Unit 7

Unit 7
When I move on to higher education i would like to go to guildford school of acting. I started with many skill including: spacial awareness, confidence and articulation. I have improved in all of these but the area I think I have improved the most in is my confidence which will help in all areas of drama school to begin with it help in the audtion and as I progress further along the course i will use this in each and every performance. As i plan to go to guildford school of acting I'm going to have to put a lot of hard work and energy in being the best actor i can be this includes going to workshops outside of collage by the acting temple alongside doing film work with the broken hearted youth theatre but inside of the classroom I will be in every lesson, turning up on time as well as giving 100%, 100% of the time with this and more preparation on my monologue I will have a fighting chance to be in guildford.
For my monologue I chose the courtroom scene from hacksaw ridge this is the moment in the film where Private Desmond Doss is being put on trial for his beliefs. I believe that I performed this well but I have lot to work on. To begin with I should pick a play rather than a film,  I should mime the thought process while creating more movement as the scene felt very static. However I was praised on  not using an accent and my characterization.

Unit 6, Macbeth

Unit 6

Macbeth 

Context

For our Unit 6 we were assigned to perform the play of Macbeth. The first thing that we did was a read through of the script with the whole of the class. After doing the read through we were given the opportunity to request which role we wanted within the play. Personally, I requested to be director along with playing a small part because I wanted to further develop my skills as a director as I had tried it during a previous project and enjoyed it. I also had a vision in my mind of how I wanted it to look and wanted to express this. The teacher assigned our roles and split us into three groups, Blue, Black and Pink, with me being part of the Pink group. My roles in Macbeth where King Duncan and Young Seyward. 

Research

William Shakespeare was born on 26th of April in 1564 even though this was not actually his birthday, but due to a lack of records it is unknown what his actual birthdate is. This however, was the date William Shakespeare was Christened on. The reason that there is no record of his birth is due to the fact that he came from a poor, average sized family for that time. His family lived in a small village called Stratford-upon-Avon which is located just outside of London. His father worked as a glover to provide for the family while his mother stayed at home to take care of her nine children as all women did in the 16th century. With William being the middle child, he never received as much attention from his parents, until the age of seven when he went to school for the first time and got kicked out of his English class because he corrected the teacher. William went on to marry Anne Hathaway, who was an actress, at the age of 18. She was the inspiration for a lot of his sonnets, plays and poems. They had three children together but due to unknown reasons, his son passed away at the age of 11. Although it is unknown when Shakespeare's first play was ever written, the first play to be performed was called The Taming Of The Shrew which was approximately between 1580 and 1590. After this Shakespeare's popularity and recognition grew like wildfire. This is evidenced by the fact that between 1590 and 1600 he wrote 18 plays. These include some of his most famous works as; Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and Much Ado About Nothing. Whilst including his lesser known work, but still phenomenal pieces such as; The Comedies of Errors, Loves Labour's Lost and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

However, the play that we've been focussing on is Macbeth. This is one of Shakespeare's well known tragedies and is considered to be one of the finest works in English literature. The play was first performed in 1606. This release alone showed the genius of Shakespeare due to the fact that James VI was the monarch of England and had been crowned James I, king of Scotland. Shakespeare wrote the play after he had been asked to be the royal play writer. He never truly gave a response but the play Macbeth can be interpreted as him not wanting to give up control over the stories he could write and publish. Macbeth can also be seen as Shakespeare having a 'dig' at James VI as he was a very superstitious person. Shakespeare wrote Macbeth about the current situations in England like the witch trials, James VI being terrified of actual witchcraft and being the king of Scotland. Whilst addressing the current situation, he also made his plays an escape from the tragedies that were actually going on at the time. 

The play of Macbeth takes place in the 11th century in a time when everyone tried to get a piece of Scotland. The ruling king of Scotland, Duncan, is fighting with England, Sweden, Norway and rebellions within Scotland. As well as having good captains such as Banquo, Malcolm and Macbeth, Duncan was a strategical genius and managed to win all wars and keep Scotland a free country. 

Stanislavski

Constantin Stanislavski was a Russian stage actor and director who developed the naturalistic performance technique known as the "Stanislavsky method," or method acting.

Born in 1863 in Moscow, Russia, Constantin Stanislavski started working in theater as a teen, going on to become an acclaimed thespian and director of stage productions. He co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre in 1897 and developed a performance process known as method acting, allowing actors to use their personal histories to express authentic emotion and create rich characters. Continually honing his theories throughout his career, he died in Moscow in 1938.

Constantin Stanislavski was born Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev in Moscow, Russia, in January 1863. (Sources offer varying information on the exact day of his birth.) He was part of a wealthy clan who loved theater: His maternal grandmother was a French actress and his father constructed a stage on the family's estate.

Alekseyev started acting at the age of 14, joining the family drama circle. He developed his theatrical skills considerably over time, performing with other acting groups while working in his clan's manufacturing business. In 1885, he gave himself the stage moniker of Stanislavski—the name of a fellow actor he'd met. He married teacher Maria Perevoshchikova three years later, and she would join her husband in the serious study and pursuit of acting.

During the Moscow Art Theatre's early years, Stanislavski worked on providing a guiding structure for actors to consistently achieve deep, meaningful and disciplined performances. He believed that actors needed to inhabit authentic emotion while on stage and, to do so, they could draw upon feelings they'd experienced in their own lives. Stanislavski also developed exercises that encouraged actors to explore character motivations, giving performances depth and an unassuming realism while still paying attention to the parameters of the production. This technique would come to be known as the "Stanislavski method" or "the Method."

The cherry orchard

The cherry orchard is a pre revolutionary Russian play written by Anton Chekhov released in 1903. The Cherry orchard is a very ambitious play that strives to change and being to light the social issue and effects that is cause by these issues, by looking at things like equality, grief, and poverty.
The area of inequality that is bought by the play is gender and how the females of the time were given very little power and even when they had the power it was taken from them as so as possible. this is shown in the play by the relationship between Ranyevskaya and Lopakhin which is that Ranyevskaya own the land which the cherry orchard is on but is not willing to do anything with the land showing a stereotype of women being less than men in ideas as Lopakhin is willing to selling a potion of the land so they can continue paying the mortgage. this has a large impact on the social status of women at the time as it held up the stereotype of being useless and make poor descensions
Grief is a main theme through out the play due to the implication of ranyevskaya losing he son creating the issue of her leaving which is the main area of effect in the play
poverty is equal shown thorough out the play by how each character has been through some sort of poverty in there lives
In the performance we tried to portray all of these by giving it a light and gentle tone to drive home the more serious issue that the play brings up

Evalution

In my performance I improve a certain set of skills these include comedic timing, directorial and memory skills. the comedic timing was used by changing the original Russian pre revolution comedy to a slapstick comedy which was directed to our audience of prodomantly teenagers. This meant that we put a small spin on the comedy that was already in place and made it more modern as I believed that the audience would remain engaged while also having the serious social terms the play brings up being prevelant durning the performeance.
As I begun looking and researching the cherry orchard. I very quickly realised why the play was and still is so popular. With a smaller role, I took a more directorial postion within our group this meant that I was able to remoled the cherry orchiad to a point where it work in modorn socity, but as this was my first directorial role I had a lot to learn this meant i made a few mistakes but learnt that i must listen to my actors more than anything else so we as a collective had an understanding of what was going on.
My memory is a skill i didnt realise i was struggling with until i started the work on the greek theature wit heach rehsuall adding more and more technical scenes i had to know them inside and out this meant i would write them everywhere to constantly remind myself which worked but going in to the cherry orchard my mermory had improved to a point where i no longer needed to wirte things down as the retained in my mind.

Unit 3

The various different roles with the job market of acting and general performing arts are extensive, to say the least. The biggest cornerstones to all areas of the performing arts world are director, producer, caster, make-up designer, costume design, lighting and sound. However, there are individual roles that are unique to each division of the performing arts world. Within the dancing industry, there are dancers, choreographers, personal trainers and nutritionist. Furthermore, the singing industry’s unique roles include singers,vocal coaches, composers and musician. Finally the medium of actor has unique roles as well these include actor, stage manager, script writer and dialect coach. These are just a few of the jobs in the entertainment business.

In order to work as an actor, my chosen career path would be to go into a drama school. To be exact, the Guilford School of Acting which is one of the most prestigious universities of acting in London.

The health and safety of the voice with an actor is mainly focused around lubrication of the vocal cords along with exercising the voice as much as possible but have the schedule of once in the morning, mid-day, and during the evening you can ensure that your vocal muscles are stretched and that they remain like that. In terms of lubrication, it is important to drink lots of water to allow projection and skills like this to be clear and precise while preventing damage to the vocal cords. Other ways to prevent damage to the cords are to not smoke, drink alcohol or use drugs as this will cause irreparable damage.  

Antigone

Antigone is a Greek tragedy written by Sophocles in some time between 442 and 440. This is considered to be one of the last plays he wrote. Antigone is a textbook example of how to develop one short episode from a myth-story to a full-scale tragedy articulating universal themes and meanings, now this was done by having the revolutionist being a female character which was rarely seen but due to the fact that Antigone was still played by a man some historians believe it did not have as much of an impact on the society as Sophocles had hoped. Along with this being an early example of David and Goliath as the small weak character of Antigone stood against the king of Thebes Kreon. Sophocles was able to use this to his advantage as the audience was expecting Antigone to fail a lot more than she actually did.

Within the specific scene that we were given was a conversation between Kreon, Antigone and Ismene where Kreon is confronting Antigone about her treason, during which, Ismene walks in. Kreon is filled with fury, to show this we had Kreon originally circling her like a piece of meat. Until I decided that Kreon, as the king, would attack her so we changed it to having Kreon pushing her towards the ground to show his dominance over her. This also showed the audience that Kreon is the one with the power in this scene from a very early stage. After this, we move towards Kreon accusing Ismene which, once again, shows that Kreon is a very powering and physical character. Within this, we also develop Antigone and Ismene’s relationship by having Antigone rush to help Ismene but Kreon stops her, proving his ability to divide them while also showing that he is always in control and if not, quickly puts himself in a position where he is.

After Ismene admits to her crime, Kreon moves to the left side of the stage while Antigone and Ismene have a conversation and use small touches to display how close they are as sisters while Kreon, whom at this point is still on stage left, is insulting both characters with gestures showing that Kreon has absolutely no love for the women who are in his company. After a brief conversation between Antigone and Ismene, Kreon steps in to reassert his control in the situation by discrediting what both Antigone and Ismene have said by calling them ‘completely mad.’ This develops into a conversation between Kreon and Ismene where Ismene is trying to get through to Kreon but Kreon shuts her out and, for the majority of the conversation, doesn’t even acknowledge her existence.

During this, Kreon says, “Absolutely: there are other fields for him to plow” which shows a very sexist and careless king who sees women as meat and nothing else. However, while this is happening Kreon is slowly losing his composure and after Antigone attempts to strike Kreon when he calls her worthless, she spits on him. In this small moment before Kreon’s next line, Antigone is in control and has all of the power. For the first time in this scene, Kreon is not in control and as a solution to this, Kreon bellows at Ismene to get her to stop. He then turns on Antigone like a viper and pushes his presence and power towards her and orders his guards to take them both in.

In Kreon’s final line, he steps towards the audience, breaking the fourth wall, he stares at a single member of the audience, and in a vile, cruel, calm manner states, “Even the bravest will cut and run once they see death coming for their lives.” This has multiple effects, the first being it truly shows Kreon as the one in control alongside the connotations that he himself is death or controls death. The second is that it sends a ripple through the audience which makes them feel uncomfortable which, again, shows how Kreon holds so much power but finally, it shows Antigone and Ismene that no one shall escape the wrath of Kreon.