Week Twenty-Three

 14/03/2022

Hello, today we began working on something different. Since our end of year show is going to be Blood Brothers, which is scouse, our warm up for today was to practise our scouse accent. We had to get into groups with one person who can do it. I don't know how to do it so i got into a group of three and one person helped my and someone else try to say some lines/ sentences. It helped me a little but I still need to practise a lot more. After the warm up we got given a small part of a script called, 'Stags and Hens'. This is another show created by Willy Russell. This was really fun, and really helped to improve my accent. We started of by just reading the script in the scouse accent. We then began blocking it out and moving around. We also added more depth to our characters. We made them super drunk and gave each character a personality. Mine was super gossipy and liked to blabber. The other was always emotional, the next one was always looking after the crying one as shes kind and the last was just a super horny character. During the time we added these small bits in it really helped me to understand and get used to the accent a bit more. Even though I've started today of not being able to do the accent, but then at the end of today I improved a ton. If I practice every day, I should be able to do it well enough in time for the show, Blood Brothers. 

15/03/2022

Today we got given the time to catch up on all of our work. We also got given a new assignment. This assignment was to research theatre practitioners. Were aloud to work in pairs. We got to choose from 20, me and my friend Kadie ended up choosing Stella Adler. We choose her as she sounded really interesting, and her way of teaching acting was new and something I feel like I could enjoy doing! Since I'm up caught up with all my blog work, me and Kadie began working on our assignment in the LRC. Before our lesson started today I was practising my scouse accent, and I just sounded super Irish or Scottish. I've already fallen into a bad habit of turning Irish/ Scottish  mid sentence whilst doing my scouse accent. When my friend was doing the Scouse accent I realised that it actually sounded a tad posh. I know that the Scouse accent is meant to be "scruffy", but when I did my 'scouse' accent it sounded super posh compared. What I realised was that if I mix the accent I was doing, with a posher one, I could sound more scouse, and I don't know how but it worked. I guess different things helps others, and luckily I have found something that has helped me. After we had tutorial, we had to go to meet my teacher Kelly as a company, as we got our feedback from the show. There was a lot, but they were things that we all knew we had to fix. Some things being our projection, how we came of and on the stage, ect. I think the two main ones were our vocal representation, who we are saying the dashed lines too and the timing of our actions.  Tom, who came to see our show from the National Theatre, said that maybe we should try saying our lines to the audience as if they are part of our group, which I think would be a good idea as it would make the audience feel more included. In some lines I already felt like I did this, but I know I could improve it a lot more. Tom had also noticed that some movements were too large for some scenes, e.g. When Antler was explaining to Crystal why she was up in the tree, me and the yoga group had taken a bottle of wine out and began opening it. This caught the audiences attention and pulled away from a serious and important part of the story. 

16/03/2022

Lets just say today was a different experience, which I'm overall grateful to have! Today we had a lesson with the preforming arts head called Tom. he gave me and my classmates a singing lesson. I was really nervous at first, as I cant sing at all sadly, but we didn't have to do any solo's. We just sang as a group, which was really fun and actually quite relaxing. We got taught some stuff about vocals and how to warm up. The fist thing we did was sit down and tell everyone what we know. I knew nothing but just from the beginning I got taught that we use our vocal chords (Flaps as some music teachers call it) for every sound we make, and that these chords, flap for every sound. We then began warming up. He taught us the position we must be in. Feet must be in line with your shoulders and all joints apart from the neck should be loose, including the stomach. Don't suck in! We then stretched a little with some lunges and planks. We then massaged our faces such as the under neck, bottom and top lip and then the cheeks. After completely warming up the body we began warming up the voice. Another thing I learnt was how we have a hard and a soft plate on the top of our mouths that help form words. We did the siren sounds, and repeated some consonant's such as: B, D, F, K, H, T. I also learnt about plosives and fricatives. These are sounds that you make with your mouth. A plosive sound is when a word or a letter you say kind of explodes in your mouth. Like when you say 'pug', you can feel that word more than if you say 'sitter', as this sound has more of an easy flow. This sound is actually a fricative. A fricative sound uses more friction in your mouth. After warming our warming are vocal chords up with also some tongue twisters and simple beats we began singing. We did some short songs first like, 'The saint comes marching'. We were fully warmed up so we went to singing. We got taught part of the song 'Tell me its not true'. We got split into three groups, High, middle and low. I got put into the high harmony group, which is the least I can do. It was fun trying tho! This taught us how to harmonise. After the girls in the class went to learn the song 'Marilyn Monroe'. This was a lot easier than the previous song we just did. We got used to the rhythm and beat and we were all good to go. From this lesson I learnt the importance of warming up your whole body, including the face before you sing. I also learnt that you must warm up your vocal chords otherwise you could hurt them. I learnt about plosives and fricatives and that my vocal range is medium/middle. 

17/03/2022

Today is the day where we learn about writing. As usual we started of with the 6 word sentences:

-A bad influence- Someone who you already don't trust. 

-A birthday wish: To be this happy for eternity. 

we then began working on our sick-com. We have to make a pitch for our sick-com and present it to the whole class and our teachers. This is so that our teachers can decide who's sick-com should be created. In this pitch we must include some interesting facts about the characters and what our story is going to be about. We also have to include what equipment we are going to need, the places we need to film and maybe also a certain type of actor who we would like to audition for the main character roles. Me and my team began making the power point. So far we have talked about the characters and the story. Once its completed I will put it on here. We are planning on completing it next Monday after we have finished college. I have created a group chat on snap chat so that we can all communicate about it easily.