Objectives Annotation

When I got on the train, there was puke all over the seat. / At first I thought someone had spilt one of those innocent smoothies / but then I smelt it - 

To inform. / To stare. / to inform.

I'm tired, I think I'm just going to...

To escape.

You store fat around your middle. It's indicating what's going on inside. / All your organs are surrounded by fat, being suffocated probably.

To inform. / To tell off.

MY EVALUATION OF TERM 1

(SKILLS AUDIT 1 & 2 ALREADY COMPLETED)

EVALUATE WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNT ALREADY
In Term 1, I have learnt that acting can be a difficult thing - only if you make it difficult. I have learnt that things such as character creation exercises, acting skills and more all add up to being the best performer you can possibly be. When given a script for your character, you have to look at the lines given and create objectives for those lines. Doing that will help you to develop your character in more depth and detail without having to use your voice. Creating objectives will help you to act through your body, not your voice. This will make the character's emotions more easier to recognise through their body language.

EVALUATE HOW YOU HAVE IMPROVED
Before becoming a student at The Brit School, I hardly did any written work when doing theatre. I adapted to only having to just learn lines then performing it! However, since I became a student here, I have become more confident in my written work and am able to add as much depth to it as possible. I am able to partake in plays that have a serious content and meaning to it and carry out a female role well given the fact that in my old school, I mainly was given male roles because of my height & I attended an all girls school. To improve even further, I am to explore more characters next term to make my acting skills more versatile. I would like to also put more effort into my writing next term as I know that hard work really does pay off.

EVALUATE YOUR ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE CHARACTER USING VOICE AND BODY
My ability to communicate a character using voice and body has definitely improved. This term, I have learnt the steps of how to develop a character: physicality, status, given circumstances, energy, objective and voice. All of these steps combined help to create a character with depth which is key when it comes to performing your character. When performing, you have to make sure your diction and articulation is clear and understandable. Your body language is also vital because body language reveals so much about someone's emotions and feelings. Next term, I aim to focus more on objectives because I know I am still not perfect with them. I will do this by putting more time and effort into analysing lines in script making sure I have a good understanding. 

EVALUATE YOUR AWARENESS OF AUDIENCE AND SPACE

Audience and space is very important as you need to be able to appeal to your audience and use the space given in your performance effectively. For example, if I was to just stand or sit in one place throughout the whole play, the audience would get bored and draw their attention away from my performance. Therefore, in order to catch their eye, I need to use space effectively by walking around the space provided, sitting or standing in different places and taking advantage of the props provided. Without the attention of the audience, the performance would fail. An audience helps to make a performance because you can feed off the energy they give if you are entertaining them well and use that energy within your performance to make it even more lively. If you make an audience bored, you're likely to be bored also when on stage! However, if you entertain them well, you'll feel more positive and enthusiastic when performing.

Term 1 has been a great start for me. I am proud of what I have achieved and can't wait to start more work in Term 2. To improve for next term, I will explore more characters, focus on creating good objectives and put even more effort into my writing work in class and on the blogs. Like I have said, hard work pays off!

Acting Skills: Voice Warm Ups

SIRENING & BREATHING: Sirening and breathing are very useful voice warm ups to do before acting. It prepares your windpipes for a series of hard work and determination before beginning to act out your scene. Sirening helps you to explore different pitches and notes your voice can hit. For the character you play, their voice may be completely different to yours which requires you to use a different vocal tone that is opposite to your own voice. Using the method of sirening where you imitate the noise of a police car's siren helps you to try out various vocal tone ranges, improving your versatility and more.

Breathing is an excellent exercise to use because it helps to keep control of your breathing when performing. One breathing exercise you could do is breathe in whilst dropping your lower body to the ground making your hands touch your feet then breathing out whilst rising back up again. To make this exercise more advanced, you'd leave 10 counts for you to breathe in whilst touching your feet and then another 10 counts for you to rise back up again. This helps to make you feel more relaxed and ready to act. Also, breathing can help to let out any sort of stress or negativity you may be keeping within your body. It's important to leave all outside affairs away from your acting time as it could create a big distraction for yourself.

"THE TIP OF THE TONGUE THE TEETH AND THE LIPS". "PETER PIPER PICKED A PECK OF PICKLED PEPPERS. A PECK OF PICKLED PEPPERS PETER PIPER PICKED".

Tongue twisters like those I have listed above are very useful for trying to improve your articulation. It helps you to try differentiate similar vowel sounds and use them correctly within different sentences. Tongue twisters are a great exercise to do for preparing to act out a scene as it helps to make sure you speak properly and clearly when acting. If you have poor articulation when acting, your audience are unlikely to pay an interest in what your saying. Having a clear voice and impressive articulation, you are more than likely to draw in your audience and make them pay attention to you.

SKILLS AUDIT 3 (October 2013)

STUDENT NAME: Lara Grace Arogundade                                   

Performance skills ·      Voice (projection, control, accents, singing confidence) ·      Characterisation ·      Rehearsal skills ·      Movement/physical skills ·      Different styles of acting (Comedy? Shakespeare? Emotional work?) ·      Confidence in working with text	Out of 10 9 9 9 8 8 8
Current skills and experience From my first strand day of theatre in September up till now, I think have developed a lot more in my performance skills. I have gained more control over my voice and have learnt to properly articulate my words when acting. Although I have not yet experimented with accents, I aim to do so in the near future. I have developed more of an interest in singing and hope to gain more of a confidence in it as well.  Strand days with Mr Rennison have helped me massively when dealing with characterisation. Usually, I'd just think briefly about a character in my head then act it out straight away without any thought. However, I am now able to thoroughly break down into steps what is needed in a character. This helps we with my performance skills because I will be able to accurately act out a character realistically without confusion. Not only do I successfully use rehearsal time given to us productively, I now aim to also rehearse scenes in my own spare time. Doing this will help me to spend more time needed on my character and truly develop it, bringing my character to life. I have become more flexible and free with my body. The stretch and conditioning classes I partake in have helped me greatly as now I am able to do different stretches that this time last month I wouldn't be able to do. Also, I do jazz dancing every Friday and dance in a studio every Tuesday. I believe dancing will help me to move more freely with my body, being comfortable and experimental. This will certainly help me when I start doing physical theatre. During term 1 of this theatre unit, we have focused on serious roles rather than hitting the comedy aspect of theatre. I play a female character by the name of 'Alex' who has a harsh, unpleasant story that definitely contains nothing on the humorous side of things. I believe being given this role has helped me to come out of my comfort zone of being used to given male roles back in my old school. I now feel more versatile and more confident in taking on different roles in the future. In my English class, we have been analysing various poems and using high-order thinking. This has helped me more in my confidence working with text as I have been introduced to different vocabulary and having to think outside the box. I applied the skills needed to analyse poetry into my script work and now analyse my lines in more depth (creating objectives). I believe that now I am more confident in working with text by applying my English skills to theatre. Areas to improve Nonetheless, I am still proud of progressing in my confidence when working with text and using different styles of acting. However, I still believe there is room for improvement always. I would like to still read more challenging novels and get used to reading out loud. This will contribute to improving my articulation and improve my literacy knowledge.  Furthermore, I would like to try doing comedy in theatre as I feel quite confident in the emotional and dramatic side of theatre. In the past, I had done work that involved being humorous but also serious. Although, I believe more work in the comical side of theatre would help me to develop my acting skills.
Do you have skills or experience in any of the following? Stage design, make-up, directing, script writing, lighting, sound, finance, and digital IT supports, marketing administration?	Out of 10 6
Current skills and experience (same response as in Skills Audit 2)  I have worked backstage at performances at my old school that involve handling props and more. However, I have more experience in being on stage rather than being backstage.  Skills to develop (same response as in Skills Audit 2) I would like to have more experience in working backstage handling technical theatre given that it is very important to have experience and gain knowledge in the theatre world both on stage and behind it. To do this, I would like to get involved in helping more backstage in different productions that the school has and help with stage design, lighting, the box office (finance) and more.
Other skills in the workplace Communication Organisation Team work	9 8 9
Current skills and examples I believe that I work very well when it comes to my communication skills and team work. During Term 1, I spent a lot of time working with Clay given the fact that he played my father 'Joseph' in the play we've been working on. In order to make sure I perform the scene well, I made sure Clay and I felt comfortable with each other by arranging rehearsals in our spare time. Currently, I am the school council representative for my form class which I am not unfamiliar with as I have been school council in my other school. To be a successful school council representative, you need to be open-minded yet opinionated, flexible when it comes to new ideas and take on board others' opinions. This contributes to improving my acting skills because all of those things I have remembered when working with my partner. Areas to improve When dealing with written work for theatre, I need to be more organised. I sometimes focus too much on the practical side of theatre rather than aiming to excel in the theory element of it. For term 2, I aim to complete my theatre homework on the day it's given and complete it to a full standard. I know I am capable of achieving something when putting my mind to it! I have learnt from my mistakes in term 1 for organizing theatre homework and now aim to start fresh in term 2 in order to become the best actress I can be.

SKILLS AUDIT 2 (September 2013)

STUDENT NAME:  Lara Grace Arogundade                                 

Performance skills ·      Voice (projection, control, accents, singing confidence) ·      Characterisation ·      Rehearsal skills ·      Movement/physical skills ·      Different styles of acting (Comedy? Shakespeare? Emotional work?) ·      Confidence in working with text	Out of 10 8.5 8.5 8.5 8 7 7
Current skills and experience I am able to project my voice to a high volume to fill the space of where I'm acting. I have good control over my voice and am confident in singing as I have been in many singing performances since the age of 5 which include performing at The Royal Albert Hall for 7 consecutive years. I have been in school choirs and have taken singing lessons outside of school also. My characterisation is good as I am able to analyse a character in depth by looking at their voice, energy, the given circumstances, physicality, status and objectives. All these features are essential in developing a character correctly. My rehearsal skills are quite good because I use the time we are allocated effectively in focusing on how to develop our scenes more and also what we may need to improve on. My movement/physical skills are okay as I attend classes that can improve my stretching and flexibility. I know that being able to move your body freely is crucial for physical theatre as it teaches us to act with only our bodies, not our voices.] I can do different styles of acting such as comedy and dramatic story lines which helps me to be more versatile with my work. I was short-listed for series 2 of Channel 4's Top Boy which is a teen drama. I can read scripts and am able to evaluate what the character's emotions might be. I am able to understand stage directions and act them out practically when rehearsing. Areas to improve I would like to be able to do more accents as it would improve my versatility when acting. If I was able to do more accents, I would be able to improve in my acting skills and be able to take on more roles. I seem to struggle to work out the right objectives for my character. I can thing of objectives! However, I know it's not right if I can't do it physically. For example, an objective for my character to be 'to command' as I can use hand gestures to suggest this without any words. On the other hand, 'to inform' wouldn't be a strong objective as I would find it hard to do it physically without any words. During rehearsal, I focus on repeating scenes too much rather than seeing what else we could incorporate in the scene. I need to think more outside of the box. Improving in my flexibility is what I need to improve on. I need to be more free with my body and loosen up as this can help me in future physical theatre work. I will improve in this by not only attending classes that help flexibility but also do more stretches at home. In my old school, most of the roles given to me were male as I am quite tall for my age (5ft10.5). Because of this, I am definitely more used to male roles rather than female. I would like to also take on more serious and in depth roles too as it would contribute to my acting skills. Sometimes, I find it hard to read out loud. I wouldn't say I have a problem but on some occasions I tend to pronounce different vowel sounds than displayed within a text. I have a very clear tone when speaking but sometimes I can jumble up my words. In order to improve, I need to read more not only at school but at home also. I need to look at more challenging pieces of texts to not only improve my reading skills but also extend my vocabulary too.
Do you have skills or experience in any of the following? Stage design, make-up, directing, script writing, lighting, sound, finance, and digital IT supports, marketing administration?	Out of 10 6
Current skills and experience I have worked backstage at performances at my old school that involve handling props and more. However, I have more experience in being on stage rather than being backstage.  Skills to develop I would like to have more experience in working backstage handling technical theatre given that it is very important to have experience and gain knowledge in the theatre world both on stage and behind it. To do this, I would like to get involved in helping more backstage in different productions that the school has and help with stage design, lighting, the box office (finance) and more.
Other skills in the workplace Communication Organisation Team work	9 8 9
Current skills and examples I believe that I work very well when it comes to my communication skills and team work. I am able to take on board ideas from my peers and incorporate it usefully in a piece of theatre. To be a good actress, you need to not only listen to your own voice but also the voice of others. Currently, I am the school council representative for my form class which I am not unfamiliar with as I have been school council in my other school. My organisation skills are okay prior to the fact that I always take note of any homework I am given in my diary and other things I need to remember. Areas to improve I think my organisation skills need improving as I can be sometimes lazy and unprepared. However, this only happens rarely. To progress in acting, being organized is crucial as it will help me to punctual for rehearsals and it will contribute to me remembering my lines accurately.

NOMINATED FOR BEST BLOG

Walk around the room and view the various blogs designed by your classmates. Browse. Enjoy. Link. Read the content—don’t just view the graphics! It is the combination of the two that makes a blog strong.

Now, nominate two blogs for Excellence Awards. These blogs should represent their characters accurately AND demonstrate exceptional style and writing. Please write at least four sentences about each blog you nominate, explaining why it deserves the award.

Nominated Blog: samjohnsonactingskills.blogspot.co.uk

Blog Author: SAM JOHNSON

Why do you think this blog deserves the Excellence Award?

I think this blog deserves an award because he has involved a lot detail, time & preparation within his blog. I can tell he has thought his pots through and dedicated his time on it.

Nominated Blog: josephpotterwarphotographer.blogspot.co.uk

Blog Author: ELEANOR CHILTON SUTTON

Why do you think this blog deserves the Excellence Award?

 

She included things that weren't required for her to do. She involved also a picture of Alex when her blog was just about her character. I think she did very well.

Character Creation Exercises: 3 Line Scenes, Taking Direction and Working On A Prescribed Set

HOW TO DO 3 LINE SCENES: With the scenes you're given, adapt it in a way where you can only say 3 words maximum in every line you get. This may be a challenge at first put the more you work hard at doing it, the easier it'll get. For example, in my scene, the first line I have is " And you look like a fat old man." One of the things I could do to change it to a 3 line sentence, I could say " You're so fat! ". Hopefully, transforming my lines into only 3 words could teach me how to interpret lines in different ways.

I think 3 line scenes are helpful because it teaches us to work harder on strongly portraying our emotions more in our lines rather than relying only on the words we have to learn for our character. It helps us to use our emotions more than our lines.

TAKING DIRECTION: Taking direction is when you take on board constructive criticism and then improve your scene based on it. A good actor/actress would not ignore the direction being given as it could help them to improve in their acting skills. Usually, direction is given to you by your director (my teacher Mr Rennison) or your peers (my theatre class). As we are all learning how to became the great actors/actresses we can be, it is important we all listen to each other and help each other out. At the end of the day, we all want to succeed and do well in theatre.

I think taking direction is important because it allows you to hear someone else's point of view rather than your own on your acting skills. It helps you to progress as an actress/actor and gives you guidance. Sometimes, we aren't aware of the mistakes me make. Because of this, taking directions from other people will help you to realize the mistakes you are making and transform them into something positive that can contribute to your performance.

WORKING ON A PRESCRIBED SET: Working on a prescribed set is when you are aware of how your scene is going to be set e.g. what props are involved, where the furniture will be placed, entering and exit locations and etc. 

It is important that we remember that we are working on a prescribed set so that we know how to use the space we are given properly. It is vital that we move around during our scene and don't just stick to one place as our audience could get bored and lose interest in our scene. Moving around and working with what we have in our scene will help us to feel more comfortable and free during out performance which will engage the audience more.

Character Creation Exercises: Hot Seating, Improvised Scenes, Create the previous scene, Working with physical objectives, Playing objectives & Finding useful physical objectives

HOW TO DO HOT SEATING: Firstly, you place a chair in quite a reasonable distance away from the audience who will be questioning the character in the hot seat. A person is then chosen to sit in the chair placed in front of the audience. As soon as that person sits down in that chair, they automatically should become their character, leaving any of their own personal traits behind. Once they sit down, become their character and the audience sees that they are ready, the audience will begin to ask questions about their character so they find out more and more information about them.

I think this is a very helpful exercise to do as it helps to develop your character and not only do other people find out more about your character but you will find out more about them too. There will be occasions where other people may ask the questions you haven't asked yourself about your character! If that happens, it'll teach you to get prepared to think of an answer that is relevant and makes sense about your character. Hot seating gives you the opportunity to think quick on your feet as you may been to do that during your performance. It helps to make you create more of a depth to your character instead of leaving the character's pages blank without content. This exercise allows you to create another story for your character rather than the one you already know.

IMPROVISED SCENES: In an improvised scene, you need a stimulus. Anything that your scene will evolve around. For example, the stimulus in my scene is the fact that Alex and Joseph are seeing each other after half a year of being apart. If I had to do an improvised scene on that, it'll again like hot seating allow me to think quite on my feet. However, within an improvised scene, there should be NO REPETITION WHATSOEVER! After all, it is called improvisation! If you begin to repeat, you are doing something wrong. Take your time with your scene: don't let your mind take control of the scene, let your body do the work.

Web definition of 'improvisation': a creation spoken or written or composed extemporaneously (without prior preparation).

Improvised scenes are very useful in becoming a successful actor/actress because it helps develop quick thinking. Improvised scenes might give you different ideas to incorporate within your scene and more of an understanding of your character. Given that it's improvisation, you don't need to remember lines which will help you to feel more free within the improvised scene. Hopefully, you'll be able to transfer that feeling of being comfortable and free within your improvised scene to your actual performance. 

CREATE THE PREVIOUS SCENES: To create a previous scene, you will need to use the information you have on not only your character's given circumstances but also the other character's given circumstances that you are also working with in your scene. This should help you to have an idea of what the previous scene could be before yours. Also, you would need to think about your character's first emotion/objective at the very beginning of your scene. What made them have this emotion/objective? Creating a previous scene will help you find out!

Creating a previous scene will help you to analyse your character's emotions more thoroughly by thinking about how they were feeling before your scene. That'll help you to act out your character more realistically when you know what their emotion was before and be able to work from that. Doing this exercise creates a whole other story for your character. It'll develop another set of emotions and feelings that you can work from and lead on from it into your actual scene. Creating a previous scene will not only give you a clearer understand of your character's emotions but also maybe being able to interpret in your their given circumstances more.

WORKING WITH PHYSICAL OBJECTIVES, PLAYING OBJECTIVES & FINDING USEFUL OBJECTIVES: Working with physical objectives has been quite a challenge for me. However, I feel as if I have been able to tackle that challenge well and accomplish it. Nonetheless, there is always room for improvement in an actor/actress' acting skills. In order to work out your character's physical objectives, you need to look at your character's lines and also the other characters' lines that you're working with. You will need to work with the people you're acting with to see what your objectives could be throughout the play and make sure they fit the emotion of your character. However, make sure your objective is PHYSICAL! If you cannot physically do your objective without speaking, your objective isn't right. If you are able to do it physically, this will add more emotion, reality and belief to your character which will help the audience that will be watching understand your character let alone the scene more in depth.

Make sure when playing your objective, you remember to make sure it can be played physically and make it clear to the audience. Also, make sure they're useful objectives too. If it's not clear to them, that is an indication you're not doing it right. Don't work too hard on your objective; don't even think about it much either! Let your objective flow within the play, If your objective changes, make it clear to the audience that it has. Your objective is most likely to change if the other character you'e acting with changes theirs. This is why it's important to work with other actors/actresses in your scene to make sure everything flows correctly and you know what you're doing. Useful objectives will help acting your character more easy for you so it won't be difficult. If you begin to over complicate it, you'll make your role unrealistic. 



        

PEER ASSESSMENT: Evaluating Lauren Crisp's Blog

I EVALUATED LAUREN'S CHARACTER BLOG: simonthewitness.blogspot.co.uk

1. What do you think is the strongest part of the blog? This could be a certain post, the writing style, the graphic design, the use of alternative media, the images, etc. What makes this element so strong?

I think the strongest part of Lauren's character blog is the first post she made where Simon gave an eye-witness statement of when he saw his mother die and witnessed Joseph take Alex. He expressed his point of view on the event in the church and his feelings on all of it. Lauren portrayed Simon to be very angry and emotional about what happened that day which gives the impression to us as readers that Simon has a very strong hate against Joseph for separating him and his sister. For example, a quote from her blog to prove this is " What sick person does this?! Making a tragedy into 'Art'. Such a sick minded man. I HATE HIM! ". To add to the effect of this strong blog post, Lauren added a picture of the church that contained the dead corpses. This creates more of a powerful effect to her post because we can get more of an idea of how it looked like that day when Simon was separated from Alex.

2. Is there a part of the blog you find confusing? A part that doesn’t seem to quite match the rest or the character for which it was designed? A link for which you don’t understand the connection? Can you give some suggestions for how to improve that part?

A part of the blog that I find confusing is when Lauren talks about Simon's interest in music. The majority of that post I understand. However, there is a part that confuses me: " I believe hip hop is the best genre of music! I LOVE it! Lil Wayne, 50 cent and Céline Dion have to be my favourite artists out of them all! " I know already that Simon likes hip hop when he has a discussion with Alex about music but I don't remember him mentioning Celine Dion who definitely isn't apart of the hip hop genre.

To improve that particular part, I think she shouldn't mention Celine Dion within the hip hop genre. Instead, she should mention it separately. I don't remember hearing Simon mention Celine Dion within the play either. All I remember is him liking hip hop, not Celine Dion's type of music. However, I could be wrong as I am not Simon.

3. After reading the blog, what would you like to know more about? Is there a post that leaves you with questions? Write down at least two questions to help your partner further develop this blog.

1. Because of Joseph's rude behaviour suggesting that there is intimacy between you and your sister, does that make you want to leave? Why?

2. Would you like to have a better relationship with Joseph? Why?

4. Did you notice any major misspellings or grammatical issues? Please note down anything.

1st Blog Post: " This is the church where we watched my mother died. " - *die

"Then straight away, joseph..." - *Joseph

2nd Blog Post: "Its" x3 - *it's

3rd Blog Post: "cant" x3 - *can't

" todays" - *today's

" Im " x2 - *I'm

4th Blog Post: "alex" - *Alex

"cant" - *can't

" I feel so sorry for Alex, " - *Alex.

5. Did your partner fulfil all the requirements on the Character Blog Requirements handout? If not, which one or ones still need to be added? 

• A photo of you in your costume
• A link to a video or an embedded video
• An addition set of research links grouped around a theme
• A photo slideshow