07.03.2020 - FEST - Final Performance

WORKSHOP

We did a workshop in the morning with Larisa Faber.  She is a successful actress in Germany and Luxembourg.  We started off with getting our bodies moving with a quick game of Stuck in the Mud.  This was quite a good ice breaker with people we hadn't met before as we had to get quite close to them.  We all worked well as a team.  Then we did some stretches and massaged our legs and feet.  This was very soothing and well-needed.  We then started massaging our faces and stretching them out to make our jaws relaxed.  To help relax our jaw, we put our hands in front of our face and shook them with our mouth open.  We got into pairs and I went with Louis.  We then had to do an exercise where one person was the actor and the other was the director.  We had to each hold the other person's right hand with our right hand.  Then the director would move the person around how they wanted the actor to move.  For example, if the director rolled on the floor, the actor would have to roll too. We had to have a lot of trust in our pairs so we could trust that they wouldn't make us do any movement that would hurt us.  I was quite lucky as Louis and I are friends so we have trust in each other whereas some people paired up with people they didn't know.  Then we switched roles.  Then we started saying our monologues within this activity.  Louis used his fragmented monologue with James and Tristan and I used my monologue after the mirrored chair duet.  When the director would move a certain way, the actor had to try respond with their voices as well as their bodies.  For example, if I pulled Louis closer to me, he would whisper because I would be right next to him and he wouldn't need to be so loud.  Then we did the same activity without holding each other's arm.  If the director ran back super fast, the actor would have to run after them attempting to keep the same distance between them.  This was obviously a bit harder to react to as it wasn't as authentic, but when doing a piece of theatre, it won't be authentic like it's happening in real time, but we, as actors will have to portray it like it is authentic.  Larisa was very accepting of everything we did and praised moments when we felt uncomfortable or shy because we could learn off of them.  After that, we discussed what our objective was for our monologue.  It was a bit more difficult for the characters doing direct audience address, but we soon figured out an objective for why everyone was saying what they were saying.  My reason was to try get the audience to sympathise with my character.  With this new objective in mind, Larisa went round all of us and made us try and get our partner to stay interested on what we were saying and not loose interest.  Larisa wanted us to experiment entirely with absolutely everything, even if we didn't plan on using it in our piece.  There were points where we were shouting, singing, dancing and jumping around.  It was a lot of fun and gave us an entirely new perspective on things which were hilarious.

WARM UP

Once we finished the workshop, we went to go have a little break and eat.  Then we started to do our makeup and get into costume.  We then went upstairs to have a small warm up.  First we played Zip, Zap, Boing to make ourselves more energetic.  After that, we stretched our muscles and then did a speed run through.  This was to see if we knew all of our cues and it was so much fun.  Everyone was saying their lines but in double speed so it was super funny to see us all running around. 

PERFORMANCE

The performance went really considering we were all feeling very nervous.  I think the nerves properly kicked in when we were backstage and we could hear the audience coming in.  Once the music was on I think we all just got our head's in the game and went for it.  I'm glad that we had a physical theatre movement at the start as it was a comforting way to begin the play.  We were all very smooth and made sure we had eye contact so a relationship was shown through the characters.  I like that we all really committed and even though we should have thought of it earlier, we added in a few lines when we thought it would make more sense.  For example, I added that Tristan lied to me too so the audience wouldn't get confused that I'm not a bad person after all.  Although I'm very happy with the outcome, a few things could have gone better.  For example, I messed up one of my lines in the fragmented monologue between Amelie and I.  Luckily, she noticed and picked it up quite quickly.  Another thing that went wrong is that the sound cue was slightly off for our mirrored chair duet.  What made it even harder to fix was that Amelie and I had the first move but couldn't see the other person.  Luckily, Tristan and Louis could see what was going on so they made sure that we timed it perfectly.  When I was doing my scene with Tristan, I spilt the "gin" all down my arm and face.  I tried to carry on and just roll with it.  The final thing that didn't go to plan was that because the staging blocks were too far forward, I tripped on them.  Luckily, as I'm the "local drunk", this wasn't too much of a bad situation.  Overall, the audience reacted very well to this piece.  They were laughing a lot at many different things I didn't expect to get such a large reaction out of.  I'm really happy with how everyone did and the energy we kept up throughout.  I'm really proud of us for creating something so fun and amazing.

04.03.2020 - FEST - Mrs Williams

RUN THROUGH

We did a run through once we got into costumes.  As this was the first time putting on the costumes, some didn't fit or were too difficult to move in so some people have to try get some other things to wear.  We didn't do a warm up so we weren't more flexible or energised.
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NOTES 

• Didn't warm up so too tired at beginning
• Like the overlapping lines but need to look at the way they say them
• Need a transition between fragmented monologue to the mirrored chair duet
• Need to include the relationship between Jane and Dave in fragmented monologue and include Dave's jealousy
• Need the boys to react more to Meredith and Jane's monologues
• Need to show that the boys being up all night
• Then need to show the passage of time from 7am to Jane coming into the bar
• Laurent saying 'she doesn't have friends'
• Laurent and Charles need more energy in their voice
• Scene 9 and 10 need help
• Charles hair in eyes
• Could have the Brighton folk in the brother's bar - Marie planning the wedding
• Fred puts the music on because joke didn't make sense
• Need a scene between Dave telling Harry about Meredith cheating to Harry telling Meredith to get up 
• Possibly have yoga with Marie and Meredith planning wedding
• Charles react more to the speech to Marie
• Have music playing after everyone says Happy Engagement - plays - all awkward and silent with "I think I wanna marry you" playing - Fred turns it off
• Jane accents

SCENE 2-3

There isn't enough of an introduction to my character so we've decided to add in a little bit of context into the boys' fragmented monologues.  When they say "boys", Amelie and I come in and hug our significant others and James explains our relationship.  This is a good transition to scene 3.  James also suggested that we start the mirrored chair duets too soon so with this new transition, it works quite well and lets us have the music playing for a little longer.

SCENE 5

We've added in a short monologue for my character before she goes into the bar to see Dave.  This shows the passage of time as the scene before makes it appear that it's very early in the morning but this technique helps to show it's later on in the day.  I felt like my character was too much like myself so I've exaggerated an accent so that the whole characterisation is different.

WARM UP

After lunch we did an actual warm up.  First we did some solo stretching to loosen our bodies and then we got into pairs.  In these pairs, one person had to hold the other person's wrists and try to keep them away from touching their shoulders.  We then switched who was holding and who was trying to hit the shoulders.  Then we did an exercise where we had to hold hands in a circle besides one person.  That person had to try touch a specific person in the circle but everyone in the circle had to keep that person safe.  It was a lot of effort and warmed us up.

SCENE 9 

This scene is a bit lost within the plot so we've attempted to rephrase it and make it more prominent.  Then we did some improvisation with Amelie, Silvana and I to pretend we see each other for the first time in a while.  After completing that scene, it just still seemed a bit too lost so we've scrapped it and now they're going to see each other in the bar.  We had to change a few lines from the previous scene to make it work however, it's not too much.  Now it goes from Seth and Silvana's scene to a split scene of the bar, then James shows the passage of time in audience address and then Seth and Silvana being in the bar planning the party.  There isn't the meeting point now which helps.

RUN THROUGH

We then did some more run throughs to help us some more.  In this run through, we tried altering some scenes as we went along.
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22.02.20 - FEST - Mrs Williams

WARM UP

For our warm up we did some sprints from one side of the room to the other.  After a few sprints, we added in a jump in the middle of the room.  We had to run to the middle, jump, run to the end of the room, run back to the middle, jump again and then run back.  After a few times of that, we had to jump up then touch the floor and run.  Finally, after a few times of that, we did a few runs with touching the floor, then jumping, then touching the floor again.  This made us all warm and ready to work.

MIRRORED CHAIR DUET

We first started off by doing the mirrored chair duet between Louis and Amelie, and Tristan and I.  We've already learnt the choreography for this chair duet but I think Tristan and I need to practice this a lot.  We aren't confident enough yet so this really needs to be improved so that Amelie, Louis, Tristan and I are all in sync.

RUN THROUGH

After the mirrored chair duets, we did a run through of everything we had done from start to as far as we got.  This went quite well but we needed to sort out the order of the plot and our fluency from one scene to another.

PLOT CHANGES AND ORDER

We've changed the plot a bit to make the ending make more sense.  Before, we didn't have a complete understanding of what happens to our characters and it was all a bit vague.  This is the new scene order:

• Prologue
• Fred's monologue
• Bar movement involving everyone
• 3 boys fragmented monologue
• Mirrored chair duet
• Jane and Meredith's fragmented monologues
• 3 boys argument
• David and Jane plotting
• Jane planting seeds inside Harry's mind
• Swindon 5 train station 
• Meredith asking Laurent to walk her down the aisle
• Charles explaining why he doesn't want to marry Marie
• Swindon 5 train station
• Laurent, Charles and Marie talk
• Awkward bar scene - David ranting, Laurent there, Fred splits it up
• 3 boys singing Sweet Caroline - David tells Harry that Meredith is cheating
• Harry and Meredith get into fight
• See Charles and Meredith's past relationship as Charles comforts her
• David's reveal of lies about cheating - Jane breaks up with David
• Harry and Meredith happy
• Charles and Marie argue but then propose
• Laurent and Jane happy

ENDING

We finished off our rehearsal with figuring out the ending to our piece.  First, we had a scene in the bar where David needs to get through all of the people he's hurt.  We used physical theatre with round, by, through to show this.  Then once he passes Jane, Meredith and Harry, he gets to Fred at the bar and downs a pint as Jane, Meredith and Harry give him a hateful stare.  He gets another pint and sits at the edge of the stage, centre stage.  Jane, Meredith and Harry walk up to him until he's enclosed and then walk away.  After this, Fred has a monologue describing what all the characters are going through.  Then the prologue we have at the start is done again, but as an epilogue.  We are also with different characters depending on our new relationships with people.  Then, in this physical theatre movement with lifts and round, by, through, we find a good position to freeze in to show the relationship between the characters.  After that, we all come together to do a bow.

13.02.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

Today's rehearsal was quite short due to the parents evening.  This also meant that there weren't many people available.  I spent this rehearsal helping Silvana and Hugo with their monologues.  For Silvana's, she was talking about how her boyfriend doesn't want to propose to her.  We made it quite comedic with excessive details on her dream dress for example.  Hugo's monologue was about the conflict within himself as he doesn't know if he should tell Amelie that her friends were talking about her behind her back.  We also helped come up with some ideas for Amelie and Louis' break up scene.  I think the easiest way to show the lack of trust would be through a chair duet but we already have quite a lot of those so they decided to try something different like round, by, through.  We all came up with that they both still loved each other but lost that lack of trust, so they attract and then repel.

11.02.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

In today's rehearsal I spent most of the time script writing as we needed some more content.  Silvana and I scripted the scene where Marie confronts Jane about David's plan.  We decided to have the start naturalistic and then go into a physical theatre where it starts with Silvana and then Tristan replaces her.  We took some inspiration from Frantic Assembly's 'Things I Know To Be True' with having a monologue whilst still doing physical theatre.  We took specific inspiration from a scene where the main character is doing a monologue and there are hands touching and holding her.  This was the physical theatre we started to create.
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After that I began to script the scene where David and my character first meet in the bar.

SCRIPT WRITING

Scene where Marie confronts Jane about David's plan

Jane - Hi Marie!
Marie - Hi Jane love.
Jane - How is it living with boys for the first time? Hahaha
Marie - Oh my god it's a lot harder than I thought hahah.
Jane - Trust me it doesn't get any easier!
Marie - Hahaha. *pause* I brought you here because there's something I wanted to bring up.  I've heard a little rumour that you and David we're trying to break up Meredith and Harry?
Jane - I-
Marie - Don't worry, I won't tell anybody.  I think that you're a lot better than that, to be honest.  I know it's not my place to say anything because I haven't known you for too long but you seem a little bit off with David.
Jane - What? No... It's fine.
Marie - Are you sure?  You know you can talk to me about anything.
*Into physical theatre*
*Jane's monologue*
Jane - It started two years ago.  He seemed like the perfect man.

Scene where David and Jane meet

*On way out of pub, David picks up Jane's jacket*
Jane - Excuse me! Hey you!
David - What do you want?!
Jane - You've got my jacket there.
David - No it's my jacket.
Jane - I'm telling you it's mine.
David - Trust me.  I'm not in the mood for this now piss off.
Jane - Seriously check the label.
David - Jesus! Fine!
*Jane waiting with a smug face*
Jane - Hmm?
David - Wow I'm such an idiot.  I'm so sorry, please don't think I'm a burglar.  Let me repay you.
Jane - For what? It was an honest mistake.
David - No please let me do this for you.
Jane - Look I'm with friends right now but I'll be here tomorrow night.
David - Okay see you tomorrow... Um-
Jane - Jane. And you are?..
David - David.
Jane - Nice to meet you David.
David - Have a nice night.
Jane - And you.

29.01.20 - FEST - Mrs Williams

POINT PLOT / STORY LINE

• Physical Theatre Prologue (feat. Monologue from James)
• Exploring relationships with characters
• Overhears customers
• Louis and Amelie on stage together - they already live together and are planning the wedding
• Harry loves Meredith
• Meredith is a control freak and gets a kick out of controlling
• Charles wants to split Harry and Meredith because he's in love with her
• Charles tells Harry a lie that Meredith has been seen with the bar man
• Fight between Harry and Frederick 

Little things that pick at Harry

• Harry smells Meredith's perfume on Frederick 
• Phone gets left behind and receives message from Frederick
• Harry finds a piece of clothing that isn't his
• Left phone behind when she's gone to yoga, yoga teacher texts asking when she will get there
• Getting a message from a nickname / unisex name
• Leaving phone behind - message from Frederick saying 'you left your bag here' when she was at the bar with Harry
• Meredith goes to bar and bar tender pours drink and says something a bit flirty or personal which Harry doesn't like
• Charles introduced Meredith to Harry and Harry was supposed to be the wingman to Charles but just stole Meredith
• Harry at bar, notification on Frederick's phone of 'M' - Harry thinks it's Meredith but it's Marie

5 Points

• Wedding planning
• The lies
• The fight
• Harry being left alone
• They separate and find their loyalties lie within themselves

More Detail

• All characters introduced
• All relationships introduced
• All relationships shown through the wedding planner (guest list, best man etc.)
• Dinner party announcement of engagement
• Charles tells Harry about little rumour
• Series of lies in physical theatre
• Spying on Meredith
• Gradually gets more and more convinced
• Conflict
• Wedding cancelled
• Harry being left alone

WHAT WE WILL DO NOW

Do point 5 last because it's a result of everything else that happens.

Makes more sense to start with point 1

Split into groups

Louis, Tristan and Amelie (James scribes)

Emma, Silvana, Hugo and Seth come up with scenarios about the conspiracies to do with Meredith cheating

CONSPIRACIES

• I saw her at the bar with Frederick
• Frederick was giving her free drinks
• They looked all over each other
• He took her to his room
• Instead of going to yoga class, she goes to meet her lover
• She can't keep her legs closed
• Frederick keeps winking at her from across the room
• She actually eats meat
• She's slept with everyone in this town

27.01.20 - FEST - Ms Trono

MAIN REHEARSAL VIDEO
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WARM UP
For our warm-up we spent some time playing Zip Zap Boing to get our bodies moving and to put us in the right mindset.  This gave us a lot of energy and set the tone for the rest of the rehearsal which was good.

OPENING CHOREOGRAPHY
We continued to practice our opening choreography and refresh our memories.  We then performed it and I think it went quite well.

FIRST MONOLOGUE
We decided as a group that it would be best to have James' character to be the first to speak.  He, as the bar tender, is pretty much the middle of all the action so I think having him open it would be most effective.  We also thought that it would be quite interesting to include some physical theatre around him whilst he is talking, which he could also be involved in.  We got this inspiration from DV8 doing Enter Achilles.
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James was having a hard time doing improvisation for this monologue so we hot seated him to help him think of subjects to talk about.  I think this has helped him, and the rest of us, enough to be able to write a monologue for James' character.
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08.01.20 - FEST - Mrs Williams

ART

In the beginning of today's lesson, we tried to improvise a scene from Art and a scene that is spoken of but not included.  We were 2 boys short today so the remaining 3 staged the "waving away cigarette smoke" scene about Marc's wife Paula.  The 3 girls (including me), then tried to improvise Paula waving away the cigarette smoke which is mentioned but not included in the play.  This was all to help create a theme or characters for us to go off of.

DINNER PARTY

We then had an improvised dinner party with contrasting personalities to hopefully give us some more inspiration.  Louis, Hugo and Seth were friends from school, now adults, with their three girlfriends/fiancées/wives.  This exercise was very useful in developing some of these characters.  The improvisation part of it was funny and surprising with some people's ideas.

WARM UP

Later on, we did a warm up when we had a bigger rehearsal space where we could move around.  We started with finding 3 different focus points around the room, then we were just walking to each one.  Then we had to run from no.3 to no.1, slo-mo walk backwards from no.1 to no.2 and then go from no.2 to no.3 with our bodies as close to the floor as possible in creative ways.

CONTACT IMPROVISATION

In this exercise, we got into pairs.  With our pairs we had to find three points of contact on the other's body.  Then we added these together into a sequence and then used the Frantic Assembly Shift, Through, Round to add to the sequence.  After that, we explored eye contact.  This set of movements had so many different meanings just by changing the point of focus.  For example, when both people looked into each other's eyes, it made the bond between the people look very strong, but when someone looks away it could portray a lack of trust.  We collectively decided we liked this a lot and wanted to include it in our piece.

MONOLOGUE

There were 6 different sheets with 2 different columns to write a monologue in.  Each sheet had a sort of relationship between 2 characters and each column was to be from their point of view.  We then had about 2 mins to write whatever we wanted on the sheet and then move onto the next.  I found it quite difficult to start the monologue but after changing sheets, it got easier as there was already something to go off of.  After we went around to all the sheets, we read out the final product.  We got some pretty good monologues, characters and relationships to use for inspiration.  We liked the relationship between a bar tender and a regular customer the most.

Things I Know To Be True

PLOT/THEMES

• Rosie comes back from her trip in Europe to see her family who live in Adelaide.  We are then introduced to her overprotective mother, loving father, business savvy sister, brother who wishes to transition and criminal brother.
• Rosie's sister, Pip, decides to move from Adelaide to Canada to take up a job for 12 months and has to leave her entire life behind.  We then find out she'd been having an affair.
• Rosie's brother, Mark, tells his family he wants to move to Sydney and transition to Mia.
• Rosie's other brother, Ben, has been stealing money and spending it on cocaine.
• Rosie's parents, Bob and Fran, try to help all the children with they problems.
• The children don't appreciate their parents' concerns and excessive worry which is why they needed to move from Adelaide in the first place.
• Rosie then decides to take up a creative writing course in Brisbane.
• Soon after she left, Fran with all her stress and fatigue, fell asleep on the expressway and flipped her car and died on impact.  
• The family then reunites in Adelaide to attend her funeral and support Bob.
• Relationship, family, marriage, heartbreak, sense of belonging, tragedy.

STRUCTURE

• Naturalistic and non-naturalistic - moments of dialogue as well as moments of direct audience address and physical theatre.
• Linear timeline - chronological, with ellipses - shown through physical theatre, direct audience address monologues, music
• Sort of cyclical structure - Rosie talking about the things she knows to be true before coming back to Adelaide and after her mother died.

SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS

• The first scene of Rosie explaining her trip to Europe - heartbreak she felt foreshadows the events in the play.
• Meeting the family - sets the base of the play, we get some exposition on the relationships of the characters.
• Pip explaining she wants to go to Canada - after she's left, Fran reading the letter Pip wrote admitting to having her affair - Fran lies to Bob about the letter - foreshadows lies that the family keep from each other.
• Mark telling his parents and Rosie about transitioning to become female - a lot of selfishness is shown from both parties - Mark wants the entire conversation to be about him coping and doesn't think about it being hard for his family to deal with all this information at once.  
• Finding out Ben is a criminal - see a scary and threatening side to Ben - "I want mum" shows he relies on his mother for help but almost abuses it 
• Fran dying - so tired from trying to help her entire family and just as things appear to be getting better, she falls asleep on the expressway and dies.  

ACTING / MOVEMENT

• First scene physical theatre - shows relationships between family members and portrays the way Rosie was feeling without her needing to say it.
• Table when Rosie gets home - transitions from garden to kitchen in a smooth way.
• Physical theatre - showing the passing of time.
• Fran and Bob dancing - the proxemics of how close they are emphasises the love they have for each other (even if it wasn't always there).
• Monologues - providing exposition on the play and also showing the situation from a different point of view.

TECHNICAL DESIGN

• Different lighting - sometimes a low light with a spotlight (usually during monologues) - sometimes a brighter light covering the entire stage (when the family were in the kitchen in the beginning) - sometimes a blue light (usually during times with physical theatre).
• The garden - signified the passing of time (through the seasons with the rose bushes) - at the end, when Bob had lost everything (his wife dying and the children all leaving him) ripping out the rose bushes.
• Bridge - only used once for Mark's monologue - water signifying rain drops coming down on him.

Bullying Piece full run through - Mrs Williams

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Monologues in the style of different practitioners - Mrs Williams

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These are three videos of the same monologue but performed in different styles from different practitioners.  We had to take inspiration from this and do a monologue that we had memorised in the style of a practitioner.

My monologue was Protecto (Kid Hero) by D. M. Larson.  When I first performed this monolgue, I did lots of direct audience address throughout the piece which could be related to Brecht.  When I changed it to do it in the style of a different practitioner, I chose Stanislavski.  I wanted my piece to be more naturalistic so i used my own experiences from being a child and gave myself units and objectives to follow.  Instead of direct audience address, I spoke to the teddy bear on the bed.  I found this exercise quite interesting because based on the practitioner, the play can be given a whole new meaning.