Initial thoughts on piece

I think that our idea of a stagey version of "would you rather?" is really good idea because I think that the whole audience would be easily engaged and the whole storyline would easily be easy to follow because the host would be explaining to the contestants what they have to do meaning that the audience would be able to follow what the host says so that could understand the storyline and what is going on.

Challenges

I also like the idea of the challenges because it would mean that the whole piece wouldn't just be dialogue. The challenges could be a moving piece or go into a full dance piece depending on what goes on in the challenge. This would meant that the audience wouldn't get bored. This would be quite good because we have dancers in the group who could choreograph the movement and dance piece.

Plot Twist

I think that the plot twist at the end of the play with the quiet person ending up being the smartest the person and winning the game and then when the host then goes onto kill her, she kills the host instead.

Also, the part where the winner doesn't survive but goes on one to one with the host to see who will host the best game and who will die, I think this will shock the audience and make the audience more intrigued.

Devising-Week 1

This week we have started to devise for our devising unit. We have decided to go for the idea of a game show where the contestants would sit around a table and a host would go round the table making the contestants do a variety of tasks to stay alive.The idea was that they go in there expecting a game where whoever wins will get a cash prize but it turns out that they are actually playing to survive.We got this idea from the film “Would you rather?” which is what actually happens in the film but we would change the challenges and the characters to have certain traits that would be portrayed throughout the story.

The characters are:

• The Host-the person who the players think that organised the game. At the end when we find out that he was the last person to play the game and win, he didn’t get to leave. He only gets to survive for the next game before he would then have to have a battle with the person who won the current game and whoever wins this then gets to be the host for the next game. Nobody ever gets to go back outside into the open world.

Contestants-These are the people who come here who are in desperate need of money and reveal this during the rounds before they are killed off. They start off by chasing money but end up chasing survival. The characters are (we haven’t made up names yet):

1. Dom-The scared one-this is the one who refuses to do anything and doesn't think that the host will actually kill him if he refuses to do anything. He is too scared and gets shot by the host within the first round to set an example for the rest of the contestants.
2. Ashley-The funny one who tries to make a joke about everything that is going on and ends up not taking the game seriously enough which ends up with him being too slow in one of the challenges and gets killed off in round 2.
3. Carl-The quiet one who doesn't say anything unless he has to. The round which he gets killed in (round 3) is one where he is meant to be very vocal but nobody hears him leading to him losing meaning that he gets killed.
4. Toby-The one who falls in love with one of the female contestants and gives his life for her so that she can survive for him. This leads to him getting killed in round 4.
5. Freya-She is the person who starts off really innocent and doesn't want to kill anyone at the beginning in the middle there’s a trigger that makes her want to kill everyone in the game and have no sympathy for anyone. She is full of hate and doesn't control her anger in the last round leading to her getting killed in the final round (round 6). She is the person who becomes the runner-up and is the last contestant to be killed.
6. Meg-the smart one who identifies the weaknesses of everyone and ultimately wins the game. She then goes up against the host and kills him taking his place as a new host who will host the next game.

Next week we will start to devise our first couple of scenes and try to have a bigger back story on our characters.

Double drama (28th December)

This week we added more to our story by creating a movement sequence for our first story of the brother. It starts with the first person getting a job. This then leads to him going on a dance all the way home. We have decided to make the dance comedic so that the Year 7's stay engaged and also they would find it more enjoyable. He then comes home to find out that his wife has left him causing him to go on a rampage. Then the wife's lover comes round to collect her stuff as she is too scared of him to do it himself as he gets angry easily. This causes a fight to happen between the two and a black-out happens just before the husband kills the wife's lover so that the audience don't know as they find out later that it's the reason why he's one of the three Giants. We thought it would be good to put a fight scene in as Year 7's like violence and would keep them engaged for longer.

I think that we could improve by making our story a bit more clearer so that the Year 7's. Would definitely understand what's going on.

Evaluation

We finished our performence this week and it went really well. We covered up all our errors really well and I don't think that anyone noticed that we missed a whole scene out. One big mistake was that the roundabout in Act 2, for the scene with the man in the street, the rest of the cast forgot to create the roundabout. They then noticed their mistake and then carried on accordingly really well so that the audience didn't notice which I think is   quite hard to do but they didn't panic at all meaning the audience didn't notice. I would profer for us in our next production to rehearse with props so that when it comes to it on the day, we know what to do. Out props had to be under our chairs and because we had never practised with them before, mine wasn't properly under my chair. This led to me kicking the train tacks which made lots of noise. The train tracks then hit by bottle over which also made a loud noise.

Other than this, I feel that for the companies first performence and my fiesta performence with everyone, I think it went really well. I feel like that nobody was lazy or slacking throughout the whole process and everybody contributed as much as possible and I feel like that we have really bonded as a group which has left us to perform a good piece of theatre.

I think that as an actor, I have really improved as this is the first time that I have reseached into characters and the quickest time that I've ever had to perform a piece of theatre and i have learnt so much as an actor as I've had more freedom to input ideas and be able to perform things with my own twist more effectively without losing the charecter a original concept.

Single Drama-Week 2

This week we started doing a bit of physical theatre. We decided to start on the opening of the play. The opening is meant to represent what goes on in Christopher's head. We decided to make it that Christopher doesn't want to touch anyone, so every time we walk towards someone, we walked away. This eventually turned to us turning away by putting our hands above us. This would then change into a spin to show that Christopher is getting much more franctic. His also shows that Christopher doesn't want anyone near him. We then go into a sequence where we type out phone numbers. We then get faster and faster to show how much Christopher doesn't like it and how franctic his mind is sometimes. I think that it could be improved by putting music to it so that it doesn't look like we're just radomly doing it.

We then carried on with the rest of the play form where we left off and go on further and block more of the first act so we could get a feel for the play and know more of the storyline. Also in the Mr Alexander neighbour scene, we created a maze to show what is going on in Christopher's head. This helps the audience understand what is going on in Christopher's head.

This week I researched how "Woman on Street" was portrayed in the actual production. She is portrayed as a commuter that stops to answer questions. She then quickly gets annoyed at Christopher's questions and then walk off. I thought about the changes u could make to the charecter and things that I have to keep the same so the original concept of the charecter could stay the same. In the play, she carries an umbrella because it's raining and she's standing there with her back facing to him. I thought that I could be texting and straight away be angry that I had to talk to him because I'm to busy on my phone and don't want to talk to him. 

Next week, I hope to do research on my last charecter so that I know how to act in it and help understand him more.

Double Drama (21st November)

We decided to do a story where the three Giants. It starts out with the three brothers who are known as the Giants and they betray their God so he punishes them. One is greedy, one is angry and one is jealous.

We brainstormed ideas on what we could do and we thought that for this scene, we would just speak with dialogue with background music do that our young audience could understand what is going on.

We thought that we could put a bit of comedy into our piece by adding a few jokes about not seeing anything as they are blindfolded. We did it so that they entered one by one and we could see how they reacted to the darkness. The God then turns to us, removes our blindfolds and pushes us back. The scene ten ends with a blackout.

Single Drama

This week we have been making sure that all of our audience can see what is going on. In our production, our audience is on three sides meaning that everything that we do has to be performed to three sides at once.

With only a few rehersals left, we decided to go over the weakest scenes of the play aswell. The London train station scene is still the weakest in the play because the voices still don't flow as they are meant to. When one person forgets a line, it means that the whole pace for everybody else slows down. Also, the lifts could be a bit smoother at times aswell. The lift at the end when we were meant to lift Meg doesn't happen sometimes as people still arnt too sure on where that are going.

We have also made sure that the little details are as refined as possible so that they are the best that they can be. We now look like it's nearly finished, we now just need to learn our lines and our cues so that the play keeps flowing and to make sure that the audience understands what's going on.