5th Week 9th - 12th October

9th October (Monday)

We started our class doing tongue twisters like She stood on the balcony, inimitably mimicking him hiccuping, and amicably welcoming him in and Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie. 

We focused on the beginning scene up to the party scene that we're going to perform on Wednesday to the rest of Performing Arts students. For the very beginning, me, Nikaya, Shamsul and Eleanor will go first. Rob directed us from the top including, how am i going to realize the Montagues and when to start my line so that everything in between will look connected. Nikaya then decided to tie her shoelace before i notice the montague walking pass, so i will need to call her up and look what i see, after that she will continue with her line.

Then, we moved to the scene where Tybalt and Benvolio fight. Rob added some interesting fighting movements for them and asked them to try it in slow motion first, then fast in order to get familiar with those movements and work them well.

In the afternoon, we repeated the details we did with Rob for few times, then Sharon brought us to the theatre. We acted our five beginning scenes out together with the lighting and background music. Our performance became easier than before as we now know our queues on what to do next. Lighting makes our play more catchy and interesting, because audience gets to see the bright part and they will know where to focus more, which is important. For the party scene, we got ourselves a nice background music, our dance movements were more natural as we get to dance to the music and follow it with the same pace. Not like before, most of us were moving our bodies with different speed as everyone was having a different pace of music in their head.

10th & 11th October (Tuesday & Wednesday)

(check evaluation blog)

12th October (Thursday) A DAY IN CONWAY HALL

In the morning, we followed Rob and Sharon to the Conway Hall as we were going to have a workshop there with students from another school. We started our warm up by walking around the hall and the instructor will tell us when to stop, go, clap or jump. After a few rounds of playing, the instructor then jumbled up all the meaning of that four actions. For examples, STOP = GO, GO = STOP, JUMP = CLAP, and CLAP = JUMP. This gave us a total challenge as we are getting use to the original meaning. At first, some of us still get confused but slowly the group were getting more smoothly.

What I learned from it?...
While things lead to learning, concentrating and focusing always come first to everyone's mind. In order to succeed in something, we need to put 100% of focus and understanding on it so we can ensure that less thing will go wrong if we always keep our attention on it. 

Then, students from both school were asked to mix together in four, so there will be two students from our school and two from theirs. We then need to share what we were working on to them by telling them our play, characters, important events, where the play take part.

I get to know they were working on Macbeth play, I'm actually quite familiar with the story for this play as i did this in year 8. Everything crossed through my mind to remind me of little bits in the play. I was curious on how will they perform it after they said the title of their play.

After all the talking, we were asked to start our performance first. We will be performing from the beginning up to the Prince come out to stop everyone. After performing, we need to give each other feedback on how they've worked with their play. Both schools got many positive feedbacks.


Feedback we got from them after showing our part...

• We worked really well as a group, not only showing the connection of all of us off stage, also when we're acting. The conflicts between Montagues and Capulets are rich, and we took it well. 
• The projection of our voice were loud enough, and all of them can hear it clearly.
• The freezing part at the beginning scene were really nice, they can see who's from Montague and who's from Capulet. We froze ourselves in a reversed V shape, so that audience could see us clearly at the back. 
• All of us were full with tension. 

Feedback we gave them after they performed with their part...

Students from another school performing their beginning scene. 

• Their background music was good. 
• The dance movements they added to their play was really smooth to watch. 
• Their fight scene was in slow motion, we get to see details when they were fighting.

After, we were working with William, the person who's leading all of us. Both school will be staying at a different space and work on their play to make it better. 

What have we changed for the beginning scene?...

• The freeze frame at the beginning, most of us were posing without full energy. William asked us to talk about our character, my character will be an orphan and the Capulets let me be in their house to work with them, and they treated me well with good food, I will give up my life to protect my Lord and the family if someone else are planning to hurt them. As the same, Capulet and Lady Capulet hated the Montagues, I'm not very sure that what's the reason making them to hate each other, but i will always stand by the Capulets side. William wanted me to remember that while I'm freezing and exaggerate it with a bigger and more intensity pose. 
• Instead of walking in from the backstage and stand in our own place, William wanted us to get ready opposite and walk to another end where we used to be, while walking, we could add some conflicts like staring at the person walking towards your direction. 
• For the scene where Nikaya and I will provoke the Montagues first. Before, Nikaya will shout "Oi" while walking towards them. But this time, William said it's better to go after shouting, the scene will be much more nicer to watch. 
• When the Prince come out and starts to speak her lines, instead of standing right looking at her, William asked us to give responses to her, like 'No!' 'No way!' so it wont be only her speaking a long monologue. 

When we repeat the whole beginning scene again after changing some details, I can feel that it's more an opening scene now. The audience get to know our character more before the play when we walk across the stage in character before getting in to our freeze frames. It looks like we're just people living in Verona walking around the street, and the staring between both groups of people just like people who support the Montagues and Capulet.

Here's a picture of what we want our audience,
Rosie to feel when we're performing.

5 Top Tips we got from the workshop about what an actor/actress need to be ensured while performing...

1.  Land the lines - Voice projection is very important for a stage performer, if there's no microphone for us. We need to make sure our voice can be heard from the last row of audience. 
2. Stay in character - As an actor/actress, staying in character is very important. Audience doesn't want to pay and see a bunch of people walking in and out the stage reading their lines. The moment we entered to the stage, we need to stay in our character, even though there's no any line to say. We need to give responses to other characters while they're speaking, so that audience get to know the relationship between us. 
3. Embrace the audience magnet - Also means the interactive between us and audience. It's important to have at least once of this moment in a play, to make the audience feel involved, and not getting bored of only watching us perform for hours.  
4. Avoid the kiss or kill position - In a theatre with big stage, it's odd to see two person standing too close to each other while performing as there will be more extra spaces around. To catch the audience's eyeballs, we need to use as much space as we can, only if we're trying to kill or kiss the person opposite us.
5. Cheat with your feet - During performance, we can't resist there might be some moment that we need to face the audience with our back.But with this tip, we could slowly move our body to a position where the audience could see us with our feet.

Evaluation for 10th & 11th October

10th October (Tuesday) Review for Music Level 2&3's performance

We are going to watch the performance from Music level 2&3 students!!

Although i was not in college that time, I get to watch some little bits of the performance  through short videos taken by friend (not sure if it's alright to take video of the performance). There's a guy singing Billy Jeans by Michael Jackson, I think I'm in love with that just like everyone else on that day. I believe that not only the song that's taking our attention, but also his nimble movements on stage. He was so confident to show what he had been working on, as an audience, I can feel the joy he brought to everyone of us. 

What did I learned from above?... 

As an actor, sometimes we don't know how will we look like for an audience. This performance had made it clear for me, i think one of the most important point will be our confidence. Why? It's the same for a musician or an actor. We perform on stage, and show our story. Audience wouldn't want to pay and watch for you standing at the back of the stage speaking your line or singing with a voice that only you can hear it. 

For musicians, they need their voice, and also their skills on playing instruments. But for us actors, we need not only our voices, the movements and expressions will be as important as our voice. How do we perform them well all together? Confidence. 

A part from that, I think their band did a great job too, as a team. Teamwork has been a very basic knowledge for an actor, we are a group not alone. Everyone is going to have their own lines, own objectives and own characteristics on stage, but not on their own. For example, even as Montagues and Capulets, everyone knows that this two groups are enemies. So for us, we need to show much more conflict in between, in order to let the audience know we hate each other on stage but also working really well together with our eye contact to each other, interactive movements, and the pace we speak. All of it were the main common things that every performers should know, but showing them in different way.  

11th October (Wednesday)

It was our turn to perform what we learned and what we did during the induction period together with Musical Theatre students and Dance students. In the morning, all of us gathered ourselves in the dance studio. Sharon did some warm ups with us such as, tongue twisters, reflection exercise, and some voice projection exercise.

We rehearsed two rounds before we need to go to the theatre, i can see that everyone of us had fully into our own character with all the blocking, the lines and movements. We get a little nervous while watching other students performing their piece but still giving most of our attention to those performers while they were performing, and give them our biggest applause.

When it's our turn to be on stage, all of us started to be very serious and remember the little details Rob and Sharon told us like what to do and what not to do on stage. To be honest, i think we did better in the performance than in rehearsals.

What we did better during the performance?...

• we did not face our back to the audience and has used the space well, so that the audience can see every cast members on stage. 
• our tension during performance were much more stronger, we put 100% of focus in to our character. 

What we could improve for our next performance?...
During the party scene, most of us stayed at the back with our group, and left with a big space in front. We should move more to upstage so that audience will get to see us clearly. And we wont feel wasted for our party character as we did so much on our detail for the party as guests. 

Overall performance : Everyone put in their best effort in the play, and it does turned out not bad, audience enjoyed it and i enjoyed it too. For other performers from Dance and Musical Theatre, they did really well too, all of them were so energetic on stage,  their movements were so natural to tell that's been planned.

4th Week 2nd - 5th October

3rd October (Tuesday)

We focused on our character in R&J. Sharon listed down some questions for us to think of our character, for examples:

• Who am I?
• Where do I live?
• What work do I do?
• Friends?
• Family?

I gave myself a summary with these questions. 

My name is Gregory, age around 16-18. I am a servant of the house of Capulet. I live in the same house with Capulets family. My job is to serve the family well in house and in charge with the  houseworks. My friends will be Sampson, the closest person in house, who is also a servant like me. I do not have any family member, but see Capulets as my family. 

We then separated into groups with people in the same status. I was in a group with Nikaya Shamsul, Eleanor, Carla and Jaychelle. We're all servant for Montague or Capulet, except for Carla, she is the nurse to Juliet. We were asked to improvise a story that's related to our character but not in the scene of R&J. 

Six of us went to another room and started to think ourselves a story line. This is what we came up with. And that's what we got

The pregnant nurse(Carla) is actually the real mother of Juliet but she's too poor to take care of the daughter after giving birth. She finds the servants for help and they suggested her to give it to Lady Capulet as she still couldn't get a baby for herself after 5 years of marriage. In this way, Carla can still stay in Capulet house to take care of her daughter as a nurse. While she was discussing with the servants of Capulet about what could she do next, both servants from Montague walked towards them, in order to protect the nurse. The servants went into a fight... 

5th October (Thursday)

During our tutorial class in the morning, Sharon told us that we will be performing in the school theatre on next Wednesday, and we're going to the Conway Hall in Holborn on next Thursday for workshop as well. And we're only going to perform the opening scene from the whole play.

In practical class, Sharon gave each of us a piece of paper with full of questions about our character in R&J. We were asked to think of the answer in a modern way like which part of London will they live and what kind of house, their personality, their outfit and more questions that we couldn't find any answer by only knowing the play. Because this is about building up our character so that when we speak, we will know how to perform it if also knowing the personal story of that character.

This is the picture of the sheet:

• My name is Gregory(male). 
• I live with the Capulet family, no specific places that i wanted to live. 
• I work with the family as a servant, and also Juliet's personal fitness trainer. 
• I do not have any family member. I see the Capulet family as my own. 
• My closest friend will be Sampson, who is also a servant of Capulet.
• I always dress myself in a clean and tidy suit with bow and tie. 
• I have good personality, treat everyone in my best way, but because of my beloved master (Lord Capulet) hate the Montagues deep in heart, so it causes me hating them as well. 
• I've got one quirk which is love to swim in the private swimming pool when Lord Capulet and the family are not around. 

We need to pair up with one person and understand their character. Each of us need to introduce our partner to the class, while he will need to act his character out, we then take turn between two person.

What I learned from above?...
For a successful performance, it is a must for actors to know their character extremely well. As every character is played by other actors in the past, probably got mostly the same characteristics. In order to make the audience be amazed by us, we need to do something different, like think of another story line for this character before the story comes out. So in every line we say and every movements\ we do will have its own meaning behind. The more we understand our character, the more the audience will understand the story too, as we will be acting it out with full of comprehend. 

In the afternoon, We combined our class with Musical Theatre students. We were asked to find a partner with opposite class and tell them a 2 minutes story about how we go to college in the morning while they will do the same to us, our objectives were to distract each other and let them stop and listen to us. My partner was a girl from musical theatre (i forgot her name), both of us talked about our story with incredible endurance, we did not stop to listen or laugh. But we enjoyed it so much as we will be talking louder and louder to cover one another's voice and starting to speak with strength. When Rob asked if anyone get what each other was talking about, only few mates put their hands up.

What i learned from above?...
It's really hard to maintain focus on what i want to say when someone is talking as well, but it gets to train an actor's focus ability. In order to be 100% not getting distracted, i need to think of the story that I'm going to tell in my mind first, and need to be clear of the order of story that I am going to tell someone opposite. And speak out with powerful words and sentences make sure that the emotion for my story is enough then I can put more focus in it. 

After that we were given a five minutes time to work out a short story on how we go to college, it can be one story chosen between two person or a combination story of both. As nothing interesting happen in my story, I suggested to act with her story.

Here's her story

She forgot to take her lunch box in the morning and need to go back and take it after leaving house for 10 minutes, when she arrived at the station, it was so crowded with people that she has to wait for the second train and still need to squeeze in after. She was being squeezed by other passengers on train for 20 minutes. It was raining in the morning before she arrived in the college and she hates that because her shoes will get wet eventually. 

Before showing the story to class, this is what we came out with after 5 minutes of sorting out unwanted parts and added some new parts in the story, 

• We decided to act out a silent play with zero noises, I will be the mother for the beginning making breakfast and preparing lunch for her but she forgot to bring her lunch box out, and I shouted her back(without noise) then she off to college again. 
• As it was raining in the morning, during the walk to station we both took out an invisible umbrella, i will be a passerby on the street that going to the same station with her.
• When the train arrived, we make weird movements and exaggerate it as we squeezing on to the train. We stayed 10-15 seconds for the scene to act out the situation in a crowded train. Our bodies were not standing straight but kinda look crooked like there will be many passengers on train too, we need to look like there's no more space for us to breathe.
• We moved our body right and left repeating as the train was operating to show the real happening and the speed of train. 
• We used some time to squeeze out from the train then took out our umbrella again, what we did this time were not only walking normally to college. We added some dance movements like in situ rotation, or slide from left to right with umbrella in our hand.
• We then walk neutrally to the college.  

What I learned form above?...
Speaking out loudly and clearly has been a very common technic for an actor, but what if we're going to act out the entire play in silent? I've noticed the challenging part of it and this is what i got as a new acting knowledge. Doing exaggerated movements in a play to show more things other than speaking.  How to show the audience when i'm in panic while she did not get her lunch box. I stamped on the ground hard but lighter the force on my feet when it's touching the ground as i do not want to make any sound in the play. It is just a movement for audience to look at my expression and know how i feel. For another example, when we were squeezing in to the train, we wont show any exciting part in our play if we just walk in and stand there straight. To make our play in better quality, we moved every part of our body just like our bones are falling apart because of the crowded train. It shows our difficulty from getting onto the train. 

I enjoyed a lot with their performances, here are some of the examples of how other groups performed their story, 

• Reflection technic, both doing the same thing opposite each other, I was so amazed by their eyes contact with each other as no one can tell who's leading with the movements. 
• Getting ready with their own after waking up, then ended up meeting each other on the way to college. 
• Use a song to present their story, both wake up and tidying themselves, they started to sing in duet. And wind up with a very nice pose. 
• Some groups they used dance movements to show their emotions in the story, like big jumping movements to show their excitement and i love all the interactive movements between both person. 

Then, we were going to show musical theatre students our progression of R&J from the beginning to the party scene, I think we did a great job every time, as each of us are slowly getting more comfortable with our character, and be able to play it smoothly. Rob wanted everyone of us to remember our lines for these few scenes so that we could move on to work more on our little movements on Monday.