Year 1 Half term 5 - Week 3

2/05/23 - Talk with David.

Today we met David Kirkbride, David is a friend of Kelly's who has managed to make a name for himself in the acting industry and he was actually taught by Kelly.

To get started David asked us to write any notes we might think we need while he was introducing himself. This was the time to ask any questions we were curious about in the industry. For my question I asked if we would be type casted, by this I meant if I was to always play a villain would people only give me roles as a villain. Unfortunately David said it is very likely this will happen but that's just how the industry works and its better to lean into that then get upset. 

For the activities David first asked us to lay on the floor with our legs bent to help us prepare ourselves for what we were going to do. he asked us to do this to let go of any tension we may have. So we has to breathe for 4 counts and when we breathe out we will let out a sigh for 4 counts, this is to help you relax. In my opinion this didn't do much but I get what he was teaching us.

After this we did the same thing standing up, and shaking our arms and legs to get us motivated. Then we were asked to walk around the room. As we were walking around David would shout numbers 1-10 and that is how fast we were going to walk - 1 being the slowest and 10 being the fastest. He then asked us to focus on where were we going, were we running late or were we early. 

During this he asked us to lead with a body part, for example your head, and then said a number 1-10 to represent how obvious it was which body part we were leading with - 1 is walking normally and 10 is walking with your head first as obvious as you can. Then he asked us to pick an animal, I picked a rat and we had to walk as that animal and lay on the floor as that animal. After this we did the same activity of David saying a number 1-10 and we had to go between being human and an animal - 1 being a human and 10 being the animal completely. 

3/05/23 - Talk with David.

Today was our final day with David. To start off todays lesson we did a workout. We did this to warm up. We did jumping jacks, jumping twists, jogging on the spot, sit ups and push ups. 

After this we all got into a circle and got told that we had to pretend we were all stood around a plate that was on a needle. He then asked someone to stand in the middle which would keep the plate balanced. Then he put someone else in the middle and they had to keep the plate balanced, to do this they would have to mirror mirror each other.

After he split the circle in two and we all had a go at this activity, then we did the same activity but with dance moves, someone in the middle would do a dance move and you would have to go into the circle doing the same dance move. You would then change the dance move and the other would copy.

Then he asked us to get in groups and try to move together as a group, he was teaching us how to be an ensemble.

After this we were asked by David for us to work on our Last Resort scenes so we could show them to him and he could give us notes on how to make them even better. 

My scene wasn't shown to David as there wasn't enough time but all of the other notes he gave to other people I can use to help my performance.

I learnt from these past two lessons with David that everything we have been taught today is what we will be doing at the start of uni. 

4/05/23 - Adjusting little women script and doing the dance.

I GOT AMY!

First off we started today's lesson by going through the Little Women script and officially adding in the new scenes we are going to use. After this Kelly asked us to get into our production teams, I'm in costume so we discussed about the sisters dresses, who could share, what colours they are going to be. We then went to see what costumes would already be able to work and found a costume that will possibly work for the maid 'Hannah'. 

After this we learnt the dance for Little Women again, this time getting assigned places and learning where our characters will be in the scene of the dance.