Bertolt Brecht!

In Siobhan's lesson we were split into three groups. Each group were given a poem written by Brecht. Our task was to perform our own interpretation of the poem.

The poem we were given was called 'On Thinking About Hell'. Siobhan already gave us some information about the poem such as Brecht writing it when he was in Los Angeles, but as a group we decided to sit down and read the poem to gain more of an understanding on it.
The play is very much about being alienated and isolated. Although the play seems to be about hell, Brecht seems to be describing it as the complete opposite. The lines, and phrases that stood out for us was:

• "Luxuriant gardens"
• "Flowers as big as trees, which of course wither unhesitantly if not nourished with very expensive water"
• "...Fruit markets with great heaps of fruit..."
• "Jolly-looking people..."
• And houses, built for happy people..."

All the irony Brecht created inspired us to create a very grotesque piece. We decided to show the audience someone's adventure and journey through hell. Liza played the person experiencing "hell" while me, James, and Chris played the characters who lure her into the experience. The beginning starts off with James and Chris as tree's with a white screen placed upstage centre. Liza walks on stage through the audience looking confused. She approaches the tree and picks off a fruit and eats it. I then come out behind the screen skip towards her, holding her hand and dragging her around the stage while pointing around the room showing her hell. Still showing signs of confusion she walks away and looks back at the white screen. James and Chris are at either side of the screen doing grotesque movements and actions behind the screen keeping Liza, as well as the audience guessing what they're doing. Not allowing Liza to have a look I drag her way from the screen. Chris and James then pull out three chairs for us to sit in.
Once we're sat down Me, James, and Chris freeze with huge grins on our faces. Liza then walks up to us trying to figure out what's happening. However James and I then grab her arm, and throw her into Chris. Me, James and Chris then hold hands, making Liza be in the middle unable to escape. Us three then skip around her in a child-like, playful manner singing 'Ring-a-ring o' Roses'.
The adventure then ends after we sing "...We all fall down!" and Liza falls to the floor while Me, James and Chris walk off behind the screen leaving Liza on the floor (CS).

Performance Evaluation

In Siobhan's lesson we had to watch our performance of naturalism on video. Despite cringing the whole way through watching it, I managed to make notes on my role as Irina, the audience, and interaction between characters.

I felt throughout most of the performance I managed to sustain my character physically. I was able to have my back straight when sitting down and when I was walking around the stage. Also, at the beginning when I was reading while Koolyghin and Masha were talking I believe I came across as shy and reserved by having my head down reading the book and looking up at the two once in a while. However I did think i slipped out of character and found myself slouching while I was sat down talking to Olga.
Vocally, I was surprised at how I managed to enunciate my words properly and pronounce my t's as I had trouble doing so during rehearsals. I do think the projection of my voice could have been louder. Irina is very quiet and withdrawn compared to the other sisters but I do think I still could have projected my voice better.

I was pleased with the audience response. It was difficult gain a sense of how the audience felt about our performance as the scene we were given was a very serious. It consisted of Irina's breakdown and her eagerness to go back to Moscow to find love. However, in the scene there were elements of comedy and humour  to add some comic relief to the piece.
Throughout the rehearsal period I was worried the audience wouldn't be able to capture the humour of the performance. Fortunately, the audience understood it and laughed at the bits that were supposed to be funny.

As a group, being given a play about three sisters, it was important we had to show chemistry between us on stage. I felt during the performance we were able to interact with eachother properly. During most of the scene, I had to confide in my older sister Olga and I think the bond between us two on stage worked. It portrayed Olga's role as the older sister who had to look after everybody. Although me and Masha don't have a lot of dialogue between each other I do think our relationship came across clear to the audience. It was obvious we do not get along with each other, but do however care for one another.
For example, when I approach her talking about our brother Andrey she ignores me. But when I talk to Olga about Moscow, and how unfulfilled my life is, although the proximity between us two is far, we were still able to communicate with each other using facial expressions.

Evening of Naturalism Poster - Final Draft

As part of our assigment with Michael, we had to design a poster for our performance using 'Adobe Photoshop'. This would enable use to use our creative skills, and develop and understanding of other area's besides performing such as marketing, graphic designing and the ability to effectively use digital imagery.

In the first part of the process, Michael went through a brief introduction of Photoshop and showed us the basics and features that could be use to create an effective poster. The posters had to include:

• Name of the event
• Venue (Arts Depot - Studio Theatre)
• Date and Time (15th November, 7.30pm)
• Tickets and price 
• Box Office number
• Running order of the show - A Doll's House, Three Sisters, The Seagull, and Top Girls.

 My Development
After Michael's introduction, I decided to play around with Photoshop. I got some images off Google of the plays and added some effects to see which ones I would consider using and which ones I thought didn't work. An effect I used to play around with was the 'Blur' tool. I used to to blur out a bit of the image while a section of it was still in focus. The image I found was of the 'Three Sister' and a few of the other characters in the play. I decided to blur out the other characters so the focus would be on the three sisters. I thought the effect did work as the sisters are the main characters of the play and the narrative of the play on a whole revolves around them.

However I chose to go for a more simplistic approach to designing  the poster and decided to use... a tree! I felt by adding too much to the poster it would end up looking messy, and it might even put the audience off.

I believe the tree managed to represent the essence of 'Nature'. The only changes made from the original picture was the added motion blur. I also decided to add a black outline around the text as it was very difficult to read with the white text against the background.


End result:

I kind of forgot I had a blog. Oops! (Part Trois)

Third blog of the day woop woop! I'm gonna be all blogged out by the end of this.

YESTERDAY! Thursday 30th September
So I woke up late and got to Uni half an hour late thinking it started half nine when in fact it starts at nine. Again, don't ask. I don't even know? Anyways I walk into class and see photoshop up and my heart cried a little bit. Me and photoshop = failure.
With Michael we're going to be "called upon to apply our creative skills to projects that assist in the development of our work - this could include marketing, administration, or graphic design". Yeah, I copied that off the sheet.
So yeah, in this assignment we're gonna have to design a poster for our performances on the 14th of November using Adobe Photoshop.

Michael went through a couple of stuff we could do with photoshop and made it all look quite easy and simple. He then told us to go to our computers and play around with it. So after being rejected by a few computers and finally logging onto one, I attempted to use photoshop and surprise surprise I felt like slitting my wrists (lol OTT much?). But it was a bit of a struggle, but by the end of the lesson I managed to make a bit of a picture blurry and ublur parts of it! Was quite proud of myself actually. But yeah, hopefully by next month I'l get the hang of it all.

After Michael's lesson we had Siobhan and did a mixture, of practical, and theory work. For the first hour and a bit we worked on our scenes. Our scene begins with Masha and her husband Kulygin. Kulygin is majorly inlove with Masha however a fire has just happened and her brother Andreyusha lost some money therefore Masha is ignoring Kulygin's lovingness towards her and is still a bit shocked about everything that has just happen causing her to be a little bit blunt to Kulygin.
We decided to work on that scene and fortunately Chris agreed to play as Kulygin. We all thought that Kulygin was around his mid twenties and is very comical and naive.

After working on our scene Siobhan got us to watch a documentary on Anton Chekhov while we wrote down notes. I found it highly beneficial. The documentary consisted of a lot of relevant information about his personal life, his plays, and how his life experiences influenced his stories and plays.

I kind of forgot I had a blog. Oops! (Part Deux)

BONJOUR! Again.

So here's Tuesday!

Tuesday 28th Sept
So on Tuesday we had Nick! We had to work on character development again, however we started off concentrating on the staging of our scenes. He drew us a little diagram showing us some drama staging terminology such as centre stage, upstage left etc etc. It was quite beneficial for Me as I had forgotten it all and had to follow a friend of mine when Siobhan asked us to go upstage left. Clever Me! The diagram looked a little like this

Although the diagram I drew looked a lot more like one of those football formation thingy's. Anyways! Because our scene is set in a dinning room as a group we decided that for our staging and props we would need:

• Dinning table
• Chairs
• Sofa or a sheet to go over some chairs to create a sofa
• Screen (for Olga to be behind)
• Plates and cutlery

After listing what we would possibly need and use for our scene we decided where everything would go roughly. So far we thought the dinning table should to CSR but in a diagonal angle, the screen would be USL andthe sofa would be placed CSL. Which would give us enough room to move around at the centre of the stage. However, we have yet to try this out therefore we might have to make some changes later on when we rehearse with our props and staging.

As a class we then had to do a presentation of our character to everyone. I found this activity very interesting as it immediately helped me identify everyones character to an extent and gave me a brief outline of how the characters personality might be like. Nick then asked us to create an Emotional chart (plotting the patterns of events your character goes through your the scene) or a timeline (allows the audience or reader to gain an understanding of the events your character has gone through). 

Irena is usually shy, and reserved throughout the whole play but has always wanted to go back home to Moscow and is also longing to find love. However, in the scene I'm doing she has a bit of a breakdown while Olga and Masha attempt to calm her down. Thus, my emotional chart gradually goes higher as Irena gets more and more annoyed and angry in the scene.

Afterwards, Nick decided to have each group to perform to the class. He would then change bits of the performances to show us how altering and adjusting something small can have a bigger impact and look better (there was a word for it but I can't remember it).
Nick then decided to wrap up the day by playing games in the last half an hour which included trying to get to get your group (four of us) to the other side of the room using one piece of paper, and wink murder. YAY!
Oh, and Mario hurt his thumb. Sad times.

I kind of forgot I had a blog. Oops!

Bonjour!
Yeah, I haven't used this in like over a week. Truth is I forgot I had a blogger account :/ Yeah don't ask I don't even know. ANYHOW this week was pretty full on. Loads of character work and all that jazz. I might as well just break it down into the days of the week other wise it will just look like a massive paragraph of turd.

Monday 27th Sept
So on Monday we finally got to use the studio theatre in our uni/ college which was pretty exciting. It was a really, small intimate thrust stage which I really liked. Happy days! So Siobhan kick started the session with a bunch of Stanislavski concentration and relaxation exercises to help us erm... yeah concerted and relax obviously which actually do work to be honest! Although I can't help but hope my stomach doesn't decide to make noises when the whole room is quiet.
But yeah after that we proceeded on doing a character development exercise where we'd have to imagine there was a mirror infront. Then we'd have to:

1. Close our eyes and picture our character's appearance
2. Say what our character is wearing out aloud while putting on the costume
3. Open our eyes and walk around the stage saying what we're wearing

Then we had to get into a circle and go into middle and tell everyone in character,what our character is wearing (which was pretty scary for some strange reason). I play Irena in 'Three Sisters' written by Anton Chekhov and I pictured her wearing a black shoes with a small heel, a black skirt, corset, and a white puffy blouse. How very trendy!

After the whole character development thing we were asking to create the setting of the scene we're doing. Again we had to close our eyes and picture it for a moment, then use the stage or any other space available to move around our setting and describe it. We then individually had to go on stage and describe it to the whole class and Siobhan which again was really scary. So much exposure ah! Well to be fair, I am doing performing arts after all so silly Me should be used to it by now.
So yeah, that was basically what we did on Monday. Oh, and Me, and my group (Shakira and Mikaeda) went through our scripts and discussed how we thought our characters should be portrayed etc etc. Good times!


Wow this blog is long. I think I'm gonna make another blog in a moment talking about Tuesday, and Thursday. Fun stuff...

Hello :)

Erm, my name is Niama, pronounced knee-arm-ahhh. But people call me Nemo because it's easier. Even though people have the tendency to come up to me and say "Oooh I've found Nemo!". Good times.

I've just started Uni and I'm currently doing a foundation degree in performing arts. Erm,  yeah I don't really know what else to write so I'm going to make a list of the things I like:
I like music
I like musical theatre
I like tea
I like food
I like Chelsea (The football club not some randomer called Chelsea)
I like travelling
I like London
And other things I can't be bothered to write at the moment because it's early in the morning (Yes, 10 in the morning is early. Leave me alone :( )

Anyways, ciao :)