Broken Hearted Youth Theatre workshop

-
Members of the Broken Hearted Youth Theatre company visited us to run a workshop. In this workshop we focused on bringing out true feelings and emotions during a performance, rather than pretending to feel those feelings and emotions; to do this we participated in a repetition exercise.

To carry out the repetition exercise, you stand opposite your partner and say a sentence, the sentence should consist of a simple observation of your partner, for example “You’re wearing a yellow shirt.” Or “Your hair is tied back.”. Your partner should then repeat the sentence back to you “I’m wearing a yellow shirt.” Or “My hair is tied back.”. You and your partner should then continue to repeat the same sentence until one of you notices a change in the others behaviour. When this happens, the sentence should change and become a sentence about their change in behaviour, for example “You’re smiling.” Or “You look bored”. Until another change in behaviour is noticed. This should continue until both you and your partner are feeling a great sense of an emotion, whether that’s anger, joy or sadness.

I was absent for their second visit but I was informed that I should write a duologue in preparation for their third visit. During their third visit, we focused on bringing the duologues to life in groups of two, however, due to me being absent on the second visit, I was without a partner. This could have put me at a disadvantage but I this allowed me to overlook other pairs and give feedback on their performance which was not only helpful to them but beneficial to me in terms of my evaluative language.

This is the feedback I received on the first draft of my duologue piece:

- Include more of a backstory (how do the characters know each other? How did they end up here?)

- Give more hints to who the characters are (name, age, occupation.)

















Overall, working with Broken Hearted Youth Theatre has been extremely beneficial. One of my favourite techniques they taught me was emotional memory. Emotional memory in acting, is imagining or remembering how a certain situation made you feel to force yourself to feel a certain emotion, instead of pretending to feel that emotion, to make your acting more authentic.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Medea

-
Image
One of our first pieces to perform is ‘Medea’. We were given an extract in which Medea had locked herself in a house with her kids and we were all desperate for her to come out. As a group of five, we decided to make the piece comedic, this was our first time working and performing as a group. After performing our finished pieces to the class, we gave and received class feedback. I also noted one important aspect of acting that I learnt, “Continue portraying character even without lines or specific actions.” This is essential because it shows your determination in presenting your character, even if the attention is not necessarily or entirely on you.
Read more

The Cherry Orchard

-
Image
Our first assignment after half term is  to be split in to groups of around ten people, then study and perform a play. The play my group was given is ' The Cherry Orchard '. Background: The Cherry Orchard is a play written by a Russian playwright 'Anton Chekhov' in 1903. It is said to 'dramatise the socio-economic forces in Russia in the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class in the mid 19th century.' And the play does this through a story of a family who, due to financial issues, are forced to sell their large, well known cherry orchard. My character: I play Varya , the adopted daughter of the landowner. Varya manages the estate and keeps everything in order, therefore I should portray my character as responsible and intelligent. Varya also adores her mother and sister, therefore I should also show more compassion and kindness towards those two characters. We were encouraged to write our actions and objectives...
Read more

Stanislavski

-
Konstantin Stanislavski was a Russian actor and theater director, his methods helped actors to be more natural and realistic in their acting to make it more believable.  The Stanislavski method is a set of techniques used by actors to portray emotions on stage by putting themselves in the place of the characters. He developed this method in the early 1900s. These are: 1. Who am I? 2. Where am I? 3. When is it? (Year, season, occasion, time of day) 4. What do I want? (My characters objective) 5. Why do I want it? 6. How will I get it? 7. What do I need to overcome? (Problems or obstacles the character is going to face) I incorporated Stanislavskis method of natural acting into my group performance of the Cherry Orchard. One of the ways I did this was through the use of nuances.  Nuances are the subtle ways we show who our characters are, the little moments that allude to aspects of the character that aren’t shown outright.
Read more