Shakespere lesson 2

The objective of the lesson was to Take a sample text sheet and read the text in different ways similar to last week however experimenting with different types of speech and movement.

We explored the technique of the 8 basic effort action's it helped us a lot in the seconded part of the lesson and I found it interesting my personal favourite was float as it was light easy going and floaty like I think it represented me the most.

http://www.slideshare.net/jayboirock/shakespeare-31956158?ref=http://dinningtonperformingarts.blogspot.co.uk/

 We were give a piece of text from Julius Ceaser and we got into a group of 3. we then began to act it out and explore how we could use these different types of speaking and movement into this particular scean. it was interesting how you could change the character from how the words were said.
My skills developed in this lesson by boosting confidence to experimenting with voice .

We have began to start work on something else but that will be recorded all together.

My first shakespere lesson

I had aleady performed the shakespere piece Romeo and Juliet so I was familiar with the old English text. This gave me an advantage as I could focus on line delivery instead of reading the words correctly.

The objective of the lesson was to Take a sample text sheet and read the text in different ways.
We started with a small piece from Henry V. We started simple walking around the room and speaking the text then when we got to punctuation we changed direction. Then we said when there is a full stop,stop moving and change direction. This was good as it broke up the text and stopped sounding so dull and monotone.

We then explored how we can react to what is being spoken. We did this using a pice of text from Macbeth where lady Macbeth insults Macbeth. we did this buy repeating words the character Macbeth may take offence to such as coward. This helped the important words become more emphasised.

My skills developed in this lesson learning how to improve the reading and the tone of the text so it sounds more interesting.

I also discovered translating the text into a language then translating it back simplifies the language meaning it can help to understand the difficult words and phrases often found this something I will consider in the future if I am struggling with Shakespearian text.

In the lesson we were put in into groups to create a warm-up.


I have a good understanding how to warm up as I have done this with real adult actors and directors e.g. Ruth Carny. So what id did with the group was a simple yet effective way of getting an actor physically and mentally prepared to take on a role 
In my warm up I had a simple game where the group must count to ten with there eyes' closed however one person could not say all the numbers after one person had said a number they had to stay quite for 3 numbers to then say the next number. a lot of numbers involved, confused, well you went the only one.

after I changed exercise and I tapped somebody then tapped the next person and next e.c.t until I said change then they would have to remember there opposite and walk in a straight line. if they were to divert from this line it shows they were not aware of the surrounding actors.


 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dneH0qaAfyU

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.