The first topic I shall be talking to you about is classical texts, and specifically Shakespeare, in our first lesson we watched a film called Julius Caesar that was staged and filmed by The Royal Shakespeare Company and whilst we were watching we had to look at the relationships between each character and connect them and explain why. We then in the next lesson looked at Iambic Pentameter which is kind of like the rhythm in which the sentences are said, for instance every other syllable should be stressed when you say it and there are mainly ten syllables in one sentence, and a lot of people think that Shakespeare plays only have a full stop at the end of the play because there is always something ti be said each sentence flows into another, another way of putting stress on certain words is to look for things such as Alliteration, Assonance, Rhyming, Paradoxes etc. in my opinion i think that it is much easier to understand what the character is feeling by listening to the stressed words for instance in Mark Antony's famous "Friends, Romans, Country men, lend me your ears" speech you can hear that he is trying to win them by his side and trying to make the people do what he wants just by listening to the words he stresses.
We later visited the globe theater to watch Julius Caesar from the pits, I personally didn't like watching the play, but listening to it was an experience in its self, and I know many people would have preferred to be able to sit whilst watching it, but being in the pits gave more of an experience with cast members walking through the crowd and people yelling in the pits, it felt like I was appart of the crowd.
For Higher education we have been looking at UCAS, I do have 5 universities/Drama Schools that I would like to go but i will only share three, one is The Napier Universities in Edinburgh, they have a course there for acting for stage and screen, one of the reasons i would like to go there is because they have put both types of acting into one course, which makes it easier for me to learn it all at one time rather than spending many a years moving through higher education, also Edinburgh has the Fringe festival on and so it would be an amazing experience to try and perform in that, and I also i'm rubbish when it comes to accents I find it easier to pick up on them when i'm surrounded by the accent and so I do wish to travel a lot to learn more accents.
The next one is Regents university to study Acting and Global theater, the reason for which I want to go is because the course is so weird and wonderful that i could pick up new techniques in order to experiment with my different styles of acting, this course is part of the Kevin spacey foundation and he does 2 masterclasses with you, and I find it easier to learn something from someone who is in the industries now and so can talk to you about the demands etc.
The third one is St Johns in Liverpool, their course looks a lot at screen acting, but throughout the course their they send you on work experience and set you up with the BBC, and so they teach you whilst trying to get you into the career at the same time.
We have been looking a lot at auditions and interviewing tactics, and currently I am learning a monologue from Motor-town and it looks at a guy called Paul, he seems to be very racist but I think that that is purely down to his upbringing and how annoyed he is when he looks around him. When I first preformed this speech I played it too angry because I only had the words in front of me and didn't know the actual play, I was told that i should be more laid back talking about it as if it was normal to say these things, and i think this would shock an audience more.
Currently we are looking at a play called Punk Rock, it is set in the present day and looks at 9 characters who all attend a six form college, it looks at the struggles of each very different character and in my opinion is relate-able to our young society today, which if you get to the end is very frightening. When we did the read through I liked the part of Bennett and also William, i think this was because they were unlike any characters I had played previously. After the read through we were given parts, I am playing the part of William, which at first I was a little worried about, but now im more curious as to what I can bring to the role.
On the first week of looking and performing the script we looked at objectives, there are 5 parts to objectives one is short term, which is what you character is thinking in that exact moment of time, whether it be I need some water or I am hungry, then you have your scene objective, so what your character would like to get out of at the end of the scene, which is normally something to do with another character, then you have long objectives which is where your character see's themselves in 10 or so years, for instance my character would be looking at what university he would be going to, then super objectives, this is your end life goal, which for most normal people is to be happy, the thing that changes how you get to the super-objectives is the through line, these are events that change you path through your characters life.
An example of these are Scene one Williams short term objective is to put his headphones away as he has seen Lilly, his scene objective is to try to make Lilly like him, then his long term objective is to attend Oxford or Cambridge, his super objective is to be an architect, to have children, to buy a small house and to be normal, but this is changed by the through line which get changed during the events of the ending.
I liked looking at objectives because it made the scene more playful and gave you something to think about at all times, it made it easier to get into character just by thinking what would he do in this situation, or what is he thinking about at this exact time.
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