12/10/15
This session we weolked on stage directions, and also the status of the character. I could understand the stage directions, and I could also understand jhe difference between statuses. Within my own acting, however, this could improve. We also learnt how to stage afavourite book or play. I had lots of ideas on how to stage the piece in the best way for the genre and story.
20/10/15
After a few games to start us off, we all had to listen to a piece of music. We had to consider how the music made us feel. As a group, we considered how to make this music fit in to a scene at the beginning or end. We created a piece based on someone coming to their senses. I performed this part. The rest of the group played senses that joined me and locked themselves in to position. This piece was cleverly made, fully included the music, and was made of everyone's iddividual ideas.
04/11/15
After many warm up games, we began to look at our monologues. Some people wrote powerfully whereas others wrote as if they were penning a book. Each, however, was unique and sjrong. We moved on to examining creating a plot using a newspaper article. We heard the story of a boy who drowned in a river at scouts. His grave was tended to, but no one knew who did it. We had to create truths, rumours, and lies about the article to try and piece together the story. It became very complex and, in my oppinion, would have made a great play. Everyone shared ideas and worked well as a team of storytellers.
08/11/15
We played a few games as a warm up. FOLLOWING this, we began listening to 4 different pieces of music and we decided what the music was was trying to portray. In 2 teams, we picked a piece of music and created a scene with it. WE used the titanium music, and I played a cyber-bullied girl who managed to stay strong after verbal abuse. It was a powerful scene, everyone played strong parts, however the scene could have been longer.
19/11/15
After a few warm up games we began to look at creating a theatre company and a play in small groups. We began with looking at doing a play about drugs and alcohol awareness for young people. This idea did not work out as the ideas weren't quite right. We then joined the other group who were creating Jack the Ripper. We began planning it and assigning roles like director. I am playing the first girl to die at the hands of Jack the Ripper. It was a very scary piece and we'll continue with it later. It was very effective, we had a good team and were very productive.
27/11/15
We warmed up with some games and then moved on to look at improvisation circles. We were given a scenario and had to cross the circle to meet our pair, and acted out the scenarios. It was a fun activity and we all managed to create successful improvs. We then turned back to our Jack the Ripper piece. We altered the first scene so that instead of 3 freeze frames we had a busy pub scene with 10 different moves. Callum then helped choriograph a slow, eerie dance with the girls on blocks as I passed slowly between them, as the first to die. It was a very productive session and we all used strong divising techniques.
30/11/15
After some warm up sessions, we turned back to our jack the ripper piece. We had 2 new ucan staff with us. They found us some music to carry out our 10 moves sequence before we continued the choreography sequence for the puppeteers dance. We then began examining our characters, and designing our monologues.
03/05/16
In our last session, we built on our ideas for our end of year performance. We were advised by Dinos, another Ucan practitioner, to make a scene timeline in order to work out the best way to lay out the key scenes. Each person worked on their own character's back stories and how our characters would finish the story. We were also all allowed to give ideas towards other people's storylines. This gave us ideas to work with, which we could either discard if not necessary, deliver if the idea is at a stage where it can be performed, or developed if it needs more work. This is a technique Dinos gave us, called the three Ds, allowing us to work on and create new ideas. For example, throughout the piece I have created my character name, and backstory. I have also helped work on other people's storylines, the design of the town with no name, the order of scenes, and the type of theatre we are aiming for. I also helped give ideas towards our company name, and our aim. We also worked On contrasted scenes, and were able to order the scenes in a varied way. We did identify a few problems, for example, one group member left the group. We reassigned her part, so now another member is running the coffee shop. Also, there was a solo in the song mashup which we tried but decided that we would cut out as the person had left. We were able to be creative by reassigning parts, and interweaving in new storylines which work just as well. For example, we removed Maisy's drug dealing scene and entered a love story between two characters which fits just as well. Songs and dances have also been added to fit in with each character. Some people have written monologues.
09/05/15
In this week's lesson, we focussed on a few main scenes, the songs, Mikey's monologue, Lorren's dance, Zizi and Ellie's movement piece. We also looked at the piece opening and scene order. We also started interpreting ideas about the ending for certain characters. We looked at why or why not the person would leave the town with no name. We did come across a couple of issues. Due to there being a lot of scenes, it was difficult to fit in everyone's scene that needed practising. My scenes weren't looked at, which is understandable, due to the amount of material. We dealt with this using staggered breaks, working on certain bits while others had a break. Lorren's entire dance was developed doing this method. The other main probl"am was that there was a lot of conflict about the final piece of music. Many people thought it didn't quite fit, and others countered that. I was on the fence, sawing both viewpoints. We dealt with this by having a discussion, and agreeing to continue with the piece for now. 14 June Our theatre company was called Tangents Theatre, and it was devised by our performing Arts class. Our mission statement was creating thought provoking theatre addressing issues faced by young people of today. I felt I was able to interpret ideas for performance material. I responded to our source materials, by taking workshops with UCAN and researching my own character background. Our performance was devised by using a number of stimulases. We had a look at pre existing pieces such as Undermilk Wood. A lot of our work actually resembled the style of Under Milkwood. We also worked on creating monologues and were practicing turning it in to a storyline and performing it. We used newspaper articles to create our own storylines. WE listened to music and interpreted it to perform to it. We looked at emotions in that piece, and moved around like cogs in a machine. The song was sound by Lamb. This influenced the actors moving across the stage, portraying emotions linked to our music, played by Ellie. In Sicily, I took a workshop in character stance, behaviour, and using silent theatre to help feel like my character. On the stage, I felt like my character, moved like her and understood how she would choose to move during certain circumstances. We used props in certain scenes, like a skipping rope used as a shower, for a motive and to represent other more complex props. For our Jack the Ripper piece, I researched my character, Mary Anne Nichols, and found out enough information to make a character profile. With Dinos, we worked on trying to characterise a lot of different roles, like a child or a queen or a policeman. This helped us choose a lot of different characters for the final performance. We also looked at trying a name, think, feel, like, fact. This helped us build personalities and ideas for our piece. We used fairytale stimulus. This helped us to portray a story with varied roles and responsibilities, which helped in the coffee shop scene. For our final performances we created character profiles. Mine was Maria Lemming, 21, been to University, has a literary degree. Father ran off, mother dead, leaving Maria with the B and B. She has mental denial that hermother is dead, and portrays many emotions from happy to sad or angry. She loves literature and boosting tourism when she can. We found materials to develop in term 2. With the help of DINOS, we took material to develop, discard or deliver. We had a hand movement piece which worked very well, however we could not fit it in so it had to be discarded. We had many strengths and weaknesses to our group for example, our group at first did not have the strength and teamwork to pull off certain scenes or types of theatre that a team with a good work ethic could achieve. A strength is that after months of trying to pull a piece together we took a lot of material from term 2 to build on our ideas. Another weakness was lack of time, with only 3 hours per week and what with other work to do, it was difficult to manage. Another strength is we could include a variety of types of theatre, including comedy, musical, and serious tradegic scenes. For example the post office scene was comedy, and Maria's monologue was more serious and disturbing theatre.
Here is a link to one of our final dress rehearsals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UBfg13gOvw
20 June On 9 June, we had our final performance. I think it was successful and our prop use was fantastic. EVERYONE was very pleased with our success, and gave great feedback. Although the rehearsals were stressful as we had to perfect things, we deffinately managed. As a group we worked well, making sure each prop and scene change was in the right place. I'd never had such a big amount of lines to learn so this was a big achievement. I also did enjoy writing the script with the rest of the group. I'm very proud of the achievement and feel as if we have used a lot of techniques from workshops. Our characters felt realistic and our audiences' reactions helped the pace move. I wish I could perform it again. 21 June M1 From term two, we picked certain aspects to take forward for our final performance. For example, we looked at characterisation and creating monologues in term two based on identity. As some of us are very good creative writers, we wrote some monologues based on the idea of identity, which helped us to become more confident with monologue writing. For our final performance I created a monologue for my character, Maria. Having practised this before I felt comfortable in characterising through monologues. We also looked at overlapping sentences, building in to a loud peak for atmosphere. This is something we practised in term 2 which we used in the coffee shop scene and my monologue. In my monologue, Maria was on the verge of a mental breakdown, and she heard voices in her head. People spoke overlapping sentences, as rumour spreaders, and as Maria's mother. As it got louder, Maria became more distressed and shouted over the top of them. We also worked on name think like feel fact. We made sure that in our final show, each character had a storyline that included each of those criterias to form a backstory. Amendment for 19 November 2015 First of all we tried to create a piece about alcohol and drugs to educate young people. This was during term 1, and we soon realised how our idea was not going to work. Firstly, not everyone had the focus, or was sensible enough to perform such a piece. Also, not many us had experienced being drunk, none of us had ever understood disorderly behaviour due to drink, and although only one person had seen a person dealing with the effects of drugs, we could not properly perform it as we could not visualise and understand it enough to perform it. We then merged with the other group to devise our Jack the Ripper piece.
Monday, 12 October 2015
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
UNIT 2 Proffesional practice in peforming arts
07/10/15
In this unit I have been notetaking all of my information and ideas in to a document to be typed up when all information ii gathered. Some of my idformation has come from the following: theguardian.co.uk prospects.ac.uk www.bbc.co.uk I have also taken information from the stage times and from footage of theatre proffesionals speaking to my peers.
11/04/16
Freelancing
Megan Barker is a freelance play writer. We asked her some questions about her career. Megan's mum had a big influence, and she took Megan to see shows, and got her in to theatre. She liked writing plays and stories. She attended university to study History and her playwriting first began there. Her first semi-professional production at the Glasgow Arches was a commission. She always uses commissions as they pay her although it is in quarters. Her first commission was with professionals but as unpaid. She continued getting jobs by networking around her. With playwriting, and freelance, you have to do some unpaid work. This helps with networking and finding work. She moved on to a paid commission, after her non paid one. Her university friends and contacts still influence her career today. Megan works in many genre, she can write whatever people want her to write, this is open minded and doesn't impose her own style. She does enjoy darker plays, her preference. She tackles challenging topics like death row. Her favourite play was in 2006, named pit, about death row and other difficult challenges like poverty. She needed a lot of research for this. She writes mainly for adults, but she did a children's Christmas play. She finds this hard as it doesn't come naturally to write for children. She does like writing her own. However, publishing plays is hard. She's had one work published by Methuen. Older plays are more regularly published. She's paid royalties for her plays. Her influence over casting can vary depending on the director. Megan advises pe9ple not to take playwriting as a career as the pay isn't good. She formed a play company so could have an impact on casting. This was called Feral. She works with a director, Estelle. She is the writer for the company. She enjoys seeing her plays when she sees none of the rehearsal process. If she hasn't got any work, Megan does teaching or goes off to workshops.
11/04/16
Session Musicians
If you want to be a session musician, in hindsight, are interpersonal skills, read a situation easily and a person so that you can fit in with any set up. You also cannot annoy people paying you. You must work with anyone, despite any reservations. You have to adapt to each new situation, you may have been booked and you'd have to playing it a track they play you. You need a good ear, making parts and harmonies. You have to create genre specific parts to fit the music. Yo u Mayo go in, learning play a completely new part. You must be an all round good musician. It's important to be punctual, and if they call you you must turn up promptly. For to and radio these are set in stone. As a session musician, you have to be self-contained, patient, and in TV especially there's a lot of waiting time, for example doing make up and camera checks. There are rehearsals for lights, and each time you must perform. Prepare for not working in a job. You need to have a bit of savings. Finding work When you begin, this is the key to your reputation. You need to network. There are networks to find talent. Start off with little bands or mallet scale work. Cara, the session musician, joined a big reggae band called Steel Pulse. It was an important musical opportunity. This helped develop the skills. Despite the criticisms, this was constructive. It's important to listen to the band and working as an ensemble. Through another singer, she heard of an audition and went, it gave a platform to become more successful. It was important to answer adverts to get you new jobs. Word of mouth was regular. While working öith one group, every few months which wasn't enough for Cara. At the same time she auditioned from a music paper. She had a good contract giving a fixed rate even when not working. It was 100 pounds, when not working and this doubled when working, this was a retainer contract. It retained musical services for the whole contract. This included making an album. This meant you had to move. There were world shows, and television performances. Also there were pop videos. Cara's next job was due to those in which she networked with. His manager praised her and then the contract with Egbt ended. With six months of unemployment, this changes your life. You never know when the next work will start. Bully Brag's manager offered Cara a job. She rehearsed in London, learning songs, doing gigs. They planned a six week tour in America. There are no contracts with this. This is not common. This meant planning pay. It's uncomfortable but eventually there was a set rate. It was 300 pounds a day in studio, and 500 each week. This was also a lot of recording. This still had a flat rate. She had to write the piano parts. Bully got I'll, Cara had to find more jobs in a newspaper. She sent them a cassette of some tracks. There was a lot of auditioneees. You had to learn all the lines and play them. In the first audition she learnt 7 pieces, and it was fast paced. They were not committing. There followed a second audition between Cara and someone else. There was more on the spot learning. THE other girl auditioned, and it was rather competitive. "They gave her the job. They asked her the fees she asked of. On the top, they toured an album around. They did lots of tv work. Also Also many live shows. They knew the band band would succeed. Cara's pay went up to 2000 pounds a week. You must be negotiable with money. 22 May There are many different contracts available for freelancers to help them manage in employment, manage finances and deal with their rights in employments. One key example of this is a retaining contract. This gave freelancers a constant injection of payment, and this increased when the artist was working. This meant that when an artist worked, they had more pay, and were more devoted to their employer. This prevented the artists from working somewhere else. Also if there was no work, the artist would still have some pay to live off. Another common contract is the heads of agreement which can outline work dates, duties, hours, expectations, pay, and length. This prepares the artist for the job and what it entails and your responsibilities. There are also MU contracts which help musicians and bands or other freelance artists to deal with any arrangements or sort out incidents with contracts or agreements. This offers basic support to freelance artists within their jobs. Contracts are also put in place to help artists live and have the support they need in work, for example, artists may have to work last minute, or auditionnnnn.n.
In this unit I have been notetaking all of my information and ideas in to a document to be typed up when all information ii gathered. Some of my idformation has come from the following: theguardian.co.uk prospects.ac.uk www.bbc.co.uk I have also taken information from the stage times and from footage of theatre proffesionals speaking to my peers.
11/04/16
Freelancing
Megan Barker is a freelance play writer. We asked her some questions about her career. Megan's mum had a big influence, and she took Megan to see shows, and got her in to theatre. She liked writing plays and stories. She attended university to study History and her playwriting first began there. Her first semi-professional production at the Glasgow Arches was a commission. She always uses commissions as they pay her although it is in quarters. Her first commission was with professionals but as unpaid. She continued getting jobs by networking around her. With playwriting, and freelance, you have to do some unpaid work. This helps with networking and finding work. She moved on to a paid commission, after her non paid one. Her university friends and contacts still influence her career today. Megan works in many genre, she can write whatever people want her to write, this is open minded and doesn't impose her own style. She does enjoy darker plays, her preference. She tackles challenging topics like death row. Her favourite play was in 2006, named pit, about death row and other difficult challenges like poverty. She needed a lot of research for this. She writes mainly for adults, but she did a children's Christmas play. She finds this hard as it doesn't come naturally to write for children. She does like writing her own. However, publishing plays is hard. She's had one work published by Methuen. Older plays are more regularly published. She's paid royalties for her plays. Her influence over casting can vary depending on the director. Megan advises pe9ple not to take playwriting as a career as the pay isn't good. She formed a play company so could have an impact on casting. This was called Feral. She works with a director, Estelle. She is the writer for the company. She enjoys seeing her plays when she sees none of the rehearsal process. If she hasn't got any work, Megan does teaching or goes off to workshops.
11/04/16
Session Musicians
If you want to be a session musician, in hindsight, are interpersonal skills, read a situation easily and a person so that you can fit in with any set up. You also cannot annoy people paying you. You must work with anyone, despite any reservations. You have to adapt to each new situation, you may have been booked and you'd have to playing it a track they play you. You need a good ear, making parts and harmonies. You have to create genre specific parts to fit the music. Yo u Mayo go in, learning play a completely new part. You must be an all round good musician. It's important to be punctual, and if they call you you must turn up promptly. For to and radio these are set in stone. As a session musician, you have to be self-contained, patient, and in TV especially there's a lot of waiting time, for example doing make up and camera checks. There are rehearsals for lights, and each time you must perform. Prepare for not working in a job. You need to have a bit of savings. Finding work When you begin, this is the key to your reputation. You need to network. There are networks to find talent. Start off with little bands or mallet scale work. Cara, the session musician, joined a big reggae band called Steel Pulse. It was an important musical opportunity. This helped develop the skills. Despite the criticisms, this was constructive. It's important to listen to the band and working as an ensemble. Through another singer, she heard of an audition and went, it gave a platform to become more successful. It was important to answer adverts to get you new jobs. Word of mouth was regular. While working öith one group, every few months which wasn't enough for Cara. At the same time she auditioned from a music paper. She had a good contract giving a fixed rate even when not working. It was 100 pounds, when not working and this doubled when working, this was a retainer contract. It retained musical services for the whole contract. This included making an album. This meant you had to move. There were world shows, and television performances. Also there were pop videos. Cara's next job was due to those in which she networked with. His manager praised her and then the contract with Egbt ended. With six months of unemployment, this changes your life. You never know when the next work will start. Bully Brag's manager offered Cara a job. She rehearsed in London, learning songs, doing gigs. They planned a six week tour in America. There are no contracts with this. This is not common. This meant planning pay. It's uncomfortable but eventually there was a set rate. It was 300 pounds a day in studio, and 500 each week. This was also a lot of recording. This still had a flat rate. She had to write the piano parts. Bully got I'll, Cara had to find more jobs in a newspaper. She sent them a cassette of some tracks. There was a lot of auditioneees. You had to learn all the lines and play them. In the first audition she learnt 7 pieces, and it was fast paced. They were not committing. There followed a second audition between Cara and someone else. There was more on the spot learning. THE other girl auditioned, and it was rather competitive. "They gave her the job. They asked her the fees she asked of. On the top, they toured an album around. They did lots of tv work. Also Also many live shows. They knew the band band would succeed. Cara's pay went up to 2000 pounds a week. You must be negotiable with money. 22 May There are many different contracts available for freelancers to help them manage in employment, manage finances and deal with their rights in employments. One key example of this is a retaining contract. This gave freelancers a constant injection of payment, and this increased when the artist was working. This meant that when an artist worked, they had more pay, and were more devoted to their employer. This prevented the artists from working somewhere else. Also if there was no work, the artist would still have some pay to live off. Another common contract is the heads of agreement which can outline work dates, duties, hours, expectations, pay, and length. This prepares the artist for the job and what it entails and your responsibilities. There are also MU contracts which help musicians and bands or other freelance artists to deal with any arrangements or sort out incidents with contracts or agreements. This offers basic support to freelance artists within their jobs. Contracts are also put in place to help artists live and have the support they need in work, for example, artists may have to work last minute, or auditionnnnn.n.
22 May Freelancing. There are many important aspects of freelancing. If you take on a freelance role, you must be very interested in this role. This is because freelancing needs complete dedication. You need to have a passion for the type of work you do, if you don't really want to be a session musician or play write, then don't do it. Another important thing to remember, is the pay. At first, you need to build on networks and a reputation. As soon as you start the job, you won't have a high payed contract. Freelancers soften work for nothing at first, so they need a way of getting income. Also, if you are a play right, like Megan Barker, you have to write plays that the public want, even if they go against your style. Freelancers also need to juggle their child care. Cara was lucky to take her children on tour with her, however, Megan had to deal with her childcare and home life. Freelance artists are often needed on call, actresses like Jenny-May would be needed for jobs whenever rehearsals took place. Claire from Open Skies among others gained passion from childhood experiences and passions. At one point, Claire lost motivation and felt that she could not properly achieve anything theatre related. She and Jenny-May, also took an opportunity to train in India and France, which may broaden ideas or freelance opportunities. Estelle often has to travel a lot, because although her pantos are Hereford based, most auditions are held in London, and directors need to see who they can work with. Freelancers must be competitive, when Cara auditioned for roles she had to go through many stages, and had a one versus one audition at the end. Jenny-May and most of the other practitioners went to university, in order to properly train. Megan chose her path carefully, working with semi-professional theatre groups. This helps freelancers build up their experiences and climb the employment ladder. Claire from Open Skies writes scripts as well as acts, and employs Jenny-May, uniting themselves and their skills in to a team effort. As Estelle directs, and Megan writes, they also collaborated as Feral productions, as they both could help each other. Freelancers need to save money and try and have a good income, in order to survive between jobs. Although this is a difficult position it is manageable, but each of the five practitioners advise others to not take this job due to the amount of risks.
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