Focus on acting techniques within 'Into The Woods' 9/12/14

In today's lesson we focused on the little bits of the performance that needed work to do with our acting techniques and characterisation.

I looked into how my character has travelled throughout the play, looking particularly at what my character has been doing before scenes to come. For example at the start of scene 4 my character enters the scene having been to get another cow to give to the Witch. My character may have had quite a tough time in getting this cow, or it may have been a case of just finding another cow within the village. I show my characters struggle through the line "Iv'e the cow". I played around with vocal techniques such as pitch and pace. by saying this line very slow and low in pitch towards the end, it makes the tone of my character seem very fed up, tired and like he had given up. This tells an audience that he has been through a lot to get to where he is just from changing on line and how it is said.

Another example where i looked into my characters feeling that were not obvious in the text is when The Baker and Jack first meet. The Baker tries to deceive Jack in believing that the beans are magic. I slowed down every line, making my pitch higher at the end to show that it was a lie. This made it seem really interesting what my character was saying. I could tell that this was effective due to others reactions in character, Jack opened his eyes wide to show him falling for the trap that The Baker was setting him up for.