Week 20: (Almost) The End of Commedia

Monday-Mr. Fearnehough talked to us about our annotated bibliographies and gave them back to us. He gave us a lot of tips on how to make them better and get more points for the RI. He showed us the mark scheme for the bibliography.

• It is similar to a review of each  source
• Be ridiculously specific and spell everything out. (Remember no word limit)
• explain why a name of a place/person is better than/more credible than another similar place/person
• Give credentials of the people you have cited
• Convince and prove the credulence of the source
• State the limitations of the source:
• Time period
• Purpose
• Language
• Ask questions about the source
• Do not use open ended sentences

I got an okay score on my bibliography, but it was not amazing. I am going to have to work a lot harder on the real one. Another thing that I noticed is how difficult it can be to find sources for some of these things.

Wednesday- Mr. Fearnehough was not in class today, so we worked on the end of the play. We played hide and seek as our warm-up. It was not as good a warm-up as we thought it would  be because it did not focus us or calm us down. We were a little distractible the rest of the lesson, but we still got a lot done on the end of the play. In fact, we finished devising and talked our way through the entire thing.
Thursday- We performed the piece for Mr. Fearnehough. It was our first full run-through. It was kind of rough but was awesome to finally bring it all together. It also helped me see a few things that we need to work on.

• scene changes
• what we are going to do during them and  
• they are going to be organized.
• getting the right props at the right time
• there are a few more props that we need as well as some more costumes
• we need to get the music worked in

  

  This picture is me and Halley
   working on our Il Capitano mask.

  
• we need rehearse some more so that we are more comfortable and used to our roles.



This picture is of me
getting into character.

Mr. Fearnehough told us that we will work on the piece a little more after the break, but it is mostly finished. Here are a few pictures from what we have done.



More rehearsing and the process of an actor

Monday 11th February-
Monday we discussed and got reminded that the deadline of our commedia piece was meant to be this wednesday but that was not going to happen! We don't have to stick to official dates in our action plan and I can see why we havn't hit that deadline because we have done a lot of work that was not devising like mask making for example. All of those things though are great ways to understand Commedia and talk about how we took part in theatre in the making. We then went on practising again with the restaurant scene, which we have worked a lot on but I think we have so many ideas for it that it needed a lot of work. I think it is going very well though and I am happy how well we are all working together.

Wednesday 13th February-
this was our double lesson and i felt we got a lot of practical and theory work done!
Mary was director for the lesson and we began with a warm-up of stretching which was good as it was a double lesson of a lot of movement. Mr Fearnehough got out lots of props and stuff for us to work with so that we could get ideas from these props. We started working with the scene where the lovers bump into eachother and meet. We felt that this scene was very short and as it is quite a romantic scene, we felt we needed more humour in it as our super-objective of the whole play is to make the audience laugh. We exaggerated the dialogue of mary and abby so it was very cheesy. We also added in the zanni(me and bekki) to come in like an ambulance when the lovers fall over and we REALLY OVER-EXAGGERATE when abby falls over and we try to put in as much humour as possible in. We then started the cinema scene after which is a scene we are all in! We thought of ways we can all enter for each person and this helped to show off our characters and personality more.
After our first our, we then had a theory section where we spoke about the process of an actor. We have done a lot when making our commedia piece. There are reasons to why we have done everything we did and it is good to reflect on this. for our TPPP's. It shows what we have learnt during the process of being an actor.

• Warm-ups= this is to obviously stretch before doing lots of movement, health and safety reasons but also warm-ups bring focus to our class which is key to get more work done. They can also bring our team together depending on the type of warm-up they are.
• Mask-making= the mask making was a good way to get to know our commedia characters even better but also mask-making was a piece of theatre in the making! Which is experience and also good to talk about for our TPP's.
• Taking turns to direct the class-= this is good because it helps keep the focus of the group by having someone in charge. It is also a good way to understand different roles in theatre.

After our discussion, we went back to devising more and we practised with the cinema scene again.A little accident happened where axel got injured. It was all by accident but it shows that even when we are using props and stuff we have to take into consideration health and safety of everything because the theatre is a very dangerous place. We ALL know now that we have to be very careful when throwing things and using things :)

Thursday 14th February-

We began with a warm-up from Mr Fearnehough which was acting by numbers. I really loved this warm-up because i think it helped me and everyone else to really let themselves go and act! We had to act the emtions we got from 1-10 when watching either romantic, horror or comedy film. It was very funny to see everyones reactions and we all really went for it. This warm-up exercise helped because we realised that the more we exaggerate and go for it, the funnier it is which is what we want for our audience. We then carried on rehearsing our cinema scene and we all really went for it. 

Process as an Actor (commedia style)

This week I began to think more about the process as an actor. Because this is the first time I’ve been in the role of actor is has been especially important for me to understand the process behind the performance. Although in dance, and especially in ballet there is usually a story and thus stage-acting and ballet mime used, however in order to fully grasp the concept between my character of Il Capitano I had to go a step deeper. This “deepness” in commedia however does not stem from the same place as it does in Stanislavsky’s naturalistic theory. However we do use an aspect of Stanislavsky; the use of supe robjectives to drive the motivations of characters in individual scenes and the play as a whole. To begin the process we worked in pairs and researched the different conventions of commedia dell’arte. Since we’d recently returned from seeing “One Man Two Guvnors” in London, we were able to compare and contrast between modern commedia and commedia dell’arte. After our initial research we had a session where we officially “met the masks” of commedia. This practical work allowed us to test out the characters and learn about the basic movements of the stock commedia dell’arte characters. By seeing the masks and trying out the physicality of the characters, it allowed me as an actor to connect more with the personality of the character. This process was aided when we made our own commedia dell’arte masks. By experiencing this theatre in the making, I gained more of an awareness of Il Capitano because I physically built his extreme features (*cough, nose…)

            Once we had our preliminary research, as an ensemble we wrote a basic scenario. At the same time we distributed acting roles, we also distributed tech and design roles. I was allocated control of acrobatics and choreography. Because dance and acro have health and safety risks involved, I needed to make sure that all the members of the ensemble understood the basic vocabulary I’d be using when choreographing. To achieve this goal and to teach them some skills, I ran a master class on acrobatics. This class gave me more ideas of what to do, but helped inform the others in the ensemble about the level of energy and physicality required in the performance. As an actor and choreographer I am now in the process of incorporating choreographed elements into the play. To continue working on the scenario the next step in the process was to take freeze frames of the different scenes. I found this step very helpful because the pictures give us a visual representation of the scenes, and act as a story board that we can work from but then reshape and rework.

            After the basic structure of the story was established, it came time to improvise and begin “playing”. I found it much easier to come up with fun ideas when the whole ensemble worked together and helped by offering suggestions. Although everyone in the ensemble contributes, it is also important to have a leader. To solve to problem of a lack of focus we decided to take turns being the director for the rehearsal. So far it has worked very well. For example, when we were rehearing the restaurant scene Lydia was the director. Even though we were all contributing ideas the scene was becoming unfocused. Lydia took control and came up with the idea for cheesy chat-up lines and refocused the group and the scene. For one rehearsal we wore the masks mainly to test them out, however we decided to rehearse without them to focus more on the story, dialogue, and our reactions (which are easier to do without a mask). However, after we have a more concrete story we are planning on rehearsing a few more times with the masks to make sure we have the physicality of our characters down. The most important part of the process of an actor is making sure that the performance concept is constantly informing your work. With that in my mind, one of my super objectives is to put on a funny, entertaining, and memorable show.

COMMEDIA, COMMEDIA, COMMEDIA

COMMEDIA, COMMEDIA, COMMEDIA

Monday 11th of February:

We started off the lesson with Mr.Fearnehough reminding us that the deadline for the commedia piece or the deadline for a rough draft to show to get some ideas and criticism that was meant to be this week. Obviously that has not happened because we haven't finished devising the scenes and we haven't properly sorted out the technical parts. We decided to then postpone  the deadline to give us more time to work on it.

Wednesday 13th of February:

 

We started the lesson with a warm up from Mary and Mr.Fearnehough took lots of props for us to use during the devising, he took them out so we could use them for new ideas. Abby also brought so props from her home and we all had lots of ideas of stuff we could bring in. We then strated working on devising the lovers scene. We added lots of Lazzi to it and brought in the Zanni to have a bit of fun with the scene. after we did this Mr.Fearnehough talked to us about reflecting on what we have done for the blogs and the PPP's. He then talked to us about then 'Process of an Actor' and what is learned and done during the process of acting and working on that:

 

-Warm ups - getting our bodies ready to do something

- Mask making - see how props are made and help us talk about it in future.

- Devising - going through each scene and giving new ideas and keep going.

- being open minded to people's ideas.
- trying out a lot of different things such as props, costumes, masks to get the feel and get characteristics of characters right.
- having a set director for the rehearsals.
We then discussed about all of this and decided for the warm ups we should be in proper focus, not spend to long on them and use music to set a focus and set a comfortable and relaxing atmosphere to set the focus level.
After this we went back to devising and there was a little accident and we all learnt from that, we learnt we should always be looking out for each other and rehearsals are a bit dangerous and we have to always be watching each others back to make sure no one gets hurt.

Thursday 14th of February:
 Mr. Fearnehough did the warm up and did 'Acting by Numbers'. This was a very good activity and was something Lydia, Axel and myself have already done in TaPS and is a good way of getting focussed and going through all the tension levels. In Mr.Fearnehough's warm up we had to each sit on chairs and be natural, we had to the pretend we were watching a film at the cinema. Our first reaction we had to do was reacting to a love scene and for every person on the chair we had a number and we had to increasingly had to react using the tension level numbers. We then used a scary film and a funny film, Mr.Fearnehough then made the point in telling us that if one person increases it or adds a sound or even gets up off their chair and runs away it helps the others after them to do something better and bigger and they shouldn't feel embarrassed. Because everyone was doing it I didn't feel embarrassed and just went for it and it felt more fun and I didn't feel like I was holding back anything.
After this warm up we then continued the devising on the cinema scene and we have come up with some funny stuff and I really hope the audience will find it funny because we all find it funny.



 

Near to Finish Line

February 11, 2013 (Monday) Mr. Fearnehough remind us the deadline for our commedia piece but then we were not yet done in our scene and also the props, costumes and sounds.

February 13, 2013 (Wednesday) Mr. Fearnehough prepared for the props that we can use in our pratice and when he was doing it, we did the warm up, and after that we started our play with props that can be included in our scene, where me and abby met each other in an accident and we added that the two zanni will enter this scene so it has more comedy words to say, cause i thought it was awkward if me and abby talk to each other only, then Mr. Fearnehough gave as 2 minutes water break then when we come back, Mr. Fearnehough talked about The Process as an Actor.

- Freeze Frames - we do our freeze frames to remember what is the follow of our play or we can call it as a pattern, we can changed it because it is just only a draft and it is just a way so we know what we are doing.
- Masks in Rehearsal - There is a question When? or Why we are wearing mask?, the answer of it is to express and give what that mask do in physical appearance like how they walk and talk
- Dividing Lazzi - can take the responsibility, where there responsibility is to make every scene ruin it in a proper way by giving jokes.
- Taking in turns to direct - warm ups is the one that we need to do before we start our rehearsal because it help us to stratch our body give some energetic moves, and when we are doing this we are not that serious so we need to change it, we need to concentrate on what we are doing, FOCUS is we need.
- Distributing tech/ design roles - It is like putting some acrobatics that halley rose will do it but we should help each other to make share ideas.
- Mask making with art - why? Because it gives a creativity when the mask make.
- Improvisation - Put some thing different in rehearsal like how the zanni enter the scene in a funny moves.
- Performance Concept - It is all about the light, sounds, costumes, props organize.
- Objectives - the stanislavski system  that has 1-6 which we need to go on thru to reach a good performance about commedia play.
- In analyzing this kind of process, for me it is easy to achieve if we give our best, focus on what we are doing and share good ideas that can help our play better.

February 14, 2013 (Thursday) Mr. Fearnehough lead us by starting in warm ups, it is about how we express ourself in terms of numbers, in this kind of warm up we show the different level of acting, so Mr. Fearnehough started up, where we feel that we are in the cinema, where the movie is all about LOVE then i will give the expression where im in a level 1, which is not that kind of inlove people but a simple movement that will know that im starting inlove with the scene that i am watching, we all express it in a nice and presentable way, and the next is about comedy, at first we have different level but this time we have the same level and gives it action, and we know that we can handle it by ourselves and it was a good warm up for us because we think on what we are doing when it comes to different levels. and after this we started to work out in our cinema scene and we apply the emotions.

       

Week 19: Almost done with our Commedia Piece

Monday: Mr. Fearnehough reminded us that our deadline for the commedia piece was coming up. This worried most of us, because we had not finished devising each of the scenes or added in the technical parts, sound, costumes, or sets and props. We postponed the deadline to the half term break. This realization of a pending deadline gave us new motivation to get moving on our piece.

 

yes Halley, this is London

Wednesday: Mr. Fearnehough got a lot of props out of the closet for us to experiment with, I had also brought some props from home and made some cue cards to use for the audience. The use of all of these props makes our piece feel more like a professional thing. Then we started working on the scene where me and Mary meet each other, officially. We added a lot of lazzi to it and worked out a structure for it. Then we took a short water break. When we came back Mr. Fearnehough talked to us about reflecting on what we have done for our PPP. He gave us a lot of tips on how to talk about. But most of it can be summed up in one question- "What have I learned as an about the acting process?". Since this is my first serious attempt at acting I think that I have learned a lot.

• Be flexible and open to change. Be completely willing to go with  a new idea. We had attempted to do a scene one way one time and I thought that it was fine, then Mr. Fearnehough said that we should try it another way. I was not willing to change because we had already done it the other way. When we did do it the new way it was better. 
• Share ideas with others- no idea is a bad idea.The entire process of commedia is about making things up on the spot. everyone needs to share their ideas or the piece will never improve. It is good to collaborate and discuss ideas with the entire group-they can help you improve your idea or might have a better idea. For instance- Halley, Lydia, and Bekki had the idea for a recurring joke.
• Delegating is extremely useful, if every one understands the performance concept, than it is just a waste of time for everyone to work one each technical role together. Even though it is fine to ask advice/help from the others.
• You are only limited by what you believe you cannot do. I believed that I could not sing badly or goof off in front of people and I was not able to, but once I tried with an open mind I was able to do it.
• Some one needs to take charge of the rehearsal and keep everyone on track. Sometimes when we are devising we start talking about random stuff and stop working, if no one took charge and pull our attention back we would never get anything done.
• A performance is alive and changing. Our piece is a devised, improvisational piece, but in all performances there are going to be slight changes, whether because of a mishap or not, that will make each  performance a little different, don't try to make everything exactly the same because it won't work and you will make things weird.
• It is important to always know your objective, why you are on stage. Keep the finish line in sight and concentrate on how to get there. It is not necessary to take the quickest route there, but it is important to pay attention to purpose of your character at all times.
• Warm-ups are for focusing on the rehearsal-not talking and socializing. Today Mary led the warm-up which was stretching. Almost everyone was talking to one another, and barely paying attention to the warm-up. The warm-up sets the mood for the rehearsal so if we are flighty and distractible during it we will for the rest of the rehearsal. The warm-up should be a time of quiet and focus.

After we discussed what we learned from this project we went back to rehearsing. We finished me and Mary's scene and moved on to the cinema scene. While we working on it Axel got hit in the eye by a piece of sticky tack. This showed us that while we should not be afraid to play with one another we do need to be careful to not do something dangerous that will hurt others.

Thursday: Mr. Fearnehough led the warm-up today. He showed us how to do "Acting by Numbers". This warm-up helped us explore the different emotional tension levels of acting. In this activity, each person sat on a chair in a row. Mr. Fearnehough told us a type of movie, romance, horror, comedy,.., and to imagine we were watching it. Then he had one person start reacting to the movie, at a low level, then he moved down the line and had each person progressively increase the emotion. The more difficult part of this warm-up was continuing the emotion at a lower level while the people around you are at a higher level. This is kind of like mob mentality. If one person increases the emotion in a group every else feels it and attempts to match or surpass their emotion. Another thing that Mr. Fearnehough said that I really liked was that it was hard to think about how to react more, it was easier to just go with your gut feeling, follow your instincts. I find this a little difficult to be open and willing to follow my instincts like that. Then we worked on the cinema scene.

Friday: Halley, Bekki, Lydia, Cam, and Maddi helped me paint the lockers.

We are doing really well working together and learning from each other!

Commedia, Commedia, Commedia
Monday 4th of February -
I led the warm up for that session, because we had already done quite a few stretching exercises I decided to do a relaxing warm-up. Mr.Fearnehough was ill so as an ensemble we got on with devising our piece. Without even thinking about it we introduced a joke used by the Zanni (lydia and myself) 'Your Mum!'. We all thought that this would be a funny on going joke because it is used so commonly now a days we decided it would be funny to use it in our piece. We then came up with another joke in which when ever anyone mentions 'Mickey' the Zanni come on and sing the 'Hey Mickey' song in  a cheerleader sort of way. We all decided we should use this throughout the piece and will be a funny addition to it. We also came up with the idea that when Pantolone is talking about Mickey having money he starts singing a song about it : 'Mickey's got the money, Mickey's got the money' and comes out completely of his character and starts dancing, we thought this would be funny because it would show how humorous the character 'Pantolone' can be and it also shows one of his biggest obsessions MONEY.

Wednesday 6th of February-

Mr.Fearnehough introduced us to Stanislavki's theory of super-objectives. These are the overall objectives of scenes and characters and are the most important things that need to be focused on. We vaguely said what the super-objective of our play is and it iis to make people laugh. Mine and Lydia's super-objective is to mess with the audience and make them laugh. We thought about our super-objectives whislt we were devising and it helped us all get into focus and make us do something that our character would do.  Lydia led the warm up and went into the role as director for the rest of the lesson, it helped us get more focussed with someone in control and get it done and stopped us talking a lot about what we could do. Out of those 2 hours we managed to get our restaurant scene figured out and now I am starting to think that the Zanni are going to be in every single scene messing up scenes, interacting with the audience and even just acting in a scene.

Thursday 7th of February-
Thursday we started our lesson straight away with devising the piece, we went over our previous scenes so that we didn't forget what we have already done. We worked a bit on the Guitar scene and the Zanni came up with a song that everyone knows and it's about Jack and Rose sitting and kissing in the tree, we decided it would be funny if the Zanni kept messing up the song and pretended to mimic the lovers. We also decided that the Zanni should be waiters in the restaurant scene and decided it should be set in Mcdonalds and instead of posh waiters we decided to be very chavy with a Liverpudlian accent. We have also came up with a funny idea with the Tango dance which we think will be very funny.
I am very excited now to finish it and actually perform it in front of an actual audience and see their reactions but also show our ideas!! :)

Super Objectives, Guitar and your Mum!

On Monday Mr. Fearnehough was ill so we progressed as an ensemble and decided to go over the guitar scene once more. This led to the introduction of a running joke, in which the Zanni shout "Your Mum!" every time he speaks of "a special someone". We then came to the scene in which I (as Pantalone) force Rose to go on a date with horrible but rich Mickey. Here we came up with a running joke, in which every time the name Mickey is mentioned the Zanni come on and sing “Hey Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey!”. We also added to my Pantalone character by making me dance while singing “Mickey’s got the money, Mickey’s got the money…”. This is good because it really highlights Pantalone’s obsession with money. The bad side is I have to learn to dance… Bekki led a warm-up which consisted of relaxation. This was good because Theatre is the last lesson of the day and we’re usually too excited.

On Wednesday, Mr. Fearnehough introduced to Stanislavski, particularly to super-objectives. Super-objectives are the overall objectives of anything from scene to character to play and are the most important things for an actor to be focusing on. For example, our play’s super-objective is to make people laugh. My character’s super-objective is to be a tight grouchy git whose only passion in life is money. In this lesson in particular we paid special attention to our super-objectives, which I think was reflected by a slight improvement of everyone’s acting. After this lesson on Stanislavski, we went back to devising our play. Lydia started us off on a stretching workout that nearly finished me, after which we went straight on to the restaurant scene. We developed this further by adding the Zanni as MacDonald’s waiters and Pantalone’s phone call. Lydia helped out a lot as directors in perfecting our reactions, something we are all still struggling with.

On Thursday we went straight into devising, quickly going over the scenes we had already done. This culminated in the inclusion of the Zanni singing “Jack and Rose sittin’ in a tree”. Also, we gave the Macdonald waiters Liverpudlian accents to make them sound funnier, as well as a Tango dance scene in which Rose is thrown about by a narcissistic Mickey. Overall I’m impressed by how much we add to each scene each time we revisit it. Can’t wait for the actual production!

Super -Objectives, McDonalds, Tango

Monday was another ensemble day, and I felt we progressed more with the story. First we went back over the guitar scene and this time we introduced a running joke; whenever Jack talks about a special someone, the zanni yell “YOUR MUM!” Then we moved on to the scene after Rose encounters Jack and the guitar, where Pantalone tells her she must go on a date with Mickey (Il Capitano) this also leads into a running joke whenever someone says the name “Mickey” the zanni start singing the song “Oh Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey!” Also we added in a comical little jig/dance/chant for Pantalone about how rich Mickey is. This really helps get across Axel’s mask who is obsessed with money, so he sings “Mickey’s got the money” and then really just starts grooving. This Monday rehearsal went really well and it was especially helpful because Bekki took on the role of director. At the start of the lesson she led a warm-up exercise that really got us focused and relaxed. (Some times if I have too much energy, it’s actually detrimental because I can’t focus on the acting) I am feeling the dynamic within the ensemble changing for the better because we are all more open with coming up with ideas.

            On Wednesday Mr. F returned, and gave us a brief overview of Stanislavsky technique. Although his naturalistic style of acting is almost the complete opposite of our stereotypical and shallow commedia characters, there were parts of his theory that could be applied to our work. The most important aspect we learned was called a “super-objective”. There can be a super-objective of the play, a scene, and of a character within a scene. For my character my super-objective is to prove to the audience my arrogance, show my cowardice, and show my coolness in the school hallway. However in a scene my scene basis, I will keep my super-objective in mind even if I have a more specific objective for a certain scene (such wooing Rose in the restaurant). Then we went back into the studio and continued working. This time Lydia led a warm-up and we did some really nice stretches that got us ready to go! Lydia also took on the role of director was really good a getting us focused. Specifically she helped people with dialogue responses, reactions being something we are still struggling with. Then we moved on to the restaurant scene, which primarily involves Mickey “Il Capitano” and Rose. However we have now added in a role for Rose’s dad “Pantalone” when he calls on the phone, and also the role of McDonald’s servers for Lydia and Bekki.

            Thursday Axel took on the role of director, but first we started by going over our rehearsal accomplishments. What we did really well this week was get the zanni more involved with more jokes. For example in the guitar scene they have a whole set of jokes that revolve around singing “Rose and Jack sittin’ in a tree…” Then in McDonalds they come back as servers and whose some type of humorous accent, perhaps Bristolian? Another thing that I worked on was the way my mask moved specifically in the restaurant scene. The only props we had were a table and two chairs so I made sure to make use of those. First I spun on the table and then throughout the date continue to lean and slide across pretty much all of the surfaces near me. Another really great thing we did was incorporate more song inserts into the scenes. For example we added “Bella Notte” during the restaurant scene and then a tango song for after the date. Also dealing with the tango, we’ve added another element of audience interaction. Because Mickey is so obsessed with his own dancing, he doesn’t even notice that the zanni replace Rose with an audience member. Then I will turn to the person and say “I told them to choose you” ahahahaha! We also had some things to improve on such as the reactions between myself and Mary on the date. But I think we can improve this by inserting a multitude of “cheesy chat-up lines” into the awkward pauses. Also I felt like the restaurant dialogue kind of dragged on and maybe the zanni should play more of a part in that scene. Over all things are looking up.

Week 18: More Commedia

Monday: Mr. Fearnehough was not at school today because he was sick, but he left us instructions to work on our commedia piece again, as well as pick a student director for the day. This seems to be good practice for future group projects, pick one person to lead the group and try to keep everyone on track. I also realized just how much we had bonded as an ensemble, we are getting to the point where we are able to play with each other with out worrying about offending each other, almost everybody is ready to do strange things for the good of the cause and throw out random crazy half-thought through ideas without worrying about looking stupid. I think this is an amazing accomplishment!
Wednesday: Mr. Fearnehough was back at school today but his voices was very sore so he gave us a short lecture about superobjectives, then left us to  work on the play on our own again. Superobjectives refer to the point of the performance, character, scene, or the character at a specific point in a scene. According to Mr. Fearnehough superobjectives are open to change but it is good to have a main goal to aim for. I am finding slightly difficult to find a superobjective for my character. I think that it would be he always wants to be in love or with his beloved.
Thursday: We rehearsed again. Today we repeated some of the scenes we had worked on  before and worked on improving them and perfecting them. Repetition is good for us, so that we will improve but it tends to get boring. I need to remember to stay in character and work with the ensemble.

More improvising and super-objectives!

Monday 4th February-
Today Mr Fearnehough was off sick but we knew what we had to do so it didn't matter. We got straight on with working but first began with a warm-up exercise from Bekki, who was also the director of the lesson. The exerise was a relaxation exercise that helped us to calm down as it was the last lesson of the day and brought focus to our hour.
We decided to work on the restaurant scene which involes Halley, Bekki, Mary and I.
We remembered from previous lessons that it was important to always involve the audience and keep it funny ALWAYS!
I felt that we did a good job really.
We didn't finish the scene so we were going to continue it.

Wednesday 5th February-
Today was our double lesson and at the beginning Mr Fearnehough first started off the lesson by talking to us about objectives and super objectives. Our own character needs to have an objective for each scene we are involved in and a super objective for the whole play. This means that our character can keep in their head what their aim is in the play. As I play part of the zanni, we are very playful and sneaky characters. Therefore my super-objective is to keep the audience interation and keep the jokes and tricks flowing!
After being taught about super-objectives, we went into the studio to work more on our piece. First though, it was my turn to be in charge of the warm-up and then be director for the lesson.
My warm-up was a full body stretch as it was Wednesday morning and our commedia restaurant scene has lots of movement.
In reflection of being director for the lesson, I think I wasn't too bad!
It was a double lesson so sometimes the group does go off topic but I tried hard and most of the time succeeded in getting everyone back on track. We all had lots of ideas to help people and make our piece better and better. I felt like we all worked really well together whilst having fun and enjoying it which is a good thing!

Thursday 6th February-
Today we spoke about the things we achieved yesterday when rehearsing.

1. remembering to always use audience interaction -example of this is taking an audience member to tango dance.
2. using different types of jokes, slapstick, sarcasm... -example of this is Halley's nugget joke which is a little rude. Also a slapstick joke where mary falls off the chair because Halley drags it too far and doesn't notice.
3. Using lots of physicality in the scene- example: Mickey(Halley) at the restaurant table, SO MUCH MOVEMENT ON THE TABLE. Also, using dance twice! When chanting "oh mickey you're so fine and the tango dance at the restaurant.

We also discussed the places where our rehearsal was not as successful but we can improve:

1. need more script and involvement for Rose, Mary's character. Reactions at Mickey.
2. Choreography for "oh mickey youre so fine

We said that time pressure is a good thing for us as it makes time precious and rehearsing time needed. Which makes us work hard and not mess around wasting time!

After we went to rehearse again and worked on adding more script for mary which worked out!

I find that our piece is coming along really well :) 

Commedy Play and Stanislavsky System

February 4, 2013 (Monday) We continue to improvise our commedy play, we do a lot of stuff in comedy and share the ideas.

February 6, 2013 (Wednesday) Mr. Fearnehough started to talk about the Stanislavsky System.
When studying the stanislavski system it takes 3 years, and a theatre is should be a school of life.
Identical system, making believable and real just like in real life.
- The Super Objectives of a Play is about what is the main aim of the play so for us our super objective in our play is to make the audience laugh, adn include them in our play, so they are not get bored on our play and the Super Objectives of a Character is about the main objective of each characters in the play just like the zanni there objectives is to make ruin in every scene.
We should answer the question:
What is the Super Objective of my Character?
What is the Super Objective that i want to achieve?
What is Super objective?
Why actually here in the story?
What are you doing on the stage?
What is the Objective to speak?
What is the objective of this scene?
Then after we talked about it we continue to do improvise our play.

February 7, 2013 (Thursday) We give the 5 feedback about what we do on wednesday.
- Make it real just like happening in the real life
- Put some music in the scene
- The audience participation in our play
- Give some jokes or commedy lines
- Audience Interaction
We need to put the time pressure each person
I should have also some words to say in the play it is for Isabella.
Scene Objectives:
1 --> 2 --> 3 --> 4 --> 5 --> 6
Through the action
each objectives builds towards the super object
We need to reach the super objective of our play which is about to make the audience laugh because it is about commedia dell arte.

Devising and improvising our play!

Monday 28^th of January – We handed in our annotated bibliographies. I found this task to be quite hard as I have never done an annotated bibliography before. Its length was the part that annoyed me the most, as there seemed to be a never ending list of sources that each needed explaining. I also had a bit of difficulty finding each source.

We spent the rest of the lesson working on the beginning of our play. Mr Fearnehough helped us realise we needed a LOT more AUDIENCE INTERACTION.

Also, we really need to keep in our Commedia masks, which I think is something we’re struggling with a bit.

These two things are vital to the play’s success as a Commedia Dell’arte play.

Wednesday 30^th of January – We spent two hours perfecting our first scene. Because I am not in this one meant I could sit in the audience area and give feedback. It was hard to improvise and we only got to about a minute of the play, but all the advice and feedback off Mr Fearnehough will help with the rest of the play.

Personally, it was a great experience seeing the play as an audience member because it showed me what we had to work on, which was turning our faces toward the audience.

I have problems with this because my instinct is to look toward the person I am talking to.  Other than that, I think it went great and we added lots of really funny stuff in, like the “BOO!” from the Zanni in the fight.

Thursday 31^st of January – Mr. Fearnehough wasn’t there so we decided to work on the guitar scene. This was good because we gave the Zanni a bigger part in this, as they are the most important roles in Commedia.

Halley and I weren’t in this scene, so we sat as audience members and gave feedback. Both Abby and Mary did really well, with the horrendously bad guitar playing and singing (on purpose of course!) and some great physical improvisation.

Lydia and Bekki did really well, especially with the audience interaction in the beginning and the mix up with the song.

Commedia Play

Monday (January 28, 2013) We submit our annotated bibliography, for me it is difficult because i supposed to find at least 7 out of 10 books about commedia that we doing in our play and give some detailed book about it. then we do our comedy play by helping of Mr. Fearnehough, it is not that easy to act like when you are using a mask and give its own moves and emotion, but we try our best to do it.

Wednesday (January 30, 2013) We continue to work out with our play by giving it more livelier and funny play and also we need to include the audience in every scene that we make so it looks more good and not boring for the audience. We do the 2 scenes already by Mr. Fearneough's help and he teach as how we improvise every move when in stage.

Thursday (January 3&, 2013) Mr. Fearnehough is not around so we continue to give more impact in the "Guitar Scene", we share what was the good thing that we need to do also we include the audience in this scene also, and we have many idea that we added in the scene like the movement, what we gonna do or what we gonna say, and in this scene i got like to feel lke im inlove then roll in the floor which i think it is better to do and twirling over and over give give some facial expression that seems to be that i am in love.

Up and doing it :)

Monday 28th Jan-
We handed in our Annotated Bibliography homework.
I found this task quite difficult as there were so many sources that we had to find and I struggled to find them.
But other than that, it was okay!
We then we straight into the studio to work and try perfecting a part of our commedia piece. We worked on the beginning which involves the Zanni (bekki and i) and il capitano. We spent the rest of the hour working on our entrances. We remembered that we have to KEEP IN OUR COMMEDIA CHARACTERS and INTERACT WITH THE AUDIENCE!
Those are key points we have to remember throughout producing our commedia piece.

Wednesday 30th Jan-
Our double lesson was spent on perfecting our first scene.
We used the masks throughout the lesson because a main point we all needed to work on was staying in our commedia characters. We had to exaggerate our characters movements and keep our faces towards the audience as much as possible. In the two hours, we only worked on a minute of the play but all the advice and help we got for that section goes to the rest of the play.
The only thing we need to do is remember it.
One thing I think we found difficult was improvising. I struggled to improvise on what to say, e.g when offending bekki and having a "bitchy fight" with her. I think I will definetely write down some ideas of funny insults to say as I found it difficult to come up with something funny or smart to say on the spot.
Also, I was thinking about what to say next which meant I was not listening to who was talking to me. This meant that we were not working off eachother to create story and script.

Thursday 31st Jan-
Mr F wasn't there this lesson so we spent an hour working on Abby & Mary's guitar scene.
This scene I find needed work because it is such a simple scene, it needed lots of movement, music and volume to make it alive. I think abby did well at having to really go for it when singing and playing guitar badly and also Mary was really loud and used A LOT of movement when it was her time to talk. I think a main thing we remembered to do in this lesson after the lesson on Wednesday was that fact we have to always interact with the audience. This meant that there is audience interaction in this scene also, which makes it more lively for the audience.