Reheasals

13th May
Today we got the script for 'Look Back in Anger' my first thoughts reading through were that I knew straight away that I wanted to play the role of Jimmy, this is because I believe we are alike in certain ways, I believe this is because we are both very sarcastic. When I first read the script I realised that Jimmy is a complicated character, he is sarcastic and horrible to women. This is a good play to display my acting ability because it's a naturalistic piece and is filled with emotions. After we chose our group we decided to do the last scene which involves Jimmy, Alison and Helena. This is the scene where Jimmy realises it's all his fault and he's treated Alison badly this whole time.

14th May
Today we done a workshop that was designed to help us with naturalism, in this workshop we started off by taking a bird made of paper and making it real, the objective was to create an emotional bond with the bird. This was effective because it helped us learn how to create emotional bonds that are real so that it looks real on stage. We passed the bird round in a circle being very gentle with it which helped strengthen the emotion. When the bird got passed back to Jill, she scrunched it up and we all felt quite devastated and Jill told us to simply let go of the feelings. This was effective because it is important for actors not to take the emotions on stage too seriously.

20th May
We started off the sessions doing vocal warmups, it is very important for an actor to warmup their voice. After the warmups we started working on the play, I didn't really know how to portray the character Jimmy so I held back on using any emotions for the time being. Jimmy comes across as arrogant and selfish, I need to show this with my voice and body language. Jimmy has a strange relationship with the other characters in the play for example, it sounds like he really despises Alison even though she is the woman he is supposed to love and she does everything for him, he thinks he can cope on his own but I think he wouldn't be able to deal with his life without Alison.

21st May
Today we done another Stanislavski workshop,this one was about emotion memory, this is a technique where the actors think of something that has happened to them in the past that is comparable to the scene, for example, if the actor has to do a scene where they lose their spouse then they could recall a time where they have felt loss before and use those emotions in the scene. This is effective because the audience doesn't know what the actor is thinking when they're on stage. It is important that when using this technique you leave the emotions in the stage. What we done as a class was shared an emotional story that had happened to us and use those emotions in a scene, this could be effective if the actor can control the emotion because sometimes the memory is just overwhelming and the actor can't continue the scene.

22nd May
I have learned my lines and developed my character, I have realised the emotions I want to use in the scene.He starts out quite angry at Alison, shouting at her and how everything is her fault. This has an effect on the audience because they feel for Alison and know that it's not her fault. When Alison has her big paragraph Jimmy begins to realise that it's his fault and he doesn't want to lose her. Beth has thrown her emotion into Alison and this has inspired me to do the same. There is a point in Alison's speech when Jimmy realises he's wrong, I decided to take this and add a physical movement. I decided to break eye contact and look away from Beth, this shows that Jimmy can't bear the thought of being blamed, I close my eyes at one point for more dramatic effect, this also helps my eyes to well up which is important because this is the big forgiving scene, Jimmy would be upset. In earlier rehearsals I didn't know how to say the last paragraph which is about Jimmy comforting Alison, I decided to try it without the lines so I wasn't just reading it off the page. I find it hard to show affection when it's supposed to look real on stage, I used a very comforting voice that came from inside me and wasn't put on, I acted like I was really trying to comfort her, this bit still needs some work but it's getting there.

10th June
Daniel brought the groups in one by one and had them perform their scene, the idea behind this was to keep stopping the group mid performance to try little bits in different ways, this was effective because we could decide which way we wanted to perform the scene and which way looked best. Some advice he gave me personally was to try and use more of my own voice instead of putting on a voice, this is effective because it makes the piece more realistic. Daniel told me to take the themes into consideration, I followed this advice by thinking of what the themes were and trying to incorporate them into the piece, this worked effectively because it helped me understand why Jimmy is the way is