DEVISING WORKSHOPS

DEVISING WORKSHOP


We were split into four groups, two groups of 5 people and two groups of 4 people. Sharron then gave us a quote 'In order for something evil to succeed that must mean the people who are good sit back and watch.' We in groups had to then create a little play about this quote.
We created a short scene where I was in school and I was sitting by myself in a corner reading a book and minding my own business, then Tarkan and Peter come along, they the bullies and the popular ones in school. As they saw me reading the book they came and kicked it out of my hands and started calling me a nerd and other names and then they started hitting and kicking me for reading a book. A girl walks by and helps me which is Dulce. She started saying, don't worry about it, they always like this. She was trying to make me feel better and to not worry much.
We done a little run through and then we performed in front of the whole class to show what we came up with.

The next day we worked on it again and then we had to extend it more and what we done was - 10 years later, i became the Court Judge and I happened to see Tarkan and Peter being bad again and it was up to me to decide what would happen to them. I had recognised them from their voice and their faces. As I was giving my statement, I asked them if they knew who I was, and sadly they didn't remember, but when I told them who I was, their reaction changed a lot and they started feeling sorry about me. I gave them 5 years in prison and that's how the play ended. We had a lot of rehearsals and practise. This play came out from our while we were improvising and we liked the way it turned out, therefore we stuck by it.



We were split into different group and we had a task to do. We were doing Stereotypes of a drunk person, a police officer and a pastor/priest. 

In my group I had Stephan and Peter and Myself. Our task was each person chose to be either a drunken person, a police officer or a priest. We chose our roles, and I was the drunken person, Stephan and Peter were the police officer. We improvised our scene really quick and we liked how it went. I was walking down drinking getting drunk, hardly being on my feet and then the police officers see me, they come to me and they test me out. They put a line down the road and I was meant to walk straight with the line to show if I was drunk or not. As I was walking down the line, I fell down and they arrested me.
We then changed roles to different characters, to show which characters suited us the best.


We was set into pairs from Sharron. I was in a pair with Stephan. We had to watch each other walk around the space and give each other feedback. We did this for a while. The feedback that I got from Stephan was that I should move around the space more and also to keep me eyes and head up. The aim for this task was for us to look neutral and just be still. After that was done, we then had to get into groups of 6 and go in turns doing different actions that everyone in the group would have to follow. 


When I was with my group, we had 20 minutes to create a small workshop for the kids. however, my group thought the workshop needs to be 10 minutes long. When we found out that the workshop we were going to do with the kids was not going to be 10 minutes long but longer than that. We did not have much time to add more. So when the 20 minutes of preparing was done, my group and I went out to the dance room to discuss what kind of teachers we would be. We then started the mini workshop, it was a really fun experience because my class mates didn't pretend to be them selves but be other characters like we did, just so the whole effect of the workshop being performed to people we don't know becomes interesting and en-joyful to play. 

The next day, we started the day by caring on with our group workshop that we didn't finish on Tuesday.  Today there was only my group left to do the workshop and the people involved in the workshop were; Me, Alex, Stephan, Joseph and Chris. During the process of our workshop we did a lot of creative and new things. For instance, we played that Splat Game but changed it a little bit, so instead of them saying Splat the two other people around the middle person would have to say their name so that they could know everyone that's participating. After that, We got everyone to seat on the floor and spoke to them about the next activity we were going to do. They told us to split into two groups and to make a one minute play and to perform it to everyone. 
When we finished we had feedback from everyone in the room, mostly said, was, it ran really smooth and they enjoyed it a lot which we all were happy. 




















Stereotype of drunk, police officer and a pastor/priest


Create a mini workshop


given 20 minutes

Evaluation - The Pillowman 'THANATOS'

Evaluation


 The whole performance ran really smoothly and I was really happy with the way it went. Everyone gave their best. I am very happy with my performance and my team mates, I have never been in a play where it included anger, depression, suicide etc. At first it was a little bit hard for me to work with depression and getting my head around it and having to act like I've been bullied, going through depression, problems with my family. But having supportive friends like I did, it wasn't as hard as I thought to act it out. Each rehearsal it got easier and easier to act out as my character.


Each feedback from friends and teachers, I took notes and worked on it. Most of the feedback was articulation and projection, and less movements. I completely cut out all the movements because it wasn't really needed in my scene. I sat down in front of my bed and performed my scene like that. My scene was the most depressing one because I had no one to help me and I was getting bullied from everyone, school and home as well.


 


 
Strengths
My strengths were the audience and the time I had in hand. In the stage because I was the only one and everything was focused on me. Therefore I said to my self, there's no need to rush, whatever happens, it will happens because of me, I'm the only one in the theatre. I felt like I could pause for like 10 seconds and still be good because the play is about violence, depression and suicide therefore it makes sense. Being in the stage alone, is scary but its also amazing because you're on your own and you feel like you have the whole power in the stage, but also, if you mess up it will be a really tough situation to come back up because its not the same it improvise with a friend. Alone it will be a bit harder to improvise because if you forget a word or line, you will blank out and struggle.


My confidence grew much more because before it wasn't as good as it was now. My confidence got better, by acting in front of my friends and my teacher, making mistakes and improving on them. Making a mistake in front of your teacher isn't the same as making a mistake in front of the whole audience in the theatre. Therefore it helped me built my confidence and my ability to perform without any worries.


 
Weakness


Worrying about forgetting lines. This is really difficult. While Stephanie was performing her monologue, I was next, I kept going through my lines and sometimes I would worry about forgetting lines. I would then start getting nervous and it made it a little harder to know the lines and perform my monologue at my best standard.


Also, my weakness was articulation and saying a line in the monologue - 'Why would anyone care about a kid that lives down at 45 miller away' I was getting notes and feedback about this sentence because when I would say it, it was a bit fast and it seemed as if I stuttered the part when I said the address. At the final play, instead of say '45 miller way' I changed it to '45 miller road' and it was 100 times better than saying way, because it seemed like a tongue twister.


 




Moreover, I feel that this was my best play that I performed because I never had the chance to be in a play that was this sad/depressed. I was always a person that would play in normal performances and comedic scripts. I had never performed a script/monologue like this before. I would love and I will be performing more plays like this in the future.

Peter Pan Rehearsals

On Monday we started lesson at 1;30. We were doing our devised piece for half and hour and then we had to go dance studio to practice our singing for the Peter Pan play. In the devised piece we run through our scenes because the next day we had to perform our plays to the whole class. We run through the play couple of times and everything was running smooth, We just need to extend our scenes and memories the lines by heart.

 

Later, we were doing our Peter Pan play, and some people were missing, which some had to fit their role and help out. My character is a lost boy, I had to make my own name which I'm happy with 'Smith'. We worked nonstop from 2 to 5 o'clock, which I very enjoyed every second from it. Most people were concentrated on the work and working the way they were told which made everything much easier and better. We added a little scene with the two lost boys 'Nibs and I' a little fighting scene as little brothers, we were training but little did we know Pirated were on their way to where we stayed, we then had to hide until they left.

On the first week of college on Monday, I couldn't attend my lesson due to celebrating Eid, which it made me miss a little about the 'holiday Stories' piece's that were created in groups of four actors. Tarkan then shared what had happened throughout the whole day that I missed. They had looked through the Peter Pan play, and that we will be working on that play soon.

Rehearsal Diary (TIMELINE)

Week 1- On the first week of our FMP, we were doing auditions to the plays that we wanted to appear and perform . There were three group plays and one solo play for Kieran. The three group plays had a short paragraph and we had to perform our best ways to be in the group and perform your best.
I performed all the three short lines to the directors and I was asked a question by Chris, the 'Pillowman' Director. He said, would you be able to perform a really depressing scene and then, when you leave the class room, you leave with your real life mentality not the class room and the depressed monologue mentality. I answered, I wouldn't really mind anything, I would be happy with anything that is shown in the open.

Chris asked me if it was okay with me if I could perform a really depressing scene and then when I would leave the class room, would my mood be the same as my character or would it change back to normal life.




Week 2- We received the script from Chris, called 'THE PILLOWMAN'
We went through the script with the whole group. We had SALLY leave the group which we then had to cut her whole section out. We went through our lines to see what kind of monologue we would have and we started to annotate.










Week 3- We were learning our lines and trying to memorize all the lines by heart.


I went over my characters lines and see what the type of acting I have to do.








Week 4- Research about depression and suicide, we run through it and we were happy with how it turned out.
work on articulation and less movements while performing an emotional depressed character












Week 5- Objectives - find each objective for each line and trying to say the lines with emotions not just say the lines as they written








Week 6- Run through the whole play even the last scenes with Joseph and I








Week 7-Have costumes and props ready








Week 8- Be able to go through the whole run without any mistakes and everything learned to its finests

Presentation

Our play had a lot of different things that were presented on stage such as;

- Hanging bodies - lights to shine on them

- Lights to represent pillowmans 'hypnosis'  / voice overs - reacting off him and looking in various directions

- Practicing the hang in the dark - adding 10 second count to show the death

- Finding a neutral for every bedroom

- Look at audience at constant time

- Monologue - how to be portrayed 

- Transitions in the dark / annoying curtain

- Showing the glove for my scene

- Performing in the front of the table

When we hanged the bodies on the ropes to drop when we commit suicide. It makes the the stage and the performance look more realistic because the clothes were a duplicate of what we were wearing. Having the lights shining on them when they drop down makes it look much better and it makes it stand out because in the stage it was dark when we committed suicide, therefore, the lights shining on the clothes grabbed the audiences attention and straight away the audience though they committed suicide. After that, when there's a black out, we drop from the table to the stage and we had a 10 second count to show our death while we hanged our-self's.The 10 second count down was a last minute idea which we all agreed on because it made it looks much better and more realistic.

When the Pillowman Voice Over started talking, we were looking in different directions because we didn't know where he was. When Chris was there, we would look at hum straight away and be scared because we don't know who he is. Chris had his injury and sadly he couldn't attend the performance, therefore it was only a voice over. At the end of the monologue, the Pillowman say's something like 'would you like your pain to disappear?' As the Pillowman says that, we look at the table and chair direction and the lights start to fade in and out in a bluish and greenish colour to show that its the Pillowmans power and to represent that hes there watching you kill yourself. 

The back curtains were fully closed and it was really hard to see when you'd come on or off the stage. It was really dark and it was very hard to see where the curtains separated. It was very annoying not being able to find it correctly, especially when its you scene after, also when I'd put on different props, such as the bed and some chairs and a table, it was very hard to open the curtains, it needed someone to hold the curtains and to make it ready for me to be able to bring the bed on or off the stage easily. Sharron then put a white glowing sellotape to where the curtains separate. That made it so much easier to know where to enter. We then took advantage of it and used it when we needed to bring a prop in or out. 

My scene was pretty much the same looking room as Joseph's (Princ) or Stephanie's (Eva). The only thing that changed was I had a glove on top of the little drawer to show that I've been trying to take boxing lessons and learn how to fight because of Jonah, and because my dad always would call me useless shit for no reason. Therefore, the glove represents that I'm trying to take some boxing lessons to win Jonah's fight and to stop him from bullying me.

Individual Development

Individual Development - How I worked on my monologue 

- Create a backstory

- Devising our own Pieces

- Getting into character

- Be prepared for any situation

- Annotate the script/ take notes

- Confidence

- What happens before the scene on stage

I spoke to Chris over WhatsApp for my monologue; he said to me what I wanted it about and how I wanted it to turn out. I explained to him, that I heard stories and had also seen online to how a lot of people feel about going school and what they go through at home and school as well. Therefore, I had written to him that I wanted to be bullied in school and also to be hated by both parents, have a terrible life and pretty much think of suicide all the time. I wanted to perform a role that I thankfully never experienced in my life and I wanted to change my acting style a bit. I had never performed a play like this before, I was very excited to see my monologue. Chris had written it and printed it out exactly the way I wanted 'Dylan' to feel. I then had to do a little background about Dylan for me to be able to understand my character the best I can.

"Chris and I had a discussion about my character; my character is called 'Dylan Ibra'.

 I appear in scene 4 with Pillowman and Dylan's Dad. In the play I explain how I got to the position where I'm right now. I talk about how I get bullied in school  by other students, especially Jonah and his friends, well, his puppies, they follow him wherever he goes. Jonah was the one who started everything. The second time he tried to take my sandwich, I stood up for myself thinking that if I beat him down Ill gain respect and he will stop. But NO. Unfortunately he was better than me. Well 'm not a fighter. Ever since then I've never been able to bring him down or do anything about it. Since then he started bulling me, him and his friends. I would always go home with a bruise on my face or a black eye.

My dad would never support me or help me in any of my needs. If I came home with a black eye or a bruised face, he would shout at me, he would start punching, kicking and push me. He would never help me at all. All he would say is 'you useless shit'. I don't remember the last time my dad ever smiled at me or hugged me or anything. All I remember from him is, his punches and kicks on me. I have never had a peaceful day. Just one. I've never experienced to be happy with your parents. I wish I never existed. There no reason for me to be alive.

My background was;

'When I was born, my father wanted the first child to be a daughter. I still don't know the reason behind me, but yeah, he preferred a daughter first. When my mum gave birth to me, he found out that their first child was a boy, and ever since then he didn't like me at all. He was not surprised at all, my dad never loved me at all. Everything started since then. As I grew up, I was never able to talk to my dad, I would come home from school and go straight upstairs in my room. My dad would always watch football and he would take all his anger on me. He loves the Arsenal team and every time they lose, its like I'm his boxing punching bag, he takes all the anger out on me. He will leave me bleeding on the floor and he will not worry for me at all.

Then in year 7, that's when I met this person called 'Jonah'. Jonah was the best male sports man. He was always really athletic and everyone loved him. I hated sports especially 'football' all because of my dad and the experience I had with him. I remember it was during P.E (physical education) my class was going to play football, and I denied from playing it because I wasn't really interested to play. I see Jonah coming towards me aggravated, asking me why I'm not playing and calling me names and that I'm not a man if I don't play football. I already had enough of my dad beating me about football, I didn't want another person to enter that lifestyle to make me feel bad about sports. Therefore, I pushed him back, and his friends came to help, he stopped all of them and took of his shirt. I was ready to fight him because I didn't want to let him ruin me like that. As I swung towards him he blocked my punch, and he punched me on my face and kicked me in my stomach. I had a busted lip and a black eye.

When  I got home, my dad was mad at me because he didn't want his son to lose no fight, he wanted his son to be a man and fight back. He then punched me on my face and pushed me away. I was crying and sobbing on the floor in a pile of blood thinking how my life got to the position it is now. As my dad walked away he turned around and said 'YOU USELESS SHIT' and he walked off. I run upstairs and started crying and I fell asleep. Everyday Jonah had bullied me till year 11, not only that but coming home with a bruised face did not help my dad seeing it. Instead of helping me, he would hit me as well for not fighting Jonah back. He would always push me and kick me around. He gave me bruises everywhere in my body. I ALWAYS THOUGH ABOUT ENDING IT ALL. It will never hurt anyone, everyone would be at peace and so would I'.

During lunchtime, I sat to eat my sandwich and I saw Jonah again. I try to not look at him and ignore him because I knew he was stronger than me from the first time we had a fight. I didn't want to be embarrassed again. Ever since then, I've always been scared of him and been scared to talk to him. He's always bullied me throughout the two years that I've known him. I cannot even change school because my parents don't even care about me. My dad injures me and bruises me more than Jonah and his friends.

When I saw Jonah again he came up to me and said "What you looking at" and as I was eating my sandwich he kicked it out of my hands. They all started laughing at me, I went to pick my sandwich up, and he pushed me on the flood. They carried on laughing and started calling me names "loser, loser" "look at the nerd on the floor" and things like that. Then I finally heard the school bell ring and they started walking towards their classes. I picked up my sandwich and wrapped it around my plastic bag and I put it in my bag. I make my way to my class, and on the side there are these kids from the window laughing at me and pointing at me and swearing. I tried my hardest to fake a smile and pretend as if everything is fine. I was eating my self inside and wanted to start bursting our crying."



When I received  my script, I looked over it and tried to annotate as well as I could because i wanted to start reading and memorizing my lines. I annotated the script to how I should feel when I say certain words or lines. For example, when I mention Jonah, I hate it so much - mentioning him makes my blood boil, therefore I raise my voice and talk with anger. Annotating my script straight away helped me a lot because I knew what to do and how to react when I would say a line. I have always learned my lines much faster when my script is annotated because it gives a better understanding of the monologue and its easier to remember. I always try my best to memorize my lines really quick and then just work on the movements and objectives - meaning behind the lines and the emotions as well.

NOTES

Work on Articulation, when we get emotional, we lost track of words and we end up mumbling, my notes were to work on it and make the articulation clearer and easy to hear and understand.

Work on the backstory of our character, to get to know him better, I completed this with Joseph, where he helped me with the background. Because of my character, i get bullied by Jonah and my dad also. Therefore, Joseph acted double characters as my dad and the bully as well. The background work helped me a lot because it gave me an idea of how it feels to be bullied and hated by everyone. You have no hopes at all, all you think about is death.

My confidence build up from performing in front of my friends and teacher. If i'd make a mistake they would tell me what I did wrong and help me do it better. We done a lot of run through's before the final performance - run through's helped us maintain our focus on our character and not be distracted from the play to something else. While performing on the final performance, I was really confident and I knew I could do it and impress the audience because I had a lot of rehearsals and had more than enough time to finish and memorize my lines. 

Before my scene on stage, I ran from my dad because he punched me in my face and I came upstairs in my room crying. He punched me because he was drunk and didn't know what he was doing. Every time I would come home from school, I would always get a beating if my dad was home, he was home most of the time. As I came upstairs, I entered the stage crying and sobbing and Joseph my 'Dad' shouted "You can stay up there, you useless shit".

Challenges and Solutions

We had a few of challenges during rehearsals such as;

- Me having problems with Articulation - mainly when i'd say the address

- Chris being sick (Creating other mannequin in case Chris does not show up

- Joseph being in pain because his leg injury

- Performance day, lights did not work properly

- Voice Over (Chris)

- Fixing the copied clothes the day before our performance, not working properly

- Facing the audience on my own, not moving at all, just saying lines with emotions

- Looking at the audience

- Use of space

- Practicing

Every time I would perform my monologue, I would get feedback from my friends as well as my teacher. The main note was to work on articulation and articulate the last letters of words. The main one was, when I would say something important or something that would stand out, like when I would talk about how I was getting bullied and how my dad would beat me up for no reason. When I was talking about it, my feedback was to articulate and project better because i'm saying important things, also so the audience knows how I ended up in the position that I am right now. Overtime, as we would rehears I would try my best to slow down and articulate every word better and to try to perform it as good as I can. My main line was when I would say the address "Why would anyone care about a kid that lives down at 45 Miller Way" I was explaining my address, but my teacher and friends said that they didn't understand the words properly therefore I was working on it a lot. When it came to the last couple performances, I managed to articulate as well as I could and I impressed my teacher and she was really happy.

Chris couldn't attend the last month or last couple of weeks due to his asthmatic injury. He would always give us a objective for each week to complete and we would always be in touch with him and tell him what we done and what not. For the last week we were working on our background story to create a little scenery for our character. This helped us build sort of emotions for our character to know how it feels to be in their position. Personally this helped me a lot because we done a full 5-10 minute little play about my character. Joseph helped me with my little play, as he acted two different characters. The bully (Jonah) and the Dad. He first acted as the bully in school, when he barged me I almost drop and I still said sorry because I didn't want any trouble with him. After that scene I slowly turned around to go to my house and Joseph quickly swapped into the Father. He held a bottle in his hand just the way I was explaining him in my monologue. As he saw my walk in the house, he straight away started shouting and me and the he slapped me for no reason. I then ran upstairs in my room to the way it was written in my monologue. This helped me more than enough because it gave me a sense of how it feels to be bullied for no reason. This was a bit of a challenge to us because it was improvised all the way through, we didn't think about it just straight acting without any time put into it - for the background story.

When Joseph would miss a lesson, he would let us know and give us a reason to why he wouldn't make it. Joseph missing a lesson wouldn't really affect my time learning my monologue, because I didn't have any scenes or anything with him. Our play was all own monologues. Joseph really helped me with the background scenes of our characters.

On the performance day, we were doing a run through of our play in the morning, as we were changing scenes from Stephanie to mine, the lights stopped working, and I was waiting for the lights to change orange and then lights on which that's the time when I walk in on stage to perform my monologue. The lights didn't turn on for a good 10 minute, the technicians team told us that there was something wrong with the lights. At this point I was getting worried because I was thinking in 2/3 hours I'm doing the real play and imagine this happens, what would I do? How would I react? Do I still walk in on stage even though the lights don't work?. At the end  they fixed the lights and I was really happy and the technicians apologized for the problem. During the real performance, at the first performance at 2:00PM , the lights were a little bit faster than usual, and there were moment where Joseph was on stage clearing out what was not meant to be there for the next scene - while the lights were off (black out) and before he exit the lights turned on while he was still clearing out. At the second performance at 7:00PM, the technician team were perfect, there was nothing wrong with the lights or the sound or even the voice over from Chris (The Pillowman...Thanatos). The second performance run really smooth and I enjoyed performing a play that contained a story that included depression and suicide rather than a comedic show. I was always in comedic plays, I had never experienced bullies or depression, therefore the play Pillowman - Thanatos gave me an idea of how it feels to be depressed and how easy it is to lose your life when you are feeling lonely and isolated.

We were hoping that Chris would be able to come back from his injury, but he couldn't. We had about three different plans about our play. How things would go if Chris was here, how things would go if Chris wasn't here, how things would go if we placed a mannequin instead of Chris. We run through all of them, but the best one, of course its if Chris was there but sadly, he couldn't attend due to his injury. Therefore, we had to perform our play without Chris, but all his lines were recorded and played through the speakers at the right time. I was really impressed of how well it turned our with the voice over because it gave the audience an idea that Chris has some sort of superpower, they can only hear him in his head and hes giving them directions to end their life's. Personally, using the voice over instead of the mannequin turned out really well and I was really excited to the way it went.

When we were working with costume, we all had to pick school looking blazers or trousers because we were students. We needed to have two similar blazers, two similar shirts, two similar trousers and two similar ties because, one I'd wear in the performance while performing and the second on hangs down from the lights when I die at the end of my scene to show that I died. The double clothing, we working on it on the day before the performance and we set it up. The next day in the morning there was some trouble with it when they would go down in the stage attached to a rope to represent our death. We had couple of problems with it when the clothes would go down, sometimes it would fall down, or hang on something else and it wouldn't look professional. In the morning the technician team worked on it and they fixed it really well, by the time we done our run through, the clothing - dropped without any problem and it looked really well and organised. We was all happy about it because that was really important to show the death of us. Also, it was our first idea we suggested when we were going through the lines and when were were talking about our death, and the way it should end.

What I found kind of difficult was, when I was on stage by myself, it felt as if I had the whole power in the room. I did. Everyone had their eyes and mind on me, everything that was said was by me, and I never had that experience on stage in my life. Being there on my own. Expressing my character the best I could, trying to impress the audience and make them feel the way I feel about my character, put them in my position. My scene was extremely depressing because I was getting bullied by a group of people in school, and when i'd come home i'd get hit by my dad for no reason and make me bleed. I was really impressed with the way it turned out because I had never performed a scene where it included, anger, depression, bullying, suicide, etc. I was always in a comedic sort of play. While I would be saying my lines and acting as my character, I would look at the audience and be impressed by everyone because all their eyes were on me. As I would act, I would think of articulation and slowing down - for me to be able to perform to my best ability. My confidence grew, when I would act it in front of my friends or when we would have a run through, because then, even if you mess up or forget a line, you still can get on track or a friend that's helping you line run would be able to help you in case you fail.