Starting off the week with individual work was beneficial for me as it

gave me the time to catch up on my Tumblr and fix things. I also had a
look at monologues using the resources from the library. I am currently
reading 'Antigone' which I am really enjoying and I like looking at
something different. I borrowed 'Antony and Cleopatra' by William
Shakespeare and the DVD. I hope then to have a couple of classical
monologues to use at drama school.

We discussed and cast ourselves characters inside the piece for our
shadow puppetry; we looked at whose bodies worked best. We came to
the decision of Amber - Dog, Harriet - Little Girl, Erol - Teenage Boy,
Daniella - Teenage Girl, Charley - Husband, Julia - Wife, Lewis - Granddad, Alex - Grandma. From
this casting it lead into our interpretation that we are all the same character but showing these
growing and ageing and the dog going on the journey too and after the death of the elderly couple
the dog is isolated at the end which leads into the physical sequence which is abstract. The isolation
of the dog represents back to the stimulus image of the feather on the beach. We played around with
our characters and presenting themselves behind the sheet. We have now established their profile
and character traits after looking at that with Claire Portelli. After this a big debate occurred as to
how we approach linking the shadow puppetry and abstract physical theatre sequence together. Half
of the company was inspired by a piece of theatre Julia had seen 'Medea' of showing the characters
feelings in a dance style routine so this splitting I between each characters stories. The other half of
the company liked the idea of doing half the piece as shadow puppetry then the second half of
physical theatre routine. I feel this was important for us as a company to have this discussion
compared to others which I do not think were as necessary to have however I felt it was going on
for too long and it kept going back and forth and not moving forward anywhere. We came to the
conclusion of trying the 'Medea' idea then if not working continue with the other idea.

When it comes to the big company warm ups with all the acting company's, I am now not finding
EXPECT THE
UNEXPECTED

(29/09/2014) (WAYS OF SEEING)
Credited: Google Images
them beneficial at all. Firstly, it is supposed to be everyone taking part however the second year
company have decided to do their own warm ups away
from everyone else, we all have things we need to work
on and I do not think it is fair we are always leading
them. Secondly I don't feel I am gaining anything from it
individually as an actor, we are all at different levels of
training so therefore know different exercises to others,
for example 'flocking' and 'buying in' Some of these
exercises would not work with those in other companies
and the amount of actors in the space it is very difficult to
play many games. The rest of that day we played around
with the relationship between the little girl and her dog,
looking at patting and ticking the dog. As an outside eye
it looked very effective and a very cute image. It was a
challenge to link each move together and make it smooth
however it was the first time starting to work for the
piece.

On the Wednesday after the big Miskin Company warm
up we done our own warm up as the HND Company together as then continued with the work. I felt
this was very beneficial for us as a company as I found we were focused and committed to the work
due to warming up/ bonding together in the morning. Compared to the Monday and Tuesday there
was a lack of focus and energy from the entire company which has been a big struggle to work
with. From this warm up we started creating the abstract isolation physical sequence which is
performed in front of the sheet. It became very tedious as everyone was talking over each other and
not a lot of doing was involved. Looking back at it, this is not healthy for our company especially
only having one week left until the show. As an individual actor I
become very frustrated and I like to just get on with the work and
being hands on. Having Carleigh Portelli oversee our work for
effectively the first time was very helpful, we all learnt to surprise
the audience by doing something unexpected and change on the beat
before you are expected too. From this note for the fourth beat we
changed certain moves, for example instead on stepping forward we
dropped to the floor. It was noted we had lost the play inside our
work; it seemed it had been rehearsed too much and we were tired of
performing it so to resolve this at random points inside the music we
moved around randomly. The result of this was fun and we realised
we had got too bogged down as a company to make everything

GAMES & EXERCISES


- Dance Off

- Tangled

- Oi, Take It, No!

- Number to Number

- Cat and Mouse

Credited: Google Images
precise and correct without passion and commitment. Moving onto the shadow puppetry with
Carleigh, we needed to be more graceful behind the screen because each detail sticks out to an
audience, the transitions into each image were sloppy and not precise. We needed to know the exact
moves we were creating and the most sufficient journey to take to create that image and at this point
in time that was not fulfilled. I went home that evening and watched Attraction who were our
main inspiration for our piece and understood the notes that Carleigh gave that day, their entrances
and exits to each image were so precise and in fact seemed part of the performance. I was drawn in
the entire time as I was seeing something beautiful before the final piece was even created. The next
session with Claire Portelli we asked to work on lifts as we knew we wanted to include this in our
piece however did not know many and how to go about it. I had so much fun, it was nice to work on
something different and unknown as we all learnt something knew and gained from it. My favourite
was the lying across another actors shoulder to give the impression someone was flying, it looked
so graceful and pretty. It will certainly be a lift we will use in the future. At the end of this week, it
dawned on me that we had not really created a lot of movements to include inside the piece. It all
seemed a bit mismatched and all over the place. Daniella and I then started to create a dance type
sequence in which we hoped to include inside the piece. We both have a background in dance and
both learnt a choreography called Set Study we took moves from this and changed them to suit the
piece and mold them into the idea of isolation. We developed it with Claire by making it more down
and open, this was it was more dance like and gave it dynamic. We hope to teach this sequence to
the rest of the company next week to use for our marketing and in the piece. I hope this will help
move things along and give us more materiel and structure to go by.