Mask work is another workshop we have done. The masks we were all different there were a variety of emotions which we had to try and match with our body language. First of all we were given a piece of music and we all had to create a wedding scene. This was helpful as we could focus more on our body language than expressions. We were then put into groups, We were quick to decide our scenario, that of a late night in a bar. We assigned ourselves characters; there were two drunken friends,a barman, a creep trying to hit on a girl on her own in the bar. We created a scene around these characters to the song of  Chelsea Dagger. We created an effective performance that was simple yet affective it used the simple principle of not breaking the illusion of there being a mask and a face and just a face.

This added to my sills as it showed that my actions can speak a thousand words and also that my body language is just as important as facial expressions.
I like this kind of work but im not Shaw I would choose to do this again.

Bertolt Brecht born 10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956, was a German poet, playwright, theatre director, and Marxist



His idea was that the characters would often step forward and narrate a scene. The set is simplistic for example if there was a bar there would be something on the lines of a simple sign that reads bar. a lot of Brectian theatre will break the 4th wall. There is a lot of gesture also used to show emotion. And all will often have a moral lesson imbedded into the performance.

 

Brecht is very different from everything I have ever done. You are not meant to be accepting it as it is you are meant to challenge it, why am I getting that water? Why am I sitting and not standing? It's meant to distance you from characters and focus you on what's actually going on.

 Me and Josh decided to use a genre which we had already usesed and the group enjoyed, and that was detectives. We set up a vague plot and the rest just attempted to make as realistic as possible while questioning everything I did. We also narrated each other as we acted. We encountered some problems along the way, for instance we had some difficulties with having to keep one eye on the other  all the time, to narrate the important things they did. This was solved quite quickly, with blocking and rehersing

Our end performance was quite good. I think we made our work Brecht style and we taught the audience. It was very interesting and I learnt allot it would be great to do Brecht at in the future.

Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski was born 17 January 1863 he was a Russian actor and theatre director. And creator of the well known Stanislavski method, or simply "method acting"he had a pervasive influence, especially in the period after World War II.



Stanislavski's system is a progression of techniques used to train actors and actresses to draw the audience to thierperformances. The method that was originally the concept of emotional memory for which an actor focuses internally to portray a character's emotions onstage.The technique is referred to as Stanislavski's system. The system is the result of Stanislavski's many years of efforts to determine how someone can control in performance the most intangible and uncontrollable aspects of human behavior, such as emotions.

In the week the idea was we would produce a pice of work that would have been made amd developed using the stanaslaski method.

At the start of the first lesson Miss Chambers was showing us a powerpoint on the bored showing three key feantures to the stanaslaski methord

1. What if (Use your imagination to make props feal life like for example there is a clay apple when holding it what dose it feel like or what dose it taste like?)

2.Objectives
3.How the past effected the current character

So now the opportunity arose to create our own piece of Stanislavski style work I was a 30 year old who was rather loud and his goal was to make a certain character leave his house and get the other character to stay he was acting like this as he wanted the other character to himself as they have a dungeon's and dragons night every Tuesday with just the two of them however this time the character in question brought another person who he didn't know.

My personnel response was positive as I thought of it as a great way of character building. I didn't think it would be difficult as I have already studied Stanislavski style work at my drama school.

Overall I think that the work was easy and it was good to have a rerun to refresh my memory.

Evaluation

"Nice To Nasty" Log Three

 

Creating Character Monologs

 

Today we designed character monologs for different characters in The Nightmare Before Christmas to perform in front of the class. The idea was to make the characters darker and more sick and twisted and to perform this well and convey the dark characters well in front of our workshop group.

 

In the lesson I logged onto a computer and we were given a choice of character to write and act a monolog about, I chose The Oogie Boogie Man. I exaggerated his characteristics and turned an innocent Disney villain into a torturing pervert, Sounds harsh, I know.

 

I reacted strangely and was almost upset having to change my favourite character into a dark villain  like that, it was difficult. But still I will rise to the challenge and hopefully do well at it.

 

This is only getting harder which I suppose is good as it shows it is challenge. However I am still fascinated by the theatre of cruelty and its ideas.



First And Second Lesson Building My Confidence In Theater Of Cruelty And Antonin Artaud

Drama Lesson One

Antonin Artaud

Antoine Artaud was born in Marseille, France. Both his parents were Turkish. His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and one sister survived infancy. When he was four years old, Artaud had a severe case of meningitis, which gave him a nervous, irritable temperament throughout his teen years. He also suffered from stammering and severe bouts of clinical depression, which was treated with the use of opium (heroin) resulting in his lifelong addiction.



Artaud believed that theatre should represent reality and, therefore, affect the audience as much as possible, so he used a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound, and other performance elements such as shock and unnerve the audience.

This will help in our performance of The Nightmare Before Christmas as it will help us to make the characters feel more dark and the lights and sound will help the audience feel uncomfortable and disturbed by the situations there put in.

The theory behind the lessons was to give us an introduction to the theatre of cruelty and to begin practicing making effects real e.g. making a scream sound real by scaring yourself to make yourself scream from your gut from real feelings and past experiences.

At the start of the first lesson Mr.Leigh ,who was running the workshop, sat in the centre of the room in silence. Everybody was rather confused, me included. As he didn't move we experimented I placed chairs around him until he all of a sudden exploded, it felt real, hence the lesson follow up. He continued on in a little scene he improvised making us feel more uncomfortable as it continued. When he stopped we shared our reactions and everybody felt scarred an awkward even next doors workshop came and saw what all the screaming was about! Afterwards we were sat a task to create a recurring nightmare but to really feel the screams and the actions and to explore Artaud's theory. We made a simple scene of opening a door, simple yet effective, we got up into peoples faces and made them tremble. I thought the performance was real that is what made me scream and tremble better. I had good feed back the main problem was I still didn't quite sell my fear to our group.

In the second lesson I gave it a second try in a pair, this time I thought of a time I got scared and really exaggerated it in my head until it echoed in my head and I let it out with uncomfortable words witch was repeated softly by josh walking round with a demonic grin on his face. The seconded time was far more successful people feeling more scared and they felt it was more realistic.

My personal response was panic thinking "I wont be able to make people take me seriously as the group see me as a happy, funny and easy going type person. However the workshop helped me build those skills by using previous experience of fright and terror.

I found the workshop a challenge, however it did show me a completely new way of improving the realism of my acting. I will look forward to further workshops to add to my collection of skills...

Luke Mosley