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.