Week One Reflection:
For todays lesson we started on working on improvisation starting by getting into pairs and given a stimulus to create a short scene on. Me and Hollie were given two best friends falling out over choosing a holiday. We gave each other basic ideas before starting and then eventually performing from where we left off to the rest of the class. I found this part quite challenging as we had to quickly bounce of each other while trying to link it to the scenario however i did find this helpful as it prepares me to think quickly while staying in character as well as improving my listening and focusing skills to communicate properly with my partner. We also played a game called Sit, Bend, Stand where we were given the scenario of a hospital waiting room and had to create a piece around it while each person remains either sitting, standing or crouched down. My group, which included Hollie and Oliver, decided to use potty humour which managed to get a good reaction from the group.
After the group showed a small piece of their scenarios, starting from where we left off. This put more pressure on us as it was now being performed in front of an audience. After this activity we moved the room into a waiting room style and we each put into groups of different characters such as executives, nosey neighbours, bullies, stressed out parents and pensioners which we would bring to life as we walked into the space. As we started to build on this scene, we decided to make the waiting area a train station and built on how the different characters would interact without vocal communication, so we had to rely on our body language and our facial expressions so the audience would understand the character. I found it hard to create my character as I was given a nosey neighbour, and i was a little unsure on how to portray it. After working with my partner, keira, we decided to portray the characters being stuck to their phones, and being nosey with the other characters but only interacting with each other to show what we had on our phones. We either reacted with laughter or pulled faces, as if we were judging people. Once we went through the scene a few times we added music to rehearse to, which made acting out the characters easier. I think this is because the music helps you focus more on the character, as well as the people around you, as you can react to them but also being aware that you don’t bump into them.
Carrying on from what we did on Tuesday, we ran through the scenes a few more times to work on characterization skills before we started to add the comedy element to the piece. We added the slapstick genre, so we watched a video to help us understand it and give us a basic idea on how to do it. I think it really helped watching it as we could take different ideas from the video to play around with to see if it fits with our groups and after, in our groups we created a short slapstick scene to add into the train station scene. My group included Kiera and Hollie and we decided to make a very over dramatic piece based around three close friends in a fight over phone. As physical slapstick comedy tends to include things such as falls, lifts and slaps we decided to incorporate a lot of this into the short piece. We made it quite fast as slapstick relies a lot on timing. We rehearsed over it a few times, adding more things as we went along and made corrections to things, we noticed would probably be hard for the audience to see. We then performed it in front of an audience to get some feedback on how we could make it more dramatic or change anything that didn’t fit. We decided to make it a little more over exaggerated so the physical slapstick would be something that the audience would enjoy a little more instead of having small movements.
Week Two Reflection
Starting this weeks lesson, we started to put it all together and figure out a running order. We started with the 9-to-5 piece for the opening and began to plan how to set up our slapstick skits. We originally had all of the pieces set up on the stage and had an order in which they were performed but after running through them a few times we decided to change it as the audience would be unable to see some of the pieces in the back. We also added a scattered entry so whilst one group is performing, another begins to quietly set up their piece so they are ready to go once the other has finished which saves time but also ensures the audience can see each piece. We also had some groups change the backing music of their skits to make them more personal and fit the scene better. In our groups we went over the slapstick pieces. Our group decided to record it too see what we can improve on. This helped us keep track on our progress and also gave us an idea on what we could change.
We also began to plan an idea for our level 3 performance that will come after the group piece. We decided to make it a teachers lounge, relating it closely to the level two piece as they are doing a detention sitcom style piece. We started by listing ideas of what kind of stereotypes teachers have such as the gossipy Art teacher and the pregnant English teacher. We chose which characters we would play and gave them names. We then came up with a scenario to base it around a new teacher being introduced as the English teacher was going on maternity leave. Once we had the scenario we started writing the script. We gave the start of the script a read through to start adding characterization to the characters, using stereotypical comedy to fit the teacher we were given.This helped us begin to think about how we wanted the character to be shown to the audience, and the kind of impression we wanted to give. We also started to think about how we’d set the stage to show the audience that it was inside the staff room.
In Wednesdays lesson, we started to plan the script out more after creating the setting of the scene. For this we focused mostly on stereotypical comedy such as having the pregnant English teacher, flirty P.E teacher, gossipy Art teacher and the teaching assistant that follows another teacher everywhere they go. We used the teacher’s personality to determine how they would react to the new teacher’s arrival. Having the teacher’s basic personality helped us set the scene better as knowing their personality helps with reactions as well as how to bring them to life. We started to brainstorm ideas for the script, starting with a fire alarm to start the scene, which went off due to the science teacher failing an experiment. We also started to bring the characters to life a little more by focusing on how we present them. My character is called Beth Ephgrave, who the teaching assistant for English, and she follows Miss Blake, the English teacher on maternity leave, everywhere. We showed this in rehearsal by having our characters enter the scene together, as well as having my character hardly leave her side throughout the whole scene.
Week Three Reflection:
Today we ran through the opening piece, setting cues for each group to enter, interact with each other and also set cues for having the groups leave the train station to prepare for the slapstick scenes. We also finalized the order of the slapstick performances, so everyone knew their cues to start and so the audience wasn’t missing out on anyone’s performance. After this the level three teachers’ lounge scene split up into three parts to start bringing the script together. Each group was given one part of the script and we worked in those small groups to create a beginning, a middle and the end of the script. After we had a basic idea script that included everyone’s ideas, we stated to match the script together. this helped us not only improve our creative skills and our characterization, but it also helped us to included everyone’s ideas, making sure everyone had input to the scene.
The following lesson, we had production meetings for both the whole company performance and the level three performance to discuss the progress we have made, how we think it is going, if we’re working well together and also discussing what we will need for the productions such as staging, lighting, props, costume, music etc. This helped us be more prepared for the production, so we weren’t rushing the week of the performance. After this, we began to bring the teachers lounge scene to life, putting set together and work on props. We did a basic walk through of it to help us think about anything we could add or tweak, how we want the stage set and any props we might need.
In this lesson, level three had two new members added to the scene, so we had to work closely with them to add characters to fit the scene as well as introduce them to what we had created so far to see if they had any input to the scene before we began adding their characters into it. After we discussed with them, we ran through the script a few times. this was good for all of us as while we’re introducing the new cast into the piece, it helps us begin to memories our lines, as well as finding where we could introduce the new characters. After this we worked some more on our physical slapstick pieces, some groups changed backing music to fit better, which also helped us with cues.
Week Four Reflection
In this lesson we decided to do a full run through of the production, with props and music so we could time it and see how long it was. After this we discussed as a company what we could all improve on. For me, I have to work a lot on my vocal projection, as i often mumble my words without realizing. We then started to work on improving the teachers lounge scene, adding more dialogue and moving people around to keep the teachers constantly interacting. We also added some students from level two into this piece to help closely link into their sitcom detention piece. This helped us slow the piece down and work on timing as well as how we presented our lines which showed us what we still needed to develop before the production is performed.
Following on, the next day we ran through it again and afterwards we sat down to discuss what we didn’t like and made a few changes. We started with the teachers’ lounge scene, finalizing it and running through it, stopping a few times to add new lines or take parts out. After this we ran it this scene all the way through without stopping. Having this scene finally complete helps to know which lines we need to remember as well as knowing the cues for going both on and off stage. It all takes stress away as we were struggling with finding an ending and we finally got it finished, so all we had left to do was perfect it.
In this session, we changed the opening scene to be more of a 1920s musical themed opening, so each group we had in the original 9-5 music entered with a small dance style entrance. This was difficult as we had become used to the original opening, but we started adding more things which matched the time element of the piece. The pieces we’re quick and there was background cast to make the station seem busy, and like everyone was in a rush, this way the performance had more meaning behind it. We also decided as a company to wear black and white costumes for the opening scene to fit with the 1920s theme.
Week Five reflection
In this lesson we started to clean up the opening scene, rehearing it over and over to make sure we had the correct timing, as we wanted each group to go on straight after the other, keeping up with the busy theme to it. We also made the transitions to each group cleaner, as soon as one group went backstage the other went on, and to keep up with the background, everyone who had performed went back on stage and interacted with the other characters on the side. We also had to teach the members of our group who had missed the change the dance so that helped us clean it up and time it better. We ran through the opening a few times so everyone got the timing correctly and then we went over our slapstick pieces, making them more overdramatic and exaggerated. After this, the level threes worked on the teacher scene, making a few changes to that, having a few of the cast already on stage, cleaning up the entrances and cues and making sure everyone remembered their lines. With having a member of this cast missing for a while, we had to make some changes and add some more lines to help the scene run smoother, so we went over this part a few times so everyone would remember but also so the lighting crew would get a hang of the new cue for the school bell. We also discussed on how we would transition from the opening scene to the teachers’ lounge, as it took us a while to set up the staging, and we came up with the idea to create comedy themed TikTok’s to play so the audience is still entertained while we set up but also so the noise of the TikTok’s would cover any kind of noise from us moving set.
Today we ran through the production as much as we could, making any final changes to the production before the performance tomorrow. Instead of having the TikTok’s as the transition between the opening and the teachers’ lounge scene, we decided to keep going with the slapstick element and set up the stage under the lights, pulling chairs and tables between each other, climbing across the chairs, trying to rush each other. I think this was actually a good idea because not only does it entertain the audience while we were setting up, but it also helped us to set up the staging quicker, as to not keep the audience waiting. We tweaked different parts as we went along as we learnt that changing things last minute happen all the time in this industry, and we learn how to adapt to this, as well as having people not showing up to rehearsals all the time. We also managed to find a way to keep the set on the stage to stop any unneeded time being added, we did this by dropping set in places after a group had used it, preparing for the next group which saved a lot of time. We also talked about how we do the bows at the end practiced that a few times, so we bowed at the same time. We also took some of the set out of the teachers’ lounge to make the scene more open and to stop from blocking in certain parts of the scene.
Today was performance today and we did two dress runs before our audience came to watch the production. Through these rehearsals, we learned that we would need stand in as some people had been absent for the rehearsals as well as the day of the production. This meant if they had a main part, they would need to be replaced by someone who knew their lines, which came in helpful today as we had some cast fill in for the members of the company who unfortunately was unable attend the day of the show. As a company we worked together to make sure it was tweaked to the best it could be before the performance, and that we had main characters filled in, we also managed to improvise on the spot when something hadn’t gone as planned during the actual production. While there was certain parts of the performance that didn’t go as well as we wanted it too, such as not projecting enough and set not being in the right place, we were still proud of what we managed to create for our project. As a company we still have lots of skills to improve on, but I am proud of what we managed to perform.