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.