26th January Gavin Maxwell

In todays lesson we started reading through the script of our Final Major Project for this year. Its called 'Arabian Nights, One Thousand and One Nights' its based on a King who was betrayed by his wicked, cruel and heartless Queen. The Queen was hung. After her death, he grew hate on all women, thinking they're all the same so every night he would re-marry a woman and by dawn they would be killed as he did not want to grow fond of them. Until one day when women were fleeing from the area that the main character Shahrazad decided she would marry the King and by her amazing 'Story-Telling' she will change the Kings perspective on women and keep Shahrazad alive. Every night after they marry, she would tell a different story and eventually the King and Queen fall in love, and she falls pregnant with his baby.
We read half-way through the script, and at first I was quite confused about the FMP thinking it will be too difficult to act out as an ensemble, however once reading half the script I found that their is actually a lot of comedy and serious sides to the play. Also thinking through the stories, I thought it fitted well with our group as an ensemble, because of it's seriousness, and the comedy throughout. Also having a rough idea of the staging of how we are going to perform it really did make me feel a lot more confident about it.
I'm looking forward to the castings of the stories, and am excited to start blocking this out.

24th January Jamie Roberts

Lesson 1- Learnt a Short Phrase in our Dance Technique class.

In this lesson we carried on with dance techniques, we did similar warm ups, warming up each muscle.
We then learnt a short phrase of eight moves which involved travelling across the room, lifting yourself off the floor without hands and creating shapes in our bodies.

I found it really exciting I really enjoy dancing, and I feel learning a short phrase helped me understand what my body can and can't do. I learnt how to take risks with my body like when it came to jumping to the floor in a styled  technique, it involved landing on the front of your foot, or take the easier option where you swap legs to get to the floor. I didn't feel comfortable doing it the hard way, as it looked dangerous to me, so I took the easy way out. From this session, I have learnt that my weakness is trying new things out, but I know that I should give it a go, and if it doesn't work keep trying because practice makes perfect. I've learnt that my strengths from this lession is that I pick up things quite quickly and have a good memory.

Lesson 2 -  Learning the Effort Graph.

we learnt about techniques and how our body limits. We also learnt how to develop movements from the short phrase we learnt in lesson one.

We learnt the following;

• Space
• Weight
• Time
• Flow

The image above showed the 'Effort Graph', we learnt that using different effects for each of the bullet points. We decided that the main ones that linked were the A and B tables.

We then learnt about the 'Eight Basic Effort Actions', which basically means every day movements intrepreted into dance moves. Such as the flowing;

• Dab - like a painter dabbing a brush
• Slash- like a sword
• Wring - when drying out a flannel
• Press - like pressing a button
• Flick - flicking hair or fluff off of you.
• Glide - like ice skating
• Float - like your flying
• Thrust - like a punch

We then leanrt about Rhythms, which are tempos to do with movements. Such as the following;

• Rebound - In the middle of a movement (weight is free and strong)
• Impulse - Decelrates in a movement
• Impact - Accelerates a movement
• Continuous - Throughout your piece.
• Swing - In the middle of a movement (weight is light and bound)

All these techniques to help create a more deverse piece of dance have helped me develop my understanding. I will now use more techniques such as the Rhythms in my movements and using the Effort Graph to give more variety to my performance.

16th January Gavin Maxwell

In todays lesson we were handed a script, it was called 'The New World Order' and was first performed on 19th July 1991.

We were put into a group of three, and there were two main characters Des and Lionel and the third actor was sat in the middle of the stage on a chair blindfolded, while the main two characters acted out their duologue. We gathered that the character Des was the more strong-willed character who took charge and the characteristics of Des followed after the character Derek Trotter in Only fools and horses. However Lionel was more of a pushover, and really wanted to impress Des. In my opinion if Des approved of Lionel he would feel that he has reached upto Des's standards. When I thought of Lionel, an image and character of Neil from The Inbetweeners came into mind.

I played the character of Des, and Bradley played the character of Lionel, Bradley thought having a confused expression helped portray his characters mind wheras I used a more rough tone and more serious matter of body language. Once we performed it we were given feedback such as;

• Good facial expressions and tones in voices
• Sense of humour but then serious brought back when the swearing came into context
• Need to build a more higher climax when the argumentive Des has a go at Lionel for swapping swear words.

This lesson helped me, giving me a better udnerstanding of script work and how to read characters profiles in between the lines. Imagination played a big part as well.

12th January Gavin Maxwell.

Lesson 1: The Stanislavski System:

“You know that a sculptor kneads his clay before he begins to use it, and a singer warms up his voice before his concert. We need to do something similar to tune our inner strings, to test the keys, the pedals, and the stops.”

                                                                                                    Stanislavski.

Within today's lesson, we had to discuss and answe certain questions with a partner.


What is truthful acting?
In my opinion truthful acting is when you really put yourself into your characters shoes. (ie, emotions, physicality). The reason why I say this, is because what would acting be if you don't make it realistic or make it become your own reality? Acting is about making the audience believe who you are as your character. If acting wasn't trueful then personally I wouldn't enjoy watching shows, or plays or even films.

Can you think of a specific performance by an actor or actress either on stage or in a film that you thought was truthful?

Straight away, when I got asked this question I thought of Angelina Jolie in the film The Changeling simply because you really believe her character and feel the emotions she's getting across in the film. When I watched that film, I knew it was based on a true story, but the way Angelina Jolie puts it across in her character's shoes was just mesmirzing. Her physicality was just spot on. Her character was a full time working mum with a full time job, with a young son. She always worked hard within her job, and leaves her son for one day and a tragedy stands her time. Angelina Jolie really fitted her character. I think what also helped her was that she is a fulltime working mum, and a Hollywood actress. I have nothing more to say, that film really did inspire me as a woman.

2) 'Imagination': 

Lesson 2

In our next lesson we had chairs scattered around the theatre and a cup of black coffee underneath the chair. We were then told that we had to sit on a chair each, and sit in 'Neutral' taken from the 'Seven States of Tension'. French music came on in the backgroud and Gavin made us close our eyes and we had to imagine being in a cafe, and to let ourselfs lose our imagination into the cafe descriptions. We then were told to play around with the coffee, smelling, touching it. It really gave a good feel to help imagination flow. I feel I could see everything in my head, the french cafe, the food surroundings, the garden area and then colours and images. It really helped me with the music also, gave a good vibe.

The Given Circumstances are not enough to create a fully-rounded character. The playwright and the director can show the actor the important aspects of the character, but in order to make the character ‘”Truthful” and fully believable, the actor has to use their imagination and “Fill in the missing bits”.

3) 'Concentration': 

To make best use of their imagination, an actor must be able to control it. This he can only do with a well-trained concentration. There are three levels of concentration.

 Outer

4) 'The Outer World': 

If you’re portraying life on stage, you have to observe and understand it. You have to be an observer not only of human behavior, but also history, religion, art and culture. You have to see beauty!

5) 'Relaxation': 

An actor’s body and voice have to be flexible and versatile- a finely tuned instrument. Physical tension interferes with this. It is caused by nervousness. The must consciously relax and then be ready for action.

6) 'Units &Objectives':

 The play should be divided into chunks. Each unit should have its own psychological and dramatic goal. This objective should be expressed by “I want…”.

7) 'Truth and belief':

 The actor must establish a level of belief in his character- “The willing suspension of disbelief”. This is often done by concentrating on a small physical actions which allow the actor into the character.

8) 'Communion':

 An actor does not just work on his own. Working as a team is very important. Actors must be intensely focused on another, reacting and giving out signals. They should be locked into a state known at THE GRIP.

9) 'Adaptation':

 The methods, the physical signs which the actor uses to communicate his character and feelings, which may start as a mechanical key, but should always be adapted into a truthful, organic part of the performance.

The actor must be able to focus on the stage, the scenery and the actors around him, and shut out the audience.

 Inner

The actor must shut out his own thoughts and feelings and remain constantly focused on the character.

What did they do to achieve this do you think?

As I've said already, just put your heart, emotion, and physicality into your character. If you don't do that, then I feel you won't achieve the full potential of your character. Also maybe researching your characters role will really help you nail it.

The Given Circumstances: The story of the play, its facts, events, periods, time and place of action, the conditions of life, the actor’s and the director's, their additions to it, the production, the scenery and costumes of the stage designer, the properties, the sound effects and so on. It includes everything that the actor is asked to take into consideration.

1) 'The Magic If': 

Having thoroughly investigated the Given Circumstances, the actor then asks the question: If these circumstances were true, how would I behave, what would I do? The Magic If in effect a key which allows the actor to enter the world of the Given Circumstances, to believe s/he is part of it, to change their character, and therefore to act n a truthful way.

Second Dance Technique class with Jamie Roberts

Lesson 2

Recreating our own interpretation based on one of the pieces we analysed. Myself and my partner Daniella decided to use movements we analysed from the piece Yesterday by Yasmin Vardimon, which was based on two dancers fighting an illness of one another.

The process of re-creating our own interpretation seemed to flow quite quickly. We decided to interpret it as that one of us, being Daniella was the illness trying to attack and bring the illness into myself. So I would be the dominate lifter trying to push Daniella away constantly whilst Daniella would be the one running back pulling me into her. We decided to use the same beginning as the Yesterdays performance, were the pillow would hit the illness dancer, using a slow dynamic to show the impact of myself not wanting to catch Daniella's illness which was then brought straight into a lift were I lifted Daniella to hang over my shoulder so I could then throw Daniella to the floor to try escape from her, which was then brought back into Daniella chasing me and dragging my leg back. After that it was just a case of running at each other making contact of different action moves.

The performance started started of quite strong, our facial expressions of wanting to hate each other came across. When it came to a certain part of movement in our interpretation of Yesterday, we repeated it three times. The movement involved myself pushing Daniella's head into her lap. The audience seemed to of lost focus and started laughing, personally I giggled afterwards and I felt that we couldn't contain ourselves near the ending of our movement.

I felt my strengths of the performance was the team focus amongst me and Daniella. We worked very well as a team, cracking on straight away, using our notes from analysing the set movements, and putting our ideas, and imagination together to create our own interpretation of Yesterday. We didn't really plan what we were going to do, instead of talking about our ideas, we just stood up and tried them out, some of them didn't work, but most of them fitted in very well together, creating a flow to the set movement. Our dynamics were fast, strong, and fierceto portray our movements and facial expressions during our performance.

I feel my weakness is that my focus lost it self during the end of our performance. I will now learn that when I perform I continue to put all my emotion, and energy into performing.

It will help us in the future, as we can take movements from our own interpretation and the works piece, using it to our own imagination. It shows us a different style of dance that we may have never seen or tried to re-create before. We also learnt new skills of dance, learning things we thought we could never do.

First lesson with Gavin Maxwell

We were introduced to Gavin as our new Acting teacher, while Dionne sadly left. Our first lesson with Gavin was pretty awesome. We we're introduced to the '7 Levels Of Tension'.

He started off the lesson by a physical warm up. One of those warm ups was the bean bag game. The whole class stood in a massive circle, and had to say the persons name before throwing the bean bag to them. Skills developed within the game. Afterwards it was only eye contact communication in order to throw the bean bag, which then turned into eye contact communication and the person catching it to clap their own hands before physically catching the bean bag. The whole idea of this game as a warm up is too get the whole class to focus, and concentrate on something they enjoy doing. Personally I thought this was a wicked warm up for our first lesson with Gavin back from the Christmas holidays.

After Gavin Maxwell introduced the 'Seven Levels of Tension' to the class, we started walking around the space, following single instructions as an individual. Gavin would speak to the class, creating an atmosphere within such a massive space. He would guide us by creating a scenario and changing the 'Seven Levels of Tension' as we walked around the space.

I found this excercise and lesson very interesting. Jack Le'Coq's technique is fascinating, the thought of following the Seven Levels of Tension and changing from one to the other really can help you discover more about your character and how the smallest details of your physicality and movement signify your character.

The 7 Levels of Tension.
1) The Jellyfish - This is when there is no tension in your body, as if you don't even have the energy to get up i n the morning, or even stand.
2) Californian - This is when your body is relaxed and cool, like the thought of floating on the water while swimming.
3) Neutral - or the “Economic” (contemporary dance). It is what it is. There is nothing more, nothing less. The right amount. No past or future. You are totally present and aware. It is the state of tension before something happens. Think of a cat sitting comfortably on a wall, ready to leap up if a bird comes near. You move with no story behind your movement.
4) Alert - This is when your body and facial experssions start engaging with your surroundings, your almost looking for things to study, looking around, minor version of feeling fidgity. The thought of Mr Bean comes into mind when I think of Alert. Levels 1-4 of tension come into our everyday states.
5) Suspense - or Reactive (19th century melodrama). Is there a bomb in the room? The crisis is about to happen. All the tension is in the body, concentrated between the eyes. An inbreath. There’s a delay to your reaction. The body reacts.
6) Passionate - Passionate (opera). There is a bomb in the room. The tension has exploded out of the body. Anger, fear, hilarity, despair. It’s difficult to control. You walk into a room and there is a lion sitting there. There is a snake in the shower.
7) Tragic - Tragic (end of King Lear when Lear is holding Cordelia in his arms). The bomb is about to go off! Body can’t move. Petrified. The body is solid tension.