Week 16

Monday 22nd January 2024 

Characterisation elements- call back 

I had my call back today as a result of my previous connections audition, getting called back to do the same audition I did originally plus a section of dialogue for the therapist. Personally I really enjoyed learning the therapists dialogue, viewing the character as a self centred upper class women who is very condescending and stuck up. I found it so funny to experiment with  stereotypes, especially for a character that is completly opposite to me as a person, meaning I could add an accent, change my movements etc. I very much used the stereotype of school councillor and cahms workers to build on my interpretation of this character, adding in this tone that makes it seem as if I'm talking to a child- using my own experiences with therapists to help form the way this character appears to the audience. I also thought about props straight away and the things she carries, in my eyes I imagine her having hand cream on her person at all times- re applying it on every 5 minutes instead of focusing on her client. I also envision her with glasses on and a lanyard with lots of key chains on. For me characterising the character in this way really helped me understand how I was going to perform her more, because of this I think my audition went well and I'm happy with how I interpretated the script and adapted it to the character. I do wish I had familiarised myself more with the dialogue itself but It was something I was learning last minute for the call back so I'm not to frustrated about it. 

Wednesday 24th January 2024 

Warm ups

We started off by doing some warm up games, just getting ourselves into the right head space to work, at the moment we are actively trying to begin warm ups before the session actually starts- just getting into that habit of starting straight away, building up a greater sense of professionalism when it comes to professionalism. some of the warm up games we do are to prepare us for the session, but others are just to get us warmed up- in this case we were just doing a casual warm so picked some more softer playful ones such as wink murder, 13 etc. What I've learned when doing any kind of warm up is that its good to just let yourself flow casually into them whilst still remaining focused. I feel this allows me not to take them too seriously and get to stressed with them whilst gaining benefit from them. We also did a little vocal warm up that I ran- this also contributed to our homework task of doing vocal exercises  everyday for a week, but instead of tongue twisters I just focused on singing techniques that apply to regular speech when acting. A lot of the vocal warm ups I did were ones that I have learned on my course, and previously found helpful so decided to re do them- my personal favourite is one were we repeat certain vowel sounds in gradually sped up tempo. This allows you to exercise multiple sections of your mouth that are used to form certain sound, which is very helpful when it comes to diction  

"Word activity"

We then spent the rest of the session focusing on character headspace for connections, doing an activity that stretched this and made us think more about the way our characters are preserved and what makes it that way. Because we haven't properly started putting together our connections production, we still have time to learn and understand more about what the play represents- especially surrounding Dana and the "freaks and geeks" characters struggles that are shown throughout the play. For this activity we all went in a circle, passing the word, "word" around to one another- slowly building it up by adding emotion behind the way we would say "word" and then also adding a connections character behind the line delivery too. Because of how quickly we were passing round the word "word we didn't have very much time to question things- acting out spontaneously and instinctively. I liked this first part of the activity because it touched on that Idea of never ending conversation, with that sense of expectation surrounding it, creating this idea of noise traffic. We then added a more physical aspect to the activity, walking around as our chosen character whilst still passing round the word "word"- adding in the final element were someone would actively try and catch the word "word" while it was getting passed about. From the outside this whole activity looked very chaotic and busy, especially when we advanced the concept more with one person constantly being in the middle of it. This was very much meant to symbolise getting caught up within society- that feeling of being suffocated by it constantly, which is something that Dana experiences and a feeling she lives with everyday. This really helped me get a better perspective on what we are trying to show and communicate to the audience- especially through ensemble work.  

Thursday 25th January 2024

Character focus

Thursday was more of a focus on character development, taking a look at the importance of sub text and the understanding of how it effects character portrayal. I straight away was really excited for this session as characterisation/character mindset are things I actively want to improve on, especially when it comes to naturalistic acting as I find that fully being in the characters headspace is something that allows you to actually be that character instead of just act like them. We started off by playing the supermarket game- internally creating the setting of the supermarket and then placing ourselves into the setting by creating a character that fits  the scene, for example an employee which is who I chose to be. The whole point of this activity is to make you think like your character- going further than just throwing yourself into depicting a stereotype, and instead actively taking pauses to think about who this person is and why they are doing everything that they are doing/existing how their existing. Character interaction throughout this game was also something that pushed you to think more about who this person was, as that would effect the way they spoke to other people/reacted to things they do. We then moved onto some other scenario activity games- taking the texting concept in connections and using it as a way to show internal thought and how that effects external reaction. This game was quite a funny one, due to the fact that if the person behind you (they were vocalising your internal thoughts) said something funny or unexpected it could throw you off guard a bit or make you react visually in a completly different way. I feel as if this game helped us understand how much our internal thoughts/thought process fuel the way we hold our facial expressions, even subtle reactions that your character may have, will like you as a person be fuelled by what's going on in your head. This activity also felt very spontaneous as the direction of the conversation was never fixed, having to react of initiative like you would in a real life conversation- which is why I enjoyed doing them so much, because it felt as if we were constantly channelling natural human instincts to convey what the character is feeling which is a really important skill when it comes to naturalistic acting. 

We then spent the second half of the session continuing our duologue work that we had started last week, being previously told to bring in an object that would add to the scene- for this I brought in an old kids toy as I liked the humour off it and felt as if It related to friendship, which is brief theme in the duologue. Me and my duologue partner Alex decided to write a little extra section at the end of our duologue, because we felt it showed more about who the people are and the relationship they have- using the toy as a way to add to this. The reason we are re visiting these duologues is because we plan to film them in TV and Film setting, so we worked on setting them out in that way- thinking about were the characters would actually be, how they would enter the scene, props they would use etc. We then filmed what we had done so far as way to later reflect so we could see were to improve.