The process for TIE was quite long. We knew that TIE was about using theatre to educate youths on crime/drugs, this was what we looked at in the first lesson. For TIE we had to research what TIE was, which is all about using theatre to educate people on knife crime, drugs and other important lessons to teach youths in key stage 4 to let us have a better understanding of the project. We then for the next lesson was given different topics of TIE which was given to groups within the class. We had to devise pieces based on these subjects. Ours was social media, so as a group we talked about what's bad within social media and how it can make people feel we used Instagram to show this as we knew that it would make sense for our audience, for key stage 4 students that's what we wanted to set it for. Miss Day helped us create this by giving some initial ideas about adding up our likes for our 3 best pictures and one of the comments and just repeat them over and over again which we did. This was to show how people are put across on Instagram and about body image, in the end of the performance we all came in for a group picture all posing and saying "selfie" . We presented it to the other groups at the end of the lesson. The next lesson our tutor Miss Day introduced a script for a short film called faceless. She explained that it was about knife crime and based on a boy called Tyrone, throughout the short film he is battling whether to become a hoodlum boy with his friends or to be a ordinary boy and impress the girl he has been crushing on. In the end he goes to a party only to find out the girl he is interested in is a smartly dressed boy .Tyrone becomes angry and stabs the boy. It ends with the victim having no face lying on the floor dead who then turns into Tyrone .This is a use of a warning of an old woman saying your all killing yourselves. So as a class we agreed that we wanted to do this short film but turn it into a play and make all the main boy characters into girls. The rehearsal process was slow and not very progressive. For the show we all tried to rewrite scenes and add scenes. In the end people got cut from the performance because of certain problems. Because of cuts there were no boys in our performance which caused a problem for scenes, with the girl Tyrone 'Tyra' who was crushing on a boy. In the end as a group we decided to make Tyra a closet lesbian. This was quite hard to adapt because we had to get Montana to rewrite the script with the new scenes that we came up with. Miss Day had to remove us from performing to the schools she had chosen because our performance wasn't ready as it wasn't up to a good enough standard.
Throughout rehearsals at the beginning people were talking, we were taking too long to finish a scene because everyone had ideas and some people didn't show up for rehearsals. So in the end that is why Miss Day had to cut people who weren't pulling there weight and let the people who were to get a good grade. Rehearsals after that was hard because of cutting scenes and working with what we got, because people got cut out so late into the performance we had to work hard fast which is why rehearsals were slow and sometimes weren't very progressive
My production role for the performance was to organise the AV which set the scenes in the background .For example Tyra's sitting room, I was in charge on setting scenes with the AV and sound effects. These worked and flowed well with the scenes. I worked with Darren one of the technicians, during rehearsals and after college. Darren helped me edit the sound effects and videos for the AV which worked well but didn't sound the best.This was because they were downloaded from you tube but they still sound good.
Initially I was the old woman in the performance but it was thought that it would be better for me to take the part of the mugger which I agreed on. My peers gave me good constructive criticism throughout rehearsals which worked well on how I developed the part which I improvised as there was no dialogue for this part in the script the criticism was helpful because I could see where I was going wrong, I don't think I felt as confident with the character but I knew that my character had to be confident and threatening. So I just gave it my all and tried to be confident, which I think in the end worked well because I felt threatening as my character rehearsals helped me develop this for the final performance.
The audience understood the plot , the only criticism was that the ending was rushed. We understood this and in future we would act on this criticism and rehearse more on our timing and add more dialogue. The lighting worked well in the scenes and set the mood. For example the club scene we used disco lights to create a party mood. The staging worked well and was spread out so the audience had plenty to look at. This was a slight challenge as we didn't have as many people that we wanted but worked to the best of our ability with what we could use during rehearsals, we thought of how we could spread everyone out but make it look good instead of small we still spreader scenes out even with our numbers of classmates.
Hopefully we have learned more must be put into rehearsals and must be more of a team effort from the beginning throughout rehearsals, and not last minute. This would have enabled us to finish more clearly, not rushed and with more dialogue.
When we got the script we knew that this piece would be fit to perform to a key stage 4 audience which is year 9, 10 and 11 we had to cut out swear words because that wouldn't be promoting a good image for young children and the image of our course. We all discussed how we could turn the short film script into a scripted play. We agreed on what scenes could be added so there would be more to show and make it into a strong performance. The reason why we thought it was good for key stage 4 is that it wasn't a corny TIE piece about drugs it was realistic and sent a powerful message to youths. Even though we had to adapt it to a different story line with lesbianism we still wanted to keep that strong message as much as we could about knife crime. As it was adapted for lesbianism we added another TIE subject which is sexuality and deciding who you are. I think in the end our message was still really strong we worked well with what we could work with.
The performance fit our target audience because all the important messages in the story where about sexuality and peer pressure. This we felt is what youths in key stage 4 are going through at this age. This is why this play had all of those important messages about being who you are, not being scared of your sexuality and not to get involved with knife crime or cracking under peer pressure.
The HND's at the end of our final performance asked us what we thought of our performance, we all said that we knew it could have been better than what it was and could have been much longer. They all said that it was too short which we all understood, because of the sudden changes of people being cut and why we had to cut scenes that didn't make sense. They gave us a lot of negative feedback which we all understood because we knew we could have done better within rehearsals to make the performance longer. The positive feedback told us that the message of the plot of the play was clear which is what we all hoped for. So at least we knew that the message was clear, that the staging was good ,apart from the last scene .In the club scene when we all bundled together, they said that this looked messy which we agreed with but we knew that if we had more rehearsal it could have been better.
So in general the feedback was positive and negative which we kind of expected on how obviously we could have done better but it was good to keep it short in a way, because we don't want to bore our audiences, which we used to know it's horrible to sit and watch an hour long or just a long performance in general, so it was good to keep it short and sweet this way we would have our younger audiences attention throughout the performance, and not become bored. Nether the less We understood the criticism and that we would take this as a learning curve and try much more in our FMP.
Sunday 22 February 2015
Saturday 20 December 2014
contemporary Theatre performance evaluation
What went well?
The blocking was strong at the start of the performance we all knew it very well it flowed very well, props were effective like the diary for example we passed it around to the person who was playing Rachel, my lines were delivered strong and with character. The way we told the story was c,ear and told in an abstract physical theatre style which is what made our performance different and strong.
What went wrong?
Towards the end the blocking became weak but that is because certain members of our group didn't come to rehearsals to help create new blocking that would have been stronger but they didn't remember the new blocking I gave to them, all of us had to have our scripts on stage with us, which showed weakness. We also had a member missing from our group, Shaine she had an accident and wasn't able to attend the assessment so we had to miss her parts of lines.
Overall on the performance?
The beginning was strong characters was strong the story we was telling in our own perspective and blocking went well and you could see this clearly. Our abstract physical theatre was strong and clear through the start, we should of worked on the end scene more but it was difficult organising rehearsals.
What would you do next time to make it better?
I think I would of rehearsed my lines more so that towards the end I was more confident with them, as a group we should of tried to organise more rehearsals so that our blocking would have been stronger throughout the performance and I think we know that as a group, but we still tried our best and tried to perform it as our characters to the best of our ability which I think was strong even though we had a group member missing.
The blocking was strong at the start of the performance we all knew it very well it flowed very well, props were effective like the diary for example we passed it around to the person who was playing Rachel, my lines were delivered strong and with character. The way we told the story was c,ear and told in an abstract physical theatre style which is what made our performance different and strong.
What went wrong?
Towards the end the blocking became weak but that is because certain members of our group didn't come to rehearsals to help create new blocking that would have been stronger but they didn't remember the new blocking I gave to them, all of us had to have our scripts on stage with us, which showed weakness. We also had a member missing from our group, Shaine she had an accident and wasn't able to attend the assessment so we had to miss her parts of lines.
Overall on the performance?
The beginning was strong characters was strong the story we was telling in our own perspective and blocking went well and you could see this clearly. Our abstract physical theatre was strong and clear through the start, we should of worked on the end scene more but it was difficult organising rehearsals.
What would you do next time to make it better?
I think I would of rehearsed my lines more so that towards the end I was more confident with them, as a group we should of tried to organise more rehearsals so that our blocking would have been stronger throughout the performance and I think we know that as a group, but we still tried our best and tried to perform it as our characters to the best of our ability which I think was strong even though we had a group member missing.
contemporary Theatre 9
On pages 38 and 39 we repeated again the 'perfect' American garden scene with rachels mother and father played by sky and Chris is in the garden reacting to the email rachel has sent back to them they both comfort each other clearly showing the relationship and how they are worried for rachel.whilst this is happening Montana is typing up the email to the mother and father, this scene is a split scene between the mother and father and rachel.
On the last paragraph on page 38 rachel is talking to her dad saying if he wants to pretend she's actually living a happy life then do so because that's what she likes to do to distract herself from the recurring horror in Palestine, whilst this is being spoken by me Chris is putting members of our group into different positions with the examples rachel has been giving him for example "I am in a Hollywood movie, or a sitcom starring Michael J fox".
The very last scene we worked on was all about rachel going to the bought pantry with her friend Colin, ifs all about the 9/11 incident in America she hears this in a shop on the radio whilst in Palestine to show this we simply had everyone shopping around whilst I was talking then we all shared the lines from "I convinced Colin" up to the line "I figured if it was world war III" when we each say these lines we sit on the floor in a line as if she was sitting on the pavement out side the shop looking very concerned and shocked with Colin, we paused for 3 seconds and then all shrugged. That's how we ended our script to really give that final message of the terror that Rachel is trying to stop and how maybe she's beginning to become used to terror having been in Palestine for so long.
I think this ending is strong we hope to give an impact on our audience.
contemporary Theatre 8
So we started off from where we left off on page 36 and 37, this scene is all about rachel making a check list and asking her friend to come and visit her, so Emmy who at this point is playing Rachel is making a check list on the things she has to either set up of do so as Emmy is saying her lines standing central all of us in the back or round the side act out the errands she needs to do.
The next scene which we also recreated at the rehearsal was page 37 which is all about the water supply for Rafah being shot at to workers and activist and receiving an email from her father, so we thought to repeat the scene from page 29 but instead of civilians being knocked out instead they are shot out to show the progression of terror through the play, this scene are my lines which I read out and the repeated scene is at the back of me, we thought that repetition would be f festive especially since the next time it's worse.
The next scene was rachels dad email, who is played by Chris he plays the father who has more of a close bond with rachel and let's her make her own decisions unlike her mother who worries a lot about rachel which doesn't mean the father doesn't, anyway Chris says all this whilst drinking a bear and having a barbecue with the mother on the hammock just like the previous scene this is again to highlight different world's through blocking.
The next scene which we also recreated at the rehearsal was page 37 which is all about the water supply for Rafah being shot at to workers and activist and receiving an email from her father, so we thought to repeat the scene from page 29 but instead of civilians being knocked out instead they are shot out to show the progression of terror through the play, this scene are my lines which I read out and the repeated scene is at the back of me, we thought that repetition would be f festive especially since the next time it's worse.
The next scene was rachels dad email, who is played by Chris he plays the father who has more of a close bond with rachel and let's her make her own decisions unlike her mother who worries a lot about rachel which doesn't mean the father doesn't, anyway Chris says all this whilst drinking a bear and having a barbecue with the mother on the hammock just like the previous scene this is again to highlight different world's through blocking.
Contemporary Theatre 7
Contemporary Theatre
Originally our blocking for pages 34 and 35 which is all about the emails that Rachel sends to her mother and father so we wanted to keep it quite simple at first it was going to be me sitting in the middle Shaine to my left and sky to my right, I was going to react to the emails from Rachel’s mother in this scene played by (Shaine and sky) and then respond and they would do the same with my emails I think we may have had a small scene playing in the background acting out the emails but we changed that in rehearsals we changed the whole next scenes after page 34 and 35 which didn't really go well because of people not turning up to rehearsals, in rehearsals which me and some others of our group turned up to we changed the scene completely we wanted to show the difference between Rachel's parents world and Palestinian world . So in the new blocking we had Sky and Shaine in a 'hammock' living in a luxury world talking to Rachel and with her husband having a barbecue. Me and Montana who was playing Rachel who at this point in the script are staying with family's in Palestine who offered to take her in and care for her, she talks about how she and a family who she is staying with have to all share a a room with the parents so to show this we had all of us from our group apart from Shaine and sky to bundle up and be asleep to represent the squished room, So because me and Montana hare lines in this scene whenever one if us spoke we would sit up and pretend to be on our computers replying to our mother, We thought this would be realistic and really dynamic with how we were showing two types of world's.
Originally our blocking for pages 34 and 35 which is all about the emails that Rachel sends to her mother and father so we wanted to keep it quite simple at first it was going to be me sitting in the middle Shaine to my left and sky to my right, I was going to react to the emails from Rachel’s mother in this scene played by (Shaine and sky) and then respond and they would do the same with my emails I think we may have had a small scene playing in the background acting out the emails but we changed that in rehearsals we changed the whole next scenes after page 34 and 35 which didn't really go well because of people not turning up to rehearsals, in rehearsals which me and some others of our group turned up to we changed the scene completely we wanted to show the difference between Rachel's parents world and Palestinian world . So in the new blocking we had Sky and Shaine in a 'hammock' living in a luxury world talking to Rachel and with her husband having a barbecue. Me and Montana who was playing Rachel who at this point in the script are staying with family's in Palestine who offered to take her in and care for her, she talks about how she and a family who she is staying with have to all share a a room with the parents so to show this we had all of us from our group apart from Shaine and sky to bundle up and be asleep to represent the squished room, So because me and Montana hare lines in this scene whenever one if us spoke we would sit up and pretend to be on our computers replying to our mother, We thought this would be realistic and really dynamic with how we were showing two types of world's.
Thursday 18 December 2014
contemporary Theatre 6
In this lesson we wanted to continue with the blocking so we started with Montana small scene in the script to summarise she is talking about life and death and the different lives people live terror wise to show this we had two cloths to symbolise life and death for death we had a black Cape which Gian luca wears and we had a white Cape to symbolise life which Chris wears. Montana stands in the centre reading her lines Chris is to her left Gian luca to her right on the line "the difference between Hitler and my mother" Emmy steps forward symbolising the mother, on the line "the difference between Whitney Houston and a Russian mother" me, Shaine and Sky stand forward I pose signing symbolising Whitney Houston and Shaine and Sky play the Russian mother and her son dying we hold these positions until my line "And I knew back then" in which everyone circles round me shrugging and shaking there head because my lines is rachel talking about how she knows that her whole life is going to amount to one shrug so we thought it would be really effective that the whole group would circle round me to stress and add more of an effect to the message we was trying to convey about the shrugging because we feel that Rachel felt quite strongly about how people in Palestine reacted to the terror with a sort of shrug attitude.
The next scene we worked on was all about the tufah checkpoint which is all about the citizens wanting to go through and start there jobs or who have errands to do it's to show to the audience how long people have to wait just to go to there jobs which they should have the right to do , so we created a simple spread out licking to show this chris stands in the centre if the room to represent the checkpoint which let's citizens through he wears a white cloth to create a wall through his body, to represent the wall and a soldier. Me, Emmy and Shaine play the women we stand on the right hand side of the stage because Rachel in the script says "women and kids on right men on left" so of course we put Gian Luca, Sky and Montana on the left to play the boys and the lines on page 32 was our wue lines to either go through or wait, for example "the women kneel, stand up again, and return " on this Gian Luca runs forward miming a yell to us the women and we kneel the. Stand up and go back to our original positions. After this short sequence me, Sky, Gian Luca are trying to reach over chris looking in the other side to resemble the people who want to to visit families or go to there jobs and university's you can see this when Rachel says "this means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can't." Whilst we are on the side of begging to go over Montana , Shaine and Emmy are looking back at us or trying to look over the wall upset and missing lived ones , we thought it was interesting to show it from this perspective because your seeing both point of views and how it's effecting everyone with the checkpoint.
The last scene which follows straight after the checkpoint scene on pages 32 & 33 Emmys lines are next and her scene is all about how she has left rafah to stay in Palestine she talks about being I'll and a family taking care if her especially a woman who reminds her to keep in contact with her mother we showed this by Shaine who plays the woman comforting Emmy. Emmy is playing a sick Rachel in this scene and we showed this by Shaine simply walking her forward from the check point comforts her and cares for her and walks away this is all during Emmy's lines
Next lesson try and get more scenes blocked keep trying hard
The last scene which follows straight after the checkpoint scene on pages 32 & 33 Emmys lines are next and her scene is all about how she has left rafah to stay in Palestine she talks about being I'll and a family taking care if her especially a woman who reminds her to keep in contact with her mother we showed this by Shaine who plays the woman comforting Emmy. Emmy is playing a sick Rachel in this scene and we showed this by Shaine simply walking her forward from the check point comforts her and cares for her and walks away this is all during Emmy's lines
Next lesson try and get more scenes blocked keep trying hard
Contemporary Theatre 5
Contemporary Theatre
We started to develop more blocking this lesson on Emmy’s scene on the new IDF tower in Rafah, we obviously wanted something to symbolise the towers so we had Sky and Chris as the towers and Gian luca as the new tower, we wanted to show how Rachel (Emmy) was slightly scared and worried about the new tower so to show this we had Gian luca stand with a white sheet over him and Sky and Chris reveal him to the public whilst Emy reacts to this me and Shaine who are doing our laundry are just shrugging it off and confused to why she is reacting the way she is, this is to put more emphasis on the fact of how used to all this terror the citizens of Palestine are, also while this is happening Montana walks around hanging round banners as an activist with Emmy.
The next scene which is Sky's lines is all about how at 10pm people get shot down to show this we had Montana as the shooter watching over me, Emmy and Gian luca as if I was conducting an interview meaning I was playing Rachel and interviewing some citizens, Chris and Shaine symbolise the clock striking 10 on the line "but after about 10pm" that is our ques to check our watches and run out of the interview, when I run out I don't get shot obviously because I'm playing Rachel but Gian luca and Emmy do, after that scene ends we all end with a shrug with is something we do for the continuity for the play.
The last scene that we worked on was Shaine's lines, to summarise this part it's about how the media is telling everyone how people have been protesting in the UK and the USA we showed this by Shaine watching the TV reacting to me reporting on the TV the staging for this was all of us facing the front, Sky, Emmy and Gian luca protesting representing the USA and UK citizens, Chris creating a background by holding a white sheet behind me, and Montana played the person recording me, who was the only one with back to the audience this scene was very spread out.
This lesson was very productive we got a lot done and we plan to get much more scenes blocked next lesson
We started to develop more blocking this lesson on Emmy’s scene on the new IDF tower in Rafah, we obviously wanted something to symbolise the towers so we had Sky and Chris as the towers and Gian luca as the new tower, we wanted to show how Rachel (Emmy) was slightly scared and worried about the new tower so to show this we had Gian luca stand with a white sheet over him and Sky and Chris reveal him to the public whilst Emy reacts to this me and Shaine who are doing our laundry are just shrugging it off and confused to why she is reacting the way she is, this is to put more emphasis on the fact of how used to all this terror the citizens of Palestine are, also while this is happening Montana walks around hanging round banners as an activist with Emmy.
The next scene which is Sky's lines is all about how at 10pm people get shot down to show this we had Montana as the shooter watching over me, Emmy and Gian luca as if I was conducting an interview meaning I was playing Rachel and interviewing some citizens, Chris and Shaine symbolise the clock striking 10 on the line "but after about 10pm" that is our ques to check our watches and run out of the interview, when I run out I don't get shot obviously because I'm playing Rachel but Gian luca and Emmy do, after that scene ends we all end with a shrug with is something we do for the continuity for the play.
The last scene that we worked on was Shaine's lines, to summarise this part it's about how the media is telling everyone how people have been protesting in the UK and the USA we showed this by Shaine watching the TV reacting to me reporting on the TV the staging for this was all of us facing the front, Sky, Emmy and Gian luca protesting representing the USA and UK citizens, Chris creating a background by holding a white sheet behind me, and Montana played the person recording me, who was the only one with back to the audience this scene was very spread out.
This lesson was very productive we got a lot done and we plan to get much more scenes blocked next lesson
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