My acting specialism- Ted talks- Task One

A range of acting techniques and disciplines I've covered: 

Devising:

Devising has been involved a few times whilst performing at the shows that I have done so far. There would be little parts and scenes where we got to devise and choreograph ourselves. An example would be the Ozian march we did in the Wizard of Oz. Another thing that we have done would be the show we did as part of the Christmas community Globe fest. At the beginning of the second year we were given a piece of paper with a short horror description/ Story, we had to finish it off and then devise our own piece for it. It was a great way to bond with the new year ones, it also got my mind working straight away, as devising takes a lot of creativity and communication. Another thing we did, in the first year we had to devise and perform something short showing a superstition. Overall through the first year and this year so far, I have done devising quite a few times. 

Improvisation:

Improvisation. I have a love hate relationship with it. I personally think that improvising an entire scene is difficult, but then improvising in a show is the most handy thing. Being able to improvise has saved me. Like LOADS!!! In my opinion, improvising is one of the best skills an actor/ actress could have. It can save a whole show, and it also shows the creative and quick mindset. I don't think that it's an easy thing to get either. Having the pressure of screwing up and making a mistake can totally throw an actor off to the point that they freeze and forget that they can improvise their way out of it. You definitely need confidence in yourself but also in others. If you think of something, you need to do it right there and then. That's what improvisation is. it comes to your head and you perform it. Iv'e seen a game which is performed in front of an audience called 'change'. An audience member gets to choose a scenario, the actors on stage have to perform something based on what they were given, and then someone has to shout "change" whenever they feel like it. When they shout "change" the actor has to do the opposite of what they did and said. Here's a short video so that you can understand it more 'Change'. I love watching these videos. I watch them in amazement honestly because I wouldn't be able to think fast enough! I think that improvisation is something that you can always improve on. We play a few improv games in the mornings as warm ups. One is where three people have to go in, there's one chair in the middle, and we all have to be at different levels. One has to be sat on the floor, the other sat on the chair and the third person stands. You also get given a scenario to act out. The point of the game was that you have to constantly change places, but you have to have a purpose for it. You need to improv your way through it. Another game is where there are three people sitting down in the middle of a circle. One has to speak gibberish, the other has to ask questions so like an interviewer and the third person has to translate what the gibberish person is saying The interviewer gets given a subject, they then have to use that subject to ask the gibberish person questions. The gibberish person will speak in gibberish of course and then the translator translates it to whatever they like. I think that it's great that we learn improvisation in my course as it has actually saved me many times in shows, especially my recent one. On my first show as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, a line was forgotten which was vital to bringing the Munchkins out, and without them we couldn't proceed to the next scene. So what I did was improvise my way through it, with everything that I had learnt so far. I acted as if it was supposed to happen, and just kept on adding lines to nudge the other performer on the stage so that I could remind them what was supposed to happen. I told a friend about it and she said that she never noticed as she didn't know that script. Another thing was that the Scarecrow didn't come on stage on time, so when I said my line he didn't reply back. What I did was start talking to myself and my dog Toto, as I was lost. So I was just kind of saying things like, "Hmmm Toto which way do you think I should go?", or, "Is it that way?..... wait no, it's that way!" just things like that until I knew he was on stage and then repeated my line for him to reply back. There were a few things that I had to improv my way through in that first show in particular, but it all worked out thanks to what I have learnt.

Stagecraft: 

Stagecraft is very important and affects how the audience sees the performance. Stagecraft is simply where you are staged on a stage. You have to look at where you are stood at all times throughout the show, as you want to be able to project your voice forward for the audience to hear. You also need the audience to see what you are doing and your facial expressions, so that they can really get a grasp of everything. You don't want to be facing backwards for the audience and talking in that direction as you would be throwing all of your lines away. This means the audience wouldn't have heard what you said which then means they couldn't fully enjoy the show as they would have missed a bit or wouldn't have understood what just happened. Another part of stagecraft is making sure not to block anyone. You need to be spaced out well enough for everyone on the stage to be seen. I think the first time I learnt about stagecraft was in the middle of the first year when Tom Guest the teacher of higher education of acting came and told us about it. He's very big on it. 

Directing:

I do an acting course but we got to do many other things with it! which is super beneficial as our skills get to expand for this type of industry. We're always allowed to pitch ideas in with our teacher if we want for our shows.  The biggest thing that we have done with directing is a show that us second years are doing. We as a group are directing a show called #YOLO together. We all give ideas and we test them out and see what works best. What we mostly do is give feedback when we are not in a scene. We sit, watch and make notes. At the end of the scene we'll share what we think and from there we'll add them to improve it! It's great working together as everyone has different ideas. I personally think that directing is actually quite hard so I like working as a group with this. Maybe it's because I haven't tried it on my own, but I know the more work I put into #YOLO the more I will learn. 

Writing:

We had an option to join a writing class, so I did because I wanted to learn something new and I wanted to add a new skill. I think that writing brings out a creative side, It's also a great way to jot ideas down. As an actor i also think that if I could write something it would be great as it would have an actors point of view on it. In this writing class we got to write our own scripts, which would then be sent to the National theatre as a competition. I paired up with my friend Sienna and we wrote a show called 'The girls bathroom'. It's about four girls with completely different life problems. They all used to be friends but drifted throughout the years. They go to a party and one at a time they bump into each other with all these problems. There's a lot more too it, including comedic times, but if we skip to the end they all express how they feel to one another and feel close again which brings the group back. It was great trying it out and having this new experience of writing. 

Monologues:

In the first year I had done a few monologues for an audition for shows at college, and in shows but I never really fully looked into them properly. This year however is completely different. They are the biggest thing that I had to look at this year as I needed to pick a few for my university/ drama school auditions. It took me months to pick the right one, I ended up picking the first one that I had in mind. Monologues can really bring out the characters personality, life story etc. Anything can happen in them. They are very important. My classical monologue is from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by Shakespeare, and I read in for Hermia. This monologue in particular I took apart. Obviously because It's Shakespeare. My contemporary monologue is 'Electricity' by Miriam Bettye and I read in for India. I love my contemporary monologue, I feel like I connect to it in some way. That's when you know that you've picked the right one, when you feel connected to it.  

Duologues:

I'd say the same thing with duologues as monologues, that they can bring out the characters personality. But the most thing it does is show their relationship with the character that they are talking to. Not just with what they are saying but how they are reacting with movement and facial expressions. I personally rather do duologue than a monologue as I can bounce of the other actor. I have more to 'feed' off if that makes sense. When I'm acting I'll build a connection with the other actor on stage straight away, even if we don't get along or if I'm not comfortable with them. That's that whole point, as if you let that barrier stay then it's going to be a lot harder for the scene to flow, and it won't look as good. 

Voice over work:

We have been talking about voice acting a lot more recently and I love it! Before acting I wanted to do voice acting, so I love learning more about it. Of course now I'd rather do acting but it's still something I want to do. At the end of the day It's another form of acting, you still need to put the emotions in it. We were looking at the behind the scenes of voice acting, and sometimes there actually is physicality in it! Sometimes they're running around and jumping just so that they can actually get the same type of breathing and excitement their character is going through right now. I have got a very expressive face so I know for a fact that I would be expressing every emotion. I saw a very short video maybe around 10 seconds long of Johnny Depp voice acting for a film called Tango and i saw him running around so I looked up more videos of it and came across this Johnny Depp- Tango. It amazed me so much. They not only used their voices, but they actually fully acted out the scenes. They used the actors voices, and faces for the animation. It's just so creative and a brilliant way to capture all the emotions. We've been given a script recently and we had to voice the characters. Not just read them, but voice them in how we think the character would be. Voice acting is actually very difficult and you need patience. 

Memorisation:

Looking at learning lines and memorisation, there's so many different ways that you can do it! We've talked about it in class before and people said different things, it just depends on what works best for you. What I do is I'll learn line by line. Once I know one by heart I'll add another one. I'll start at the beginning each time I add a new one, it takes time for sure but it works. I feel like learning lines can be hard for me at times, but sometimes it can be so easy. I learnt that it depends whether you feel like you understand and connect to the script/ lines. When I love the script I tend to learn them faster, whereas if I don't feel connected to it, it's harder for it to stay in my head. Back to how I learned them.... what I said before, I do it all on my own. What I then do is ask for someone to help me. I'll say all my lines and see if I say the right thing, then I ask them to read the lines before mine. This allows me to also learn my que lines. Some other ways you can learn lines is by jotting down the first letter of each word, I know that someone in my class does this, personally it didn't help me. Another thing that I do is I like to record myself saying my lines on this app on my phone. I have no clue why but it somehow helps.  

Singing:

I've already talked about Tom Guest before, but he also helps us with singing. We've done a few things including singing, with Tom's help. The main one would have been the Christmas Community Globe fest. We performed 'A Christmas Carol- Muppet's version'. We have also sang beetle's songs and blood brothers songs for the blood brothers showcase, and a little bit of singing in the pretty woman flash mob that we have recently done. Singing is something that I want to keep improving on. A lot of the actors I look up to can sing, and it's a great skill to have. 

Stage combat:

We had a lesson about this, and it was one of my favourite lessons ever. It was so fun, and I'm so glad that I now know how to do stage combat. It's also very handy to know, and it will look great on my acting CV. We learnt how to do a side punch, upper cut, hair pull, knee hit to the  stomach and knee hit to the groin. what was fun was that we were given a random script and we had to adapt all of these  into it. We were given a script about cooking, we quickly learnt the lines then adapted the punches to them. Here's a very short video of me punching Kadie-Video- punch. I have uploaded a longer video on my blogger. It's in a post under the name of 'Week 18- Y2'. I would love to have more lessons like this, it was so fun and I learnt a lot! 

Physical theatre:

We haven't really looked into this. Personally I'm not a massive fan. We did it once right at the beginning of year two. I spoke about it in my devising part. Before we made it good, we put some physical theatre into it, so we acted as doors, walls tables, you name it. It was odd, I'm sure that there is some physical theatre out there that is good! 

Understanding practitioners: 

Last year we had to pick a practitioner and make a presentation about them. I worked with Kadie on this one. We ended up choosing 'Stella Adler', which i was really happy about because I enjoyed learning about her. We made our presentation on power point and then presented it to our class. I learnt about many other practitioners too thanks to my class mates presentations, such as Lee Strasbourg. I don't think that I have ever posted my Power Point on my blogger so I'll have to do that, It'll be under the name of 'Stella Adler'. Learning about practitioners is important, it allows you to see how acting started and the development of it. It's also a new way to learn new techniques. 

Acting for camera:

Acting for camera is what I mainly want to do. Whilst being at college I have been a part of a few short films. This hear I have been lucky enough to be part of the big film project. I only had a side character but it's great to be a part of it. The first thing that I did for film was this very small project where we had to get in pairs and write a short script, we then recorded it. It was muted after it was edited. The point was to be able to see if the audience can see what its about by the emotions we were expressing on our face. We also did a copycat scene. My group chose to do a scene from twilight. Gosh I was horrific but it was my first time properly on screen and I learnt new things, such as how the camera crew have to yell "cut", in order for us to stop acting, even if we made a mistake. Also how many different shots they need to take instead of one on going scene. It was fascinating. Here's the video of it: Twilight Biology scene- Copycat. The next film project was the John Lewis advert. I really enjoyed doing this because, we had to get into our own groups and create our own ideas for it. We also had people from the film course in our group so that they can help turn our idea into a film and help edit our script if they needed to.  I think that it was better, but I still need to definitely improve a lot. Here's the link to it John Lewis advert. After that I got involved in two end of year films. I wasn't a fan of them to be completely honest. I think that they weren't prepared and it was a hassle as there was a lot going on at the time. I can't find the clips because I don't think that they were uploaded. My most recent filming is for the big film project 'Unbroken'. It was a very successful filming day I would say, and I feel like it turned out good, I can't wait to see it. Personally I do think that my acting has become quite theatrical, and I need to learn how to tone it down again. Actually talking about toning it down, that's the difference from film acting and theatre acting. The movement and facial expressions along with the tone of voice is a lot more dramatic for theatre whereas for film it's a lot more natural. For the end of year films I'll definitely try and get in some. 

Characterisation: 

When you get given a character, it is super important to break them apart. You want to have a look at their background, you can make it up or you have to look deeply in the script to see if you can find it. When I first started college and we had to know our characters, we were given a template. I've been using that template since as it really allows you to think deeply.  Some things that that template has is: Name, age, Gender, mannerisms, clothes, grooming, movement, style of speech, occupation, knowledge, personality, temperament, likes and dislikes, beliefs, fears, Goals, self image, relationships, ethnicity, general history( Time brought up in) and finally personally history such as significant people in their life. Once I answer these questions about a character I'm playing, I finally understand them. You need to understand and know why your character is saying every line. You have to know what drives your character. When you're not saying a line you still need to react and move around, but as the character would. This can be tough if you don't know them.

Producing:

As part of our final grade we as the second years are producing our own show. We have decided to do a show called #YOLO. We will be performing it on the 23rd of March. We are going to be acting in it as well as producing and directing it. We have assigned roles where we will be focusing on, mine is set and design. I love working as a group with this because of all the ideas we put together, it really turns it into something special. 

Collaborative:

My course is great for working with other people, and I really love it because it brings new opportunities to us. We have worked with the Globe a couple of times, national theatre and then other courses in the college such as makeup, film&TV and Art&Design. 

Sight specific performances:

As a group we have performed in several different spaces, which is great and really shows how much we really get as a course. We have performed in the Globe, our Margret Armstrong theatre, The York theatre Royal, Whitby and soon enough in the Fire station in Sunderland.   

Script analysis:

I like to really analyse a script when I'm playing a character or auditioning for one, as it really helps me to understand them and the show as a whole a lot more. There's things in a script such as beats, shifts etc that really help to bring it to life. Another thing that comes into it is monologues and duologues. They help to see the characters relationships with one another.  It overall just helps me to understand, and makes it a whole lot clearer on what I need to do. 

Accents:

Throughout my time in this college I have been able to do a few accents, and perform in them. It has been so much fun! Something I struggle with actually is accents. When we started doing blood brothers I was quite worried as I wasn't able to do it at all. But I started practising and eventually I got it, and I knew how to do it before the auditions. It was honestly great. That's when I knew that I can learn how to do them, it just takes time. (It was Scouse by the way). The latest show that we have done, The Wizard of Oz, I had to do a Kansas accent. I got the grasp of it quite quickly actually and I really enjoyed doing it! I have been teaching myself some accents and it has been really handy!