Part One

Week 1- Introduction

Coming into this unit, I was unsure as to what to expect. I had heard many different opinions from students who had completed the unit beforehand. Some said it was too hard and that I should change, while others said that it was one of the most rewarding experiences of their lives. I’m not a quitter and I’m not too afraid of hard work so I decided to stick with it. The first workshop confirmed to me that this unit would be hard work, but also a lot of fun along the way.

 After going through the usual mumbo jumbo that is required at the start of each unit, we got into the fun!! Like any activity that requires expending energy, we had to warm up. I never realized that warm up activities could be so involved, especially not after playing netball, yet some of these stretches were more complex. I suppose stretching is highly important, because acting involves movement and you wouldn’t want to pull a muscle on stage. That could become quite interesting and embarrassing to the person involved. After completing these stretches, I learnt that I would be able to use most of these in different ways. In fact, I taught my netball coach a thing or two.

 Next came the vocal warm ups, which I sort of knew what I was doing because I was in a choir and we had to warm up. I found these warm ups to be similar to what I have experienced, so I didn’t learn much more in this activity, except that I absolutely HATE the counting exercise (thanks a lot Darren). However, it did make me think about the importance of warming up your voice. I once went to a play where one actor had not warmed up their voice. Let’s just say the understudy had to take over because the actor could no longer project his voice! Not many people realize how important it is to warm up the voice, yet it is just as important as the movement aspect of acting because you are conveying thoughts, emotions and so on in a vocal sense.

 Character improvisations proved to be my hardest challenge of the day! Thinking of just one character to channel was quite hard as I have been exposed to so many over the course of my life. Improvisation is used in acting in order for the actor to develop certain skills (EuroEncyclopedia, 2005). These skills include listening, confidence and performing without thinking. Stanislavsky (     ) came up with the idea that an actor must use their instincts to define a character’s response to events. For this activity, I eventually chose Donkey from Shrek as I feel he is most like myself in terms of personality. Talking like him wasn’t too hard thanks to my brother who continually quotes lines from the movie (14 hour car trips can become very dangerous for him, especially at 2 o’clock in the morning). However, how do I, Jodie, move like a donkey?? I still haven’t quite worked it out, so I have been watching Shrek just to try to figure it out as I don’t like to leave things unfinished. Making up my own character wasn’t too hard, as we had to do this as part of an audition for a play once, so I used this character and extended what I had done in the audition to create a more 3D character than what it was. The conversation with other characters was quite interesting to me, as in our one group we had a lamb, a lion, a 3 legged dog, a cockroach and a bear. What do these animals have in common? Yet somehow we came up with the most extraordinary conversation centered on the cockroach’s quest for “world domination”.

All of these activities somehow related back to the importance of learning improvisation skills. For example, developing a character and putting them with other characters that aren’t related relies on the actor’s use of their instincts, as you have to be thinking on your feet. On stage, any situation could occur, and you need to be prepared to adapt straight away. For example, if the conversation activity was a performance, you couldn’t take 10 minutes to think up a response; the audience would get bored. I think that all of the activities that we did today related back to Stanislavsky’s theory that an actor must use their instincts and trust these instincts to define their character (    ).  Each of the activities involved the actors developing specific skills related to improvisation, whether it is listening (in the conversations), confidence (in showing the character to the class) or any other improvisational skill. I believe that the activities today did help me start to develop certain skills related to improvisation because they let me see what I could do and what others could do. It also gave me an opportunity to reflect on others characters; did I like them? Why /why not? Could I do something like that? Can I incorporate some of their ideas into my character? I do feel however that I do need more opportunity to develop these skills, as at the moment I am not fantastic at improvisation. I would like to try more activities similar to the character conversations where we have to interact with others because they helped me the most in terms of developing certain skills.

Week 2- Movement and Improvisation

Today’s workshop began with myself and a couple of other people stuffing envelopes for the school’s that wish to view our fantastic production (because it is going to be fantastic). Paper cut count= 5. That made me think about a few things. When we go to plays and watch for enjoyment, we often focus on what is in front of us, the actors, set, music etc. We tend to forget or not realize how important each job within the play is. I have to admit, when I watched “Romeo and Juliet”, I didn’t think about the production crew, or the envelope stuffers or many other people that do not often get credit for their input. I was more concerned with how good looking Romeo was! Yet without these people, the play would not be able to go ahead. For example, if we didn’t have envelope stuffers, no one would come to see the play. I have learnt that each job holds its own importance and it is a collaborative effort.

Now back to the workshop. I have always thought that drama and theatre was the same thing. Yet children’s drama is about teaching children performance aspects such as movement, voice etc. in a classroom or the like. Children’s theatre is in a venue and concerns all aspects of production such as lighting, sound, set etc. After our warm ups (making the counting scales even harder than what they were) we got into some serious movement skills, which I am in desperate need for because I move like an elephant. According to research, verbal acting can only take a performance so far; the actor also needs to develop specific movement skills to bring a character to life (Roses-Therma, 2003). Brain gym is a concept that I have come across before due to my brother who has a learning disability. We use brain gym as a way to get him focused and alert for his lessons. It is a great concept and it works really well. As an aspiring primary school teacher, I want to use this in my classroom. Moving to the music, we created different elements. Flowing water, solid earth, light swaying air and fast powerful fire were projected in many different ways as each person has their own opinions as to what each should look like.

“Images can be used to infuse an actor’s movements with depth and intention to create a believable and inspiring character” (Roses-Therma, 2003, p34). Based on this concept, the water, earth, air and fire activity used images from nature and real life to inspire the actor to develop movement suitable to that element. To me, it was interesting to see how each individual used different images of the same topic to create unique movements. I found this activity to be extremely useful in developing particular movement concepts. I never realized that each movement you do can be related back to specific elements. For example, by moving like a fish, you are relating back to the element of water. How does a fish move in water? Is it smooth and flowing or is it solid and grounded? The movement activities also allowed me to develop my improvisational skills. You can’t take 10 minutes to think about how to move as the earth, for example. You need to be able to think on your feet figuratively speaking. This seems to be the major problem that I have on stage and it is one that I must overcome because I may be the person that has to think fast in order to keep the flow of a performance going. The last movement activity was dangerous to me, but interesting. Dangerous because I am a bit of a klutz and I kept tripping and knocking into someone.

I absolutely LOVED the space jump improvisation activity. It is a great way to get student’s attention and to make people think on their feet, important skills that improvisation activities are used to develop (EuroEncyclopedia, 2005). Each situation is interpreted in different ways, with different people coming up with different situations to the same freeze frame. Even watching, I was thinking about what I would do if I was presented with that situation. There are millions of possibilities, and each individual would think differently providing a great source of individuality and creativity. I had experienced the reject/accept concept before and had some idea of what to do. I found it really hard not to laugh when rejecting in an accepting manner. Some of the ideas we came up with were really good as they were varied and sometimes silly. Yet that provided a great atmosphere as we weren’t afraid to laugh at ourselves and express ourselves in different ways. For me, I expressed myself in a way that I didn’t think existed, as I was loud and outgoing.  I think the present activity “I have something for you” could have problems, as some people could think of immature ideas, but that is where the supervisor of the activity could step in with ground rules. Again in regard to these activities, I found that they all worked really well and helped me to develop my improvisational and movement skills. This is due to the fact that each activity centered in on a different skill, with the space jump activity requiring the actor to use the skills that they have learnt. This works well for me because it was broken down into steps, and then rebuilt. I tend to absorb a lot more information in this format rather than just lumping a huge amount of information on me at once. From this workshop, I have learnt how important movement is in creating and portraying different ideas, moods and atmospheres which to me is a very important element of portraying a character or idea to an audience.

Week 3- Circus Skills

This is one of the workshops that I have been waiting for. Although I am the first to admit that I am not very good, it is still a lot of fun learning how to be a clown! I had done a workshop with Reg before in a previous unit and was looking forward to extending what I had learnt.

We began by learning juggling, which may look easy but let me tell you now it is not. As I had already done the introductory lesson, I sort of knew what I was doing. I didn’t find the juggling too hard, although when I got home I tried with some apples and I wasn’t quite able to get it , much to my roommates annoyance (splattered apple is quite hard to remove off the wall). I learnt from this never to judge a book by its cover; something that may look easy can be deceptive. I think that this can be applied to theatre as well. When people hear this word, they think of the fun that they can have. They don’t tend to realize that it can be quite difficult and involved, yet still fun.

I wasn’t looking forward to the falling and tumbling aspect of this workshop due to the fact that one of my major fears is doing a somersault (I don’t know why but I just hate it). However I was mildly surprised and again learned not to judge something too early. I found it to be lots of fun and without realizing it I also did a mini workout because boy, are some muscles sore today!! The hitting that came next was lots of fun, mainly because it looks so lifelike yet not so dangerous. My partner and I came up with the silliest routine, yet looking at everyone else’s we were all forgetting that we were adults and having lots of fun. That is one of the aspects that I think is very important to consider, as we are often considered immature if we deliberately seek to have fun in such a way. Why? It makes life so much more enjoyable and less stressful. I think that if adults are immersed in this activity, everyone would have a much better time.

The stilt walking for me was the best part of the day. Ok, so I fell down every time, but just getting up there was exhilarating for me in the fact that I felt so much taller than my 5 foot 6 inches. By allowing everyone to have “free play” it gave us the opportunity to experience many things that many of us would not have before. I for one had never tried making balloon animals.  In regard to theatre, circus skills can be used in many aspects whether it is in a fight scene between pirates or a humorous scene between two clowns. It is an exciting way to convey information and interest the audience.  It gave everyone the chance to learn a new skill. I think that this relates back to theatre in the sense that you are continually learning new skills. As someone said to me “the day I stop learning is the day I die.”

Week 4- Auditions

Today is the day that will decide all our hopes and dreams, our aspirations, our goals… who am I kidding, its audition day! I was a little nervous starting out the day, but I think nearly everyone gets nervous when it comes to displaying your talents to a panel. Coming into this week, I was unsure what I wanted to do, whether I still wanted to act or change over to production. After thinking about it, I decided to give it a go because it is not everyday that I will have the chance to do something like this.

After reading the script, my head was in a mad spin. I didn’t know if I wanted a big part or a small part. In order to find an answer, I had a good hard look at what my life is going to be like in a few months time. I eventually decided to try out for a crab, because I liked the way that the character was written. It tended to suit me for what I wanted and what I was able to commit to if I was to give 100% focus. I didn’t want a major part because I am not that sort of person. I would prefer someone else that has the experience and ability to portray those characters and I don’t feel at this stage I am ready.

Before we were called up to read specific parts, I was really quite nervous. I had the idea that we would read the part by ourselves in front of the “casting directors”. This I am very unconfident about as I don’t believe that I am the best actor in the world. If I had other people around me, maybe I might not look so bad. It also might bring me out of my shell a little bit, as I tend to be quiet and reserved when I get nervous. Before I began to read I had all these voices in my head saying don’t do this, don’t do that. I was quite relieved when I found out that we would read together according to the characters that we wanted to play. I think that this helped me calm down significantly, which is a good thing.

My part came up and I was quite surprised that not many people wanted this part. They were all battling it out for Ms. Severity or other characters. I was just glad that I was given the opportunity to show what I could do, even if it was a little bit weak because I was still a little nervous. But my theory is, if I start with a base to work from, I can build it into something really good that audiences will want to watch. I feel that it is important to allow everyone to have the opportunity to try for any part they want in order to increase their confidence, yet provide them with constructive criticism if they didn’t get the part. From here, the casting directors can look at every performance you do and see what skills and characteristics you have. From this, they can cast you in the role that suits you the best in order to develop a performance that audiences will appeal to.

Casting is extremely important in regard to creating a performance that is believable and exciting to watch. If a person is given a character that they are not good at, or they don’t have the right atmosphere for, then the whole performance can suffer and audiences will be left disillusioned (Stanislavsky). It is therefore highly important to get the casting just right if the eventual performance is one to be remembered. For example, when casting Quokka, would an audience prefer to see an actor who is strong and humanitarian or someone who is nervous and weak? The dynamics of the play can be influenced solely by the person playing each character.  

Vocal auditions made me extremely nervous as I was auditioning against people that were really, really good. I have had no formal vocal training, in fact I taught myself, and my voice doesn’t project as far as I would like. I almost died when I forgot the words considering I knew the song off by heart. I think I was nervous enough that my brain shut down. What a time to do it though. I felt that I went alright in the audition, but I could have done better in certain aspects. I feel that my confidence wasn’t really high, and that may have made a difference. But as many people say “life goes on, it is not the end of the world and there will be other opportunities.”

Paul says: "Do you really want to hurt me?"

View other Your Work entries...

Val's Journal...     Week One - Week Six     Week Seven - Week Eleven     Week Twelve - Week Fourteen

    Jodie's Journal...     Part One     Part Two     Character Development

...or view the...     2005 Ed Pack

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Contact Andrew @ thechaseison@optusnet.com.au

This page last updated: 17th February 2006