College updates

Monday: lesson with rob we went through the play as usual and did scene 1 and 2,3 some people were instructed to be more like their roles in the play and to play the lines like drums one after another and quite quickly like real life

Lesson with Sharon talking about he week

Tuesday: lesson with Rob again
Then we went straight downstairs and had the lesson with donmar project guy. Started the lesson with waa and we also played a ball game to wake us up and get us confident to go into the center of the circle. We played this until 5 in a row of us went into the center and threw the ball at one another. Then we listened to 30 seconds of molly reading out her where she finds that she is most herself. The we got into groups of twos and wrote our own what makes us at one with ourselves and then I wrote about the Heath and we shared with one another and that was interesting. Then we all stood is different places and read out our monologues when our shoulders were tapped. And that was interesting. Then we split into two separate groups and got behind stage and when we were ready we had to stand in a ::: formation on stage and each one of us had to say this is my home and then whatever was your home. We have criticism and say who sounded most convincing. After this we left.

Wednesday was the big day as it was the big workshop. We began by meeting at the donmar theatre and went into a small yoga room where we learnt about how we could put music and that aspect into our pieces. We got into groups of twos and made dance pieces based on the previous exercise where we moved according to what music was being played and wrote 4 different emotions based on the four pieces of music. Me and abdul made a great team. After this we went to the donmar theatre and worked with the same guy as yesterday. We started off with the was game and played grandmas footsteps which was fun but it also conveyed and story and that was quite interesting. Then we learnt about gays blackmail and the gay language and then we sat in a big room and asked the actor for George questions and he told us about he went to farms and did all sorts in order to prepare for his role.
On Thursday we worked with rob and was told by Sharon afterwards to write a review

REVIEW:

This play takes place on a Yorkshire farm in the 60's and it shows us the relationship between a seemingly normal family and an assistant director? Over time it does become clear that a family member named George and this assistant, John, are having a secret relationship with one another which Robert Hastie has wonderfully presented to the audience. John comes to Yorkshire in hopes to retrieve George and pursuade him to come and re-attend  rehearsals for the York mystery plays and what should have been a failed attempt had become a Romantic feud between the two men. We get to observe the musculine side of George and his softer side as he and John are about to engage in their seemingly sexual acts which actor Jonathan Bailey very clearly depicts in his use of subtext and emotional recall.

From the wonderful, remarkably detailed farm house creditted by Peter Mckintosh to the almost unbelievably executed use of the subtext, it must be said that this play is one to not be missed! We get to observe the contrast in different characters in this play, and a result of this in the end of act 2 was the swooning of the young girls of the audience at the reer side of the stage. This would have arguably ruined anyones experience of the play, except from the fact that as the actors came back after the interval, they changed their style of acting very slightly to quiten down the audience, which was fascinating.

Despite the lack of establishment and clarity between the relationship of George and John, and the clarity of whether George's mother or other family members had realised the romance between the two lovers, which quite frankly got on my nerves! I must say that there are very little negatives to give this production.

The next week:

Tuesday:

The guy came in from the donmar we first played a game of wa then we played a game in a circle in which two people went in the middle to do a freeze frame. This was fun and in the beginning not many people committed but over time more people chose to do the freeze frame at the centre. Then we did two people doing an improvisation of a freeze frame and that was even more fun. Then we got into four groups and looked at one of our what makes us feel like our selves and we did an improvisation which was enjoyable and we got new ideas from each other. Then we were given homework to look at what objects make us our selves




Monday:


We worked on the Three sisters and went through the whole play. We collectively were still very slow with cues and not everybody had learnt their lines. Every now and then the director would jump in and act for actors who were ill, and he was a very good influence. He brought the energy up and made people use skills we had experimented on like emotional recall to bring their characters to life which some found helpful. We were also told to move around almost like we would in real life around the stage and not to do unnatural movements which some people were doing and the director referred to it being like a 'Darlic'. I found this advice helpful even though I wasn't the one being criticised only because it is a pleasant thing to be reminded to be cautious of the acting space like being cautious about bad posture.


Then we had Donmar project at which the representative came in and played the game 'Wah' with us like usual to wake us up and make us more aware. We then stood in a circle and pretended to be throwing energy balls at one another which was to make people get out of their shells and be more confident around everyone else. If the ball was thrown lightly it was to be caught in a similar manner as it was thrown and people had to act and react to their surroundings, so if the ball was being thrown at a particular person they had to receive it before someone around them who would try to steal it. We adventured with this for a while and in the background there was some calm, almost like 'Buddhist meditative' sounds which made us all the more relaxed






















After this we all walked around the space and threw the energy ball at one another whilst walking around the space and this changed into us trying to tell a story by throwing the ball, and every now and then the representative would tap us out so we had to spectate. It was so fun to see what people would come up with. Then we split into groups of twos and looked at two pieces that had been brought in about objects or people that make people feel like themselves and made improvisations based on them,