphabet and a, e, I, o, u and we had to go through the alphabet. For example saying ba, be, bi, bo, bu but in the accent. I did find it quite hard and needed Laura to say it first but I have been going through it and I think I'm getting it.

 

 

 

Week 1 - Road

Our new assessment is Road which is about life on a road in Lancashire in the 1980's. My first response to the play Road after reading the book was that all the character's are very open to each other about their lives and are very flirty. I see most of the women using sex as a tool in the play in able to get what they want from the men. They live in a bad environment in the way that none of them have a lot of money and most of them don't have jobs or have lost them. I feel like the only way they can enjoy their lives is to go out pub crawling and meet most of the people that live on the Road as that's what they all like to do. Even though they live in this poverty area they don't care, they still love the Road they live in and are happy with it.

The major themes throughout the play are sex, politics, alcohol, poverty, family and swearing. Sex is a major one because the women do use it as a tool to get what they want from the men and the men don't mind because they want some. During the play there are many references to sex. Politics is a major theme because this play was set in the 1980's which was when Margret thatcher was in charge and got rid of the union that put a lot of people unemployed.  I feel alcohol in the play is used to solve their problems in the way that it makes them forget what's really around them and they can have fun.  During the play everyone wants alcohol, for example Brenda who tries to get money of Scullery so she can buy some alcohol. The Road is a place full of poverty but they don't see it as that, they see it as their home. Family is a big theme as they see each other as their family since most of them don't have any family and everyone on Road are really close and they all know each other so it's like they are family. There is a lot of swearing in Road which is showing how uncivilized and how much it's so common in their social community.

 

My vision of road is that I see it as a very dirty area as in black bags full of rubbish would be on the side walk along with tin bins. The smell of smoke and alcohol would fill the air and you would maybe see the odd splatter of sick on the pavement. If I was going to set the play out I would have it so the audience were standing and all the characters would always be onstage. There would be scenes in chronological order and the audience would follow the scenes as they go on as if they're going down a Road.

 

I have been casted as Doreen and Mrs Bald which I am very happy about. I'm excited about the character Mrs Bald as she is very comical in every scene she's in. Her and her husband Bald have this kind of relationship where I see it as he's very boring and she loves to joke around with him. For example when Bald says "What do you think this is eh! Keeping decent ones awake likes this. My wife's awake here." and Mrs Bald replies with "I'm not". I think playing Doreen will be fun as she is a very loose character and flirty. She's great friends with Lane and I think it's very important that the bond between them shows. The bug problem for me would be the accent and I'm really bad at them but I'm excited to try and hopefully be okay at it but if not it's something I definitely need to work on.

Week 6 - Devising

During this week we were focusing on the feedback we got back from Kirsty and Deborah so we could have a finished piece by the end of the week. We needed to work on all the scenes we already had from the feedback and add one or two scenes to finish the play off. We started off by sorting out the boys fighting scene and finally taking out the back toll that Lewis and Luke do and changed it to something more suiting and that they could actually do. After we worked on Kennedy's monologue scene and made mine and Phoebe's actions more bigger and expressive. We worked at bit on the break up scene with me and Joe and the running away scene with us, The break up scene needs more emotion and Bobby needs to be more bitter and act as if she don't love him anymore and that she never did so he doesn't get even more hurt when she marry's brother Taylor. The run away scenes needed to go more swiftly. 

We got some feedback from Deborah saying how she still doesn't know a lot about Joe's character who is Billy Joe. We started off by hot seating him as his character, we asked him a range of questions about he's feelings towards Bobby, what we did before he met her and his feelings towards her family. After this Deborah had another look and said that she's still learning nothing new about him. We then came up with another idea about asking him questions after he has commits suicide but we would put the scene during the play before he dies. These questions involved asking him why he gave up, how he felt about Bobby marrying brother Taylor and why he didn't stay and fight for her. Then we took the questions away and left it so we only had the answers to the questions so it leaves a bit of mystery about what's going on. 

Another scene we came up with was a dinner scene which involved the mum, dad, both Bobbies and brother Taylor. We put this scene in the style of berkoff and made it show how the women are basically the men's slaves and how everyone thinks they're a happy family but they're not. We build "We're such a happy family" from being said in a happy way up to where it's said in a way to show how much we hate it and the fact that we're stuck init. None of the women are happy with their lives but the men are and we show this in the scene by the women acting as the table and the men putting their feet up on them.

My group is hopefully going to meet up next week and discuss what songs we're going to use and if we are in what scenes. We also need to sort out a few scene transitions so they flow into each other and then when we go back to college perform in to Kirsty and Deborah so we can get some feedback before our performance so if we need to make some changes we can. 

Week 5 - Devising

I have been thinking a lot about my character this week and her relationship with the rest of the character in the play. I want to be able to show clearly to the audience Bobby's love for Billy Joe and how she is getting forced to marry brother Taylor. I have linked Bobby to Juliet  from Romero and Juliet as she was also in love with someone her family didn't approve of and they were forcing her into a marriage.

We didn't do a lot on are devising this week but when we did we worked on the scene where Bobby breaks up with Billy Joe for his own good.I have to seem bitter and act as if I never did love him and as if it was all just a lie. I found this scene really hard, more because of the emotion I have to put in it. When doing a play I can normally relate it to my own experiences which will help me find the emotion but I've never broke up with a guy after being in a serious relationship with them which makes if difficult. To capture the emotion I think I'm going to have to think of something that upsets me and annoys me and put that all into. I want to make sure the audience believe me so I'm going to grab every single emotion I have at that time and show it in the scene.

I've also done some research on depression and anxiety as when we got the stimulus we said that a boy named Billy Joe commits suicide. It says that most people experience ups and downs in their life, and can feel unhappy, depressed, stressed or anxious during difficult times. This is a normal part of life. Many difficult events and experiences can leave us in low spirits or cause depression: relationship problems,bereavement, sleep problems, stressed at work, bullying, illness, and pain being just a few. But sometimes it's possible to feel down without there being an obvious reason.

Symptoms of depression can include the following:
*continuous low mood or sadness
*feeling hopeless and helpless
*having low self-esteem 
*feeling tearful
*feeling guilt-ridden
*feeling irritable and intolerant of others 
*having no motivation or interest in things
*finding it difficult to make decisions
*not getting any enjoyment out of life
*having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of harming yourself
*feeling anxious or worried

Next week I hope for our group to come up with some more scenes to link the rest of our play and hopefully have our current ones all tidy and that everyone knows what they're doing. We also need to have a few more scenes with speaking in because most of our scenes just have dancing in them. I think me and Phoebe who is the other Bobby should also think about our feelings towards the other characters so when one of us is the other ones thoughts we know what we're going to say. We could also do a monologue to help who ever is doing to thoughts so we have a clear idea.

I have started to think of the costume's we could wear for the play and I think the boys should wear white shirts with black trousers and us girls should wear flowery dresses with black leggings.

Research Portfolios

Frantic Assembly

Frantic Assembly artistic director's are Scott Graham and Steve Hoggoet who met in Swansea as students.They have 5 permanent members of staff. They were formed the company with a desire to do something different, they wanted to create a thrilling, energetic and unforgettable theatre. They were inspired by Volcano Theatre Company. All the director's work as a team and do not discourage each other's ideas as other people's ideas might lead to an even better idea.

They are one of the most exciting companies in the country. Their unique physical style combines movement, design, music and text.  They are an athletic type of theatre and use a lot of naturalism.

There are 10 practitioners who lead workshops and residencies for Frantic Assembly. They have three workshops, Devising and physicality which provides students with the skills to embark on their own devised projects. Othello uncovered with helps them discover the devices and techniques used to create Othello.Then there's Creative residencies which provides participants with a sustained creative experience, through a series of workshops culminating in a performance.

When exercising the director's like to challenge the group and go forward in small steps. They don't like to set anything complex for the first exercise but set very specific tasks. My class tried some of these exercise and I learned that the simplest movement can be very effective and show a lot to the audience. Frantic Assembly like to keep they're performance's beautiful and dynamic. The director's like to keep an open field on what they do and try not to get carried away in the art.

They stayed away from a classical line and it was all steered by gut instinct. They get inspiration from each other and sometimes base their plays on past experiences like fights and real life stories.They give the writer freedom to developing a text in response to they're ideas and conversations, but don not expect the writer to be inspired by what is created in rehearsal room. They believe the partnership with a writer should be completely collaborative. As they develop their rehearsal process they start to take advantage of the generous opportunities to try out ideas.

Frantic Assembly show a lot of dance sequence's and every single one of them show you so much, it allows you to see deeper into the emotion. For example in Stockholm they wanted to show they were a couple by creating something intimate and sexy. They just wanted to show  that they loved to dance and not have a specific style to the dance. What was is important to them is that the dance feels different each time for the characters. They needed to be aware of the tension of the moment, when the context changed so do their reasons for pulling each other tight. The moves express the characters growing passion, anger, jealousy, insecurity, desire and desperation. In early development they set their performers the task of making up some ballroom type material.They then created some lovely and joyful moves that made them look just right.

The imagine of the shows are really important to Frantic Assembly. They take the creation pf the image very personally, that they just have to get it right. To them getting it wrong not only means you are misrepresenting your show and not promoting it properly but it also means that you are going to see it a lot and be constantly reminded of your mistake. 

Greek Theatre

Greek Theatre is unknown at the specific time of practice but we know it started in B.C and has evolved since there to develop some of the famous practitioners we know today. Greek theatre was introduced as a festival which is every year in April to celebrate the God Dionysus who is the God of wine and fertility. Athens would hold great festivals and performances in honor of the god. Within the performances there would be a chorus and three actors who were men.

A chorus was originated by the ancient Greeks and consisted of 12 to 50 people. They were considered the vital role in theatre and their propose was to react to an action. They sang, danced and read lines to express the public’s opinions on cultural, political and military actions. The 3 actors that were all male would used different masks to portray different people and genders, they were also warn for religious reasons. It would be rare to see any females at an amphitheater due to the fact they had few rights in ancient Greece to the point where they weren't even aloud to watch these plays, only the men were. The mask were also used to hide their identity otherwise they would be at risk having mocked the government or very high influential people.

There is only tragedy and comedies that the Greeks performed and from thorough research there would have only been them two and nothing more because of the God Dionysus. Wine, representing liquefying poison and temptation and fertility showing laughter, happiness and peaceful giving.  

Greek tragedy show the suffering of people and human tragedy it's self. We live in a flaw world full of suffering from our actions and that's what they show in their plays. All their actions were big and you saw the tense relationships between the characters. 

Week 4 - Devising

This week consisted of developing our ideas we have by making up more scene to go into our piece to help make the scenes we have so far link. We came up with a proposal scene on Monday which shows how Bobby is forced into this arranged marriage with brother Taylor by her father. At the back of the scene with be happy Bobby and Billy watching over the proposal and when brother Taylor asks her the happy Bobby screams 'NO'.

'Arranged marriage is a type of marital union where the bride and groom are selected by a third party rather than by each other. It was common worldwide until the 18th century.'

We had a bit of feedback from Kirsty on Monday were we discussed about our piece and all the relationships and how it might be too complicated for the audience to understand it all. Then we decided that instead of having Phoebe as Bobby's sister Betty she was also going to be Bobby as well. Which meant we had to tweak some of the scenes we already had.I came up with the idea to have one happy and one sad Bobby, the happy one would always we with Billy-Joe as he makes her happy and the sad one would be with brother Taylor. Phoebe decided to be the sad Bobby and I'm the happy Bobby. Which is why we changed it so Phoebe is getting married and I just have my hand on her shoulder during the wedding scene.  

With this we would have one Bobby on the side saying all of the other Bobby's who would be doing a scenes feelings and real emotions that she's not saying. For example with the dinner scene that we have Bobby sitting down at the table and then the other Bobby behind her reacting to the things the father is saying because the Bobby sitting down isn't brave enough to say them. We had some feedback on this scene about the way the Bobby stood behind the other Bobby should express her feelings. For example I was shouting them but they said the tension was already there so there is no need to shout but maybe just have an angry tone to my voice. 

We have also worked on a dance together to show that we are both Bobby and to help the audience understand that better and when we showed the group on Wednesday they seemed to know without us saying anything. We also came up with a scene for the mother to show her relationship with the father since our play is based on the relationships between each other. We now have a scene with brother Taylor and the father talking about the arranged marriage.

With the scenes we came up with this week we now have a beginning, middle and end to our play. We have linked 6 scenes together which is what we needed to do mainly this week to make our middle of our play. All we have to do now is make a few more scenes up to link to beginning to the middle and the middle to the end and then we have our play. We have also figured out a few songs for some of the scenes but some are yet to be chosen and then we need to think about costumes which we will probably discuss near the end. I think so far our play is going really well as we have a lot of material to work with. Hopefully it will continue to go this way and it isn't long until we have our final piece.