My Production Journey - Production Diaries (Year 2, Term 1)

 Candidate Declaration - I confirm that the attached portfolio is all my own work* and does not include any work completed by anyone other than myself.

Monday 9th September 

Today was our first official day back at college and our chance to start officially working with our new first years. We started the year as usual by an introduction to some acting techniques and the Ghost light tours.

Improvisation

The first half of the morning consisted of getting us back into the rhythm of acting and out of our own headspace, as that is key to being a good actor. We did this by focusing on improvisation. We started with some warm up games we have done before, such as 'What are you doing?' and 'Yes, Lets' which got everyone comfortable in the space and provided an introduction to the day. Yes, lets is the main rule of improvisation, agreeing to what is happening and accepting it, allowing yourself to go with the flow of what is going on in the room. This was a great start to the morning as it got me back into the headspace of being an actor, and allowing me to be creative and not be scared to do it. We then moved onto getting into groups and having to create an improvised scene in a short period of time. For example, one of our themes was hospital so we had to pretend we were in a hospital environment, so i improvised being a patient who was dying and everyone jumped in. This activity was a short, snappy one and the point of it was to get us out of our headspace and not think - just do. We then moved on to another improvisation task we did last year, where we have to build a picture from a prompt, for example the beach or McDonalds. This was great as it focused on us working as an ensemble without any one person taking control, a scene where everyone is involved from improvisation and no overthinking. Then it got made more challenging, limiting the amount of people who could talk. We did many of these, the main one being a supermarket setting where i had to improvise with my classmates Scarlet and JJ a small family, with my child throwing a tantrum in the middle of the supermarket, a small story within a larger picture.

Ghost Light Tours

We then moved on to starting our first project of the year - our Ghost Light Tours! We started by thinking about our theme 'Villains in Theatre' and thinking about different characters which we could include in this. Some ideas consisted of: Carrie, Bonnie and Clyde, Nancy and Bill Sykes, etc. From this, we got into small groups and did some research on the characters that we found interesting and could be included. My group and i did research on the Chicago women of Cell Block Tango. I found these interesting, murderous women who don't regret what they did based on real events. We did this research task to give Kelly an initial idea for the characters and route of the tour and also to find some characters that may interest us to audition for.

Thursday 12th September

Today's lesson was a split lesson, so the first years were separate from the second years, our first half of the day we spent looking at Shakespeare with Tom and the second half we spent looking at Film Acting with Kelly.

Shakespeare

Today was our first lesson into Shakespeare and monologues with Tom. We started the day by having a general conversation about what we already knew about Shakespeare and got a general feeling for how everyone felt about the language. We then moved on to looking into him and the language used in more detail, understanding how certain things are said differently, we looked into pronouns, verb conjugations, tenses, etc. This helped a lot as it made it easier to understand the Shakespearian language being used in texts that we need to look into, meaning i can also understand the context a lot easier and get a general feel for what is going on. We then moved on to picking out at least one Shakespeare monologue for drama school, as it is something they expect you to have and to be able to perform to them. We spent 10-15 minutes looking through files Tom had kindly created for us - Male/Female identifying monologues - and picking out a monologue which we liked/were interested in. I picked Phoebe's monologue from 'As You Like It' Act 3, Scene 5, as it was a comedy with a romantic side to it, and it was interesting to me as it was a love/hate relationship. After we had picked out a monologue, we got back together and Tom taught us about the Iambic Pentameter used within the monologues. This was helpful because it allowed me to understand the flow of my monologue and helped with the delivery of it.

This was all helpful to me as an actor because it allows me to fully understand the context of the language/script and emotional situations going on within the piece i am looking at, understanding the delivery and meaning of each line is essential with creating a good performance.

Acting for Screen

We then moved on to doing some screen work with Kelly, something i have a keen interest in and we didn't do much of last year. This was an introduction to acting for screen and we looked into different shot types. This was helpful because as an actor it is useful to know what type of shot the camera crew are wanting to do so you know how much of you will be in frame, the exaggeration of the emotion, and just to have a general idea of what is going on in the scene. It is key to be in good communication with the people behind the camera as well. We then watched some clips of different uses of these shot types in iconic films, as well as a little quiz to test what we had learnt where we had a sheet with different shot types from different films. This was a fun activity and helped keep it in memory.

Different Shots 

Monday 16th September 

Today we were in the theatre with our first years and it was a day for articulation and creativity. We started with a few warm ups as usual such as ninja, wah, etc. and then we moved on to the tasks from Kelly.

The first thing we did was a great activity for thinking on the spot and using our imagination. We had to get into groups and we got given a chair. From this chair, we had to make as many different things out of it as possible, turning it into whatever we could think of. An example would be a rollercoaster, or a washing machine which is some my group did. The point of this exercise was to get you out of your own head. It improves our skills as actors as it allows us to not overthink what we are doing and to just simply do it. After we had done this one and understood what it is we were doing fully we got given another object - ours was a bowl. We then had to get up and imagine this bowl as a bunch of different objects. We could make it anything we wanted, as long as the whole group was on board and saw the vision and agreed then it was anything, we turned this into many different things -  a bomb, an earring, a phone, a hat, etc. The point of this was that our creativity and imagination could take over and as long as we worked as an ensemble and fully invested in what was going on, this object could be anything we wanted it to be - getting us out of that awkward overthinking part of being an actor. This helped me a lot, as i overthink what i am doing a lot of the time, but we didn't have the time nor chance to overthink.

We then moved on to looking into articulation. We had to get into pairs and we got given a different tongue twister. Me and my fellow classmate JJ got 'I scream, you scream, we all scream, for ice cream'. We had to really focus on the pronunciation of every word, making sure you could completely understand every letter. This one focused on the 'sc' sound. Each groups tongue twister targeted a different sound, whether it be 't' or 'sh' etc. After we had mastered our tongue twister, we then had to teach it to the rest of the class and get them to repeat it back to us, and we had to repeat theirs back to them. I particularly struggled for awhile with one groups tongue twister, but that was the point of it - to target aspects that you struggle with within articulation and focus on it, after awhile of going over it i got the hang of it! This was a great activity to do.

For the final part of the day, i started the work on my warm up power point. Kelly set a task to the second years to lead a warm up that is creative and hasn't been done over and over in our classroom. I am working with my classmate Hayley and it is focused on breathing and projection.

Tuesday 17th September

Independent Study 

For the first half of the morning, i continued to work in the LRC on my warmup powerpoint with Hayley, researching what your body actually does when you breathe, and developing a game for both projection and breathing, creating ideas with Hayley.

Duologues

We then got into partners of people we haven't worked with much over the last year and started to look into a duologue from Dear Evan Hansen. This is great to start to look into as they come up quite often in scripts and it was about getting the emotional stakes, character objectives, character relations, etc. right. Me and my classmate, Charlie, weren't too sure which duologue we wanted to do, so we decided to look into two for the time being.

Wednesday 18th September 

We started our day by doing some new warm up games introduced to us by Abbie. We first did a game we've done before - lying down counting. We then had to all get into a line and Abbie had a ball. We had to interlink our hands and using only our arms deliver the ball down the line until it got to the end. The point of this was concentration and teamwork- trying to get the ball to the end smoothly without dropping it. We then played another new concentration and teamwork game called lockers. We had to get into pairs and get in a line. If your locker number is shouted, you have to stand in sync with your partner in a salute and say "Aye aye captain locker number -- to locker number --" and send it back. The aim is to be in sync and to not fumble on your words and to get to the front of the line to win.

Ghost Light Tour

After we got warmed up, we focused on our Ghost Light Tours - specifically our ending. To get started, we had to walk around the room and target specific people and do what we could to make them feel uncomfortable or scared to understand what we think was the most intimidating feeling. Everyone agreed that the eye contact, uncomfortable silence and random creepy sounds was the things that made it the most nerve wracking. The finale includes everyone from the ghost light in one room to make the audience feel nervous, this time we went with the idea of uncomfortable staring and moving in sync. We tested a few things out, and we added to it as we went. We started by simply being in a circle and stepping closer in sync, reaching out and staring at where our audience would be. This created the building blocks of our finale, as we added more and more. I had to sing a nursery rhyme 'ring around the roses', others had to laugh, scream, etc. whilst others just stared. It was a great start to our finale. The point of this was to get a feel of what our finale would look like.

We then moved on to getting into groups with people for characters we had in mind. I went to Bill Sykes and Nancy with my classmates Kieran, Alfie, Imogen and Milo. In these groups we got given a sheet that had the location of where Kelly was thinking these characters would be on the tour, and any ideas we had for the characters. We then went off in these groups and created ideas for the characters together.

Dance

To end the day, we had a dance class which was split 50/50 from Abbie. We did a bit of choreographed dancing as well as a good cardio exercise. This was helpful to me as an actor as it is important to keep our bodies in shape and to be in good health. We then did a bit of theory work and talked about different aspects and sports/diets that are good for our maintenance of our bodies.

Thursday 19th September 

Today was a split day again, looking into Shakespeare with tom, directing with Kelly, yet coming back to join our first years again for Pinocchio prep.

Shakespeare

Today, i spent the lesson with Tom this morning going over our Shakespeare monologues. Tom helped me pick a second monologue today and that is King Lear, Goneril, Act 1 Scene 3. This one is contrasting to my comedy, as it is serious and harsh compared to confusing love. After i had got this, i spent the rest of the lesson doing research on King Lear - understanding the play, the context, the character relationships, how all the characters link together, the plot, etc. It is important to know all of these things when doing any monologue, but especially in Shakespeare as the language makes it harder than a normal monologue, therefore this makes it easier to do the monologue. This was extremely helpful as i found out a lot about my character and why she is saying what she is saying in this scene, how she feels about everyone in the play, etc. After we did our individual research, we all come back together and got into groups with other people doing the same play as us. We then exchanged what we had learnt, which was helpful because some of the things they had i didn't know. Research is a key part of being a good actor, and this really helped me understand and learn what i was talking about.

Directing

We then got introduced to directing - something i am interested in but had never done before so this was great! We got into groups of four and got given a sheet with little to no information on it. It included the characters, a situation, and a conflict. With this, two people had to be directors and two actors. We got to analyse the script and try bring this to life with the actors we had, giving different ideas to them as well as seeing how they would do it themselves. We also learnt about stuff to think about when directing. This was helpful to me as an actor as it is nice to understand what could be going through your directors head.

Pinocchio

For the final part of the day, we spent some time as a full group including the first years learning some of the songs in Pinocchio, which was helpful as singing is one of the things i am less confident with, so its great to be starting on the songs early. We looked into 'When you wish upon a star' and 'Toys'.

Wednesday 25th September - Auditions!

Today was the day of the auditions for Ghost Light Tours! I started the morning by going over my piece with Kieran, seeing if there was anything else that we wanted to add or improve on whilst other people went for their auditions. After a bit of prep time, we went to add our name to the audition list and waited for our turn, going over our lines as we did so.

I think that the audition went well! I gave Kelly the research i had done on Nancy so she could see that i understood my character. The audition process was just me, Kieran and Kelly in the room and again it was a different type of audition i hadn't done before last year. This time, we did our audition and Kelly gave us some notes to improve then and there to go away and work on our piece to show her again. This is something i haven't experienced before as i knew how the director felt about my audition straight away, and it was great to hear the insight and have a chance to work on what i needed to improve on. She could tell we knew our characters, we needed to work on our accents. I knew before i went into the audition that i had to improve on my accent, as it was the thing i had been struggling with during the process of working on the auditions, so i agreed with her feedback. To try to improve on this, i went away and tried to listen to the Cockney accent in the movie 'Oliver!' as Nancy speaks, as well as asking some of my fellow classmates who could do the accent for some help. 

We then spent the last half of the audition day watching some of our fellow peer's auditions as a group and supporting each other. You could tell everyone had put an incredible amount of effort into it and it was a great, positive end to the day. 

Thursday 26th September

LAMDA

This morning, the second years and i had a work shop with one of the leading drama schools - LAMDA. We started the morning by joining musical theatre and the LAMDA team in the theatre, which consisted of LAMDA's vocal coach, and movement coach, as well as some course leaders and previous students. During this, they spoke a little bit about their course and what they had to offer as well as introducing themselves. We then split from MT after learning a little bit about the course and the leaders and went with the vocal coach and did some work with them. We started by doing a vocal warm up with her, then moving on to looking into a Shakespeare script. The way she had us do it is to walk around and change your step and direction on every bit of punctuation. This was great as it gave a different perspective to when i first read the script given to me as it really changes your view on the script when you take into account all the pauses and it changes the tone and speed of your performance. It was very helpful to me and i will be using this in my own Shakespeare monologues. We then moved on to doing some script and creativity work with the other leader, we looked into how a script is split into different sections, and looking into the methods of Stanislavski with him - looking at given circumstances. It was a great day and extremely helpful and gave me an insight to the course, in which i really liked beforehand from research but now like even more.

Thursday 3rd October 

Today we went to the York Dungeons! It was an amazing experience and the actors were phenomenal. We went to the dungeons to see if there was anything we liked/disliked about it that we could take and incorporate into our own piece. I believe the use of the lighting, silence and staring was amazing, and the fact that all the actors had their own storyline.

Tuesday 8th October 

Today i spent the morning working with some of our film and tv students on a short suspense film called Famine. It was great to work with them and be apart of some screen work this year, as that is what i want to focus on this year.

After this, we then had one of Kelly's ex students called sol come in who went to drama school Bristol Old Vic to tell us about his story. He explained about his struggles with drama school, how he got into acting, his experience in drama school and answered any questions we had. It was very inciteful and helpful to hear.

Wednesday 9th October 

Ghost Light Tours

Today was cast list day!! We started the day by doing a few warm ups but as we were doing this me and Kieran got pulled out and asked to read in for Bonnie and Clyde. We had never looked at these characters before so it was a bit hard but we managed to do it. Shortly after this we recieved the cast list and me and Kieran had got Bonnie and Clyde! When i first saw this i was excited but also a bit nervous as it was a romance, killer couple which i knew i would struggle with. We were happy with what we got though and after getting the cast list, we got the final script. We spent the rest of the day in our official characters going over the script, learning our lines and trying out different types of blocking we think could work with the characters.

Thursday 10th October

Monologues

Todays lesson with Tom i spent in the LRC trying to find my two contemporary monologues. I knew i needed them to contrast and i already had one of my monologues but i needed another. I needed to find a serious one which worked with me. After awhile i managed to find one i liked and brought it back up to Tom. I was now all set to go! All that is left is to learn the monologues and show them so i can be prepared for drama school auditions coming up.

Film Acting

We then looked into film acting again and this time focusing on the close up shot we had previously talked about. We got into partners and had to stand back to back pretending we were on a phone call, one person talking and the other one reacting. Phone calls are hard shots to do as you have to react as if someone is talking to you on the phone and you have never heard this news before, and every expression is caught with the camera being so close. This is one of the hardest shots in film acting in my opinion. We then got given a script of a one sided phone call and had to fill in the blanks, imagine what the other person was saying and try create the other side of the conversation. This was useful because if doing this scene in real life, you would have to imagine this conversation happening and react to it.

Afternoon

We then spent the rest of the day going over our Ghost Light Tour individual work again, as well as going over our songs for Pinocchio.

Tuesday 15th October 

Ghost Light Tours

Today we spent the morning going over our individual performances again, nailing them down and making sure we knew what we were doing. The second half we spent doing a cast 1 show walkthrough. This was to ensure that everyone who was main cast this night knew what they were doing and to ensure everyone felt more secure when entering the Globe.

Pinocchio Prep

We then spent a little bit of time before we went home going over one of our Pinocchio songs - Toys - for the upcoming showcase we have. We went over the song to ensure everyone was confident with it and created a bit of choreography to go with it.

Wednesday 16th October 

Today was a bit of a different but nice day. The morning we spent in a showcase with Musical Theatre, as we both showed what we have been working on so far in the year. This was nice because we don't really know what they do and they don't know what we do, so it was nice for us all to support each other. We then went to go watch Heathers at the globe as a class! It was great to watch a piece of live theatre, the atmosphere was amazing and it was great to see the actors on stage and their stage presence was amazing.

Thursday 17th October 

This morning was another split day between Kelly and Tom, doing monologue work with Tom and directing with Kelly, however we all come back together for the afternoon. During the first half of the session with Tom, everyone shared their monologues that they had been working on and got some feedback from it, which is helpful as it is great to get more than one perspective on your work and helps improve the pieces.

Directing

We then focused on some directing again which was great. We started of by being in pairs and each took a turn at directing. One was making a cup of tea and the other was building a tent. The reason Kelly did this was to show that some actors may not need as much directing as others and some may need more, depending on what it is your asking them to do and if they understand fully the task at hand. We then moved on to groups of three and doing a dinner date gone wrong. One actor had to act like they were confessing their love whilst the other was completely oblivious to it. I struggled as the actor to this as confessing the love was difficult to do. Many people took a comedic approach to this and it was great to see the different versions of it come to life.

Ghost Light Tours

To end the day, we did a full run-through of Cast 2, which was great as it meant when we enter the globe next week we are fully prepared and understanding of how the performance is going to run and who is before and after us.

Monday 21st October 

Entering the Space

Today was our first day in the performance space we are going to be using! It was a productive, useful day. We started the day all together on the Globe stage as Josh went over the health and safety, but then we split into two groups. Cast 1 went on a tour of the building whilst cast 2 stayed on the stage. Whilst cast 1 were gone, i was showing my costume to Abi, making sure the costume worked with Kieran's costume and went over our scenes a few times. We then did a walk around of our cast, doing another walk through but this time in the actual spacing in the Globe. This was helpful as it let me get a feel of the space with an audience before we had an official audience. After the tours were done, me and Kieran got called back up to our space to show Kelly ours again and she was happy with it, so i felt very prepared. Bring on show days!