This lesson we rehearsed for our auditions on Monday that was for our unit (Musical Theatre). I was going for the part of Angel. I think I would best suit this character as my vocal range is similar to Angel's vocal range, which is C3-A4, in falsetto and tenor. I think training my voice using vocal warm ups and training will help me fit into this vocal range. When I was rehearsing I felt lyrically in my comfort zone with his character so I think this made learning the song easier as I was enjoying myself, However physically and mentally I don't think I am ready to get into this character as it asks for a lot. Physically, Angel is very feminine in his walk which is something that I need to practice In my own time, I am going to watch YouTube videos to try and aid me. Mentally, I have to put myself into Angel's shoes which is really difficult as it is a sensitive subject. If I portray Angel in the wrong way I could offend someone which I really don't want to do. Angel is referred to as a drag queen in the script, This means that I could take inspiration from 'Ru Pauls Drag Race', this TV Show is a contest for drag queens to win a drag race. I am going to watch this TV show to take ideas as it will help to improve the development of my characterisation of Angel. The song I am auditioning with is called 'Today 4 U', this is Angel's solo in the musical. I really like this song as its upbeat and fun to sing- It makes people laugh which is what I want in a character. Here is the solo:
After we rehearsed for 20 minutes, we had to perform them to class. For some reason, I was not nervous to perform in front of all of my classmates. This was probably because I was comfortable around all my classmates and it didn't faze me. After I performed I was told I need to go and learn 'Ill cover you' with a person in my class, Will. We was given 20 minutes to learn the song and perform it to the class. the rehearsal process was tricky as I hadn't quite nailed belting the lyric 'Be my life' however I practiced and finally was able to belt it, obviously it wasn't as good as I'd liked it to be. When it came to performing the song I thought It went really well as I was able to hold the note on the lyric 'Be my life'. I think I still need to work on my projection in this song as I feel I'm lacking this skill here, looking at diaphragmatic support videos will help me achieve this. Here is the song if you've never heard it before:
In this lesson I learnt that I had an ability to belt however I need to improve this by looking at diaphragmatic support which I did not know about and I am going to start practicing this song at home aswell
This lesson we performed our 6-hour project. The other group performed their piece first which made me a little nervous as their performance was excellent. However this did not decrease my confidence as each performance was two totally different styles. We went for a more aggressive violent turned passive and calm performance whereas the other group went for a more powerful message performance. I think each groups' idea were amazing.. If we had the chance to re-do the 6 hour project I think we should still use this idea however tweak certain parts of the performance to make it a polished performance. I think that if we were to perform this again we should try and make transitions between different moves more smooth and less noticeable. For example at 2.20 you can blatantly see that we are waiting for a certain lyric before Callum launches himself into our arms. Little things like these are parts that we could and should have worked on a lot more in the 6 hours we had. Here is our performance to view:
In the future I hope to work on my physicality as an actor as I think this is a necessary skill for me. There are many other skills I hope to develop many other skills as well however this skill, in my opinion, is the most important for me.
This lesson we carried on with our 6-hour project. All we done this lesson was practicing our performance and tweaking bits we didn't like. We decided to add another movement piece before we went onto the poem. This movement piece would include Taylor pretending to strap a bomb to her chest whilst we (Me and Callum) pretend were unaware of Taylor's actions, this would highlight how the public never see terror attacks coming. This would all occur with a heartbeat in the background to add tension to the scene, the heartbeat became faster just as it got closer to Taylor blowing herself up. Once Taylor pretended to blow herself up there would be a loud high pitched sound just like there is after an explosion. Me and Callum would fall in slow motion to the ground whilst Cameron supported our fall. He would support me first then Callum to make it easier. It worked excellently. After this we completed 3 run throughs of the whole performance to make sure we had perfected everything, we had. We was ready to perform next lesson.
This lesson i learnt how to support myself when falling in slow motion, This skill could help me in the future with physical theatre.
In this lesson we carried on with our 6 hour project. Last lesson we got up to where Taylor was
trying to escape but we wasn't going to let her. We then decided that Cameron would fake grab her hair to one side of the stage whilst me Callum, Joe would prepare ourselves for a lift on the opposite side. Taylor was going rise up and pretend to explode, simultaneously Callum would violently throw himself back into mine and Joe's arms whilst Cameron supported his shoulders and head. We thought this would work well with the lyric " I wanna be a celebrity martyr" as we felt that is the impression terrorists leave behind after they produce worldwide media attention. With help from another teacher we produced the idea of praying whilst Taylor breaks free from praying as we wanted to highlight that terrorism does not occur from religion but extremism. We then created a piece where Taylor kills Joe to emphasis the radicalization and brainwash in contrast to the start when she didn't want to kill. This conveyed the message that anyone can be brainwashed no matter their race, Gender, Religion
We then went on to portray the victims, we found a poem called 'Out of the blue'. We thought this poem accurately represented victims of friends and family who have been affected by the death of loved ones from deadly terror attacks. Cameron suggested that he should play his guitar whilst we perform the song, once we practiced the poem with Cameron's background music it really worked well together.
This lesson improved my skill to work better as a team and I think my skill for lifting improved as well.
In today's lesson we didn't do much performance wise it was just presenting our presentations that we were assigned to create over the weekend. It had to be about musical theatre and each element that makes a musical what it is I thought my presentation went very well. My class listened to me, so I think my presentation was engaging. I was able to elaborate on the notes that I already had on my presentation to provide extra information. Other people in my class presented their presentation and I was able to gain more information that I did not know about. For instance, Alice's presenting was very detailed on the history of genres of musical theatre such as The Golden Age, Jazz and Blues etc.
As this lesson we didn't complete anything based on performance I cant say I learnt a new skill within Musical Theatre. However i did learn new information about Musical Theatre.
This lesson was our second lesson of our first unit, which is Musical Theatre. Today I had to perform the song JCB by Nizlopi, If you have not heard the song here it is:
This was set the previous lesson, and i had to perform the song to the whole class with 2 others . To my surprise i wasn't very nervous when I had to sing, i think this was due to the fact that i had two people that were singing with me. It gave me more confidence as i thought that if i messed up they would be there to carry on. This is something i need to work on in the future as it will make me a better performer. A good performer always has confidence which gives them good stage presence. This is something i aspire to have. After performing the song, we was then given a whole class exercise which was to learn and perform a musical song of choice in 20 minutes. We picked summer nights from Grease as most people knew the song and if not knew parts of it. There was an imbalance of Girls to boys so I of course joined the girls side. Alice, a girl in my class, is very experienced in Musical Theatre and knew the song of by heart so she directed the song. We all worked well in a team and it paid off as the final result could have been West end worthy. Okay maybe that was a little far fetched but we was very good considering most of us are new to Musical Theatre.
To finish of the lesson we completed an array of vocal warm ups such as Tai Chi. This method of Tai Chi allowed us to open up our lungs more. Our tutor told us to keep doing these warm-ups in order get our lungs used to taking in more air so we would be able to control our breathing more. Another warm up we completed was facial exercise, these will ensure us that when we sing in future our muscles will be relaxed in order for ease of singing and not tense so we strain our voice We was also introduced to the two voices in singing head voice and chest voice.
For our next lesson I need to make sure I keep up with the vocal exercises to improve my voice and research the two resonances. Head and Chest.
This lesson we carried on with our 6 project, we had previously created a group chat on Facebook to make the communication of ideas much easier. As in the previous lesson we decided to base the performance in two perspectives. The shooter and the Victims. However, this lesson we decided to focus on the radicalization of the terrorist first as we wanted to highlight how terrorists are brainwashed into thinking that their actions are for the greater good. And also to portray the message that no one is born a terrorist either, they are influenced and pressurized into one. One of the people in my group thought it would be a good idea to use the song Bang Bang by Green Day. This song is very upbeat and gives an aggressive nature to the performance which is just what we want. Some of the lyrics in the song truly represent what a terrorist is for example one line goes "I've got a fever for the violent behavior" and "Daddy's little physco and mommy's little soldier". These lyrics highlight what we think a terrorist would feel like. We also wanted to highlight how terror attacks give terrorists media attention and one lyric goes "Bang,Bang give me fame". We thought this song was a perfect for our piece.
As a group we decided we would have a girl in our group be the terrorist as we thought that not much attention is paid to women in the media. Most people assume that men are the main focal point of terrorism when in fact that is not the case.
To start our performance we decided we would have Taylor (the girl) sitting in a chair and me an Cameron would be beside her. Meanwhile Joe and Callum would be hostages about to be executed. Cameron and I would control each arm and get her to shoot Joe and Callum (this would hopefully portray how some terrorists are forced to kill against their will). After that we would then circle her and push her to the ground in order to show aggressiveness of radicalization. Then us 4 boys will enter a square formation with Taylor on the floor in the middle, she would then run at each of us trying to escape but we push her back into the middle. This would hopefully convey the isolation and entrapment they through when being brainwashed, That is all we was able to do in this lesson but it gave us a solid ground to work on in the next couple of lessons.
In this lesson I think I contributed a lot when it came to ideas and we all worked as a team which paid off as we completed 1/3 of our performance,
Today was the day we started our first unit which was musical theatre, we was given the task of spending 20 minutes practicing a song we was going to perform to the whole class. I am not used to singing so I immediately felt nervous, but after a few minutes I brought my self together and searched for a song of my liking that I could actually kind of sing. I don't have much confidence singing in front of people so I did find this task challenging. When the time came for me to sing I did not think I could do it, but I did. I don't think I done my best at all. This is most probably because I've never trained my voice or been part of anything musical theatre. I was given feedback which was to focus on my breathing and tone of voice. This would affect me as a performer as not everything I will do would be straight acting, most performers are end up doing something out of there comfort zone so this is something I need to get used to if I a want to succeed in this unit. Shortly after I and the rest of the boys in my class were given the task with of learning a song which was called JCB for our next lesson. I was in a group with two other people.
One way in which I could improve is by taking part in musical theatre at school or potentially outside of school. I could also start doing vocal warm ups each day to start training my voice, this could improve. I am going to watch some videos of vocal warmups to do each day. Hopefully and improve my voice and make it better than it is at this stage.
This lesson I have learnt what my weaknesses are when singing and what I need to focus on in the future to improve my voice.
In this lesson we performed our previous monologues again but this time on video. This is so in 4 weeks time we can look back on these performances and track our progress and to see how far we have come as actors. I also made sure i added my improvements from my feedback in the last lesson to this performance to try and challenge myself in the future. Hopefully, this will push me to meet my full potential.
After we all performed our monologues our teacher split us up into two group. One group of 5 and one of 6. I was placed in the group of 5. Our teacher had set a 6 hour project in which we have to create a 5 minute performance inspired on the commission of Terrorism and Freedom fighters. Many ideas came to mind as soon as this was said for example the horrific attack on the twin towers aka 9/11, London Bombings, Orlando Shooting (which was only just recently). However we had to brainstorm as a group on a piece of paper. Everyone flooded the paper with ideas only to discover that it was all jumbled and there wasn't a clear idea in sight. Here are pictures of some of the ideas we came up with:
Everyone in my group was given the priority of coming up with an idea based around a mass shooting and the shooters perspective. So next lesson we will be able to conjoin all our ideas and start rehearsing straight away.
In this lesson I excelled in improving my monologue and contributing ideas to the group.
Today we performed a piece our group had put together derived from the word 'metamorphosis'. Our groups performance was about how teenagers deal with school and how they change emotionally, physically and mentally, becoming who they truly are.We was given feedback as a whole group and as individuals. As a group our feedback was the length of our piece being too short and to practice our physical theater as it wasn't sharp and effective enough have an impact on the audience. As an individual my feedback was that i go from 0-10 in creating an emotive atmosphere, making it too overpowering for the audience and they don't get to fully immerse the thoughts and feelings of my character in the performance. I needed to build up emotion to make the performance more tense.
We then started a group focusing exercise. This was where we laid on the floor with our eyes closed and listened to the words being said to us which was what the character was feeling and thinking. This enabled us to focus on nothing else but the character and fully occupy the character's mind. This exercise will help me in the future as i can use it to become the character that i need to be and make them more convincing.
This lesson i have learnt my up-to-date weaknesses that i can improve upon in future performances and how to become a character more effectively.
Today in this lesson we performed our monologues we were set over the summer and also was set the task of analyzing another actors performance. My monologue was from a play called 'Like a Virgin'. The monologue highlights the difficulties terminal ill patients go through on a day to day basis. I thought I would challenge myself as I chose an opposite sex monologue. However I did change pronouns to his/him/he etc. to make it easier for the audience to understand.
My positive criticism included things like good use of tone, naturalistic with relevantly placed pauses and breaking on each breathe to create an emotive atmosphere. However my negative feedback was lack of eye contact, I agree with this as well. I don't think I made enough eye contact to engage audience into my monologue, this made the audience lose focus on me. Also another point was to try and use black comedy on one of my lines which was "he looks really good" and "He's the best suntanned corpse I've ever seen". I think my characterisation was strong in this monologue as I was able to put myself in their shoes. I had previously talked to my nan who had cancer, so this gave me inspiration into how to portray my character, vocally and physically. I would like to think I am really good at portraying emotional characters or characters who are angry caused by emotions, so this character suited me.
After our we received our criticism we improved on what was negative to make it positive. So for me, I worked on my eye contact and my black comedy. I thought it made my monologue much better once I had improved these targets.
I do think that I played it safe with this monologue as it was in my comfort zone and I felt comfortable. In the future I would like to be put out of my comfort and challenge myself with different style of monologues or something other than naturalistic acting.
