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Category: Acting & Ensemble

Reflection 2021/12/03

1)What did you accomplish today? Did you get through everything on the agenda? What did you not get to finish and why?

Today my group split our roles and answered the nine questions together after reading over the script.

2) What is your plan for each ensemble member between today and the next rehearsal? What should everyone be doing to prepare for next rehearsal?

Next rehearsal we will plan our scene to have a rough image of what it would be like.

3) What is YOUR OWN personal plan to prepare for next rehearsal?

memorize a little bit of my script.

Uta Hagen’s Nine Questions

  1. Who am I?
    Who is your character? Identify all the details: name/age, physical traits, relatives, education, personal opinions, likes, dislikes, hobbies, fears, ethics, and beliefs.

My character is Erika. She is Nate’s sister. She is a teenager who has brunette hair.

  1. What time is it?
    The year, the season, the day, the minute. What is the significance of time?

Summer break during the night.

  1. Where am I?
    Identify the country, the city/town, the neighborhood, the building, the room, the specific area of the room.

St. Claires at an abandoned camping sight.

  1. What surrounds me?
    What is happening in the environment around you? Weather, landscape, people, animate/inanimate objects.

Quiet, abandoned no one near.

  1. What are the given circumstances?
    Identify events in the past, present, future. What has happened, what is happening, what is going to happen?

They are camping at an abandoned camping sight. There is a serial killer who is trying to kill people.

  1. What are my relationships?
    This is more than your relationship with other people. Think about your relationship to objects, characters, and events.

Nate’s sister. Friends with Brooke, Sasha, and Marvin.

  1. What do I want?
    What do you want immediately? What does the character want overall?

Nothing that is identifiable. But she just doesn’t put up with things she dislikes.

  1. What is in my way?
    What are the obstacles to getting what you want?

She meets Pippa the serial killer. But Pippa failed to killer Erika. At last, Erika gets killed by Pippa who got training from her friends Sasha and Marvin.

  1. What do I do to get what I want?
    What actions do you take (both physically and verbally)? What tactics?

There’s nothing my character wants. She just doesn’t seem to care about anything, and she isn’t afraid of the serial killer Pippa.

 

Page to Stage: My Monster and Me

1.You took a children’s book and collaborated to ‘dramatize it’ – make it theatrical – for a specific audience. DISCUSS your role in the development process: What did you contribute? How did you collaborate with your ensemble? What were some successes of that collaboration? 

my role in contributing to create this task was by suggesting movement ideas, dividing the lines, and taking in ideas my peers suggest. When my group was dramatizing the story book, we had challenged because every class we had one member missing. It made it hard for us to communicate and make large progress in class. However, when we were creating this piece I contributed by giving suggestions of what actions my peers can do. For example, the monster could stay on one side of the kid then the other side when the kids turns its face. I also contributed by listening to my peer’s suggestions and taking that to make my role more developed in character. As an ensemble everyone contributed to this piece. We all made suggestions and took in the suggestion to make it a better piece.

2. You performed it for the ES kids: DISCUSS your experience as a performer in this piece: What do you think and feel about your performance and performing for an audience? What new insights did you gain (yourself, theatre, audiences, performances, etc) through this experience?

when I was performing I could see the kid’s face and they had no expression (especially because they had masks on) and it made me feel a little anxious because I was worried that they weren’t enjoying what we were doing. We expected there to be a larger reaction, however, there weren’t many reactions. After the performance I thought “maybe it wasn’t entertaining” but I also thought ” we did the best we could” Overall, I thought my group did pretty well but I also realized it could sometimes be difficult to please the audience and not everything turns out the way you want it to.

3. You reflected as an ensemble (whole group) in the studio afterwards: DISCUSS what new learning or understanding about theatre or the process of creating this piece you gained. What do you now KNOW or UNDERSTAND that you didn’t before?

I realized it was very important to utilize the location you are performing in, and it takes a lot of practice to get used to an abnormal stage. My group definitely didn’t get as much time as the other groups to practice as a whole group. The location where we performed was unique and I wasn’t used to the set up. We also didn’t practice in the location many times, which made it difficult for my group to utilize the location and run the act smoothly. After the performance I know that sometimes you can’t control the audience’s reaction. I also know that it takes a lot of time and effort to create a performance in an unusual, new location.

4. CREATE 3 BULLET POINTS.These are instructions that you could use as a guide if you were to do this type of task again.

–communicate with your teammates and plan what you will do each class

– work efficiently don’t waste time

– practice, practice, practice!

My Monologue – Stanislavsky style”

Hannah

1. To perform the monologue, I cooperated several exercises to develop a well-put monologue. One of the exercises was different ways of expressing your monologue. I would read through my monologue but each time the way I express the monologue would be different. For example, the first time I read through the monologue would read it as if I just won the lottery. The second time I would read the monologue as if I couldn’t hold my anger anymore, and so on. This exercise helped me to develop different emotions throughout the whole monologue. To finalize my monologue, I tried different tones and different volumes to see which way I could express the monologue so that the audience can really feel the emotions coming from the monologue. I practiced over and over repeating the same lines again and again until I felt like this was my final piece.
2. I think I was successful in some aspects of the performance, however, watching over the video made me feel like there could’ve been many things cleaned up or changed. Some things I thought were successful was my voice, I think my voice was projected to the whole class, and what I was saying was clear to the audience. I also think I was successful in expressing my emotions as an actor to the audience. However, I thought my body language wasn’t coherent with my act. My body language doesn’t look professional, and it looks awkward. I also kept on moving my head back and forth, which makes me only pay attention to my neck movement.
3. Expressing your monologues in different ways can help improve my monologue performance by helping me feel the different emotions you could express with the same monologue. This exercise could help me with other monologues in the future that has a different meaning and different emotions.
4. I used to think performing a monologue doesn’t require many skills but now I think in order to perform a successful monologue you need to adapt many skills such as facial expressions, body language, emotions, etc.

Konstantin Stanislavsky

  • Born in Moscow, Russia in 1863 (died:1938)
  • Began an actor and moved on to become a director and teacher
  • parents did not indulge in his passion for theatre, so he changed his name
  • developed a new system of actor training and development-  a new way to approach theatre
  • it took years of experimenting to get to what is now known as the Stanislavsky system.

5 elements of actor preparation

  • relaxation: learning to relax the muscles and eliminate physical tension while performing.
  • concentration: learning to think like an actor and to respond to one’s own imagination.
  • observation: discovering the sensory base of the work, “sense memory” or “affective memory”
  • communication: developing the ability to interact with other performers spontaneously, and with an audience, without violating the world of the play.
  • imagination: The more fertile the actor’s imagination, the more interesting would be the choices made in terms of objective, physical action, and creating the given circumferences around the character.

Improvisation

  1. I used to think that improvisation was only for people who were skilled actors, not for someone who just started theatre work. Now I think that improvisation is something ANYONE can do if they have the courage to make mistakes.
  2. never say no, and it is okay to make mistakes. This will stick with me because I feel like improvisation takes lots of encouragement since you could be afraid to make mistakes and messing them up. If you know that it is okay to make mistakes it is an encouragement for anyone attempting improvisation
  3. I think I did well on adapting to a character. When I was improvising with a partner, we were randomly given a starting line. Then we had to improvise our character and the scene had to make sense. Something that was a struggle for me was creating lines after lines after lines. Because you need to make the lines make sense and open-ended for your partner to add on to.  I think practicing more would help me improve in improvisation.

Qualities Of An Affective Ensemble Member

1. Risk Takers (willing to be open-minded to new things/ideas)
4. Focused (concentrate on what you’re doing)

I need to work on Risk Taking and being Focused. I can take risks when I’m in a very usual environment however, I don’t usually take risks at school because I like to keep it safe. I occasionally can’t focus especially when something is bothering me, or if I’m concerned.

I will try to prove these skills by reminding myself every time before class that this is “drama class” it is where you focus on drama and only drama.  Also reminding myself that it is ok if you fail, no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. Also having unjudgemental teammates would encourage me to take risks.

My earliest Theatre Memory

My earliest Theatre memory was from when I was in 3rd grade back in New Zealand. My mom had signed me up for this musical camp. You go there for a week, every day and you work with everyone else in the camp to create a musical! I attended the program with my friend Amy! Amy and I love to dance, sing during our free time. Amy was a confident and extroverted friend, while I was shy and extremely introverted. Amy and I decided to audition for a solo part in the musical. I was so nervous during the audition I was looking down the whole time, I felt so embarrassed. We both, however, I was so shy throughout all the acts. My voice was barely heard, I hid behind everyone else, and I just couldn’t take it seriously. I honestly thought it was straight-up embarrassing when I was on stage but when I saw other people, older kids, on stage they were so admirable. I didn’t enjoy it during the moment and whenever I look back at the videos I wish. could go back in time and do the whole musical again. That’s my earliest Theatre memory.

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