UNIT 4, 5, 6

UNIT 4

Task 1 - Documenting your journey

Normalised

We played a game with moral questions. We had to stand on the side of the room based on if we strongly agreed, or strongly disagreed. We were asked silly questions at first like ‘Pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza’, then progressed to deeper questions about mental health, politics and homophobia. After each question we were given the chance to explain our reasonings. I enjoyed discussing these topics, and hearing everyone's different views. This game was a challenge set by the writer of our connections piece, to get us thinking about moral questions, and hear lots of peoples views to understand the different views of our characters.

We planned some set design, working out what would work for both plays. Our main idea is to keep the set roughly the same for both, with two hedges at the back, a bench at the front and tree stump at the back. As most DNA scenes are in a forest this works well for us, it is versatile and adds dimension to the space. And planned some costumes for the characters, based on their personalities. I’m in charge of costumes for DNA, so I have been taking notes and asking each actor what they believe their character would wear to get some insight.

We then began rehearsing for our call back auditions for ‘Normalised’ and our auditions for DNA. I felt prepared for the call back because it was the scene I'd practised in my previous audition.

This time, I worked with two different partners, which was helpful as it gave me a chance to create chemistry with someone else. If I was to redo this audition, I would try to keep eye contact with my scene partner for longer, as I often felt overly awkward and had to look away. However, I felt I took the note from the last audition, and made sure the scene was awkward for the characters but not for the audience. I also was given some redirection from Tom, to change my line about me being a ‘physic’ to pretend to be a fortune teller, to go overly dramatic with it as an attempt to make Rosa laugh in the scene.

In Normalised I’m going to be a part of the ensemble in Jamesy’s gang, meaning I’ll be playing a chav. I created a character for this part, called ‘Becca’ and gave her a backstory of having a past relationship with Jamesy, making her extremely jealous of Reema as Jamesy is clearly interested in her. Becca is fun to play as it’s the opposite of me, and of Leah in DNA. I’m grateful I’m part of both plays, as DNA has a brilliant story, but Normalised allows me to perform at the Newcastle Royal, and gives us a chance to perform at london.

One afternoon, Jamsey’s gang got together to discuss all of the scenes we’re in, and work out how we can become a tighter, chavier group.

The day before the show, all the Normalised ensemble had to go to the theatre to clear up the spacing in the group scenes. This afternoon, we did a full dress run of Normalised, which was very helpful, as my chav costume helped get me into character very well.

The show went very well, a more detailed analysis can be seen in my evaluation.

.

We had some time to go through the director's notes for this connections performance. Some of the notes that are relevant to me are:

Then we used these notes to change parts of the play. As we were short on time, we focused on moving the shrine further forward on the stage to stop it from being hidden at the back. We ran through the last scene with this set change, to see how it would feel and to make some new spacing.

DNA

For my DNA audition, I worked in a large group to create a scene where we find out that the boy we killed isn’t really dead. It was a difficult scene as for the most part I was standing in silence. This pushed me to focus on my reactions and relationships to other characters. Then for my dialogue, which was written with a lot of stutters, I portrayed Leah as panicking whilst trying to get her words out. I was proud of my audition, however I felt I’d done better in rehearsal, I was very nervous, as we were performing in front of the whole class. It was enjoyable to watch the other pieces as it was interesting to see how everyone else interpreted each character.

For the recall auditions in the afternoon, I auditioned with a monologue by Leah (from DNA), and worked with George who played Phil. In this scene, Leah rambles on to Phil about how she wants to know what he’s thinking, and how she talks too much. This monologue is interesting, as Phil’s silence speaks volumes about their relationship, in terms of unrequited feelings. Leah’s non stop talking is a direct contrast with Phil's quietness, and in my opinion shows her insecurities, and overcompensation on not feeling good enough - filling silence with words. I spent a lot of time developing my monologue, analysing the full script.

I was proud of myself in the audition, and for the first time feel as though I did it the best I could. I chose to sit on the floor as the scene is set on a field; we leant against the pillar as if it was a tree. I tried to give the monologue structure, by building the scene up, starting slow and getting faster so that by the large paragraph I was speeding to show Leah’s thoughts exploding. I used a range of emotions, disappointment, longing, frustration, and confusion.

In DNA I got the role of Leah! I’m very excited but also very nervous, as she is such a complicated character it’s going to be tricky to pull off. However, my main focus is to keep on top of the lines, ensuring I can develop her character to the best of my ability. After rehearsing the first scene, which involved Leah’s first monologue, I got some feedback from Abbie in which she said I understand the character.

We also rehearsed the first scene and developed the moment. When I was not needed in the scene I spent time learning bits of my monologue - the faster I'm off script the faster I can develop my acting, it’s difficult to work with others with a script in your hand.

I practised Leah’s second monologue, which I am really struggling with. In this, Leah attempts to kill herself in front of Phil to see what he’d do, which is nerve racking to try and act as it’s so out of my comfort zone. I learnt all my lines for scene 1 over the weekend, so I focused on developing the acting of the monologue, with some help and direction from Lily Day.

We also got into our groups and finished off a group piece everyone started last week whilst I was off. Our piece showed each character’s reaction after following Phil’s instructions to form the plan. My character (Leah) went home to an empty house, and killed her hamster, which is later mentioned in the play. This helped us all build our characters, and understand the reasonings behind their actions. Creating an idea of what happens at home, or when they are alone really helps to make a backstory, adding depth to the character.

Next, we ran through the final group scene of DNA, freestyling it as we went. It was very intense as everyone was so committed to the scene, we were all very impressed with how it went, and we know we can build on it even more with some blocking, and losing the scripts.

The next day, our group rehearsed the second group scene, working on it by running it once extremely quickly to get into a rhythm, then running it again at a slightly slower pace. We showed Kelly our first two group scenes and were given helpful feedback, such as making sure to listen to what each other were saying, and not preempting the last line. It’s difficult as it’s so fast paced, but with work we can improve this. Kelly once again said to be more attentative to each other, and really listen to what was being said. Overall, she was very impressed with our performance.

Then our group rehearsed scene 1 from DNA in the black box room, as all of our cast was in. This went well and we ran it a few times, improving it to make sure no one was blocking themselves or each other. As we were pushed on time, we skipped ahead to scene 4, as our Lou hadn’t rehearsed this before. We explained the blocking to her, and ran through. However, it was quite stoppy and starty as we wanted to get the spacing correct.

Our DNA group got together and rehearsed scene 4 as that is the one we are least familiar with. Our goal was to get it running smoothly by the end of the rehearsal, which we achieved.

We did our very first proper run on the 10th, including all of my monologues which we had been skipping previously to save time. I enjoyed this run, as doing it from the start helped all the characters feel the rhythm of the play, and kept the storyline going through our performances. It was nerve racking to perform my monologues for the first time to everyone, and although we only got to the third one, it helped me gain more confidence. When I got home, I read over my lines for the first three monologues, and annotated the last one which I have yet to learn.

I ran through a monologue from DNA with Lola who also plays Leah in the other cast. She gave me some tips to give the monologue more dimension, and add a sense of humour to it. The monologue starts by explaining how humans are like Bonobos, but changes to Leah strangling herself to get Phill’s attention, before going back to the topic of Bonobos. This in itself is comedic as it’s such a random thing to do. To make it funnier, I now look back at Phil as I’m laying on the floor playing dead, to see if he’s looking at me. This also helps explain to the audience why I’ve just tried to kill myself, and makes the awkwardness in it more funny.

On the Monday, we all brought our costumes in to get photos for marketing. We also had a run through in our costumes, to get the feel of it, like a mini dress run. Whilst in the theatre, we sorted our the lighting, Abby was in the light box up the top, and we shouted up letting her know what the lighting ques were. I took charge on this, writing in my script at the start and end of every scene. We had three main light settings, one was a white light on the street for Jan and Mark dualogue scenes, one was on the feild for Phil and Leah, which had more of a green tinge, and the other was the woods for the group scenes. However, when Bri has her melt down we added a spotlight on her to intensify the moment, and had a red spotlight on Eve when she appeared in the last scene. Some scenes we wanted to end with a black-out and some didn’t so we had to clear this up.

On Wednesday, we had a tech run making sure the lights were correct, and so was the sound. For the sound we had wind on the street, and birds chirping on the field. The speakers were broken so the sound was not clear, we ended up deciding to not use them and just have silence, apart from a heartbeat, which opened and ended the play. After, the other casts had their tech runs, so we rehearsed in the white box room, sorting out any mistakes we made beforehand - which was mainly the last scene, which we messed up lot’s of lines on, and therefore disrupted the blocking. We also played a game of ninja with the whole class, this was a fun distraction from the chaos of show-week. I helped Adam and Hayley rip up Eve & Adam’s shirts, putting eyeshadow on it to make it look muddy, and bloody. We put lot’s of mud on the cuffs of the shirt, and blood on the rips to make it realistic. To get it even muddier, they put them on the grass outside and stomped on them. I then watched cast 2 do a run through in the theatre, and wrote down notes to give to them, to help them improve. I tried my best to give them lot’s of positive feedback, as well as constructive criticism. 

Thursday was our show day! My cast had a show in the morning at 10.00am, meaning we arrived at college early to get ready and run over a few lines. This performance was in front of a school, and it went very well. A few of the group scenes lines were muddled up, but we just made sure to iron these out afterwards. The school gave us some feedback, and were impressed with what they saw. We had a discussion with them afterwards, and they asked us lots of questions about character building, working and directing as a group, what we found hard and what we found fun. We told them we really worked on our characters, understanding their emotions and reasonings to make the performance believable. We also said it was enjoyable working as a group, as we all supported each other, and listened to one another's ideas, integrating them all. We found it hard to rehearse properly, as the whole cast weren’t able to get together very often, because of the other plays (Normalised & Bright young things) that are going on at the same time, and to align everyone's schedule. I also struggled with the monologues, as there’s so many I tried to find the balance between not dragging them on but not speaking too quickly. I enjoyed the group scenes the most, it was more of a push to make those believable, as you had to try to listen to other people instead of just reciting lines. 

Then it was time for our evening show. This went really well, the audience found lots of elements of humour in the play, which allowed us to play off it more. The moment where I strangle myself then check if Phil was looking worked well, I changed where I fell, as in the first performance I was too far forwards so couldn’t be seen by everyone in the audience. Sometimes it was difficult to stay serious when the audience was laughing, but I managed. The mistakes we made in the lines earlier were fixed as well. Kelly gave me some feedback from my performance, saying I was excellent, and the monologues were executed very well, especially the Bonobo monologue and the De ja vu monologue. Tom was using the script to check how accurate our lines were, and congratulated me on being so spot on, word for word, instead of paraphrasing. 

Task 2 - Production


My production role for DNA is costume. After some convincing from me, our cast decided to not have it in school uniform, as we imagine the story to take place during a half term, or school holidays as the kids have so much time to hang out and meet up. But, Eve will be in uniform at the end, to show how long she has been lost for. To help decide what to do here, I made a poll on teams which everyone voted in to have uniform or not.

To help people understand what they needed to wear, I gave everyone some outlines as to what their costume should be. : try use things you already have, casual teenage outfits, 2010-2020 vibe, things you would wear outside, no large logos and match it to your character.


To put all my ideas together, here is a mood board of costumes I created, based on other companies productions of DNA, and outfits I think would be suitable.

I also developed some ideas for each character, these are as follows.


Jan and Mark: - casual outfits that coincide with each other - perhaps wear something that matches - jeans - cool jackets


John Tate: - joggers for bottoms - trainers or branded shoes - hoodie? thick coat? - something that shoes him trying to be cool and hard looking


Lou: - very basic - too anxious to wear anything outside of the box - joggers/comfy clothes


Cathy: - show off her chavviness - scruffy but cool - shows her confidence - bit wacky


Richard: - straight leg jeans - colourful hoodie - plain jacket


Leah: - very simple but nice to impress Phil - jeans and a top - flared jeans possibly? - puffer coat#


Phil: - casual clothes - straight leg jeans, hoodie and coat - beanie of any colour - backpack


Danny: - smart clothes - nice jumper/sweater - glasses - any bottoms and shoes


Bri: - wacky clothes - glasses - converse - something bright


Eve: - school uniform - covered in muck and blood - no shoes or coat - messy hair - ripped tights or trousers

I kept a log of what people were wearing on my phone, and tried to get as many photos off people before the show, unless I had seen it in person. Everyone who didn't send me a photo let me know what they were wearing to check it was suitable. Here are all the photos I got: 

And here are the photos of the costumes in the show: 

To help with Eve's costume, me and two other students covered the shirt and skirt in fake blood, and mud from an eyeshadow pallete. We ripped it up with scissors, and focused the blood around the rips, making sure the cuffs of the sleeves were covered in mud. To make it even more realistic we took it outside and stood on it on the grass to get some real mud on it aswell. 

Overall, I think the costumes worked very well onstage, we were all happy with the decision to not wear uniform, as it brought out the differences in our characters more, and added to the atmosphere of the play. Even Kelly agreed that it was a good choice!




Task 3 - The National Theatre





Normalised - Amanda Verlaque




This play was written by Amanda Verlaque who is an Irish writer and director, from Dublin, who has strong moral views about the mistreatment of the LGBTQ+ community. She produced the acclaimed play called, ‘This Sh*t Happens All the Time’ which covers this theme, including themes about homophobia, misogyny and coercive control. She worked in TV drama as a script editor, storyliner and producer before starting her writing career, and now writes for stage, screen, audio and VR.




The national theatre of Great Britatin is located in London and is a prestigious performing arts venue. The NT was founded by Laurence Olivier and was based at the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo until 1976, at which time Queen Elizabeth opened the new location, which houses 3 auditoriums and plenty of spaces for rehearsals and performance workshops. In addition to performances at the National Theatre, also known as ‘The Royal Theatre’, the company tours around the Uk performing in different venues. The company presents a range of performance styles, such as: Shakespeare, international classic drama, and new plays by contemporary writers. The first production in the NT was ‘Phedre’, starring Helen Mirren. Since this, many acclaimed actors have performed for the NT. This company has been extremely successful, and has created its own streaming service in which its plays are recorded and broadcasted online for people to watch.




The national theatre is special, because it brings the art of performing together, allowing people all over the country to view the amazing work they do, and the high quality performances. It keeps theatre relevant in the modern day, and the national theatre connections competition gives opportunities to young people everywhere to be passionate about acting and performing, keeping them involved. It aims to inspire and challenge young performers.




Task 4 - Your performance




I took part in DNA on the 20th March for two shows. I performed as Leah in both the morning and evening with cast 1. The morning show was for a group of secondary school drama kids who thoroughly enjoyed it and were eager to ask us questions after about how we learnt lines, worked together, and what we do at college. On the evening we performed infront of our family, friends and classmates. This was a nice opportunity to show everyone what we'd been working so hard on. It also meant we had an audience who weren't necessarily passionate about drama, and hadn't been studying DNA. Therefore it was good to get feedback from them from a different perspective, of people who weren't familiar with the text. Most of the feedback was positive, saying that they understood the story, and were impressed with the chemistry we had together as a cast. The evening performance also got a lot of laughs, which was good to know we managed to bring out the comedy in the text. We did our final performance on the 11th April at Northfeild academy. This was in a different environment, as not only was it in a school, but it was in a classroom with minimal lighting, and a small area to perform. However, the drama kids enjoyed the performance, were listening attentively and as a cast we were all proud of how it went.




We performed Normalised at the college theatre on the 11th March, and listened to the director feedback from the National Theatre which can be seen in my evaluation. We then performed it at The Newcastle Theatre Royal, on the 10th April. This was a brilliant performance, the venue was amazing and it was such a great opportunity to perform at somewhere like that.

Task 5 - Evaluation of your work

Normalised is the title of our National Theatre Connections piece, in which we performed at our theatre in college, and The Newcastle Theatre Royal. It is a story about a boy, Colm, who had passed away tragically, showing us how his friends, boyfriend and family react afterwards. This play discusses topics of homophobia, friendship and bullying. Colm’s twin brother Jamesy is the bully of the play, refusing to believe his brother was gay, destroying a shrine that was in memory of him. I was a part of his gang, and we were all chavs. In the play, Colm’s boyfriend Jay raises awareness for the LGBTQ community, campaigning to protect the meadows that were going to be destroyed, damaging the environment and the shrine.

Individual reflection


I think my overall performance went well, I was part of the ensemble for this play, which meant I had to do my best to create a character and support the leads. My characterisation was good, as I played someone completely different to me, meaning the way I stood was different, the way I walked was, and the way I talked was. I slouched when I was standing, dragged my feet, and chewed gum constantly, holding my phone in my hand for most of the show. All of this made me appear relaxed, but trying to be cool.

My stagecraft was good, as we worked on the blocking a lot to make sure to turn out to the audience. As I was a part of Jamesy’s gang, we worked a lot on appearing as a tight group, whilst not blocking one another. For some scenes we would spread it out, such as the bench scene, in which Layla and I moved to the back right of the stage and had a pretend phone call. During this we made sure to not draw attention from Jamesy’s dialogue, but it helped to add a better dynamic to the scene.

As I had no lines, I didn’t have to work massively on projection, but I did have to join in adding volume during parts where the ensemble were chatting. It was important I worked out when to be loud, and when to quieten down to let the principles be heard. When I was speaking, I made sure to say things that aligned with my character, chatting to my friends about where we were going after school, what lesson I just had etc.

My character started as a selfish, mean, cocky person who followed her group sheepishly, sucking up to Jamesy. By the end, she realises that what Jamesy’s done isn’t right, which makes her step away from him and stop supporting him. Throughout this character’s journey, It was important to hold the moment, to keep the ensemble scenes alive with energy and stay in character at all times. It took a lot of thought to decide where I wanted to take my journey, and which scenes I wanted to start that change. This also required a lot of reacting to what was going on in the story. Reacting is a big part of ensemble roles, as it adds to the atmosphere. It’s also important to not overreact to keep it realistic.

Challenges and how we managed them

The biggest challenge was elevating it without words, and keeping the energy up throughout the whole play, even through the dips and darker parts of the storyline. The thing that helped this the most was working as a team and having chemistry with each other. It was also a challenge to keep it as such an emotional story, as this piece has a lot of tough themes in it, so it was important to handle it with care, and keep it true to the story as the writer would wish.

Engaging character and audience

To create my character, I answered every question on the character development sheet. These varied from random facts about their favourite tv shows, to their views on different moral situations and relationships. This helped to make the backstory of the character. All of this can be seen on the blog post about character research. Creating relationships with the people around me helped build my character as well, as it gave me intentions behind my actions and reactions. I added a backstory to my relationships with the other characters as well, such as past friendships, past relationships and current friendships/crushes. It’s also important to decipher what your character's opinions are on different situations, instead of reacting as you, but reacting as them.

To engage with the audience, Jamesy’s gang entered from the back of the seats in the first scene. This meant we had to keep in character for the full time the audience entered, but also had to be discreet to surprise them when we walked onto the stage. This had a good reaction from the audience as they were all shocked and interested in us. We also kept the audience included by facing out and not turning our backs to them.

Feedback and Interpretation

The biggest bit of feedback we were given was from the national theatre representative who gave us notes. Not only were we given them in person, but we were given a full sheet of information about it. In person, we were mostly given positive notes, including some about Jamesy’s gang who were complimented for staying in the moment, being completely in character and supporting Jamesy’s role well. Please see the photos below for the full feedback sheets: PHOTOS

After we finished the play we were given a round of applause and standing ovation! This was an excellent response from the audience, showing how much they liked it and how impressed they were by it.

Moments of strong delivery

The strongest moments in the play was the opening scene, and the final ensemble scene and final scene overall. You could tell because of the energy in the room, and the pivotal moments of the story. The opening sets up the full story and introduces all the characters. The final ensemble scene with Jamesy trying to set fire to the shrine had so much power to it, as all the emotions were high and it was executed brilliantly, by both the main cast and ensemble. The final scene was a bittersweet ending, as the friend group came together, remembered Colm and came to have somewhat of an understanding of Jamesy. The audience reacted well to all these scenes, slightly murmuring in the first scene (especially when the chavs came through), gasping during the destruction of the shrine, and being completely silent in the ending.

My improvement as I go onto perform at the Newcastle theatre Royal, is to interact with others more, even if that is pulling faces at them, or slightly nudging them out the way.

Character Research - All of this can be seen on a separate blog post for both DNA and Normalised.