Week 4

On Monday we spent the lesson brushing up on the first 5 scenes. One example of what we had done is that we worked on a part of the chorus where Jayshel says "Two households both alike in dignity", and after this is said all the Capulets and Montagues line up and face each others. We had improved this so that we didn't just simple stand in line and look at each other to show the tensions between the two households but we had also been instructed to pose to show anger for example I pose by holding the shoulder of the Capulet next to me to show strength and unity in the Capulet household, but I also look at one of the Montagues with hatred and bite my thumb at them ( equal to erecting just your middle finger at someone). This was quite nice as it gave a better representation to the audience as to how the mechanics between the Households in the play was like. In Sharon's lesson, we had been refining party scene. For example when Lord Capulet and I are done with our verbal fight I storm off in anger as I don't get my way and I need to barge Romeo, and after I barge Romeo he does a spin and catches Juliet which then initiates the next part of the scene. I learnt quite a lot from this for example how you can easily get creative, and make smooth transitions from one scene to another and in that way the audience won't get bored. After I am done barging Romeo, everyone in the party scene in the background needs to go silent and freeze to give emphasis to the scene going on between Romeo and Juliet.

On Tuesday we had worked on Character/character development with Sharon. We started the lesson by sitting in a circle and discussed what makes a character for example looks or personality or background. Then we had to write down some details of our characters that we had knowledge of:

Who am I?    Tybalt
Where do I live? Capulets Household
What work do I do? N/A but I thought Tybalt would be a drug dealer he has no care for laws
Friends? No friends
Family?  Lord Capulet, Lady Capulet, Juliet

Then go into groups of fours and create a scene for each character which could get the audience to get to know more about their past. I came up with a scene for my character with Romeo where I was in love with Roseline and then as I was flirting with her and trying to make a move on her Romeo comes in and steals her heart from me, and it made sense to the play as it could explain how Romeo and Tybalt became enemies to one another.

On Wednesday since not all of the class had attended the lesson on time, the Montagues and Capulets split up at beginning of the lesson, and each family had to create a scene containing all the characters having a conversation just so that we got to know one another's characters better. We had discussed some actors that do contrasting roles and how they managed to pull off the roles well, and the reason why was because they look for the motive of the character they are looking to play to create such a strong effect. We briefly spoke about Naturalism by Stanislavski and also projection, emotional memory, the magic if Objectives and discussing what our characters objectives. Then we continued to go into groups of twos with someone else in the play whose character could have a past with our character. I worked with Romeo again and we had built on yesterdays idea with him stealing Roseline's heart. At this point I have become quite comfortable with just going up and performing a piece to the rest of the class and so I asked to go first which we did. I enjoyed our semi-improvised scene and it went smoothly, and everyone felt it was quite comedic yet serious.


On Thursday morning we had done a joint lesson with the dance students. We spent the beginning of this lesson in a circle doing all sorts of exercises, some of which were stretching and others were vocal exercises. One example was the 'Ma ma ma ba ba ba pa pa pa" at which we say that but talk in such a way where we are trying to get our voice to hit the other side of the room. This game is to get us out of our comfort zones by making silly/humiliating noises to the other side of the room which for me had increased my confidence, and this exercise is also good for the vocals just to warm them up. After this we got paired up with another dance student and using any technique we wanted we had to perform a quick 2 minute piece on how we got to college. My partner and I had performed a comedic piece where we would perform an action for example walking. but we did it over the top and say 'Then we walked'. This went well as the crowd got the humour and had laughed and I used this exercise to make my voice stronger in front of crowds, whereas normally I get quiet when I am performing in front of crowds of people I don't know. This had worked as I felt quite confident performing in front of all the actors and dances and I was proud.  In the next lesson we got in a circle and wrote details about our characters down

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then we partnered up with another person in our group and we had to read out about their character in front of everyone else and the person whose characters attributes are being said has to act out some of their description. An example of this is if I write that i'm evil and my partner reads it out I need to do a hand gesture or show anger through body language to portray this 'evilness'. This was a fun exercise and it made me more confident in myself in front of big crowds.