Physical Theatre - Amy Taylor

Peer Performance Evaluation.

The highlight performance for me was Eve/Lori's group and Danny/Laura's group.

These groups were the highlight because:

Eve and Loris group was completely out the box they actually acted there character out with Lori being Alexander 'Alexander Technique' and Eve being Feldenkrais 'Feldenkrais method' , Also they had props such as the toy skeleton  sweets and a white board with lots of details on and I always work better with tangible things. The detail they put in was brilliant, with that they set it out brilliantly with the detail being at the start and then practical towards the end which kept us engaged which was similar to mine and jades performance.

Also they performed it with confidence and this was important because it helped me to believe in what they were saying was the truth.

From this performance I have learnt that I need to keep my back much straighter to maintain a good posture for the future, this i will practice using the 'Alexander Technique' getting out the chair.

Danny and Laura's group was brilliant in particular because they did 3 workshops which no other group had done before also they related each workshop to acting which was vital for me to understand why we were doing it, the best workshop for me was the 'Downton Abbey' workshop which was related to Alexander’s technique about posture and so on. Also they used us in every workshop and made it a very creative seminar and stood out.

This performance has helped me recognise that my posture is vital for developing different characters and so so important for actors in general.

I enjoyed everyone’s seminar and everyone in the group did a great job but the two above helped me learn and continue with exercises that were done in their performances. I learnt a lot in other groups as well for example controlling breathe which Dannel’s group did, which was a great practical exercise and consisted of breathing out of a straw and helped to improve stamina of breathe which is vital for an actor. 

Thanks to the groups I now have a programme that I do every night I do the ‘semi supine’ Alexander technique which was done by myself to help relax me and improve my posture.

Voice & Speech- Ellie Darvill

Today it was Jonathan and my turn to take the warm up for voice and speech and as we were the first group it added a bit of pressure and nervous because we didn't know if it was going to be right.

However I did know a fair bit about vocal warm ups because of singing and you tube videos.

We talked for the previous week on social networking sites to plan the warm up to see who was doing what and what was going to be said. This was our plan:

Stretch

Breathe

Tone

Warm down

We choose to do it in this order because if we went straight to speaking without warming the vocal chords up it could lead to permanent damage them which could restrict range in the future.

This is the basics on what was said in each part.

-Stretch Tia chia roll down vertebrae by vertebrae so that it releases tension from the neck and shoulders, we stretch because we don't want to pull or strain muscles just like a basketball we and an athlete warms up actors should always do the same so there instruments are at optimum levels

-Breathing exercise, first we breathe in most amount possible count to 7 then we do 8 have a small breathe some might say a snatch breathe then all the way to 12

Before we even say a word it is important that we don't dame out vocal cords our strain them in any way, so before we go on to tone we will trill, this is the best way to warm the vocal chords up.

Tone exercise - It's important as an actor to have a variety of tones no one wants to be a monotone mumbling because you’re never going to get a job as an actor if you do so in your mind pick a word so mine is dangerous now say the word out loud, so well go round in a circle, now say it in a different way completely opposite

Warm down, quickly before the end it is important for your voice that you do a warm down especially if your characters like to shout a lot for example simple say the word sooth and oooooo then just do some simple breathing exercise

Evaluation

Personally I think that these techniques that I have had to learn through research and through my partner have been really helpful with understanding the anatomy of and the way the voice works an example of this is  that I now know that as well as the mouth and lungs but also the trachea, nose and diaphragm effect the breathing and breathing directly effects sound (the voice) because to create a voice it is just air passing over the vocal chords to create sound. As well as this i now know the 6 organs of articulatipn which are      Tongue, Teeth, Lips, Teeth ridge Soft palate, Hard palate Also I feel that after using these techniques it has helped me to develop clarity in my natural voice and I will continue to use these techniques every morning in the order above, this will be my voice and speech programme for the next couple of weeks because in my opinion it will help to create a better accent for my character TUZENBACH in the three sisters play.

Physical Theatre - Amy Taylor

Today was the day Me and Jade performed our 'Physical Theatre' Seminar on Skeleton.

Me and jade set out a plan for the performance before hand and this was the plan;

-Firstly I would talk about the basics of the skeleton like how many bones (206) and the functions of the skeleton (protection, support, movement, blood production/mineral storage and shape)
-Then we would move on to labeling the skeleton which would be Jade. We cut out 20 labels of bones for each student to pick one and label it where they thought it went then I would go through each bone correcting them if they where wrong ( this was to give the students a visual part of the lesson but also teaching at the same time)

-Thirdly Jade would take a 10 minute palates class
-Finally I would take a 10 minute practical on Alexanders technique (Semi Supine position) Which was more about relaxing but also relating it back to an actor because the semi supine helped relax muscles at the bottom of the spine which usually get tense when we are nervous and actors always get nervous weather it be before an audition, filming or a live show.

My Evaluation

As a group I thought that me and jade worked exceptionally well together we bounced or each other.
Jade was a pleasure to work with, she listen to all my ideas she was helpful and would love to work with her again.
On the day everything went smoothly the students absorbed everything, it went ' Perfectly'

Peer Evaluation

They loved it, Eve said ' our voices worked well together'
Leon said ' It showed how much time and effort you put into it, great job'
Jonathan said ' Great teamwork and the way you set it out was brilliant i loved it'

Acting Technique-Paul Garnault

Today was for me a real eye opener in acting techniques will Paul we did Alexander technique Paul gave us some instructions which were to lay on the floor with legs bent with feet flat on the floor, also he told us to breathe into the small of our backs so that our backs would be completely flat (neutral position) then he told us to close our eyes and relax each muscle in term this is a Proprio-Neuro-Facilitation

Then he said go to a beach will sand beneath you and the sea touching your toes (automatically i went to Algarve beach in Portugal where I spend most of my holidays)then you float up and fly across some trees, this I found very difficult to imagine because Portugal algae beach doesn't have any trees behind it, out of now where I found myself picturing a cartoon sea and beach with trees behind it and this was from the Madagascar film I watch a couple of days ago (weird) now you fly and beneath you know is a city ( the city for me was an old roman city, old fashioned cold snow on the floor) now you’re in the city/town you see a person you follow them, at this point I could see a women that looked like Danni Minogue she had a long vibrant blue jacket with dark jeans and black heals with black/red hair, Paul said follow this person so at that pony I followed her she led me to this old house kind of ruins she lead me inside where she sat down in this wooden chair and it smelt like chalk, then she gave me this vase looking thing which at this point I was confused looking back it was probably somebody's ashes, then Paul said go inside the person what are they feeling? What I got for the person was that she was full of love but overriding anger then Paul Sao return to the beach where I went straight back almost as if I was having a dream while on the beach

This is a technique I am definitely going to use in the future as I was surprised how well it works and it also combines Stanaslaviksi’s method of when acting you must feel it and live it and this technique helps this!!

Physical Theatre - Amy Tayor

Physical theatre- Amy Taylor

Starting physical theatre I had no know idea what is was or about and why we had to do it, Amy quickly told us that it was not dance it was a form of expression through movement.

We started off by jogging around the room and listening to Amy's instructions which were (1 right hand down 2 left hand down and so on) this got the blood pumping and everyone was warmed up. We started learning some choreography that Amy herself had made. The choreography was linked to practitioners such as Martha graham,” Graham’s early teaching was based on breathing and the bodily changes that occur as a dancer inhales and exhales.” Janson, M. (). Martha Graham. Available: http://www.dance-teacher.com/content/martha-graham. Last accessed 09/11/2012.

On a personal note I found this the easiest part of the session because of my experience with street dance.

We then moved on to some walking and corner exercises which I found a little more difficult because it was more about straight legs and arms which I had never been asked to do before now. The one I found most difficult was triplets I found this an odd and confusing movement which I struggled to get my brain around!

We also then did some partnered work which our objective was to get to the other end of the room but still touching our partner but without using hands, this I found difficult and slightly uncomfortable because I didn't know if my partner would like me touching them and we have only known each other for 6 weeks which isn't very long!! Then we did the same thing with another partner which for me felt much better because I felt at ease with the partner and so the movement flowed because I wasn't thinking about the personals feelings instead I was thinking about the music.

After this we moved on to doing it as a group shown in the video link below, I found this much easier than with a partner because there were more people to keep in contact and the movements seemed to flow. My evaluation at the end of this was that it was much easier to judge what others were going to do if you had eye contact.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6skXIdCvmF0

When we re-joined with Amy we had a lecture about many things such as how performances are made:

                                              

                                  IDEA->EXPLORE->SELECT->REFUSE->REHEARSE

Also the 4 basic movement components such as action, space, time and dynamics/planes, we went over these in detail. The one that was completely new to me was dimensions/planes, movement can be explained in three dimensions (height,width,depth) planes are a combination of two dimensions:

Horizontal plane = width, depth

Vertical plane = height, width

Saggetal plane = height, depth

The choreograph that we have done so far involves mostly the vertical plane as we move side to side and collapse/rise a lot as well.

We also went into much detail about Laban Efforts, we did this by watching everyone's walk in the class and to categories them as a Laban Effort, my walk was wring which meant it was indirect slow and strong. We then went into extremes of all the Laban efforts Amy started at 10 ( the extreme) of a Laban effort and counted down and we had to scale it down and by the time she reached 1 it should be a natural walk but containing a Laban effort

The Laban Effort are:

Punch= direct, fast, strong

Dab= direct, fast, light

Press= direct, slow, strong

Glide= direct, slow, light

Slash= indirect, fast, strong

Flick= indirect, fast, light

Wring= indirect, slow, strong

Float = indirect, slow, light

This was really interesting and will defiantly help in developing a character and opened my eyes to see how much detail goes into making a character believable.

My target is to be able to be able to complete triplets by the end of the week!

The Risk Evaluation!

Evaluation of our performance

Before the performance everyone was nervous because they wanted to do our project justice and show how much time, effort and thought had gone into it. During the performance we encountered some problems which had to be dealt with such as Zoe coming in to early on the bridge scene which meant kev had to improvise some script which in my opinion he dealt with very easily. As a group I believe that we put across our purpose of the play (To teach, to tell a story) very well and this was reciprocated by our audience when we asked them a simple question " if you think we portrayed the story of Alex in a different and in lighting manor could you please pop your balloons" imminently all the balloons were popped.

Lexi- was brilliant at narrating I put lexi forward for this role because i think she is the best at telling a story in the whole group, she defiantly had strong views and contributed well to every discussion.

Danny- was easy to work with always tried to help with putting thoughts into the mixing pot, didn't believe in his own ideas which is defiantly something he can work on because the ideas he gave were brilliant.

Kev- he was very out spoken like myself, always had good strong views and he wanted defiantly wanted to give the audience something unseen which was amazing.

Sinead- also very opinionated like myself, definitely helped move the project along, Sinead was a well come addition to our group and i think made it much better.

Dannel- was very interesting to work with and very passionate. He had strong views for his own character which for me was important because I believe Dannel's character added another dimension to our performance.

Zoe-  defiantly wanted to deliver a good performance, our break up scene we struggled with but i believe we did it justice on the actual day.

It was a pleasure working with you all, i cant wait to work with you again!!!

The making of 'suicide'

the making of the risk project was a very long process it didn't come to us straight away, it felt like we had so many ideas that it was hard to pick, when ever we decided on one, another looked better. However once we settled with the suicide story we all did research and i think the performance we delivered showed this!
In early blog posts it shows the entire making of the project from start to end and the feelings that we as a group went through


Individual evaluation

At the beginning of the performance i was slightly nervous which really helped me play my first scene character which was Alex being a nervous wreck and telling the audience that he loved someone. However the nervous did bring some tensing to the upper part of my body which restricted my voice, this is something i would need to work on in later performances and do a simple serine technique to free the vocal chords.

i believe that mine and Zoe's scene was much better than rehearsed, i think the audience, nervous, tension really added to the performance and in a way helped us to achieve a better and more believable performance. Just before starting my second scene i remember a quote from Stanislavsky actor prepares which was  " When performing a single gesture, only the muscles necessary for that gesture should be used" this helped me to free my mind, clear my thoughts and real delve deeper into my character and create a believable and interesting performance i do believe that the audience believed that too as when i rejoined the group lot of audience members were till crying and after the performance they came to me like Shayne said " you really hit a nerve, you delivered it exactly how its done i know I've done it, i felt as if i was back in the room"

Other groups and there performances 

I really enjoyed watching all of the performances they were all interesting and so different, it opened my eyes and each performance made me think about things. I really enjoyed the bird cage but there was scenes which were much better than others like I believe that Leon s and eves scene was the best and really stood out, so well done to them, i think the message was clear and very well organised all the actors and actresses new exactly what they were doing which as an audience member helped me really to concentrate on what was happening.
The drug party performance was good and very different, i believe the way they got us all to be a part of the performance was brilliant i thoroughly enjoyed the performance, the only problem I felt was that there were significant breaks in between scenes and it felt as if some of them forgot what they were doing!! I believe that Melissa acted her role really well, and so did Lori, them two stood out for me in there performance

Our Performance 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKKeELULL1s&feature=plcp