Monday 27th of May 2013:

This lesson was a focus on more tips for the TPPP's and all of our blogs - the most important things that stood out for me to remember whilst doing TPPP's is 
- to look at the mark scheme, i know i should already be doing that but i get so carried away and want to start the projects i am given that i just completely forget. Another helpful tip that was given 
- State something, introduce theory, then reflect if that theory worked or not. 
- talk about our own experience and connect it to as many things as possible which will show understanding of theater. 
Tips that were given to our blogs were:
- BE SPECIFIC - being specific will show that i have understood the lesson and will help Mr. Fearnehough see how i am doing in the course. Being more specific will also help me in my TPPP, when i have to talk about my experience and show evidence and be able to connect it. 

Wednesday 29th of May 2013: 

I was really excited but nervous to what the workshop with Helen Leblique was going to be like, we had already been told that it was going to be mostly acting based and discussing Mother Courage and Brecht. 

At the start of the workshop we just did some easy stretching to wake us up and get us ready. One of the warm ups was the 'Funky Chicken' which is an exercise that i am going to remember. We started off with some activities like the 'Stop Game' - for this Helen told us to walk around the space and she would say, stop, go, clap, touch the floor, be in love and be angry, we had to do this whilst walking around and once we got the hang of it she changed all the directions and everything was the opposite to what she said e.g. Touch the floor would be clap. When everything was the opposite it was very difficult because since we've been little we've always known that stop is stop and go means go but changing it round messes with our head, so we need to concentrate in order to get it right.  

The second exercise was the 'Walking Game' - we each had to walk in front of the whole ensemble and they would pick out what we were doing and we would have to exaggerate it. I found this exercise a bit awkard, i felt very attacked by walking in the middle of everyone and everyone starring at me and i also felt that i put on a different walk because everyone was looking at me. After we had all done our walk we were put in to pairs and were told to walk behind each other doing each others walk. After this we then had to do a neutral walk - i found this hard because i don't think there is anyone that would be able to do a neutral walk because there will always be apart of the body doing something not neutral. 

The third activity we did was to do a 5 line piece by using our exaggerated walks. I was paired with Mary which i thought was good because our walks were very different. Mary's was very slow and delicate and mine was quite energetic and quick - we came up with the idea of a granddaughter (me) and a grandmother (Mary). We then had to find a social message in our tiny piece and we wanted to represent families falling out and the effect it does. We then had to Narrate everything that was happening in the piece, i found this a bit tricky and    i got lost to what i was suppose to say every time i would narrate something, although i felt like that  i think Mary and me did pretty good. 

After these activities we sat down and we all discussed how we felt about Mother Courage and our ideas. Helen then told us about what questions she would ask herself that she would say to a director on why they should put one of her shows on - the one that stuck with me was 'What can i bring to the play' i thought that was very important and can be used for our future work and in general perhaps. And i think it could help for when i am older and applying for a job. 

Thursday 30th of May 2013:

We were told to write down 3 things on the board which we had remembered from Wednesday's Workshop

I wrote - 

- What can i bring to the play?  

- Why the play should be done? 

-Narrating  

I picked these because i realized how hard narrating is and how much concentration you need and i choose the two questions because they stuck with me to what Helen said and i thought they were quite important.