Nick’s all things uni drama blog

Ok, really should be attempting to do these the night i get home from uni but that requires way to much scruitization but this went for about 2 hours, now to remember what the hell did we do?

I remember we started off with lookign at circles of attention in which we had to choose an object preferably something that would better suit the characters we were playing, again this was still the same scene from Shopping and Fucking.  We had to act through the scene, keeping to the words as best as possible but to focus on that object throughout the performance.  The idea was that this playing with an object removes alot of the nervous tension which can be seen in an actors stance or gait when they have nothing to do sence they have something to focus on and also to help create depth to the character which can be realised through gestures or actions made with that item which are hopefully smbolic of them  or the scenes purpose.

The next acticity we stayed in the same groups as we had been and we were delving into finding the characters objective in the scene and minor objectives through the units of action in the scene.  So within our groups we tlaked through the scene and discussed what our characters wanted, after this was complete we stood up and walked aorund the space a little then confronted our group members looking them in the eyes we told them what we wanted in a way which conveyeed exactly what it was the characters wanted.  After doing this for how ever long we were asked to form into 3 groups consiting of the Lulu’s, Marks and Robbies and then one at a time we all told the class what we wanted.  Glenn spoke briefly about this excercise dicussioning that its purpose revolves around getting to understand what the characters want from eahc other, the scene and showing slightly their emotional involvement with each other.

The next exercise involved breaking up into pairs taking tha largest chunk in the scene, which is when Mark is telling the story of how all three of them meet when he purchased them off a fat man in a super market.  For the excercise one of the pair had to read through the text while the other spoke about what they were thinking about.  When i undertook this i was constantly thinking of the images that were occuring like the supermarket or the flat or the fat guy and occansionally feelings about what was happening.  I’m not completly sure about the exact purpose of this excercise but i guess it falls into the same category of knowing exactly what the character is thinking at every moment during the scene which transcends the acter into the place of that character i guess.

The final exercise we undertook involved using emotional stimulas from our own lives to fuel our characters emotion.  Firstly we asked to thinki of a time when we were pissed off and go over sit by ourselves and write down what happened, how we felt, where it was, what was said in order to try and recreate the moment to its full exactness.  One of the group was asked to volunteer, Danni voluntered and went down, had to pcik a place to keep eye contact gaze focused on and begin telling her moment.  After awhile she became quite pissed off and it actually made me feel very unnerved and edgy.  Another volunteer was asked to come up and repeat the process except after they had reached a point jump in and start delivering a moment from the text in which one of the characters was pissed off, she did this and to no avail it worked really well and again made me feel edgy and un nerved.  I think this technique would be extremely useful if i was unable to find the emotional attribute required for a certain character.

This week we are meant to be reading a few plays and lookign for scenes we may want to undertake for our major scene study, there could be one or two per group but in total it can’t be longer then 7minutes.  The process which we have been undertaking has been a short hand, revised and totally cut stanislaski mthod of dealing with a text and if used continusly with a group can result in some great perfromances with exceptional depth and excellence. So next week we get to start on the process finishes all this.

Ok well this was almost a week ago that we had this class but i’m sure i’ll be able to remember what happened.

Well last week Glenn started us on a method similar to that of stanislavski’s method of breakign down a text so that it could be understood on all its levels; those being pyhsical, emothional and the other one i can’t remember what its called but i’m sure i will get it in the next week or so.  We were continuing on this line of work to further establish our understanding of the charaters and scene in further depth.

Firstly we split up into partners and briefly re-familiarised ourselves with the scene before choosing one of the characters from the same scene as last week; so mark, lulu and robbie.  Once we had adopted a character we asked each other questions, i was a little confused at this because i was unsure if we were directing our questions which furthered the information in the script or just questions compeltly off the bat.  Thinkign about this now i don’t believe it makes a difference but a combination of both would work best.  Thee idea of this was to really get into the head space of the character, havign an idea about them, their history, what their like etc and enable the actor to draw on this depth to perform better as that character with greater understanding i guess.  After around 15 minutes of this duel question time Glenn (my tutor) asked us to reassemble as a group explainign the purpose of the excercise as i have above, we were then asked to form groups of four and each of use was to be at one stage questioned byt he rest of the group (like a hot seat).  This again brought out more questions except this time from a far braoder range of areas due to the addition of two extra groups members.  After i think 20 or 25 minutes we were again stopped and convenied as a group and to finish off the process we did a whole group question time with one person in the hot seat, due to time constraits only two members of the groups got the chance to do so but without these contraints in a real rehearsel i guess that would have been udnertaken.

I choose to do Robbie as my characterand as this post is concerened with the process and not information gained i won’t bother goign itno the details of what i discovered.  In general terms the types fo questions asked generally revolved in some way aorund the scene.  So questions like when did you first try heroine, what was it like, what is your posistion in the house hold, what sexual services do you perform, what are you goign to do after makr leaves, do you think your a good person, why, do you think you will get bakc on the junk when your clean, why don’t you want mark to get clean and many many more.

After this we broke back up into our groups from the previous week (i was with Bec and Jules) and were asked to block about a third of the scene, once we had blocked the scene and knew what we were doing we were then told to chuck away our script and walk through the scene narrating our own actions, for example, who are we looking at, where am i moving to, how am i moving, how am i positioned, how am i holding myself etc.  I believe th first few things that i said went somethign like this ‘i am sitting hunched over looking at mark, i get up slowly and slowly stumble left to pick up something and then shuffle slowly over to the right and throw a towel over the pile of spew.’  All of the group would be doing this at the same time talkign voer each other is action was takign place at the same time and also moving through the actions.  The purpose of this excercise was to instill in the actor a sense of knowing completley what was takign place in that scene and although we only had a short time to do and practise this i am sure i could pick up the script now and go through the same motions i had on Thursday.

The class finished with us recieving another script 4.48 psychosis a play written by Sarah Kane which has no characters in it what so ever which lends itself extremely well to having as many or as little people in the show as desired.  As of now i can’t really say what the play is about in any depth so i will read it a few times again before posting some comments but as far as its purpose Glenn is hoping to use this script as a gateway between our scenes that we are going to present for our major scene study for the deakin show case week or whatever its called.  I guess thats pretty much it for now.

Ghosts was one of Ibsens most acclaimed plays, extremely  

Ok, well this week i was sick so couldn’t attend the lecture and i guess i missed out on heaps of info on dada and surrealism but i’ll just write down what happened.
So the class began with a short test on The Breasts of Tireses (check my other post for an abstract of that bizarre play), then we had a brief chat about the play and its meanings before Bec and Jules did their presentation; concerning dada and surrealism. I think they had a power point presentation all ready for show but techniquial difficulties saw that fall through. Their presentation was quite funny because between each of them delivering content about both subjects they would do random things in the space which reflected that of a dada perfromance; which i thought was awsome. This onyl took up a relative short period of time and then we got onto the pratical side of the class. So here is my grasp of dada and surrealism.

Dada: was an anti-art movement which was born in Zurich due to their repulsion at society which had perpetuated and started such a destructive war (World war 1). Dada is a word with mutliple meanings in different languages, originally selected at random from the dictionary. A dada performance might consist of political readings, dancing, poems, short plays, visual art and paintings much of which could random or aimed at offending their audience; more then often the Zurich Cabare Voltaire (the starting place of dada) stage would be gang rushed and at times furntiture stestroyed. From my understanding dada was a relativly short lived movement with with small groups of people associated with it, although dada movements began in Zurich succcessive movements were started in Germany and France. The French movement is considered the most successful, at its height a dada festival consumped the streets of Paris (i believe) but shortly after the French dada group had internal poltical problems and soon dispersed. DADA IS NOTHING!

Surrealism: ok missing the lecture i dont really have a great breadth of knowledge or understanding about this type of theatre but from what i gaiend from the girls presentation is that surrealism was developed in response and rebellion to Naturalism. August Strindberg who was previously a Naturalist playwright began wanting to explore the signifigance of dreams through the theatre, i believe he was heavily influenced by Frueds theory of dream interruptation and the associations of images from conscious thought to subconcious. Their were two different bodies of thought in the Surrealist movement which the names i have forgotten but one associated with Fruedian theory and the other the theories of Jung.

Just thought i’d post this bit about self assessment i had to do for the presentation i gave on the thursday just been. 

The content of my presentation was well researched and offered an appropriate amount of depth to topics which were not exclusively covered in the lecture and our class discussion on Ibsen’s Ghosts.  My major problem was not having sufficient time for rehearsing the material and this inability to rehearse defiantly revealed itself in my presentation because I felt while delivering the presentation that I staggered through a great deal of the information often interchanging topics with extraneous and sometimes irrelevant information.  Visual aids could have most defiantly helped the audience see the key points of the presentation and me in the content delivery as my notes were to complex to deliver a fluid presentation.  I did have slides prepared to slot into Irene’s Power Point but we had no opportunity to meet before class to prepare this which I believe was mainly due to the restrictive time frame we had to bring the presentation together in.

If I had the opportunity to undertake this assessment again I would firstly cut down on the depth of information I was presenting.  I would focus more lightly on a broader range of subjects that relate to the Naturalism movement; briefly speaking about each of these.  This would give the audience a greater breadth of knowledge and enable me to more easily construct a Power Point presentation which was not cluttered with extensive facts (as was the one I designed but did not show).  Cutting down on the depth of knowledge would also allow me to cover the material much easier and probably cut down on the running time of the presentation because in view of my presentation I believe it dragged on for far too long; it should have been shorter and more to the point.

Overall I believe the presentation was relatively successful, we were hindered by the short time frame in which to research and bring together the presentation, the assessments flexible guidelines and the fact that Irene and I were the first to present out of the entire class and really had very little idea of what was expected. 

Well i’m feelign under the weather today which means im going to be missing my ACP lecture on Dada but it gives me the chance to write about what we covered in the second part of last weeks class.

So in the second half of the class we got into groups of three and began looking at the first scene in a play called Shopping and Fucking written by Les Gutman.  So we got together in these groups read over the scene then started talking about design, blocking, the characters, what was beign said and all that jazz; really just pulling it right apart.  After maybe 20mins we were asked to go and write down everything we as a group had spoken about, then one group was asked to run throught the scene while we all watched.

I’m thinkign i probally should give a rundown of the scene very quickly. Three characters Lulu, Robbie and Mark are sitting in a once stylish flat now almost stripped bare (the play is set in England).  The scene begins with Lulu and Robbie trying to get Mark to eat something but he cant because he is detoxing off herion, after promptly vomiting a discussion begins about Mark’s welfare.  Mark is persuaded to tell the story of how they all met ,  Lulu and Robbie pay out Mark for his love for H, mark tells the other two he is leaving to goto a clinic but Lulu becomes angry and tells him to get out while Robbie becomes upset detailing his love for Mark.  Now my comments from class:

• The three characters are in a love triangle together (2 boys and 1 girl) and i am guessing from the story of how they met that Robbie and Lulu are submissives because they were purchased from a fat man by Mark for 20quid.
• Mark is addicted to H and says he is going to a clinic to get help but wont tell eithier Robbie or Lulu where it is.  I thought initially that this could have been because he was just planning to leave them but after discustions in class i now feel that his problem with not telling Robbie and Lulu has something to do with his current and previous status in the relationship.  Initially when the three would have meet Mark would have had all the power over the two but because of his addiction he has possibly fallen to the bottom of the pecking order or at least below Lulu.
• I see Robbie as quite submissive because of the way which he seemingly takes orders from Lulu without question and does whatever she bids him to do and then later conveys his love for Mark which reveals not just a want for Mark but a need for him.
• Visualising the flat they are in, I see a mouldy couch, broken lamp sitting on a small table, the place is filthy, used needles litter the floor as do ashtrays filled to the brim with ciggie butts; its real tip. 

Anyway after viewing the scene we convenyed as a group in an attempt to break the scene down into units of action and map out the scene pyshically, emotionally and somatically; this is a method developed by a guy whose name i can’t remember but eh used to teach at VCA.  We managed to get through abotu a third of the scene breaking into these units of action  and i think discussioning it in the way we did helped me to get a better understanding of what was happening and why; the second step was labbeling thee units of action with appropriate titles so to as at a glance show in detail what was happenign in that part.

Anyways i’ll leave it at that because i’m pretty sure this post is already confusing enough.

Class rundown: Ok, so this week we were lookign at naturalism and realism as a theatrical style, Irene (another member of my class) and myself had to do a presentation involving naturalism in some way or form.  Irene made up a really good power point but my sucked in comparisen so i just decided to use my notes but i generally just ended up waffling on abotu things.  We spoke about Irene spoke abotu realism and then i went on to naturalism talking mainly about Emile Zola and the Theatre Libre, then quite briefly spoke about Chekhov; Irene finshed the presentation talkign about Stanislaski and finally naturalism today.  Before the presentation we had a test on ghosts and a conversation revolving around ghosts and naturalism then we started looking at one of the plays which we will be takign scenes from for our end of semester show case.

Naturalism and Realism: Naturalism and realism are perfromance styles which look at trying to recreate life as realistically as possible on the stage.  The difference between the two is difficult to identify because from text to text they will often use them interchangable or have speciffic definitions for them both.  Realism to me is just a set of conventions and techniques which attempt to portray acting in a realistic manner, pycholgoically and pyhsically.  Naturalism on the other hand i see as a distinct movement with speciffic purpose which uses realistic theare conventions and styles. 

Naturalism was started by a man Emila Zola who due to the scientiffic, political, medical, sciological, economic break throughs during the late 19th century and the advent of the scietiffic method wanted to use litreature and the stage as a place to experiment on society and hopefully cure it of any ills.  He believed that this could be done if theatre was produced in a way that seemed so real as if nature so that people would understand the problems with society and act on them.  Zola not really reaching his own mark (he notes this is his book Naturalism in the Theatre (1881)) but he left the movement open for playwrights such as Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg and Shaw to take the movement further and create the style we know as naturalism.  Directers such as Antoine and Stanislavsky were particuliary important in advancing the production style and acting methods assocaited with naturalism respectivly.  The issues explored in many of these texts were extremely provocative and sensitive issues for the day and i can see myself why some were censored but i can also why the playwrights wrote about the thems and issues they did.  The idealogical issues that began arrising at the end of the 19th century needed to eb addressed and what better way then to reahc the people then by the theatre, a strong medium of the day.

Well, i just lost the post that i had written, damn i love technology some times.  So i am a third year student at deakin univeristy studying education/arts and currently undertakign a drama unit ACP308 - the intergrated performer.  As it is we have to submit a directors case book or major scene study at the end of the semester, this could have taken the form of a journal or essay/report.  So i thought why not start a blog,  Jo Rapheal is my drama ed. teacher at deaking and she has been pushing us to get on and give it ago since the start of the year plus as a future drama teacher it will be good to see the advanatges and disadvantages so that when i come to teaching i can implement it as a tool in my classrooms.  I digress, i am intending to use this instead of a journal for ACP mainly because my hand writing is real bogeous so this makes it easyier on everyone.  I think that was about all i covered before the machien ate the post, yep proballly.