Week 6

 Monday 16th October 2023                                                                                                          Ensemble work 

We started the day off by focusing on some ensemble work- building up our skills of synchronisation and being able to read the room collectively. This is something that's extremely important when it comes to large group reliant scenes/pieces, because even if just one person isn't in sync with everyone else it sticks out and draws all the attention away from what's actually going on- detracting from the performance as a whole. I personally find synchronisation activities really difficult- finding it almost impossible to jest when people are going to move/change positions, But after taking some time to focus on them and zoom in on the best ways to go about staying tuned in with other actors I developed some strategies that I found worked really well. For example:

* gradually slowing down my movements so that the movement as a whole would slow down without everyone moving at different times.

* Keeping my attention on people across the space not just next to me- making sure that I know the movements of everyone, so nothing catches me of guard.

Lonely Harts column continuation       

The lonely harts column task is something we started last week- just kind off scraping the surface when it came to our characters, but this week we really zoomed into physicality and the way our character would deal with certain situations/environments. To start of figuring out my characters physicality I did my usual strategy of focusing on their walk and the way they hold themselves. My character personally is quite heavy footed so I moulded my walk around that, swaying my hips quite noticeably with each stride whilst distributing my body weight unevenly between both legs. This forced me to pop one of my hips to the side, which in my opinion was the starting point for adding a sense of cheekiness to my character. After I had figured out her walk we were then put into a scenario of being in a bar- having to approach it in the way we think our characters would. Doing this exercise really helped me characterise the rest of my character, because it put her into a "social situation" with other characters, forcing me to not hesitate and react instinctively, and although at first I felt I hadn't fully understood the character as a whole- being within a constantly moving improvised scene I had opportunity to try different approaches and gradually peace together who my character was as a person existing within society. 

Tuesday 17th October 2023                                                                                                           Vocal shift warm up technique  

Because we are getting closer to the peter pan auditions and peter pan itself we started delving further into singing technique- focusing on proper form and how to get the most out of our range. To do this we started by opening up our posture, making sure our diaphragms were not contracted, giving us the best opportunity for breath and longer notes. We then did a exercise that involved pushing our tongues forwards while singing up the scale- letting them stick out of our mouths in order to make it easier to get higher up the scale by creating more space for noise to travel clearly. I found this to be an incredibly helpful exercise as singing in my head voice is something I really struggle with, never mind maintaining control while doing so. Although I have found all our singing sessions to be of great help and preparation, I found the things I have learned from this session to be of greater use to me- for in the previous session we have focused more on warming up our voice and vocal care whereas in this session it felt more aimed at singing education and development- focusing on how to control your voice and use it in a technically correct way, which is why I found it so helpful.

Globe work

After we finished working on singing technique we then moved onto globe work- piecing together the final execution scene for the evening run through of our tour. Because I am one of the tour guides for the morning show I don't play an active role  within the evening show apart from the last scene were the execution takes place. This scene is really intense therefore the characters within it have to be more aggressive and eye catching- yet not to big to detract from the event itself. So because of this I decided to take the persona of an "angry old man" that's excited to see the executions, for in that time period executions were seen as entertainment and an enjoyable family event. To create this persona I mainly just focused on the way I was reacting to situations, letting my body follow my face for that's what makes a person creepiest- using harsh stears  and menacing grins that hold a large amount of intensity. Throughout doing the execution scene I was mainly just focused on making myself as creepy as possible, because this character that I'm playing isn't really a character, instead more of a persona due to the fact the they're not significant within the scene and don't have a storyline- meaning that trying to characterise them would do the opposite of what their supposed to do which is be scary. Because of this I actually really enjoyed doing this scene, because it felt as though I could experiment more and test out what was scarier and what wasn't, I also liked the freeness I had with that element of improvisation from being in the audience and I would also say that it helped make me feel more confident with the improvisation that I do when being the tour guide in the primary show. 

Thursday 19th October 2023                                                                                                         Tour guide run through---morning show

Thursday was the first day that we ran through the primary show- so I made sure when doing so to take the time to discus how we thought it was going, and how we were going to approach certain sections of the tour. This is because some scenes were more complicated to enter into that others- for example the Mary Ann Cotton section starts with the sound of a nursery rhyme, instead of me and the other tour guide entering the audience into it. Obviously one of the main things we were focusing on when running through the tour was practicing keeping our improv flowing, but whilst running through it we have realised that audience interaction and spacing is something we need to keep a constant eye on- for if the back end of the audience are still entering the scene when we begin talking, their going to miss out on what's happening and who they need to focus on. To target this problem we decided to consistently shout back to "casey closed" and  "johnny walker" the other two trainee detectives that come along with us on the tour. This is so the audience at the back can feel more added into the tour when we interact with with those two detectives, it also prevents audience members from being "left behind" throughout the tour. But overall I think the tour is going well so far and am excited to take it to the Globe.