1930's gangs and music

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To summarize some of the major genres in the 1930's: Jazz in several forms; in particular, small groups and larger dance bands. Many dance bands played a more heavily arranged form of jazz known as Swing. Blues, mostly performed by black musicians in that terribly segregated era. "Sweet" music, sort of like jazz in orchestration but (at least in my opinion) with a lot of saccharine easy-listening aspects to it. Vocal groups such as the Mills Brothers, the Andrews Sisters, the Pied Pipers, and so on. Solo vocalists such as Bing Crosby, usually backed by an orchestra and sometimes by a small vocal group. 

So I think for our group we need to find a lot of jazz music that is fitting for the time this is set in.  So far I have found two songs that I like the sound of, which i think will sound appropriate for alot of the scenes we have, for example bar music, or dance music. Of course in this day, jazz was the most popular genre of music, so we will only be using this sort of music to help the audience understand what time period our performance is set in.

  

Mr kelly double drama

Today in lesson. Me and meg wrote down everything we are doing in the movement piece, these notes are vital because they help us when trying to learn our lines, in this lesson we also all sat down as a group and planned everything out (discussed our piece) I do feel we maybe need to run it a few more times so we can recap on what we have done. We will be performing this to year 11's in the new year! 

Mr Kelly's lesson

We have been continuing devising our dance which we will be performing at the end of term near Christmas, hopefully It will go well. it's really coming along in lessons, and our timing is good. All we need to do now is work on our small monologues. Mine takes place after dan and mega "rape" scene. I walk in after, when meg is on the floor after cheating on me, or at least that's what I believe because I didn't see dan forcing her. I say " Roxane, I loved you Roxane. You do not sell yourself Roxane. You do not sell yourself to the night, you belonged to me. You are worthless to me now". After this meg pushes me to the ground then runs off. Later on in the next scene. Freya and meg kill me and dan. For cheating on  and abusing them. 

Our piece

We are using the piece called "in a sentimental mood" by duke Ellington. We are using this song in the bar scene. It's a really good piece if music and sables the audience what time period the performance is set in, in our last lesson we had an opening scene where the stage is in blackout. And there is a gang questioning someone about not giving money that is owed to the gang. It sets the scene well and shows the audience that the play is set in a time with Gangs.

I was at first concerned with the fact that our storyline may come across quite cheesy, because the main storyline is Kyle falling in love with Ellie. 

Emotionally Connecting the Audience to a character

Also known as Actor sympathy, this is a psychological process wherebe the audience experiences the same emotions and feelings as the characters who they're idendifying with. When you can capture audience sympathy for your characters, you will hook them into your story. This is called, "Identification."

One of the first goals of a devised piece is to get the audience involved in the story by creating a bond between themselves and the characters. After you have captured the hearts of the audience, your goal is to elicit emotions in them by showing your characters experiencing emotions. If the audience has no sympathy for the hero, then the story will be flat.

In our case, we need the audience to feel sympathetic to Kyle and Ellie, we had the idea that after Kyle bumps into Ellie, she is brought back to the gangs den (headquarters), however all the other members of the gang hate Ellie,because kyle is focusing more on her than the actual Gangs tasks and operations. So the members get a bit annoyed and send Kyle to do a misson on his own, however kyle is blind to the fact that the other members dislike Ellie,and while he is gone, the gang, rape and abuse Ellie and kick her out onto the street, then when kyle (A slightly weak member) returns, the gang lie and say she left,leaving Kyle devastated, this will be a great way to get the audience to have a connection with the two characters, we need to in a way show Kyle and Ellie to be madly inlove, this will then get the audience to imagine themselfs in the play being in them characters shoes.

This will enable the audience to feel really sorry for the characters, which is what we want because we want the Audience to emotionally connect with them 

Ideas for the Author - With pictures

I Absolutely love these images, i uploaded these to show my interpritations of the author character, and what he looks like/does, i feel they both show the author from being sane, to growing overwhelmingly mad,  especially the top one, at the start, Dan could be casually sat down thinking of writing a story, it could all be going well until he realises there are no happy endings, over time he grows more and more insane, ripping out pages and launching them everywhere, this will show how mad he is becoming, the cruelty of life has taken over his story and its driving him insane. We could also show the change in Dans appearence, from being quite formal and smart looking at the start, to being all messed up and creepy by the end, its a very peculiar yet interesting character. We had the idea that somebody is also maybe writing the authors story, to add a cool twist to the end, it allseems extremley confusing now, but when we start merging our ideas together it will look seriously awesome. We also want the author to be drinking strong alcohol when he starts going mad, it will add effect to how insane he is going

I think this character will be the most interesting throughout the play, and it will keep the audience engaged throughout, if the character is acted and plated well. Alot of people whoare depressed normally drink strong Whiskey, so this idea of him drinking is showing us that hes loosing control of the story and its only heading one way. But drinking is just making his behaviour worse and worse.

I think in the end,the author ends up killing himself because he cant take it anymore, he cant take the fact that his story wont end happily.

Final ideas for Chasing pavements

Today we came up with final ideas for our piece for 'Chasing Pavements' today in lesson we finally managed to come up with a really cool sounding idea, miss cordell helped us out alot and told us to think outside of the box, because obiously everything in drama has been done before so we need to add our own spark to our piece

In the end we decided that the soldier idea, despite it being really good, would not be able to entertain the audience and get us the grades, for example, the crash at the beginning would have been really effective, and the soldiers individual stories but the play would get a bit dry and boring and we need the audience to stay engaged and feel sorry for the character who in the end is going to die

 We are also not going with the idea of the gang idea, however we are using the story in part of our piece, we had the idea that the performance starts as a blackout, and you can hear shouting and screaming, then as the lightrs come up, you see a dead body with a gang, who are tying up loose ends, (Basically killing someone for not doing something), and then the soppy character of the gang, a stranger (Ellie)walks around and sees the dead body, the rest of the group run away but the emotional (wet) character that is played by Kyle,doesnt run, and this shows them falling in love in a way. We havent planned out the full story, but in a nutshell, Dan Mckay is the Author, writing the story, which we are the characters of, and it shows him writing the story and us acting it out, which will look really cool. Initially before this amazing idea,we allcame up with origional ideas, which were in fact really good, but it wasnt outside the box or strange in a way, we dont wan the audience to be able to relate our play, to a film or other play. Because its our owndevised piece

We had the idea that Dan canever finish the story with a happy ending (showing the cruelty of life), and he gets more and more frustrated, and drinks alcohol while writing, so to the end of the story, Dan ends up killing himself, its really difficult to explain, but when we sort out the order of the performance and look into more depth about each character, i will be able to tell you more about each individual character, how they feel and why they are behaving like they do

Personally i wanted the Author because i can act really well at being stressed and i feel the part would have suited me, hopefully i will have a good role in the actual story, me and theo need to come up with important characters to play otherwise we will hardly be in it and wont be matching the grading criteria, im slightly dissapointed i didnt get the part,but it was done in a random draw so i cant complain. Apart from this our story is odd but unique and i feel it will seriously entertain and interest the audience,and they will be engaged throughout the performance/

 One thing im worried about is the idea that Dan Screws up the paper and re-writes it, i feel that repeating it too much will bore the audience, although its a really good idea and it really shows how the author cant find a happy ending, it may confuse the audience,

Next lesson we should sit down again and structure the play, then once we have more knowledge on the play, we should start devising the opening scene, i really want to start trying different ideas, because fir the past few lessons we have just been talking about ideas, and havent peen putting them into action tosee what works well, and what doesnt, i cant wait to start working on this. But i seriosly want a part that i will be really good at acting, i know i could have shown my potential by being the Author,so next lesson we also need to tactically assign the appropriate characters to each actor.

Chasing Pavements Initial Ideas

Today in lesson we found out that we were doing a devised piece, weve been giving the Adele song 'Chasing pavements', we came up with alot of different ideas like somebody chasing a dream, or chasing something thats never going to happen, one of our ideas that i like is that their is a gang in new york in the 1930's and one member wants to break free and follow his dreams, another idea is that a helicopter gets shot down stranding a group of soldiers in the middle of nowhere and we could show their journey home,and how they want to see their loved ones. Theo had the good idea of us basing the story around a relationship, i think that is the point Adele is trying to make in the song,

 'I've made up my mind, don't need to think it over if I'm wrong I am right, don't need to look no further happening This ain't lust, I know this is love- This shows us that the girl is in love, she doesnt need to think twice, she knows something is right about this person.

 'Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements Even if it leads nowhere? Or would it be a waste even if I knew my place Should I leave it there?' She's wondering wether to go after this person and go through pain and hurt, to finally be with that person, or to just stop, give up and be unhappy without them.

'build myself up and fly around in circles Waiting as my heart drops and my back begins to tingle Finally could this be it? I think this means she makes herself look amazing for this specific person she loves, just for them to not notice her in any way, so her heart drops whenever he doesn't notice her.

This is why I've come to the decision that the an idea based on relationship will be a good one, because we can use alot of ideas from the songs, and also we can do alot of cool drama techniques that will help tell the story of someone being so in love. However we would have to make it look professional and not childish or cheesy.

The lyrical meaning of the song shows  A fruitless search or mission, particularly relating to love and romance. Coined by singer-songwriter Adele, it referred originally to her running after a boyfriend with whom she had just fought, before realising she was 'chasing an empty pavement' as he was no longer there.

So from this i can see that devising a relationship themed piece will be much easier to work with, because its what the song is about and we can use ideas from the lyrics to aid us, this idea in my opinion is more tactical and appropriate than any other idea we have so far.

Final week of curious incident!

Wow! What an amazing performance! The final week was basically final preparation for there show which we put on a wednesday. We spent the final lessons running the scene we weren't very confident in, like we ran alot of my characters scenes, i feel we needed more time because through most of the performance i was unsure of what was coming next.

Unfortunatley for me during the performance i forgot alot of my lines, but I'm very proud of my improvisation skills, i normally just freeze if i mess up a line, but me and ( carl ) managed to do some really good improv work and the audience didn't even notice, so i was very proud of myself.

Everybody enjoyed the performance, towards the end of the week we have started coming up with our devised work, which I'm going to seriously enjoy because i love devised so much more than scripted, because i feel more confident not having to learn any lines, and improv is 100 percent easier if i mess up.

17-21st weekly review

This week we focused on getting the movement scenes done, they are really starting to flow through nicely now, we have now shown we can work together as eel all came up with the physical theatre parts as a class, showing good teamwork and leadership skills within the group. We have all now grasped how we should be playing our characters and now look very professional when performing.

Doing the character workshops has really helped me to keep in character whilst acting on stage, I'm now much more confident with knowing my lines, so i can focus 100 percent on my acting and movement as my character. It has made me act my character alot better which will look very professional when we perform.

At home i have been watching clips of 'The curious incident', i was very impressed with the west end show, the choreography is insane and it flows through really well, we have pinched some ideas from the original to go in our performance, hopefully it will look just as good as the original show.

We had many strengths with this weeks practice, everyone has nearly perfected their lines, some people need to practice their lines, because sometimes the play stopped dead for prompts, which made it flow less and look less professional, however i think we should have it nailed by next week when we perform it.

Next week before we need to fit in as many run throughs as we can, and keep on practicing, if we practice it to death we will know it off buy heart and the performance should be a walk in the park.

9th-14th November weekly review

During the rehearsal process this week, we have been rehearsing alot in the hall, which is good because its where we are performing the piece, and practicing in the hall will give us a clear idea of how much space we will have, and where the audience will be, The entire class has been working on alot of physical theatre, for example the station scene, and the beginning scene, we all do a marching routine in formation which looks really really effective, we also do this to techno sounding computer music, we have practiced this alot and its started to flows through really well and look good.

At home i have been individually been practicing the choreographed movement part at the beginning part of act 1, it helps me to remember each individual step and where i will be onstage in relation to other characters. Also i have been practicing my lines with the help of my family members, i have also been practicing the movement of my character, although i have found it hard to act my character well, along with remembering all my lines. As soon as i have all my lines remembered perfectly i will naturally find it easier to stay in my character as an old man.

I have been researching alot at home, watching more videos online, i also listened too the music that is used in the origional performance, that we are using in ours aswell, i tried researching into my character but unfortunately the original is Mrs Alexander and not Mr Alexandra, we had to change Mrs to Mr because there is a short amount of girls, but i do understand how to play an elderly character.

This week has been very successful, the performance is really starting to unravel nicely, we all are acting our characters really well now. The correographed movement parts are also being practiced alot and are really starting to look good. We have also now got really good music and sound effects to go with the movement scenes. Which makes the movement look even more professional, Everyone has taken alot of time and effort when learning their lines.

I feel we need to spend alot more time running the show from start to finish, if we get the play to flow through efficiently with everyone knowing 100 percent of their lines it should look really good, the character workshops from the previous weeks have really helped everyone in lesson to understand the movement of there characters.

Mr Kelly 14th November

Today in class we planned the beginning part of the story, where the king is having a celebration/party for the birth of his new son jason. I was thrilled to find out that i have the part of Jason. We also had to work out music for the party, we have gone for a traditional Greek look to the play, our original idea was to keep it more modern, but things didn't work very well when we tried putting it together. I really like the fact we use some good techniques, for example we used slow motion, in a short fight between drunk Dom and Ashley. I especially like the fact that Carl narrated the party while we acted, i thought it looked very cool, and it will make it easier for the young year 7's to grasp the basic storyline.

Mr Alexanders Character.

Mr Alexander is the neighbor across the street who inadvertently helps Christopher with his detective work. he's noteworthy for a few reasons. For one, he doesn't mean to reveal to Christopher any secrets about his mother – he just can't imagine that he doesn't know she was having an affair with their next-door neighbor. Another thing we notice is that, even though he's a nice old man, and has a dog, and offers Christopher snacks and things like that, he still completely distrusts him, and is afraid that he might try to hurt him. 

Putting these two things together, we could say that Christopher imagines dangers that aren't there, and misses some that really are right in front of him. Mr Alexander helps us see this.

Mr Kelly 7th November Jason And The Golden Fleece

Today, when everyone turned up, Mr kelly arranged us into 3 seperate groups, each group told a different part of the story 'Jason and the golden fleece', we done this so we could decide which part of the story would appeal more to our target audience. Personally i think my group had the best part of the story where, Jason travels to Cyzicus, This specific part of the story involves alot of adventure and fighting parts, we also came up with alot of comedy ideas, we are hoping to perform to year 7's, at this age, fighting and adventure is really cool. I came up with a really good idea, where in the fight scene, we could place crash mats on the floor, so during the fight people could be thrown from the stage. I feel that this will be really appealing to the young year group we are performing to and will help them to stay engaged.

Toby, me and meg, performed the part in Jason and the Golden Fleece, where Jason and his group travel to Cyzicus the king of the island mentions a premise land beyond Bear mountain, that holds alot of fresh fruit and water. However what isn't mentioned is what lives beyond Bear mountain. So half of Jasons crew stay with the boat, and the other half, including Jason, travel to the premise land, unfortunately, the crd were not told about the 6 armed monsters that roam the island, and the crew near the boat came under attack. Jason and the others return and kill the remaining monsters. They set sail as soon as they can, to get away from the island but loose their bearings out at sea, and the boat mysteriously returns back to the land of Cyzicus, As it was night time, Jason and his crew were mistaken by the villagers of the island as enemies, and were attacked, the villagers lost the battle, soon after the king of the island was killed by Jason, on hearing this the kings wife, (the queen) committed suicide.

I really enjoyed the other groups pieces, they had some great ideas using physical theatre e.g, however not everyone had a good role in it, for example there were a few main characters, the others weren't involved much, whereas in our piece, everyone was used equally, in all parts. The only real main part is Jason. I feel that if we come up with dialogue for our piece, it will be easier understood by the audience, because they are only around 11 years old, they may not grasp the main storyline and would get easily lost, this is why adding dialogue with aspects of comedy, will keep the audience focused on the storyline and engaged through the performance.

Christophers Aspergers.

People with aspergers find it difficult to tell people what they need, and how they feel. They find it difficult to meet other people and to make new friends. They find it difficult to understand what other people think, and how they feel. Not everyone with Asperger syndrome will find these things difficult. This is because everyone with Asperger syndrome is different.

 They can have good language skills. But some people with Asperger syndrome think that people always mean what they say. For example, someone with Asperger syndrome might not be able to tell when someone is joking, we can see this when christopher never seems to understand somebody is joking, and always seems to be serious about things. They may only talk about their favourite subject, in this case, Christopher only talks about what happened to wellington, or about Maths and space, because Christopher loves outer space and we can see him describing space like a genius throughout the play.

They may be very interested in some things. For example, they may be very interested in trains or the weather. They may want to take part in games or activities with other people. But they may not know how to do this. They may like to play the same game or do the same thing every day, for example the game Christopher plays in his room the game tetrus, and he really enjoys it. They can have a good IQ and may go to the same school as children who do not have a disability, Christopher mentions how much smarter he is than everybody else in the school, and calls everyone else stupid, he is clearly clever because he is taking his maths A level early, he is only 15! So this shows us how high his IQ must be. Your IQ is a number. Your IQ is a way of thinking about how much you can learn and what you can do for your age. They may be bullied at school because other children think they are different. Being bullied means being treated badly by other people.

 They may be very good at something. For example, they may be very good at maths, christopher is extremely amazing at maths, They may be very good at learning information, be good at concentrating on one activity. Concentrating means to focus your mind on one thing. They may find co-ordination difficult, like when Christopher counts right left right left when he walks. This is the reason Christopher is so brave to travel to London on his own.

Weekly Review 3rd-7th november.

1...During the rehersal process this week we have been running through Act one, without scripts, this is because we have been learning our scripts at home, we also practiced in the hall because thats where we will be performing on the 26th november. Over this week we have also been working on the movement of our characters, my character is Mr Alexandra, so he is going to be old and be dependent on a walking stick he carries round, i also play, (London Transport Policeman, its a completely different character to Mr Alexandra, a policeman will stand tall and walk around with a high reputation, i can definitley see the performance coming together nicely, it seems to flow more and eveyone remembers the lifts and physical aspects.

  2... At home i have been focusing on act 1, and have learnt as much as i can, I have also been researching more into aspergers at home ( see seperate post) and i have learnt more about christophers character, now i understand why he feels the way he does, and why he sees the world as he does. I have also posted pictures of what i think my character should look like onstage. This is helping me to understand how my character should look and walk, Mr Alexandra is a very old man, and he leans on his stick to show weakness, like most old people do. I also noticed that both Christopher and Mr Alexandra are very vulnerable, Mr Alexandra is old and can't move around well, and Christopher has Aspergers and can't co-ordinate properly, making both characters slightly weaker than the other main characters.

3... Another thing I've been doing is learning/watching online videos of the curious incident, i have been looking specifically on the movement and physical theatre, and taking alot of ideas that we can use in our Performance, which is really coming along well now. I like how we can easily show what Christophers mind looks like through physical theatre, it really shows us and the audience, what it must be like to suffer with aspergers.

4... I think next week we are going to look at some physical theatre aspects of the show, we will also start practicing in the hall to get used to the space, because this is where we are going to be performing the show. Our performing arts tops will hopefully arrive next week aswell! Which I'm really looking forward to

5... All i need to do now is carry on learning my lines and researching more online about the play, like finding videos and taking ideas, to make our show look as professional as possible

20th-25th week review

During the rehearsal process this week we have been going through the script, we have begun trying to get through some parts of act 1 without scripts, after a lot of character work from last week we all know more about our characters and why they behave as they do.

At home after the half term, i spent a lot of time reading the script to understand the play more and its characters, i also learnt all my lines in act 1 with only a little prompting, which i am very happy about, I'm now going to continue practicing at home until it is perfect. At home I'm also going to research into my character more and find out why he behaves as he does and how i can link this to his age.

When we get back from half term i want to spend some time at home researching my character, i feel that this will help me understand (mr alexander) more. I have been researching a lot at home this week about Christopher, learning mores about autism/Aspergers, it has helped me gain more knowledge on why Christopher behaves the way he does, and why he is so intelligent. making it easier to see why Mr Alexander is so kind around him.

After character research in school and at home, i now feel more comfortable with playing my character, i know now why/how Mr alexander reacts to Christopher. It has been difficult getting into character sometimes, because an old over friendly man is quite a challenging role to get into as a young 16 year old lad. The character building workshops this week have helped me alot.

Before next week, in our half term break, i will take time to look over and learn my lines, hopefully i will have learnt them all by the time we get back to school.

Curious Incident. week review. Monday 13th - Friday 17th

During the rehersal process,we have been working on our character development aswell as the play, we have been mostly working on part one of the script, and have started to learn our individual lines, we have also been working on a lot of the parts in the play where we use physical theatre to show where Christopher is, and what he is doing. We also did alot of character improvisation work, for example, i put up a video on blogger about a week ago showing a short video of all the neighbours, Mr alexandra(me), Number 40 and Mrs shears, doing a small bit of improvisation work, talking about how we feel about Christopher, this helped us to get a better understanding of our characters.

At home i have also, read through the script and adapted my voice and body language to look and sound more like an old caring man. The short improvised performances helped me to understand more about the character i play, It helped me to understand how my character feels about Christopher, and made me ask myself why mr Alexandra is so kind to Christopher. Now i understand more about my own character aswell as the other characters in the performance.

 I myself know quite alot about Aspergers, because a family member has the condition, this has helped me understand alot more about Christophers character, because i know someone close to me,who has it, Aspergers is where you like everything organised and planned, any changes to the origional plans can be quite frustrating for the person with Aspergers. 

 I have been very successful with knowing more about my character,and the other Charachters around me, because we have done alot of character building workshops, it has mainly been a success because i now know more about my character. Previously i didn'tfeel very confident in my character, for instance when i was communicating with Christopher originally, i didn't know how to adapt my voice and body language to match my character, now we have worked on our individual characters, i feel more confident when performing.

 I feel that we need to work on the play a lot more, in many parts of the performance, we all call out random words and numbers, as if its all happening in christophers head, so we need to all learn our individual lines and i need to start learning my lines and practicing them, however i think more character workshops will help me, learn more about my character Mr Alexandra.

Mr Kelly friday 17th october

Today after the warm up, we were put intosmall groups and asked to work on one of the three greek god stories, my group: Tom Falconar, Freya Beck and myself, performed/created a small part of the story of Medussa, we have changed the time of the story to modern times, Medussa, devoted to Athena, works at Athenas strip club, however when Athenas dear friend, pesiden walks in (god of sea ) he falls in love with Medussa, medussa loves pesidun so much she begs to leave, however athena punishes her for going against her word. Atthe beginning i introduce, the audience ( my customers ) to the stripclub... " Welcome to the gods temple, where we assure you a brilliant night, we have a wide variety of women; Blondes, Redheads, Brunettes. The carpets do certaintly match the drapes hahaha, but remember, you get in, do your thing, then get out. No love strings attatched, enjoy your stay! " When i say " No love strings attatched " I wink at the men in the audience to suggest they all have wives at home.

Medussa is my favourite story of the three because it will engage the audience, and its quite entertaining storyline

Monday 13th october character improvisation

Today we did a lot of character work, mainly improvisation, which helped us to get a better understanding of who our characters are, and how we should play them, above is a small, ( funny ) video of us demonstrating improvisation work, unfortunately when the audience members laughed it put us off so it didn't look very professional, but the work helped us to get in touch with our characters more, The characters involved were, Meg, as ( mrs shears ) dom, as ( Number 40 ) and me as ( Mr Alexandra ) After we performed our small improvisation work we wrote monologues.

29th september Mr Alexander diary/ monologue

Diary Entry

Christopher, hes the only person in the area who really talks to me, its a shame because hes such a nice boy, but whenever he stops off at mine hes just here to do detective work, i find him very interseting, id love to get to know him more, i dont really have that many friends, im really concerned for Christopher, because his father has warned him not to do detecive work, i have tried talk him out of it, i even invited him in but he dissappeared, its a shame, i really like that kid. His dad doesn't seem to love him very much, i can often hear Ed yelling at christopher from my house, and I'm practically deaf! I really feel sorry for the young lad. At the end of the day he's a 15 year old autistic boy, the other neighbours need to cut him some slack...

Ways To Tell A Story 26th september

Ways To Tell A Story.

Stories can be told in many different ways using different techniques and expressions, the drama techniques can enhance performance skills such as character development and story telling, there are many different techniques which can be used in different ways for example.

Stories for children need to be narrative and engaging with the characters, they have to be narrative and should flow from beginning to end. Alot of the time in childrens stories, pictures are involved, many storylines in childrens stories involve talking anilmals, For example disney has created engaging stories of animals, which connects the younger audience. A very famous, successful disney story was 'The Lion King', which is a grasping emotional story which captured many adults and children, it was quite an easy story to understand but also was very clever, as the characters sang and danced, which always helps when telling a story. Genrally in stories, there is normally a plot twist,

 Another way of telling a story is through dance, the audience can clearly connect with the character and the theme of the story, through the dancers facial expressions and movement, contemporary dance is a brilliant way of telling a story.

 Singing is also a good way to tell a story because the emotion in the characters voice can show how they are feeling, and yu can link how they are feeling, to what is happening around them, which makes it easier to work out what the story is actually about.

23rd September: getting to know our characters.

Today we were able to go into more depths with our scripts, i found that in act one of "the curious incident of the dog in the night time", my character, Mr alexander has a lot of scenes with the main character Christopher who is autistic, i notice the character is very friendly towards Christopher and when i play this role i will have to show that i care a lot for him, I also have a few lines in the second half, one being my second role which is a 'London transport policeman'.

We practiced our lines and tried to get into character, this way we could develop a bigger understanding of the way our characters behave and feel.

The play is basically about everything that is going on in Christophers mind, and we as actors act out what he is saying, for example when he mentions how he came home and his mother was not home, as he explains every movement when he got home, each actor acted out different things Christopher did, which looked effective.

22nd September: getting our characters and scripts.

Performing Arts.                  22 September 2014

Today we took a trip into Christopher's mind, stood in his shoes and felt how he did, we acted out the inside of head, the constant confusion, my group improvised most of our devised piece but Christophers emotions and feelings where still very clearly shown.

I was given two parts, one being a main role and one quite small role, i was happy to know i had got the part of 'Mr Alexandra' and a 'London Transport Policeman' both are very different characters, Mr Alexandra being quite calm and friendly and the policeman to be quite serious.