Friday 12th February 2016 pillowman

This was the last lesson before the half term break so again in the lesson we once more ran the performance. We had learned a few lines but needed prompting throughout, also the teacher watched and gave us a lot of constructive criticism and advice, a few of us were slipping out of character and perhaps not performing the characters full emotions. Which is vital to the performance and effect it has on the audience. So our plan is to learn our lines over the half term. Or as many as we can. Because this seems to be the main concern at the minute. 

When we get back from half term I feel we need to do lots more full runthroughs. And keep trying to show our characters full emotions. I'm going to look over my research into my character Tupolski. And really give it my all when it comes to me acting the part. I need to look aswell as act the part, so I can really bring across my character to the audience.

Friday 5th February 2016 pillowman

In this lesson we decided to run through the whole play, it ran really well and showed that we all have a great understanding of our characters. However it didn't run through as smoothly as we would have wanted to. And took longer than it should because we spent a lot of time looking at our scripts. Stumbling over lines, coming out of character a little also.

To improve this we need to spend some time looking into learning out lines, because everything else about the play is good, it's all there we just need to perfect our lines. What we also need to do as part of the assessment is build the other groups pillowman. We have looked at the design ideas from the other group for their pillowman. And it should be easy to build. Apart from these little things I feel we are ready to perform. Lines are a big problem at the minute. Because there is a lot of them! 

Milos entrance

From the moment milo walks in. As I have explained/annotated on the script. He gets very defensive when questioned. And has a very short temper. Tending to lash out on every individual member in the group. Bringing up their pasts 

Friday 22nd January 2016

In this lesson we thought about how we could portray katurians stories throughout the play, perhaps by using puppets or a projection on the wall, we thought this would be a cool way of telling the stories so the audience could see why the stories play such a massive role in the reason why katurian and his brother are under arrest/interrogation. 

Although these ideas are good It would be very difficult maybe even impossible to project the stories or tell them through puppets. Due to the fact that the play only has 4 characters so we have a massive load of lines to learn each, also we have quite little time before we perform now so we need to really focus on lines and scenes a bit more 

Friday 15th January 2016

In this lesson we focused on the Death in act 3. We really wanted to make it gruesome and quite horrific in a way for the audience in the way we stage it and have lights/sounds 

At the moment of katurians death, Tupolski gives him a ten second countdown as promised.. We then see tupolskis brutality when he shoots katurian in the back of the head after only six seconds. This also shows tupolskis agressive and heartless. Character. 

With regards to lighting we want to set it so that the audience sort of know what is about to happen, by having a dimmed red sort of lighting throughout act 3, then after the shot is fired I want to lighting to go to a blackout. To show a death has occurred. After the death I want it to remain blackout for a while. Then slowly I want clear coloured lights brought up over Tupolski and Ariel talking/arguing by Katurians dead body

8th January 2016

In today's lesson we decided to spend more time looking into our own characters, in the previous week to this lesson, we liked at the relationships between each character, we found that Tupolski is a very strong hard to break character, and Ariel not so much. We found Ariel easy to crack, due to a troubled past.

However now I want to focus on my character tupolski, throughout the interview between the convict and investigators, tupolski is very secretive with how he goes about his work, he never reveals any information about his personal life showing professionalism. This is the reason why I think he is always made number one on cases, because he doesn't let the convict break him and bring out the worst in him. 

Tupolski is also seen to be very smart, the way he goes around explaining things to Katurian in big lengthy monologues. For instance when he tells Katurian the story of the little deaf Chinese kid, whilst telling katurian the ridiculously lengthy and pointless story, katurian is clearly confused. 

I think we see katurians fear of tupolski at this point because tupolski forces Katurian to tell him that his story is good and better than any of the stories Katurian came up with. We can see tupolski is well trained in his job 

Friday 1st January 2016

In today's lesson we researched mainly into the relationships of the main characters, for instance I looked into tupolski and ariels relationship. And Carl/meg. Looked into the relationship between their characters. I noticed that tupolski is very dominant throughout the entire performance. 

In fact from the very beginning to the end, Tupolski apears to get worse to Ariel as the play goes on, in the beginning Ariel is put in his place many times by Tupolski, for example Tupolski reminds Ariel that he is number one on the case, so Ariel is technically an assistant, we also see Tupolski taking control in act 1 also when katurian and Ariel are both on the floor after having a bit of a misunderstanding with each other. It's at this moment when Tupolski steps in and tells them both to sit down.

We see toward the end that Ariel really doesn't like Tupolski, In act 3, katurian finds out alot about Ariels problematic childhood and humiliated him for it, we see Ariel getting extremely worked up and angry with him. Ariel then tries to get Tupolski to stop katurian from intimidating him, but Tupolski joins In. 

In a fuming rage after the case when Katurian is killed by Tupolski, Ariel threatens to report Tupolski to the officials, and says "this has happened before", from this we see that Tupolski has previously intimidated Ariel and brought up his childhood which is a painful topic for Ariel to talk about. Ariel also suggests that he should be the number one on the next case, Tupolski laughs because in his head he knows that he dealt with the Murders quickly and efficiently, Ariel would have probably killed Katurian, because Ariel is weak and has also murdered before, he murdered his father showing us that he would probably loose his patience with any convict. 

The characters clearly not hate each other, have split personalities and cannot work together.

Monday 28th January 2016

We didnt officially have a lesson today, however we all came together as a class in our frees, Michael and katurian have a lengthy scene at the start of the second act, which the two wanted to work on, so during this free period they looked into their characters and how they wanted to interact, (the characters are brothers, both convicted killers), as they practiced their scene me and Dom gave constructive advice to show the characters relationships with each other. Also while they ran through, I decided to research into anger management and what effects this has on somebody's life. It helped me to understand why Ariel and Tupolski are so cruel and heartless when it comes to their jobs.

Anger management: 

Anger management is the process of learning to recognize signs that you're becoming angry, and taking action to calm down and deal with the situation in a positive way. We see this a lot in the performance from both characters, however in different ways, we find that Ariel was abused as a child by his farther. He is very embarrassed about this fact and is very touchy when the subject is brought up. Even tupolski ridicules Ariel for his "problematic childhood", even when katurian nearer to the end of the play humiliates Ariel, tupolski doesn't even intervene, completely driving Ariel to an agressive stupor. The odd thing is we never find out why tupolski has anger management, he's very concealed through his personality in the performance.

It is important that we researched into anger management, because in order to play the characters well. We need to learn how people with anger management find it impossible to control anger. This extra lesson in our free periods has really given us a better insight to how the play is written and how it displays our individual characters sporadic personalities. 

18th December 2015 pillowman

In this lesson we finished off the setting of the first scene, we looked in this lesson into the way me and Ariel (the other officer) approach the table, we wanted to establish personalities through the way we walk, Ariel was going to be loose and agressive looking. With his tie half done and shirt untucked. And we wanted tupolski to look incredibly smart with lengthy strides and good posture, this will instantly assert a more professional approach to tupolski over Ariel. We were very happy because it looked quite professional now, after all we had spent a lot of time planning it, seeing how our decisions would effect the audience and us performers. 

In the first act we also need to display personalities through our body language and the way we speak. Tupolski has a quite a broad temper so is quite controlled, sitting down next to katurian, working effectively with him, finding out information. Ariel on the other hand is loosing his temper after everything katurian is saying, which shows the audience he must have had a rough past or something wrong with him that has caused him to be so aggressive.

The speech from tupolski to katurian shows me that I have to be very shrewd with the way I play the part, Tupolskis speech is very controlled but professional, he shows small bursts of sarcasm. Intimidating katurian. I will be able to work well with this character because I have a good idea of how to play it. 

Friday 11th December 2015 pillowman

Due to the fact we had done read through in the previous lesson. We decided to focus o the opening scene. This scene is possibly one of the most important ones in the play, because it introduces where the characters are and the situation, we had the idea of having katurian in the middle with a white spotlight on him. With a bad over his head, the audience would be sat in the gallery theatre seats. (An isle of slowly sloping stairs runs through the middle of the audience. Separating them. We thought about having a very oxymoron effect in the first scene, it's supposed to look very dark and quite scary, but we had the idea of putting in quite an uptempo classical piece, we thought this would bring a cool sort of eerie effect on the audience watching, this would properly set the mood for the performance. Because it is quite disturbing. On the murder case are two police investigators. Two of extremely different personalities. (Not the best team). We had the idea of both policemen walking down through the audience, I was thinking it would be a good idea to put us in suits, so as we walk down, the audience can establish who we are and have a basic understanding of our job. 

For the stage plan. We are going to have a single table in the middle, katurian will sit behind this, facing the audience. And the two investigators will sit down next to each side of katurian, giving an intense feel, the rest of the stage is going to be quiet, and quite bland. To keep the attention focuses on the main characters and to show that katurian is unable to leave. 

Friday December 4th pillowman

A week prior to this lesson we were told to order scripts for 'the pillowman', when we all turned up to lesson we began doing readtheoughs of the script, mainly to get a feel for what the play was about and how we would go around performing as the characters, we had already been assigned parts previous to the lesson also, as we had auditioned to get the parts. Luckily I got the part I was going for which was Tupolski, the number one on the case which a convicted murderer is being interviewed for, at first I thought the play was quite standard, a usual police interview, however after studying the lines that were being said more in detail. I started to see how twisted the play is. I noticed that my character Tupolski. Is an alcoholic, as he says this in the second act, however he is very professional about his work, forcing information out of the convict "katurian" through sarcasm and quite a strict piercing vocabulary.