Assignment - Unit 9 - Developing performance and production skills.

Horror at The Globe – This year our piece at the globe was slightly different, it was still an immersive piece but we wrote the script! To do this we first got into groups in the class and started researching about all stuff scary that happened in the UK over the decades. Last year our performance at The Globe was all about The Globe itself, its history, myths and the buildings story but this year we wanted to take it even further and make it as scary as possible so we decided to go into the UK’s history.

Originally, we started researching things like The Great Fire of London which was a huge tragedy in 1666 but it just didn’t have enough people involved to make it work in our piece so we put it to the side and any others we knew wouldn’t really make a story and carried on with our search. The people we knew we definitely wanted in this script right away was Burke and Hare as we wanted these two characters to be our tour guides. Burke and Hare were murderers in the 1820s, they killed people and sold their bodies. They were also known as the body snatchers because they would take other dead bodies of people’s hands and sell them for there own profit. Once we knew that we wanted Burke and Hare to be the main characters to guide the tour we then moved onto finding our supporting cast to bring it to life. 

After some more research we got our base line for the show and characters. We decided on The Titanic victims, The Gunpowder Plot (Guy Fawkes), Jack the Ripper, Mary Ann Cotton, Plague victims, Ripper victims, Radium girls and Queen Mary I. Now that we knew what characters were going to be in it, it was our chance to write some of the script. We needed to write our own audition piece for the character we wanted to go for. If you were successful, your audition piece was used in the script. 

I decided to audition for Mary Ann Cotton. Mary is known as the first serial killer in British history and many called her The Black Widow. She killed eleven of her thirteen children and three of her four husbands for their life insurance policies. She got away with it for so long because the weapon she used was arsenic poisoning, and the symptoms for that looked identical to gastric fever so she said they all died of gastric fever and it was never questioned. Until one day she killed her stepson and after claiming it was gastric fever police were suspicious and finally found out that it was arsenic. She was only ever convicted for the one murder, so whether police at the time managed to make the link or not she was hung either way for her crime. 

My audition piece:

“1,2,3”

Pacing back and forth.

“11,12 No 4,5”

Pacing away from the door, turns and sees everyone. Tour guide may say something before she speaks.

“Oh hello… 13,14 No 6,7”

Confused slightly then looks at someone in the group.

“Wow you look just like my William, or was it, James? Yes, yes! James. Oh, my dear James was such a lovely man. 

Oh, it was so unfortunate that one of his children died just a few weeks after I started working for him, from… gastric fever of course. He was so lucky to have me there to support and help him through such a difficult time. I mean what would he have done without me. Unfortunately, as he started to fall into my trap, my mother decided to become ill. So, the only option was, well to speed up her untimely death. She was just getting in the way. It’s what she would have wanted, I helped her out! However, I had left my daughter with her. I knew she didn’t deserve to grow up the way I did, my life was just so unfair. I let her come to live with me and James, but the house just became so full, I deserved more money! I mean I had to do something to help my dear out.”

Snaps out of it and starts pacing again.

 

“8, 9 ,15 ,10 ,16 ,11 ,17 ,9 ,10 ,9 ,10 ,9 ,10, NO”

Turns abruptly to the audience.

“I was hung, I was there for quite some time before they realised, they had made a mistake with the trapdoor, I told you my life was unfair. I mean who can’t place a trapdoor high enough to break someone’s neck, doesn’t seem that difficult. I was pushed by the shoulders until I died because of this. After everything I did to help, I was the victim. I wasn’t violent, a women’s weapon. Arsenic. Sure, it’s a slow and painful death but I did what I had to do. If it wasn’t for me they would have all suffered!

I would have never been caught if they didn’t figure out that arsenic poisoning and gastric fever looked identical.” 

After the initial auditions Kelly struggled to decide which Mary Ann Cotton she wanted in the script so she asked the class to help her decision. To do this all the Mary Ann Cottons, including me, re-auditioned in front of the class. I liked this because it meant I could show everyone what I had come up with. After everyone had gone, Kelly asked our classmates to send her a message anonymously of who they liked the most. After Kelly had calculated all the votes we found out that Sophia won! Meaning her audition piece was now the script for Mary Ann Cotton. This was a little disappointing but considering it was my first time ever writing my own script I was very proud of myself. Originally, after we were told whose script was being used we were all meant to play Mary Ann Cotton but after going through the show dates we soon realised that there was too many of us so I said I would take a step back and let the others play Mary. This actually worked out for the best because the character Queen Mary I needed filling and I was very happy to take it on. 

Queen Mary I is best known as Bloody Mary because of her brutal ways of execution. She burned people at the stake in hundreds. For the script we changed this to beheading as it is easier to create the affect. Queen Marys character was in charge of the execution at the end of play. This was incredibly fun to get to think about because I knew from the beginning that I would be doing my speeches and killings from a balcony, this meant I was very far away from the audience. Knowing this I started playing around with sound. How loud can I be? What tone of voice could I use? How will I get the audience’s attention and make them feel completely in the moment?

Another thing I had to think about was the audience’s responses, part of my scene was a section where I asked the audience which Jack the Ripper they think should be killed. This was because throughout the tour there was three different versions of the character Ripper and at the end the audience need to decide who they believe is the real one but if they can not decide or take too long I order for all three to be killed. This was important because I had to listen very carefully to be able to hear their decision to be able to move onto the next part of the script smoothly. 

My diction and voice had to be clear at all times so the audience could hear me well. The character of Queen Mary I was extremely fun to play, she was bossy and really demanded the space, being able to play a character that only really used their voice was definitely a new challenge that I am glad I took on. What I mean by this is being so high up on a balcony, facial expressions are not completely noticeable so they are still important but not something I could rely on.

My second character in this piece was a Radium girl, this short section of the script was there to lead the audience to the execution. Gracie, Millie, Sophia, Paige and I wrote this little section. The Radium girls are factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning while painting the dials on clocks, it’s said that the paint used to light up and the girls would find this funny and paint their lips and nails with it not realising it was the reason they were getting ill. Most of the factory workers then developed radium jaw which is where the radium they had consumed started to rot away the bones in their face. Because this character was more of a way to round off the tour it was a very short section that was easy to play as we decided to make the focus on covering up the radium jaw ready for the big event. For me I felt there wasn’t much needed to get into character as I believed these girls were just ordinary like us but unfortunately died because of their work. I decided to play the character like a girl excited to go out for the night as executions were viewed as entertainment.

Overall, my characters for The Globe this year were very different from last year, Queen Mary focused more on my diction and clearance of voice so really honing in on a certain skill and Radium Girl was used to help end the tour so more of a relaxed scene rather than scary. This shows the range thatI have done in my Globe pieces because last year a played a crazy Beatles fan and a witch, which are the opposite of my characters this year. The Beatles fan was screaming and crying, using my voice to show distress so the words didn’t hold the scene together whereas Queen Mary was sophisticated and her words controlled the whole space. The witch was scary and I creeped up on people and used my body language to glide across the space whereas the Radium girl was a calm and polite girl trying to ignore the fact that her jaw was rotting away. 

I am very glad I took on different roles this year and was able to develop my skills further. 

Evaluation – I feel as though my performance at The Globe went really well, I think my diction was good and I was clear to the audience. One thing I would change if I could go back is to be more consistent in how bossy I made the character Queen Mary I. I really wanted the character to demand the space and I feel I did that but I could feel myself losing some of the power in her voice at the end of my sentences. I realised the main cause of this was because I was losing breath by the time I got to the end of my paragraphs, this shows me that I need to work on my breath control while projecting throughout long paragraphs – making sure I take in enough breath to keep the same power straight through to the end of the scene. Since I was far away from the audience I realised I was more focused on being loud enough rather than making sure I was still taking in enough air to portray the character the original way I wanted too. I don’t feel as though this affected my performance overall or how the audience perceived the character but it is definitely something I would like to improve on to make sure all my characters are truly as good as they can be. Because I realised the problem sooner rather than later I was able to go through my speech and make sure I took breaths in the second show to really give my best performance. I know moving forward that a skill I would like to improve on is breath control especially when saying larger chunks of dialogue. However, it’s not all negative as diction is something I have struggled with throughout this course but doing this character really showed me that the tips and tricks to help me overcome them problems are working as I think this performance is one of the clearest I have done diction wise so I am very happy and excited to keep using them moving forward. 

Looking at some feedback from Kelly “Pheebs demonstrated a clear understanding of audience throughout the piece and responded and reacted well to them throughout the piece”. I am very happy with this feedback as I also feel as though I did a good job interacting with the audience even while being at a distance and I am glad that it was noticeable from others who saw my performance. 

 

Peter pan – Christmas is just around the corner so that means our fairy tale show for the year is coming up! What I mean by this is we like them to be very upbeat, funny and age friendly so everyone in the family can come and watch. Last year we did the Wizard of Oz, this year we did Peter Pan. When I first found out that we were doing Peter Pan I knew immediately I wanted to go for Hook, however, I was not a huge fan when finding out we would still be doing it as a musical. Musicals are not really my thing and it did put me off a bit at first because they are very much out of my comfort zone but this year is all about pushing myself so I stuck with my plan to audition for Hook. 

Before we even started auditions we needed time to prepare and really know what to expect from them because there were three rounds. An acting audition, a singing audition and a dancing audition. Now we didn’t need to be perfect dancers or singers as long as we gave it our best shot Kelly would know we tried our hardest and she would judge us off of our acting skills and determination. In the weeks running up to auditions we had singing lessons with Tom and Dance lessons with Abby. In our singing lessons we did different types of vocal warmups, we did this to train ourselves to remember that every time were about to go on stage whether we are singing or not we need to warm up our voices so we don’t have any problems or potential voice injuries on stage. Some of these vocal warmups include: Lip drills, Humming, Singing vowels to the end of a room, 1,2,3,4,5 and mini songs (‘When the saints go marching in’ as an idea). After we did our vocal warmups we learnt the audition songs. Learning the songs was really fun because you started to see the characters personality even more throughout the lyrics and pace. Hooks audition song was tricky, it was more talking to a beat rather than singing which you would think would make it easier but for me it was quite complicated because I would lose the pacing and be too fast in some parts and too slow in others but I tried not to let it get me down and kept working on it.

In our dance (movement) lessons with Abby we started with a warmup to wake us up and get our blood pumping, this included things like: Jumping jacks, Running on the spot and Jumping twists. We then did a warm down type of thing which is essentially stretching so you’re still keeping your body moving but letting your heart rate come down and settle. This included things like: Touching our toes, Lunges, Squats and Arm circles. We do this for the same reason as our vocal warmups, it is important to make sure your body is ready to be on stage whether or not your dancing but especially if you are dancing because it makes sure you don’t injure yourself like getting pulled muscles. After our warmups we started to learn some of the dances for the shows, these were not set in stone but just gave Kelly and Abby an idea of what we could do.

When auditions came around we did them on three separate days, our acting then dance then singing. When Kelly was telling us how she wanted us to perform Hook she had different ideas for a man and a woman, she wanted a mean and nasty male hook but an almost powerful and bossy female hook. Unfortunately, after my acting audition I knew I didn’t give off that personality, I just couldn’t turn his monologue into something like that so I kept it as a nastier character. I still feel like I did well but I knew that I may have cost the role because of this. When it came to the dance auditions, they weren’t expecting pirouettes or leaps, they wanted to see characterisation in the dancing. They put us into groups of 4 and the mini choreography we had been learning we performed. I liked doing it this way because dancing really isn’t something I am good at but I knew that wasn’t what they were looking for because if you have good characterisation no one is looking at your feet. But when it came to the singing audition I flaked, I was so nervous about singing and getting the words I froze, I didn’t move or act I just stood there singing. I didn’t get the role of Hook but that wasn’t surprising to me, not because I’m trying to put myself down but going over what went wrong I knew it was never meant to be my role, it wasn’t something I could make my own so I would have never felt comfortable performing as Hook.

Once Kelly finalised the cast list I found out I had been casted as Twin 1, when I first found this out I was a little gutted, I knew Hook wasn’t for me but a part of me still wished he was, I wanted to be able to prove myself and at the time I just didn’t think I could do that with Twin 1. I soon found out I was wrong because I started to love the character immediately and realised I actually judged the character too quickly. Yeah maybe the twins don’t say much but their personalities are everything. Alex played my twin and I couldn’t have asked for someone better, it just came so naturally with her, we were able to pick apart the twins and make them completely our own. Their similarities to their differences all the way to where they came from. My favourite part about the Twins is that their funny, they don’t take things seriously, they bicker and argue but would die for each other at the same time and getting to really think about how to put that on stage was so much fun. I love comedic roles, there probably my favourite thing to act, making jokes at the worst possible time, just getting to see the joy on the audiences faces. The twins really reminded of the old ladies from the last resort. What I mean by this is the old ladies were so blunt and honest and that’s what made them funny and the twins’ personalities just resonated with that to me. They would still drive each other insane even if they’ve been captured or blame each other if something went wrong, it was just really great to be able to bring a funny character to life again. The twins may not have been centre stage but I definitely think they put smiles on people’s faces. During the singing and dance scenes Alex and I decided to add some of our own bits into it so I would turn the wrong way and barge into her and then act like it was her characters fault. This made these scenes so much less stressful for me because like I said musicals aren’t really my thing and I was very anxious about them but if I messed up it didn’t matter because it was obviously Twin 2s fault… 

During Peter Pan we also learnt stage combat, this was definitely hands down my favourite part of rehearsals. Of course, after we had learnt all of the important health and safety rules like always keep eye contact – never ever go to throw a punch or a kick if you have not got eye contact and the other persons/peoples acknowledgement as it can end in incredibly bad injuries. Most of my stage combat I learnt with Alex and we came up with the idea that we wanted to fight with frying pans, I may or may not have pinched the idea from tangled, and I would swing for our enemy but accidently hit her instead. Stage combat is my favourite skill I have learnt so far on this course as it’s so cool to learn how they do certain fight scenes in the industry. The most challenging part I would say is taking the rehearsed fight and making it look spontaneous, however, our enemy who we were meant to fight sadly became ill during the shows and this left Alex and I behind stage realising we were going to have to fight each other on stage with no practise before hand. To make sure we were being safe we agreed that we would only do frying pan swings, she would go and I would duck and so on until the end of the fight where I “Bonk” her on the head as if I’d won and we’d turn to see everyone else is actually fighting and we eventually go to help. I think it worked great and I was very proud of us for overcoming it quickly.

My second character in Peter Pan was a Brave girl, the brave girls are a bit like the lost boys but the fighters. They are the ones who protect Peter and the boys. A girl gang almost. Going from playing the Twins to a brave girl was a little jarring at first because the brave girls are very professional, they are very serious and will do anything to keep Peter safe. My favourite thing about the brave girls is that at the end of their scene they go into the audience and say hi and it was just the best experience because people would just light up. 

During these runs of shows we had a relaxed performance, this is were people who have disabilities come to watch as they can’t see normal performances as big audiences or loud noises may be too much for them, it was an incredible experience to be able to put on a play for people who probably don’t get to see them as much. 

Evaluation – My comedic timing is something I take pride in, I think I am very good at comedy characters as it just comes naturally to me. They’re fun and enjoyable and being able to play that on stage is always a bonus. Playing the character Twin 1 was actually very rewarding. Being the subtle funny characters in the lost boy group with Alex was a blast and something I was not expecting enjoy as much as I did. Dancing and singing on stage is not my forte but it was truly such a fun experience and something I would definitely do again. Going into Twin 1 I had my doubts but when performing, the character really came to life. Thinking about my performance there isn’t anything I would like to change. My performance wasn’t perfect by any stretch but the little mistakes in the dance moves or a slight bump on stage just fed into the characters of the Twins and really made them more realistic. That’s what I love about comedy roles, if you know how to play of your mistakes, nobody will even know you’ve made one. The main thing I can take from this role is actually how much I have changed, in my previous roles if I messed up I would beat myself up about it and start believing that I should just give up but now seeing how I feel after playing this character and realising that my performance wasn’t perfect but the audience still loved that character just shows that not all performances are going to go exactly the way you want but that’s okay because you learn to overcome and make it your own version of perfect. 

Zest Theatre (Camp Phoenix) – Zest Theatre is an outside company we worked with briefly in our first year, they came to our college and told us they were putting on a play about how kids from primary school can overcome challenges ready to go into the next stage of their life which would be secondary. They did this by going to schools all over the UK and asking students what their school experience was like and what challenges they may have overcome to get them through school and that they want to put these topics into their play. We did this with Zest by sitting down with them and telling them all about our experiences good or bad, they recorded our answers and said they would begin writing the script and get back to us when they had the first draft. We also found out that when the script was finished we would be the first college/acting group to perform the piece so we were going to be the face of the performance. 

About six months later we get a call from zest, the first draft is done. We do a read through with them over zoom call and after the read through they ask for any feedback. I liked the script it definitely had a lot of good points about how challenging school could be whilst also keeping it a fun and upbeat, however we did all believe it could definitely use some work on character development and making sure all characters have a good story line so that is the feedback we gave and they went back to the drawing board. 

When the time came we were given the final script and it was time to go off to The Arc and begin our work with Zest. The concept of the play is a group of students who are going to summer camp and they have all these challenges (our stories) to overcome to win ribbons as the play goes along. It follows the main character ‘Zia’ in his journey and we meet his camp friends along the way. Going into this project I was very skeptical, its not like anything we’ve done before and the script was definitely a different genre to what we were all used too, it’s a musical but not like any of the usual ones I’ve seen. On the first day of rehearsals we learn who the characters are and what scenes the play is made up of and how the music is going to slot into them, in all the break-through scenes there is a song to go along with it that the characters sing, for example the first scene uses the song ‘Jump into adulthood’ as we are entering the camp for the first time. I was asked to play Amelia, Amelia’s character struggles with personal issues that stop her from being able to do things the others can. When they first asked me to play this character I wasn’t sure because they told me she had quite a bit of singing in her characters storyline but then I thought back to Peter Pan and how much I actually enjoyed the singing and dancing and knew this was definitely a great next challenge to take on as I would be singing by myself and it would be something I would always remember if I did it so I took the role of Amelia. 

In the start of the play we see Amelia asking where the cabins are as she really needs to put her bag down and this shows the audience straight away that something might be wrong but she doesn’t say anything. This then leads into the first challenge scene where we see Amelia, Zia, Maisy and Afhan in a knot tying competition trying to get their first ribbon. This is incredibly difficult for Amelia as she just can’t do it but all she wants is to keep up with her camp mates and doesn’t want to be the reason they lose the chance of getting ribbons. During this whole scene we are singing and dancing in between our dialogue to the song ‘Cross it’. This is until Zia sees that Amelia can’t keep up and he shouts at her to hurry up and she breaks, the others stop singing and I sing my mini solo while the others on stage surround me, representing a panic attack. The scene ends with the camp leader realising something is wrong and telling Amelia that its okay to sit out because we can support our friends in a different way so then my character becomes the cheerleader for the task and everyone gets their ribbons, I finish the scene singing with the camp leader then run off stage. This scene is used to show the audience that teamwork is actually the most important thing when something is challenging and you should work together with your peers to make sure everyone is comfortable and safe. 

Two-year evaluation – Looking back on my journey throughout the two years at college, my progress on this course has been unimaginable to me. I have achieved things I didn’t even think was possible and if you told me this time last year I would be ending my journey going to university for acting I wouldn’t believe you. My confidence over the two years is the most noticeable improvement in my acting, when I first came to college and started this course I was terrified to get involved and didn’t want to speak in front of my classmates never mind perform. Everything honestly made me feel embarrassed and that is not how you want to feel on an acting course so that was definitely the biggest thing I had to work on in first year. I did this slowly, gradually building up to bigger characters. At the time I didn’t understand why and I felt like I couldn’t prove myself but now I understand. If I was given too big of a role and something was to go wrong I would never have set foot on a stage again so it had to be done carefully so I could learn to enjoy being on stage before I delved into the big parts and for that I thank Kelly for not giving up on me and realising I just needed time to adjust before I even realised. And it payed off, I went from playing Beatles fan to Aunt Em to Young Stefi and ending the year playing Amy March and that wouldn’t have been possible without the support I got. Every role I did my confidence grew more and more and I started to really fall in love with acting, I always liked it and knew I wanted to do it in the future but I had never performed before college so I had no idea how much it could really change a person. Sounds dead cringy when you put it like that but I wouldn’t be who I am if I didn’t gain the confidence from this course.

One of the main skills I developed in my first year was how to improve my diction, I have a speech impediment so its never going to be perfect but its almost unrecognisable now, using things like tongue twisters and having my friends tell me when they hear the issue so I could really slow down and figure out were the problem was coming from and it helped a lot. It hasn’t cured it but when I’m on stage I know now how to avoid it from being a problem and it has changed my performances drastically because its always good if an audience can hear you properly. Another skill I gained in my first year was getting to know the characters, deep diving into their world. Really getting into their head space, Who are they? What are they doing? And Why? And it really makes any performance 10x better. This is my most used skill I have taken away from college and even something I have caught myself doing just out and about, looking at a stranger and giving them a whole backstory. We do this because it makes the performance even more realistic because the more you know about the character the more you can become that person.  

In my second year I now love sharing my work with everyone and showing what I can do and you can really see the difference in my acting now because I am no longer worried about what people think of me because I am finally able to tell myself I am good at this and I think its really showing in all my performances in my second year, especially in my Zest performance, going into that performance I was skeptical, we didn’t really know this company very well and had no idea if their script or music was going to be any good but all their songs are still stuck in my head to this day. Playing the character of Amelia really showed me how much I’ve come out of my shell, I am no singer or dancer but I loved that role so much and I gave it my all on that stage and I would not have done that in first year I would’ve been to embarrassed but this year I knew I could do it. 

One of my favourite skills I’ve learnt in second year is pretend your character has a secret, it can be anything and they can’t or don’t want to tell anyone. I love this because it just really accentuates the performance because everyone in life has a secret and if your giving your character a secret it means you’re really in their head space because you need to know everything to be able to determine what type of secrets they would keep.

Overall, going from Aunt Em at the start of first year to ending the year playing Amy March from Little Women. Then coming back into my second year at college with a new-found confidence working for Zest on camp phoenix playing Amelia who has her own solo on stage is mind blowing to me. My progression seems like its never ending to me which may sound a little cocky but I started from the very bottom so every new skill I learn or step forward I take I know I still have a long way to go but to be able to write down how far I’ve already grown as a performer excites me so much more for all the things I’ll be able to do in the future. 

I know I will still have many things to overcome and work on while at university but I wouldn’t even be going if it wasn’t for this course preparing me and I can now safely say I’ve never felt readier to move on to the next stage of my life and really see where I can go.