Variety

I started my devising process by practicing juggling balls and working on a couple of tricks that I can do during the performance. Once I had had looked at that and was comfortable with juggling balls I looked at juggling rings. They were harder than balls but once I had got the general technique it was just about practicing until I was happy with being able to juggle rings. After I was happy with juggling rings and balls, I started to think more about the magic side of the performance. I looked into some more tricks which I could do in my performance and how I would link them to the juggling. I worked out how I would do this and so it was just practicing both my magic and my juggling so I would be able to do it in front of an audience and with confidence. 

The week after I looked at juggling clubs, it was the first time that I had juggled clubs so it took a while to get used to it as it is a lot harder than both balls and rings are. By the end of the lesson on monday I was really happy with the progress I had made and knew that by the performance I would be confident enough to juggle clubs as part of my act. I spent a bit more time working on the magic, as it takes some slight of hand and so I want it to really slick for the performance.

After I had knew the layout to my routine I started to think about things like music. I am still undecided about the music for the start of the performance. I am either thinking about using a remix of 'Enter the Circus' which I can use the comedy side of because the music really wouldn't fit my performance. Or 'Welcome Back My Friends' by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Both of these songs are good because they mention about shows in their lyrics and they both have a circus feel to them which fits my juggling.

The overall layout for my routine is going to be some music to start then me doing a magic trick will will go 'wrong' I will then do some juggling with different objects and then the magic trick will go right.  

For my costume I have been looking at lots of different magicians and jugglers to see what kind of thing they wear. It does vary dramatically but mainly they dress smartly, so I will probably wear a something not too different from this.

Homework Task About Pace

'Why is pace so important to the delivery of the play'

Pace - 'Move or develop (something) at a particular rate or speed' '

I think that pace is important to this play because although it does have some serious parts, there is lots of comedy moments and so timings and pace become very important. The first act of this play I think should be fast paced throughout, there shouldn't be any lulls in pace and there should be constant movement. On the other hand, act two is a lot slower, there are blackouts, as well as parts with little to no dialogue. Because of the very sudden change between the two acts, as a cast we have to make sure that the speed from the first act, doesn't carry on into the next.

The play 4.48 Psychosis is a play written by Sarah Kane. It explores the subject of mental illness through a very Brecht like way. There is no setting or no real characters and the dialogue varies from naturalistic to almost poetic. The lack of setting is similar in Dissocia because although it vaguely mentions settings, there isn't any real description of them. Although Dissocia doesn't use any Brecht techniques, it still has a very fast pace matching 4.48 Psychosis.

An example of a slow paced performance is the production of Electra we saw. I felt that although there wasn't any cuts, I didn't feel that it went anywhere in excitement levels. which is similar to the second act of Dissocia. Although there is lots of things going on, there isn't anything particularly thrilling or out of the ordinary.

Lesson 12th February

In this lesson we read through act 1 of the play. We did not have Rachel in this lesson so we took it upon ourselves to do a read through. It was the first time we had read through the whole of the act together as a class. It was quite challenging because it was double cast so it was hard to split the lines up. However my opposite wasn't there for the lesson so it gave me a good opportunity to read all of the lines. What i found really helpful about the read through was having other cast members around to say their lines instead of having to imagine them being said like I had when reading through it alone. The thing that surprised me with the read through was how some people delivered their lines differently to how I imagined them in my head and this sometimes meant that I had to change the way I delivered my lines and it gave them a completely different meaning. The part that I found the most helpful to read through was the voice over parts. Even though they aren't long passages of speech, in the actual performance they will only be voice and no movement so it gave me a chance to try out different ways of delivering the lines so I could put plenty of emotion into them.

It was useful doing the run through before tacking the large chunks of blocking because it gave us all an overall feel for the play before picturing it on stage

24th Febuary Lesson

In this lesson we looked at the goat scene. Before we looked at it we looked at sorting out a level from one to ten on our characters social status. Me and Luke both had different ideas so we did not end up on the same level. I put the goat as level 3 because of his bad intentions in this scene and that the way he treats Lisa is poor and becuase is is almost sly and secretive, it has an element of sleaziness about it. Luke put the Goat at around a level 5 because he felt that although the Goat is sleazy, it isn't as bad as I thought it was. 

I felt that as well as this is my biggest scene in the play, is is also the most challenging because it has my most lines, which I am finding hard to get in the right order, and also needs the most movement. Another challenge in this scene is the mature content and it touches on some very adult ideas that I personally haven't had to portray on stage, so we all had to make sure we dealt with it in a grown up and respectful way so that it comes across to the audience in a professional way. We all decided that we would not show anything explicit on stage but just to suggest it. 

When blocking this scene i was making notes in my script so that I know where on stage I need to be as well as what movements I need to do. I start off on one of the stage blocks on the corner of the stage, when we rehearse this further I will think about the different ways I can react to Lisa being there and how I can be subtle about it as not to draw attention. Because I am going to be high up at the very back of the stage I will need to make sure that I am projecting properly so that I can be heard, this is something I can work on outside of rehearsals whilst running lines, and doing projection exercises. 

I was really happy with what we managed to run through today and I am not comfortable with being able to put movements to my lines when learning them.

27th February Dance

We started off this lesson by going through the warm up sequence that helps with various physical parts of our dance.

We then learnt a short sequence that we will performing when we take part in the year 13s performance of Cats. We learnt the sequence together as a group, before splitting into our two groups of Journalists and Paparazzi. I am in the paps group and so we started to think about ways that we could incorporate having cameras into routine. In our groups we then looked at making tableau's to show that we were paps. We would do these in the begginig of the song before the sequence we learnt. We wanted to use levels in our tableaux so we went in a diagonal line in height order for our first, and then reversed this oder for out next. We then had a 'fight' tableaux to show the violent world of paps and journalist. We felt that we wanted to do something that looked really good so we put in a lift. We struggled with getting Livvy onto my shoulder, but we struggled even more getting her off... with Kat and Emily's help we found the easiest and safest way to get her off so we were really happy with what we did this lesson. Next lesson we will look at ways of altering the routine to match our Paparazzi characters.

27th February Singing

In this lesson we worked in groups on presentations regarding the anatomy of the voice. My group consisted of myself, Holly Hos, Izzy and Max.
We all researched different parts of the anatomy, mainly the vocal chords and the diaphragm. I was happy with our presentation and I felt that I learnt more about the anatomy than I had earlier on in the year.

I have attached a link to our presentation and photos of our posters.



*HOW DO I ATTACH A LINK TO THE POWERPOINT?!?!*

Lesson 3rd March

In this lesson we started to block the Brittany scene. In the first part of this scene my character doesn't have many lines, but I found this lesson useful in getting a feel for the pace of the scene as well as picturing some movement ideas that can be tried out in later rehearsals. There was one point towards the beginning of the scene where all of the characters do fall of of their chairs so I made a note in my script so that I remember when it is because it is not on the stage directions.

Lesson Analysis 5th March

In this lesson we finished blocking the Brittany scene. This scene is quite challenging because it involves the whole cast and there are lots of short lines so learning cue lines are very important.
We looked at the way we stand for a lot of this scene and as well as this, various movements and line delivery. One of the harder bits to block was the Biffer talking part because before this we don't really move on stage and at this point we have to remember where we all have to stand as well as when we have to say our lines.
Although it was tricky, I found that being off script helped because it can be easier to learn cue lines. I am still struggling with when some of my lines come in bit I think that rehearsing this more will sort this out.

Grease dance evaluation

Because my use of extension is my biggest weakness I have looked at different ways of improving this such as looking in the mirror whilst rehearsing  and recording rehearsals and watching them back as self assessment. By my last performance I want extension to be something I can put as a strength rather than a weakness. Using the mirrors will be very helpful in getting immediate extrinsic feedback.

Singing 6th March

In this lesson we looked into vocal techniques. We split into groups and all picked a vocal technique. Mine was range. We discussed as a group different exercises and wrote them down on this sheet.

After we had filled out the sheets, we got back into the class and a few of us shared our exersices. I shared mine with the class and we all did my exersice. It was really useful to see how it worked when it was done and I feel that this will help me with my vocal technique sheet.

Dance 6th March

In this lesson we carried on from our Cats routine we started last week. We started off by running through the sequence again so that everybody remembered it which was useful because over the week I had forgotten the order of some of the movements. After this we split into our two groups and went over the tableaux that we did in last weeks lesson. We used canon, fragmentation and retrograde to look at different ways we could alter the original routine. We altered the beginning section of the routine by facing each other and changing the levels that we used. This added a bit more to the routine and makes it a bit more exciting. We also added a lift into the routine, we struggled with finding the right way to lift up Amber and Livvy but once Kat helped us we could progress onto putting it together. I was really happy with the progress we made this lesson and we plan on altering the rest of the routine next week.