Week 26

 Monday 22nd April 2024 

Shakespeare audition workshop

Today we had the brilliant opportunity of being able to audition for a theatre company called Theatre Space, run by the national theatre director that came to view our connections play "shout". She was really impressed with our performance so offered us this amazing opportunity- giving us the chance to potentially do some professional theatre work for her company. The audition process was really fun and quite freeing and experimental, and I liked how the audition itself was spread out into a workshop as it meant that we had more opportunity to show our skills instead of being confined to a 5 min slot. The audition covered multiple areas such as singing, stage combat and finally some ensemble work- as these are things that they are important within their shows alongside the acting of course.

We started by warming up and working on some team work focused exercises, allowing us to understand the importance of team work when working on collaborative projects. One of these games we hadn't been introduced to before- requiring a bottle of any kind that is placed in the middle at the end of two rows of people. Everyone in your row is holding hands and the aim of the game is to send a hand squeeze from one end of the line to the other end of the line were the bottle is. When your hand squeeze has made it to the last person on the row, they must quickly grab the bottle in front of them before the last person on the opposing teams row does. Not only was this game fun, but it required a heavy amount of focus and attention control- which is something I feel is really beneficial when it comes to team work based warm ups, as when the warm up encourages everyone to get to loud and move around loads, people can start to get frustrated, and overly excited. Which ends up doing the opposite, and making it harder to work as a team. Which is why this warm up game was so effective, because it prevented the group from getting out of hand, whilst also making it so the group had to rely on each other heavily- stopping us from individually only being concerned on our own input, but that of the group. 

We then moved onto the main tasks/activities within the audition. This was split up into 3 main sections: singing/group harmonisation, stage combat ability and group creative collaboration. Out of all three sections I found the singing section to be the most challenging for me personally, which I didn't expect as singing is normally something I'm quite comfortable doing- but the main focus within the singing section was group harmonisation, which is something I'm not very skilled at and need to work on as a performer. I personally found it quite hard remembering the harmonies when going to sing them collectively, and also struggled to not switch back into the normal melody. Sage combat went well, and I found it really fun and challenging in a positive way. It was really helpful to also learn more about how to move your body in certain way to mimic combat and damage within conflicts on stage- also working on falling technique and understanding the natural fat distributions in out body and were is safe to put pressure on and were isn't. I found the fight choreography okay to pick up, understanding how equally important your emotional reactions and responses are when it comes to making your fights look realistic and believable. Whilst people were going in for their auditions we were split into groups and given a piece of Shakespearian text to translate into a mini performance. The brief was to be creative and show what we can offer when it comes to ideas and collaboration, so as a small group we tried to really push the creativity- using self made sound effects and elements of physical theatre. We wanted to show a range whilst maintaining a sense of cohesiveness within our piece. We found it helpful as a small group to word storm first and not rush into things randomly, we wanted to create a concept that remained throughout, instead of going to wacky so it became hard to follow. Overall I really enjoyed the audition experience and felt it was another great opportunity to learn more and understand more about how to approach auditions. 

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 

Cast List and filming 

The cast list for our two end of year shows were given to us today- finding out I got the role of Kathryn in Radium girls. I'm very pleased with my role and am excited to tackle some of Kathryns scenes that are quite emotionally stretching, as this is the challenge I felt I next needed  to become a better all rounded performer. Act one scene 7 is a scene in particular that I feel will be a challenge to tackle when playing the character, but I'm really looking forward too it along with understanding and exploring her development from a young girl to a grown women. 

Filming 

I left the session early today to do some filming for a short film I'm working on with some of the film and TV students. It's a really sad but beautiful story so I've been really excited to start working on it. Today was my first day of filming- tackling scene 1, scene 9 and scene 10. We filmed scene 10 at the end of the shooting day as it was the most emotional scene we were going to be filming today, so we made sure that we were already fully in the headspace of our characters. This short film is the first main bit of filming that I've done and even from todays first filming day I'm understanding a lot more about the difference when acting on screen compared to acting on stage, but I'm really excited to learn and slowly understand more throughout this process.

Wednesday 24th April 2024 

Today we went to York Theatre Royal to perform our connections production "shout". This was an extremely exciting day, but also a nerve racking one as it's a really important performance, and an opportunity to show the hard work and dedication we put into this performance. 

When we arrived at the theatre we started on our tech run, this was blocky and messy as the theatre we used at York theatre royal was a lot smaller than theatre we used at collage for our home performance, so this took a bit of getting used to. One of the main things we struggled with was making sure we were centring the set around centre stage, as for some scenes when doing the tech run we ended up staging the performance either too far left or too far right- but this was mainly because of the change in space and after some alterations was quickly fixed. some of the transition were also altered for the space slightly so people could get were they needed to be, some were also changed as new people were filling in as others weren't there so it made it easier for them to alter a few things. Once we finished our tech run, we did a full run through of the show. Although there were a few stops and starts to correct things, it mainly went quite smoothly, so after that run was finished it was time to pack up so the other company Performing could do their tech runs and preparation in the space. 

The performance that night went very well, and we were even informed that another director from the NT had come to watch our performance- which mean we had been flagged up as a high contenders. This news was amazing to hear and stands as a true testament to our hard work putting together the performance. 

Thursday 25th April 2024 

Thursday was a day of sharing the work that has been done so far on our two end of year plays. Because I had to leave earlier for filming on Tuesday  I missed the start of the blocking of the first scene from Radium girls, so came in a bit earlier and spent the morning catching myself up, and running through a few bits with my cast who were there on Tuesday. This was incredibly helpful as it meant I could enter the session prepared and at the same point as everyone else who was there on Tuesday- this prevented me from lagging behind. I'm learning that when it comes to working on a shows there is never any time to go back, so if you are out while things are getting blocked or rehearsed you need to make sure you catch up and enter the rehearsal room at the same point as everyone else. Otherwise you're not just coursing yourself complications, but the wider company, especially if you are a lead character. 

In the opening scene in Radium girls we sing collectively with harmonies to create this very dramatic beginning that is weaved in within the first sections of dialogue. The song that was picked originally to sing ended up sounding a little bit to cheery- which is the opposite of what we want to create, so spent the rest of the afternoon going through a few different songs and experimenting with them, a long with the first scene.