Week Three: Mon 23 September – Weds 25 September 2013

At the beginning of this week we began with another set of monologue performances.  On our Acting Skills and Techniques lesson, last week, we were assigned homework, to learn a new monologue given to us by our teacher, and perform it to the class the following week.  My monologue was from the play ‘The Gods Weep’ written by Dennis Kelly, and my character was Colm.  Just like last week two students were being reviewed by another student and rate their positives and negatives.  The purpose of all this was the same as last week, to see a student’s performance skills and see the reviewers understanding of drama strategies.  Each performance was mostly successful.

After our break, we came to our third singing lesson and this lesson had us presenting a homework in which we can understand another useful technique for a singing performance.  The homework was to research into the five singing vowels.  The singing vowels are very similar to the literacy vowels: A, E, I, O, and U.  Except these type of vowels are similar in the sense that they sound the same but the method is to put more enthusiasm as you sing them in lyrics.  The purpose of this was to get a understanding as to how a singer would pronounce their strong words, and identify certain techniques, within their singing. 

Our third Art Industry lesson had us look at some important techniques, for drama.  Such as looking at character analysis and development, as well as taking notes for when it comes to our own performance.  Note such as knowing the time period of the play, the authors intentions and plot of the play.  All of these notes have a key importance for an actor, for when it comes to a big performance and an actor has to learn their character inside out in order to give the best performance.

 

The next day we began with a lesson of Development of Drama.  Now in this lesson we were looking at the development of physical theatre.  Looking at what it is and how it originated.  Like drama itself physical theatre came from ancient Greece and was expanded over time, but became very popular when the actor Jacques Lecoq became famous for his use of physical theatre, and then founded in Paris L’Ecole Internationale De Theatre Jacques Lecoq in 1951.  As well as its origins we were to look at its methods.  How the technique behind physical theatre was for an actor to perform a mime performance and make it believable for the audience.  This all came in handy for when it came to our Developing Physical Theatre lessons, understanding a little bit more about where it originated from and how the technique is use by an actor.

After the written work our teacher then gave us a more practical piece of work.  Our teacher gave us a task to see if we were capable of performing a monologue within a group.  Splitting the class into two groups, our teacher gave us a monologue from Greek theatre.  In our group we were to decide how to perform it and how to present our lines.  This was a technique to see how our team building had developed from week one and see each students understanding of drama strategies in order to present the monologue.

At the end of the day our last lesson was our third dance Movement lesson.  In this lesson we began with our warm up technique which we learn in the previous lessons.  Then we were introduced to some new dance moves which would come in handy for our next lesson.  But the key point of this lesson was to perform and understand our warm up technique.

 

The next day we had our third Developing Physical Theatre Performance lesson, and in this lesson we began with some different tasks.  The lesson began like our last two lessons with the warm up, focusing challenge then the teacher told us to think of a joke.  A simple joke which was to be told in front of the whole class.  Then the teacher called us up one by one and he asked us to tell our joke, and without showing us he made some note on our performance.  And without any explanation he told us to repeat our joke and he kept making notes.  Once every student had performed their joke we all sat in a half circle and our teacher revealed what he was taking notes on.  Beginning by telling us about the three types of clowns in theatre.  The first type is Naïve – a type of clown that is childlike, anxious and sorry when he tells a joke.  The second type is August – a clown which is a bit angry and arrogant after he tells a joke.  And the third type is Surreal – a type of clown that is off the wall crazy when he tell his joke.  Our teacher telling us these types of clowns lead to him introducing that he was taking notes on what type of clown we are.  The type of clown I am was a Naïve clown.  This seemed, at first irrelevant, until we were given our first assignment.

Our assignment was the task of preparing for a performance of a play called ‘Scaramouche Jones’.  Which tells the story of an old clown who is about to die and is reflecting on his life.  Therefore the purpose of the lesson was to see what type of clown we were in order for us to relate more to the character of Scaramouche Jones.  The assignment is designed for each student to become this one character and see how each of us is capable of portraying him.