Thursday 15th January - Inrtoductuary Lesson to Dissocia

This was the first lesson of our new production of The Wonderful World of Dissocia. We started off the lesson by thinking about our everyday lives. We had to think of situations where we were either, Leaders, Negotiators or Followers. I felt that I was more of a leader in my everyday life. As I tend to come up with a lot of ideas and would love for people to get on board with them. However there are some moments in my life where I do have to be the negotiator and think about what other people want as well, to make things fair, and then I also have to become a follower in situations where people may have more authority over me and they have to take lead, such as work and education.


We then started to link these roles to our characters in the scenes of the play. One of my examples was the Goat and how he is a strong leader in the scene. He makes everything carry through and make Lisa do what he wants her to do. Such as when he wants her to start blaming him for things he starts to prompt her into pathways to saying things to trick her in. However my character of Inhibitions becomes a leader in the Britney scene, where the character are following Britney's lead into doing what she wants, but in some cases they have to use their own initiative and lead the group into another subject in order to distract Lisa.




We then went on to think about Act Two as a whole and about our characters background story's. We went through the act and thought about our characters general life and what they had been through to get to the hospital. I decided that my character of Vince, had a bad journey that I wasn't nice weather and that he had to get a lot of different transport to get to the hospital, he was then put into a negative mood before visiting Lisa so that's why their scene has a negative feel to it.

Friday 30th January - Grease Dance Rehearsal

In this rehearsal we didn't learn any new sections to the dance, but we went over all of the bits that we had learnt already. One bit that I was finding hard was the duo sections in hand jive. I could do this bit when we did it at a slower pace, but once we speed it up to the pace of the song I lost some of the steps and then came off beat with the timings. I will keep going over this till it sticks in my brain, and then I can do it at the faster pace. Where I think I went well in this rehearsal was that I started to add in some characterisation to my dances. For example for the opening song of Greased Lightning, I have started to think about the character of a 'T-Bird' and how they would all react with each other.


At the end of the lesson, we all started to speak about costumes for the performance. we all came to a disition that we would stick to basic colours, and all of the boys would wear white t-shirts and black trousers, this linked the dance to the context of the musical that was set in the 1950's. To keep unity with all of the dancers, we said that we would all wear coloured converse.

Wednesday 15th April -show evaluation

As a whole I feel that I really showed a wide range of characterisation skills over the show, and had the ability to show the difference between my multi role playing with all of the characters, and used different techniques, like vocals, body language to show different relationships of my character towards Lisa. I feel that my performance level was a lot higher than it was in the runs that we got throughout the day. I think that this was due to having a full audience, and being able to respond off them, that being which scenes or sections they found funny or serous.

My first scene in the play was the lift scene. This scene has always been one of my faveriotes as I really think the pace of it helps with the comic timings. I played the part of Passanger Two, who is quite serous as he talks about hurting others, and being violent in general. As this scene as a whole is the first time in the play that Lisa and the audience exspirence the wierd nature of the play, I felt that I couldn't just perform this character as the straight, violent man. So to add a comedic edge, I directed some of my lines to Lisa, this gave her the chance to react and show how awkward she felt. 

   Where I think I could have improved my performance in this scene is, I feel that I could have added in some different characteristics to Passanger Two, as I think there were some very clear links in my character traits and vocals to some of my other characters in the play, I felt that this may have shown some links in my characters. 

My 2nd scene in the play was the Goat scene, this was my faveriote scene in the play to perform and work on as I saw a lot of different sections where the characters levels could change and I could have the chance to show some different side to the character. While in the performance I started to think about my directors note about starting lower, so that you have somewhere to go. One bit that stood out for me in the show was the bit where the Goat defends himself about stealing Lisa's purse. I really felt the tension levels rise, as I got really close to Lisa, and raised my volume. I think that this really showed the nasty side of my character from quite early in the scene. One bit that I also thought that worked well for me in this scene was the section where Lisa is getting ready to blame the Goat for something but the Goat is standing behind her, getting ready to tie her up. I think that I showed two sides to my character in this section, my vocals still showed this wanting, desperate side. As my character was telling Lisa that all he wanted was to be blamed for things. But in contrast to this side of my character my body language seemed very dark and menacing. I think that this showed the audience that something bad was going to happen. I showed this by moving very slowly and moving for side to side behind Lisa, this showed the element of suprise as I was about to jump onto her and tie her up. One bit in this scene that I didn't think went as well as in rehearsals had was the end where the Goat is about to rape Lisa, as I pushed her down to the floor and was about to get on top of her, I am then interupted by Jane coming in. I felt that I did this section to early and didn't give Jane enough time to come in, this meant that I felt that I was just hanging around for a while and I feel that we lost some of the tension in the scene, as there was a small pause. 

The next scene in the play that I was in was the Britney scene, out of all of the scenes in the play I feel that this was my weakest one. I felt that this was because of all of the fast paced happening and the improvised comedy, to make it seem that we were all trying to distract Lisa rom finding the hour. I feel that I got caught up in all of the happening and I may have lost some of the characterisation in some of the sections. We were given the note to improvise any bits that we thought of to keep the scenes pace going if we ever felt it drop, It seemed to me that I may have got to caught up in some of the bits and have forgotten my characteristics. If i was able to do this scene again I would have still done some of these improvised scenes but with the mindset of my character still going through my mind.

My last scene of the play was my Vince scene in act two. I think that this scene went really well and that I responded well to the feedback that I got from Tuesday's run and the runs during the day. I really felt that the pauses in the scene and the lower tone of my voice made the scene feel awkward and brought that tension between the couple. One of the reason I felt that this scene was effective was the feeling that I got after it had finished, it was not the same feeling as some of the faster paced scenes where I felt energised, but I felt drained and sad. This is the feeling that we wanted an audience member to feel so they can start to emphasis with Lisa and her surroundings. 

 

I think that I gave a performance where I was able to cover any mistakes that my have happened, for example in the Britney scene where the pace started to drop I picked it back up, by making my self a distraction towards Lisa even if I didn't have line. Not did this just pick the pace back up, but it showed the audience once again the characters motives in this scene.

I think as a whole I was trying to communicate the way that mental illness effects everyone differently through the use of my characters, and showing the contrast between them all really helped to show that it can effect everyone differently and there all lots of different people are involved. As a cast as a whole I think we all portrayed the importance of awareness of mental illness and how it does effect people, showing the themes and some of the more negative topics, like the abuse in a sensitive way.

I think that I was able to show everything that I planned for my characters during the show, showing all of the different traits of my characters and how they are towards Lisa. I showed how Passenger Two is aggressive and shows a very negative light towards Lisa, how the Goat shows I very contrasting and wise character through his use of trickery, to get Lisa to do something for him, then he turns it on her. And then I was able to show the massive contrast in Vince in the second act, where he is very calm and not a forward to Lisa.

Wednesday 15th April- day of show and rehearing throughout the day

During the day of our show, when we first got in we set up the theatre, by putting out all of our costume and props in the theatre so that we were ready to do a full run of both acts. Without prompting and with all technical ques. My first scene in the play is the lift scene. This went really well in the run as its only short and people knew all of the ques and we all had bits to make it very funny. We got a lot of laughs from the audience watching our run. This really helped to set them up for the rest of th show. 

My second scene in the play is my Goat scene, I was very intridged in performing this to a knew audience for the first time, as we had spent a lot of time on it and had thought a lot about the staging and the delivery of the lines. The audience seemed shocked by it as it as a whole scene is a huge contrast to the rest of the play. In this scene me and the girl playing Lisa jumped a lot of the scene, this is because we were not 100% on the lines that brought us onto the next subject, this meant that we jumped over a section of the scene, but we soon picked it back up,needy for the next entrance.

My final scene, in act one is the Britney scene, for a cast this did not go very well for us. We were all jumping around this scene with our lines and we all got a bit lost in it all. One of my problems in this scene was I was missing out a line "we're only trying to protect you Lisa". This meant that we did not go into the next subject and we then we're not sure where we were going in the scene. I then went onto to spend the rest of the day, revising my subject changing lines, as these are the most important as they keep the scene rolling and moving onto the next bit. On a positive side for this scene we all saw the comedy and the pace come to life, this is due to the audience being there and we all had something to respond off of. I saw my characterisation come to life in this scene, where I have not spent much time on this scenes character, but I started to adopt this character that didn't care what anyone thinks and would just say things. 

In act two I think I showed a really good character for Vince. I really took on board what I was told about starting lower so that there is somewhere to go, and I started to add in some more pauses to make it seem very tense and uncomfortable. 

After we went through the notes from the first run, we went through the play and spoke about the scenes that we felt needed the most attention. One scene that came up for me as in need of work was the Britney scene, I felt that by doing just one run of this scene, mainly of line accuracy and once we got these cleared it would help to pick up the pace. 

Tuesday 14th April - Technical Rehearsal

We spent the day doing our technical run. This is mainly for the technical team to get all of their cues in place and work out what we will have in each scene. For the tech run the person in the other cast that plays the same characters as me, was absent, so I did both acts for the show, where as everyone else swapped. I found this really helpful and I took it as an opportunity to have a ruff run with my costumes and to put in time to change my costumes and props. The only problem that I came across was I share parts of my costume with other people so I just had to come up with a time to when i was going to get these off of them. 

The scenes that I was in, in act one didn't have lots of technical ques, this meant that a lot of my scenes we jumped to allow time to get the other scenes done. One scene that really came to life for me was the Britney scene, this is because we have been rehearsing it for a long time without the sound ques, but by putting them it helped with timing of comedy and some of the stage directions that we do. 

When we did the ques for act two, it went fairly quick as we use the house lights, to give a clinical,uncomfotable feeling to the audience. As this act is only about 20 minutes long, instead of jumping from que to que we just ran the whole thing. This also played into me getting some feedback from Rachel our director about my character and how I have been using my voice to show the tension between Vince and Lisa. One of the main note that she gave me was how I had been starting off my lines in a high pitch, and had been adding to many levels to my voice. This made my character seem to lively and energetic. She gave me the note to start of my lines lower, and talking in a monotone style. This made me seem lifeless and as if I had given up with Lisa.

My target to do before the show is to go over all of my lines in act two, using the trick of starting off lower to add the lifeless feeling and make it seem as if I'm drowning on to Lisa. By doing this it will hopefully show a huge contrast to my characters in act one to my character in act two

Monday 13th April - act two run in Lena's lesson

In Lena's lesson as it was show week, we spent our time doing a couple of run's of act two for each cast. We did this with our learning mentor, Katie. This meant that it was an informal rehearsal, and was just a chance for us to get to grips with our lines and staging of act two. 

I found by having this last minute run, it helped me get into the zone of my character, and trying out some different ways of delivering my lines, in a dull, naturalistic way.  Ine thing that I think worked well in this rehearsal was being able to watch the other Vince do the scene, as naturally I find it harder to show a naturalistic side, where I naturally show a animated, over the top character. But by watching the other cast I picked up on some of the subtle gestures that he does to show his change in emotion. 

As we ran the scenes over and over, some people started to lose focus. To be able to still show the serious tone of my character and not get distracted, I kept going through in my head what my character would be thinking, and how he feels about how he and others have been treated by Lisa. This helped me get into a state where my characters life is being affected by one persons actions. 

Wednesday 8th April - Easter holiday rehearsal

During the holiday we had a day were everyone came in and we spent the day doing some runs of the first act. This is the first chance that we got to do a run of the first act without stopping to get direction notes or line prompting, this meant that it became really clear which sections of the play that we need to work on as a cast, and which bits for me needed to be looked into, either for line accuracy or where I need to work on my character, as I wasn't sure on my characters intensions. One but that I needed to look into was the end of the Britney scene where the characters start to interpret Biffer, I was not 100% on the order of my lines, but I really felt that I needed to look into how my character was feeling about living to Lisa, weither he is feel guilty and that starts to show or he is just doing t easily as he knows that this is what he has to do to protect her. 

Another thing that I want to work out, so that I looks smoother, is the entrance to the Goat scene, I came in from the side, then climbed up the tower the corner, so then I'm ready to be there to watch Lisa while she sings a song and calls her boyfriend. One thing that I picked up from my entrance during the run was that if I was going to come in this early for the scene, I needed to do it a lot more slower, and remain in character, and showing the audience that my main focus is Lisa and have that intensity with my eyes.

One thing that always comes as a worry to me when doing a show, is not being able to put all of it together until the last minute, but by doing this run I was able to go over my track though out the whole play, and how I will get form scene to scene, this run made me a lot less worried as I noticed that I never am very rushed from scene to scene and always have enought time to get ready.

I then spent the rest of the day watching the other casts run, I always find that helpful to watch someone else to do the same part as you, as you get the chance to go over each scene as you watch it but then you also get to see how the other cast do it and the differences between your two performances, for example the main difference between mine and Henry, the other casts me, is that I do everything with very animated actions and expressions, and he does everything very subtile and understated. This gave me some idea on how to deliver some lines in scenes that I was not 100% on.

 

Friday 27th March - Cats singing

In this singing lesson we did a two hour pair up with the year 13 class who are performing cats. And we are performing on number of the musical with them, to add to our singing and dancing unit.

We began the lesson by watching their opening number to the muscial. This Gave us an idea of what their theme was and how they wanted the story to carry on as. Their quality of performance in the opening was something to work from for our number in the musical, and gave us some moves that we could use in our dance. During this song they wanted us to learn the main bits so that we can singing along to bring the opening to life. We then went in to learn some of the verses. At first I found it hard to pick up all of the words, as they were fairly repetitive, yet each section had some different words in that we're very important that we got right as they lead up to the next section. Once we had got the lyrics down we started to add in some harmonies. I found it easier to sing the lower side of the harmony as it fit better with my range.

For the main part of the lesson we went to a different room to learn the song that we had created our dance to, which is the 'Pekes and the Pollicles', we knew from the start of doing this that we would be singing the bit in the song where the ensemble sings the "barks", but we also found out that we were signing a verse that has a fast beat to it. This meant that we may have to look into changing the dance so that we can sing it. When we sing the barks the original was very high, I could reach this note, but I found it easier to project the note further if it was in a lower octave.

My target for the next singing lesson for Cats, is to try and link some of the words to a move that I do in the dance, this will help me remember the words and start to add meaning to it.

Thursday 26th March - character understanding

This rehearsal was the last one before the Easter break and was the last chance really to do an bits that we thoughts needed to be done, as our only other focused rehearsal would be the one in the Easter break. I felt that i knew what my track was and didn't feel any major worries with my scenes, and it was just line accuracy that I need to work on. So while the rest of the class went over some other scenes, I and some of the other people that were not in the scene did some more character work. 

I looked into my characters importance to the play and Lisas development through the play. I see most of my characters in a negative light, either talking about negative actions like Passanger Two, or inflicting negative actions to Lisa like the Goat. And then Inhibitions has lost all self worth and privacy. This is why I see my role in the play as a representive of everything negative in Lisas life. It also came clear to me that all of these bad things in Lisas life may come down to her boyfriend Vince, who is my character in act two, and I have seen my character of Vince being a a manipulative character and all of these negative characters in act one being how she sees Vince.

Tuesday 24th March - Act Two run

In this two hour rehearsal we only focused on act two. We all agreed that this was the bit in the play that we all felt the least confident with. We started off the lesson by all sitting round talking about our production roles. My production role is marketing. For this we have decided that we are only going to design a poster to send around and put around the college. Our instal design for the poster was to have a pocket watch swinging, with very bright colours for the writing and background. During the production meeting I shared this with the group to see if they liked the idea and thought it showed the meaning behind the play and gave an idea about the story.

During the rehearsal the other cast went first in act two run. I sat a watched to see if there was anything that the other Vince did that I thought would work well with my interpretation of Vince. I picked up on the points in the scene that the tension rises and where it felt that it would work if I stood or sat down next to Lisas bed.

When we did our run I felt that I got the tension levels correct, by not making them seem angry to start with as there would not be anywhere to go after that. My and Izzy who plays Lisa used a lot of pauses in this scene to add tension between the character and make it seem that they had nothing really to say to each other. One thing that did not go to well in this run was our lines in this scene, we all got a bit muddled up and was not sure on what parts happened when. This started to lose the meaning of what the couple were saying to each other. 

One thing that came out of the this rehearsal form,y character was the butch side to Vince. How he comes across that he doesn't care much and puts up a front that not much bothers him. I started to show this with very closed body language and brushing off what ever Lisa said to him. I was given a note that I need to keep up my characterisation throughout the scene to show that my character doesn't get phased my much.

One of my targets is to go over lines and think of means and different ways to say them

Friday 20th March Cats dance rehearsal for Two hours

In this lesson we were taught the rest of the dance that Emily had created. We started off the lesson by running what we had learnt of the dance so far and running it with a close size of the stage area that we will have for the dance in the show. This came clear that we will not have a lot of room for the dance so we had to adapt some of the moves to make them fit into the space, this was mainly with the travelling moves, where we had to change them to be stationary. 

The next section of the dance that we learnt was a faster paced bit. This involved transitioning to one move to another, and was mainly with leg movements. This involved jumping to the side and lots of spinning. The main challenge in this section was the end where you have to step three times op forwards and then do a full rotation jump in the air. This came as quite a struggle to most people as it took a while to get all the way round in one jump, but what I found hardest was mantaining my balance when I have landed. The will be something that I focus on in rehearsals for the next week, with playing around with my feet positions to make a steadier ground to land on.

We finished the lesson by making up our own 32 count dance solo. We had to try out some moves using retrograde, repitition and levels. I came up with my solo fairly quickly, but I used a lot of repitition. So my target to work on over the next few weeks is to play around with some levels in my solo to add so,e more diversity and depth to my solo.

Tuesday 17th March - Start of Act one run.

In this lesson we spent some time on act one, we spent half an hour on each cast, then swapped. By having this shorter time scale of the act, and not completing the whole act, meant that some characters didn't make an appearance. My first character in the act is Passanger Two. This is a very short scene, but I really wanted to think about my character. My character in this scene talks very negative about people and how he wants to hurt them. I have interpreted this character as someone being negative or abusive towards Lisa. To show this is tried different ways of saying my lines in this scene. One way that I tried out in this rehearsal was having my character being very blunt and straight with his lines, this showed the audiene that my characters abusive side doesn't phase him. The other way was directing all of the negative lines towards Lisa. By putting emphasis on the negative words, such as snap, stamp, break. This turns it into a threat towards Lisa, and makes her feel uncomfortable, as I play all of my lines towards her and get close to her with my body language, Thai made the whole lift scene feel very tense and threatening.

As one of my bigger scenes doesn't appear in the earlier part of act one, I went into a seperate room and did some work on my goat scene with the other casts goat. We looked into how the goat would move around the stage, and where in the scene we would get closer to Lisa and then further away to add the threatening side to him and the danger. By going through the scene, and pin pointing lines that need to be more intermate this made the scene come to life, I also realised that some of my lines could be turned into a darker side. Such as 'Tend to cluster round your bum'. Before this I had been saying this line in a joking manner but but changing the tone, and getting closer to Lisa gave the audience an idea that my character can be nasty even from the first few lines. One this that I want to work on is making my character of the Goats, objectives clearer and making the change clearer, by using my body language and playing around with how obvious to an audience that my character focus has changed.