Tuesday 2nd September

Performance workshop

In the morning we started off in with a roll cool where we told Will was not in for the day so are three classes were merged together which gave us a chance to interact with others outside of our class. In acting epically in a class I think it is a great opportunity to act with as many new people as you can and learn of each other.

As there was not much space in 413 we moved the class down to the lecture theatre we then were asked to walk around the space and leave no gaps of empty space then Simon would speak out Archetype characters as we were told this is what people would perform in olden theatre they would just look at the characteristic and only become these characters which I feel was lazy and not really acting for example

The Hero : body image for this was chest puffed out chin high to show status and he is important you would also place arms in position to make muscles look big.

The Damsel : would have the expression of fear or fright on face normally falling back to show they need to be saved and hands up to show they can’t fight and they are helpless.

The Villon : normally seen as gross or disformed as it was something people should be afraid of, so something not normal was wrong with it maybe a hunchback you would normally lead from the nose for you to be grotest and look like a rat.

Mother : shoulders back and proud but also protective normally holding a child and has a caring inviting face.

Henchman: near to the Villon but normally different in a big aspect maybe height or intelligence or facial expression

Prince : proud so has shoulders back and chin up and walks with the body as a straight line to show his class looks down on people.

We done this exercise to just get us into the flow of what people in that age as actors would do on stage it helped us understand the difference that Stanislavski made in the industry.

After this we were told about melodrama as that what these characters were they were over the top and nothing was left to the audience’s imagination then we were ask to make a 2 minuet piece of melodrama it could be anything we wanted as long as we had these characters.

For our show I was the damsel and was locked away in cage and a hero was coming to rescue me from the evil villain. We then went on to show all of them in front of the class. I think we did this for fun but also to see what we had been told that morning and to feel like an audience member in the time before naturalistic acting.

After the shows we were asked to discuss why they were good but there was a question that someone said it was what the difference between stereotypes and archetype is?

The answer is that an archetype is an original mould of a character that people know universally and a stereotype is just a perception of someone and may not be real and can be offensive.

After this we went onto break then after we gathered in the hut by the main building where we were going to spend the day learning about naturalistic acting

Naturalistic acting is near the opposite to melodrama you want the audience to think this is a real life situation and nothing is an act in the piece. To learn how to do this we started by getting into groups and were told just to make a normal situation. My group decided to do a family getting ready in the morning for work and school and the only problem was taking little parts of what us as kids do every morning or the conversations we have with people when showing are piece the audience said it was natural and it is what they say daily to their parents so my group were pleased after all the groups were told to shorten their pieces I think we were told to do this so the teachers could know that we were able to pull out only the key moments of the show and being able to see the difference between a short section or long section of naturalistic acting and if there was actually any difference in the acting or performance. If my group were to do the short performance again I think we may have tightened up a few parts of it but overall it was really well put together. As an impact the idea of being told to shorten a piece would be a challenge but when you break it down to only key moment it turns out to be more easy than originally before.

We were also asked to do this for the play The Cherry Orchard and only pull out key moment we believed to be useful to the show my new group decided to do still images that came to a life for a line to describe the image being made I do think that the performance we gave was poor and if had a chance again it would be much more better but during the rehearsal we did get into some great conversations and different ideas of the books and characters. As an actor looking at this old play and being able to already know key moments without re reading a play is a great trait to have I the industry as you will know points of a play even if you can’t remember every detail throughout your career.

Overall the day was really progressive and we got a lot done for four lessons work and I am really liking how lessons are going and can’t wait to carry on a grow as an actor with techniques and learning all these new things.