Acting
Stanislavski
For this unit we are doing sketches written by Harold Pinter from the book The Dwarfs and nine revue sketches. After reading these sketches I really enjoyed them as they were really funny and enjoyable. How he wrote the characters was really good as well as they majorly had conflicting personality's to each other. I also enjoyed the idea of doing multiple sketches instead of one large play after reading the brief.
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After reading the sketches I really enjoyed New world order and Interview as they were the most humorous out of the ones we read. These were the ones I wanted roles in as the character were different to ones i'm usually cast into as these were more crazy or excitable character rather than the more serious or villainous roles i'm put into. When we cast each other I got the roles of Jakes in the Interview, Lionel in New world order and barman in Last to go. The first two were the roles I wanted the most as they were the characters I found the most funny out of all of them. The barman was another type of character i've never performed as before as its an overall friendly and chill character.
About Harold Pinter
Pinter was a playwright, screenwriter, director and actor with a career that spanned over 50 years. He has multiple award for his work including a Nobel prize and Olivier award.
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His most well known plays include 'The birthday party' (1957), 'The homecoming' (1964) and 'The betrayal' (1978) which he also adapted to screen. He directed nearly 50 productions for stage and screen which included his own plays and other peoples plays for stage.
Practising stage slap for new world order scene
Stanislavski was a Russian theatre practitioner who lived in Moscow. He was well known for Naturalism which made theatre as feel as real to the audience as possible. He died on the 7th august 1938 at the age of 75.
His style is used to this day and is one of the most influential practioners to this day.
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His family loved the theatre and he went to them a lot as a young boy. When he started his career he took a stage name to hide it from his parents.
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Realism involved making performances feel as real as possible. These involved the play being set in realistic contexts and would not have fairy tale settings. The characters were always normal people and always defined as working class characters and have a everyday style of speaking along with the dialogue being an everyday conversations.
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Stanislavski's used given circumstances which was the character information given in the script, The magic if which makes the actor put themselves in the characters shoes and what they would in the situation, character objective which was the reason for there actions and the super objective which was the characters goal in the script.
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Out of his techniques I used the given circumstances which helped me develop the base of the character. I also use the magic if to get a feel of the characters personality and figure out what they're like and the objective and super objective to base my characters actions that will help to there goal. These helped me develop as an actor as they really help with developing characters from scripts.
We decided to practise a stage slap for me to do for the final scene as my character lashes out at our torture target in the scene.
I did a few try's before I perfected it and actually made it look realistic and not hit Riley at all.
After we decide to act out the scene with the slap in. The scene went really smooth with the slap and really helps the scene.
Later down the line we changed the slap out for a punch as it looked more realistic as for the scene Riley was cuffed and blindfolded so he couldn't properly react to the hit of the slap.
Hot seating and character analysis
For hot seating and character analysis we each made our characters names up as most of the scripts had the numbers 1 and 2 or just that characters occupation.
For my barman scene I gave the character the name Lawrence who works at self named café. He is very friendly with his customers and knows most of the community. He did not participate in world war 2 as he was helping his local community and keeping his café open as much as possible even with the shortage of most of his menu items. The only person he's not very familiar with is the local newspaper salesman as he's only just came in to the community.
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For the interview my character on the script was just called Jakes which I thought of as a last name so I gave him the first name John to make it alliterate with his last name. A character who is quite a big conspiracy theorist and a person who is really anti communism who try's to uncover hidden communists in his community. He is also very paranoid about communists being hidden out there.
He also runs a pornographic book shop to use as a base of operations to help him uncover communists.
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For the new world order I played Lionel who was an overexcited man who was happy to get a job with torturing. He from a small village and frequented the local pub and was offered this job by his friend Des. He enjoys doing what he does and is happy to get paid for anything including torturing someone.
Crewing
Risk assessment
Crewing roles
Producer
Produces and pays to make plays happen
Artistic director
In charge of budget and creating programmes for the theatre
Managing director
Chooses performances that appear in the core demographic of the company,
Director
The person in charge of deciding how the production plays out and directing the cast
Playwright
The writer of the script for a production.
Choreographer
The person in charge of making dances for dancers.
Production manager
Responsible for for realizing the visions of the producer and the director or choreographer within constraints of technical possibility.
Business manager
In charge of financial resources of the theatre and gathering the general budget of a performance
Stage manager
Supports and organises the teams in charge of the day to day running of a production.
Lighting designer
Works with director and choreographer to create the lighting and atmosphere during a production.
Costume designer
Designing and creating the costumes for each cast member for a production.
Sound designer
Works with director to create the sound for a production.
Scene designer
Designs the background of a scene
Technical director
The resident technical expert who oversees all technical departments
Assistant technical director
Assists technical director
Prop master
The person in charge of keeping props in the right place off stage.
Make up designer
Designing the make up for cast and testing if the cast is allergic.
House manager
Oversees front of house operations and in charge of front of house staff
Usher
In charge of customer service before, during and after a performance.
Stagehand
Moves set and props during or before play.
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For our production I was prop master on the right of the stage. I was in charge of keeping a eye on the props on the props table and making sure they weren't missing.
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I feel like my role went well as props never went missing from my side of the stage with the exception of one as it ended on the other side of the stage before the performance,
The backstage crew for any production must be quiet during performances and move things around as quiet as possible as to not make actors not lose focus and get distracted while they are on stage.
Performance crew roles.
Prop master: Me (Right), Matt left. In charge of props.
Director: Jessy. Directing cast
Marketing: Jamie. Promoting show to gather audience
Costume: We all chipped in for costume and all gathered ideas for each other.
Lighting and sound design: Jess and Jessy found the sound effects for each bit of the sketch.
Technician: Rich played the effects for the show with a script for cues.
Stagehand: We were all stagehands for the performance and were all helping at the side of each hand.