This Unit we looked at different classic monologues and Duologue's and learnt different ways to learn the lines of the monologue and different techniques to present the monologues, also we are looking at voice learning different warms for our voice ready for us to create our own 15 minute warm up for the rest of the group.
Tuesday 21st January 2014
"Let's hear the play"
The first part of the lesson was to warm our voice we did this though learn the song Rose which is in Elizabethan English
Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose.
Shall I ever see thee wed?
I'll marry at thy will.
If thy but said.
we then start to look at start of one of Shakespeare plays monologues the boy look at a part of "Hamlet"
To be or not to be, that is the question:
whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
or to take arm against a sea of troubles,
once we had read the lines a couple of times and learnt the line we walked around the room saying the lines how we would think then character at that time would have said the lines once we had got the character we want right we then performed the sort section of text to the rest of the class in the way that, that character would have said it, one of the challenges of the when performing was getting the Elizabethan English right which means to say the word correctly and to pronounce the word correctly, during the performance I stumble on a few words but after a while I was able to stay the words correctly.
Doing this Task has help me to have more of a understand of what we could be choosing for our assessment and to have a better understanding of some of the old English we could be facing.
Tuesday 28th January 2014
During today lesson we looked at some duologue's and some monologues by reading though them and each reading a character from the duologue the one that me,Sasha and Tom looked at was "The Seagull" by Anton Chevok i was reading the part of Trigorin after the read though we were told that this would be the dialogue that me, Sasha and Tom would be doing for our assessment, the part of "The Seagull" we are doing focuses on Arkadina relationships with the start the extract the audience see Arkadina and her son Treplyov have a decision about what has happen with Treplyov and his hate for Trigorin with Arkadina standing up for Trigorin the scene then change to Arkadina trying to flight for Trigorin love the whole extract mainly focuses around the main character which is Arkadina.
After we had looked at the Duologue's we then started to look at the some on the monologues by having a read though them and having a looked at the once that we like and that we were going to chose for our assessment, the Monologue that I like was "Women of no importance" by Oscar Wilde this monologues is a comedy and is based around the character Gerald who is have a decision with his mother about his dream to work for Lord Illingworth at some point of the monologue the discussion turn into an argument.
The other Monologue which is chose which is the character of Prospero from "The Tempest" this monologue is more drama then the other one and the character has change from a young man to an older man who is explain what has happen to them and why they're on a deserted island.
Tuesday 4th February 2014
Today to start the lesson Kat lead the warm up she started with warming the body up with stretches she also led the drama game "I love you but I just can't smile" i found this game very hard as i laugh to easy.
After the warm up we start to rehearsal our monologues and duologues but we looked at an exercise that could would help us add emotions to our performance, to do this we worked in pears and we had to tell the other person a situation that could happen to them and that person had to think about there reaction to that situation I worked with Tom and the situation I gave him was that he was going to die very soon, Tom reaction was in shock and a bit of crying but he did show the emotion very well of someone getting news there going to die well, the situation that Tom gave me that I had won e lottery my reaction was disbelieve and happiness with a mixture of shock, but when I performed this to the rest of the group I gave away what my situation was by saying that I had never won anything before.
After this active we talked about our monologues and dialogues as a group we look at the text and looked at how we could stage the piece and looked how we could ad the emotion to the characters as well as looking at the movement, from this me , Sasha and Tom looked the emotion of the characters Sasha main emotion is sadness and anger from when she has agreements with her son to when see is talking with her lover, tom main emotion is disappear from losing the love of his life to hating his mothers lover and me emotion was lovestruck with his lovers son's lover and his real lover.
Tuesday 25th February 2014
Today we started the lesson with a physical and vocal warm up, once we had warm up our bodies we move on to techniques to learn line, the technique that we use was splitting the monologue up into section where the emotion change and then learning the first three sections, we were given 5 minutes to learn as much as we could then we were set a task to make breakfast but say our lines as we made breakfast, doing this is different to the way I learned line but it did help me to learn the first section of the three.
The next task was to performed our monologue but as if we were performing them in front of aliens that don't speck and understand English which means that we had to create an action for every single word which was hard but fun but when perform it was hard not to laugh when performing it as the action that we were creating were funny but not all ways representing the word that we were saying, but this task challenge us to use a drama improve techniques of on spot as the task was making think on the spot.
Tuesday 4th March 2014
For today lesson we focus on the monologue that we were least confident on and hadn't worked much on which was "Prospero" from the "The Tempest", I had to think how I would stage it that was different from my other monologue but as well working on my characterisation so the two characters are different to each other, I was thinking about standing for some part of the monologue when the character is talking to his daughter to the end of the performance be on his knees
During the lesson we move to our other monologue which was "Gerald" from "A Women Of No Importance" I worked on my staging and character for the staging was just me standing upright back straight to so that my character is from a posh background have the character mothers sitting on a chair where the audience would be so i would be talking directing to the audience as well I was working on my character so I could present Gerald to speck with a posh accent but as well I could be silly with the character as the play is a comedy
Tuesday 18th March
For today lesson we were performing our two monologues and our duologue's to Reese the theatre director.
First I performed A women of no importance I was nervous at first as and that I was wasn't sure about all of the lines but I tried my best to keep in character for the character Gerald I portrayed the character to have a posh tone of voice so I presented the lines with a posh tone of voice and have an up right stance, but half way though the monologue I forgot the line and had relied on my script which I came out of character and lost the performance which I started.
The fed back I got so I could work on my performance read for the assessment was to be more conifer dent on the line and open out a bit more to the audience and keep the character constant all the way though other performance don't lose the character and work more on my characterisation of the character of Gerald I could my him more silly and add more humour and make the performance more comical.
The second performance was The Tempest this time I didn't feel as nervous at the first one as I was more confident on this monologue then the first one this time the character was Prospero he is talking to his daughter about why they are on this island, I tried to present the character of
Prosero to have a mixture of emotions with anger, sadness and forgiving tones in my voice, I did stumble on some of the line but I needed to get the old English right and pronounce it right.
The fed back I got which I can work on for the assessment was to show a clear difference between the two characters Gerald and Prosero as I had the same tone of voice throughout both performances and once again be more clear and confident on what I am saying and presenting.
The final performance was the duologue's (the scene) which was from the seagull this time I wasn't as nervous as I was before with the other two but I was a bit more confident as I knee the line and how I want to present the character, I played the character of Boris who is in love with two women and is tormenting one with the other and is also lovestruck so I present the character with this love struck feeling by showing in one point I was in love with a calm tone of voice to a bit of anger with the line "she doesn't want to understand" to giving up at the end but when the character lovers is delivering her paragraph I show the character to be listening to what she is saying.
The fed back I got was that I was listening to Sasha paragraph well and reacting to it how the character would and to show that to the audience the dedication to listen to what the character was saying was well present, I need to work on staying in character throughout not changing accents and be confident fully.
Tuesday 1st April 2014
Today we performed our monologue for the final time for our assessment I had taken on board all the feedback that I got from the mock mock performance to the other performances in class, when I performed my first monologue I thought about my posture and my speech was I posh enough for the character but when I watch the performance back at a later date I realised that I had all my speech to the side not towards the audience which would have made my performance.
If I could do the performance again I would change the position of the character i was talking to which was Gerald's mother and have my speech facing the audience and not to the side so the audience can face my posture and my facial expression as well the audience can hear what I am saying to them more clearer as I am direction my speech towards them instead of the side.
Then I performance my second monologue which again I took on board all the feedback I got and applied this to my performance but this time I was mainly focusing on my characterisation so the audience could tell that I was performing a different character to the first to do this I lost the posh accent I had put on and tried to speck in a normal calm tone then build up the anger then lost it again.
If I could perform it again I would change where the person I was talking to as this time was facing out towards the audience the whole time but not once having an look at the person I was talking to but as well I could have change the level that I was performing on as during the first monologue I was standing all the way though but for the second one there was time where I could change my level that could help build the character more.
If I could do the performance again I would change the position of the character i was talking to which was Gerald's mother and have my speech facing the audience and not to the side so the audience can face my posture and my facial expression as well the audience can hear what I am saying to them more clearer as I am direction my speech towards them instead of the side.
Then I performance my second monologue which again I took on board all the feedback I got and applied this to my performance but this time I was mainly focusing on my characterisation so the audience could tell that I was performing a different character to the first to do this I lost the posh accent I had put on and tried to speck in a normal calm tone then build up the anger then lost it again.
If I could perform it again I would change where the person I was talking to as this time was facing out towards the audience the whole time but not once having an look at the person I was talking to but as well I could have change the level that I was performing on as during the first monologue I was standing all the way though but for the second one there was time where I could change my level that could help build the character more.
The research that I did for the monologue and dialogue, the research is broken down into social,political and historical context for the three different performances.
A Women of No Importance by Oscar Wilde
the play is about a story of an illengement son.
Social
This play is presented in present time which the year was 1893 and was performed at London's Haymarket Theatre and is set in Victorian London in 1893 the whole play is set within a 24 hours in a country manor house called the the shrines the house is own by once of the characters Lady Hunstanton the party is an upper class party with the all of the characters of the play are upper class.
My Character Gerald is the son of one of the characters
In Victorian England people had a set of value these are Lords Illingsworth and Mrs Arbuthorlot but he doesn't know that he is Lords Illingworth's son as his mother has kept that secret for most of his life. Gerald is a badly paid and not very demanding job at a bank clerk. the character development is influenced by his mother who brought him up too strictly. later on in the play Lord Illingworth offer Gerald a job as his private secretary Gerald accepts Lords Illingworth job offer which mean that Gerald get an unexpected chance becoming a member of an upper class society.
Victorian set of Values
A - Work Hard
B - Thrift
C - Religious observance
D - Family life
E - Awareness of ones duty
F - Absolute honestly in public life
G - Extreme respeactiabity in sexual manners.
when think about the classical presentation the character would wear these type of costume that would show their class to an audience.
This is the sort of costume that an upper class man and women would have worn at the time that the play was set in.And when also thinking about a classic presentation of the set this is the type of place where this play would be set in.
Political At the time of when the play is set and written in Queen Victoria was on throne she was Queen from 1837 to 1901 as the play was set in 19892 the person in flavour was William Ewart Gladstone as he won the General Elections of 1892.
Historical
Queen Victoria all throughout her reign from 1837 to 1901 had the same powers as any other King or before her but she was seen to be the symbol of Britain success in the world, she set an example to the people by being a representative of a hard working mother of 9 children and being very religious and devoted to her husband Prince Albert.
By end of the 19th Century Britain controlled the world largest empire (the British empire) that the world had ever seen with countries such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and large part of Africa a part of empire.
As the population of London increased the census conclude that 79% of the population was working class but putting an all classes audience under a theatre roof in two to three playhouses was impossible.
The most popular theatres was Drury lane, Covent Garden and Haymarket.
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Historical
The stages of Elizabethan and Jacobean period were for the most part bare and simple as there was very little on stage scenery and artificial lighting was very limited.
The Tempest was written by Shakespeare between 1610 to 1611 and was written in England and was published in 1623 which was 7 years after Shakespeare death in 1616.
At the time English people in the renaissance period were aware of the efforts of their government and the government of other European countries into exploring and colonizing distant lands, when Shakespeare was writing The Tempest the Jamestown Colony had just recently been established in America.
Social
In Elizabethan time peoples beliefs an individuals social position was more or less fixed.
The King was King as he had been given a mandate by God and all positions below this were based on a rigid social hierarchy which were also dictated by birth.
Shortly after Queen Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 she declared that the context of the play performed in public could no longer have to be religious.
Political
King James I was the on the throne when Shakespeare wrote the "The Tempest" was written, King James I was also the King of Scotland he was know to the Scots as King James VI, James I was crown King of England and Ireland on 27th March 1603 after Elizabeth I died on 24th March 1603.
"The Tempest" was performed at The "Global Theatre" on London's Southbank in 1911
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