UNIT 1:

                                          IDENTITY

          what you have learnt so far:

•  Acting skills

• Warm ups

• Games

• Improvisation

• openness

• confidence

• good eye contact

• motivation

• supporting each other

• Good posture

• Attitude

• punctuality

• time management

• projection

• DON'T apologise  

• facial expression

• determination

• taking your time

• Articulation                   

Week 1:

In my first level 2 drama lesson with Shenagh and Rob we started off with a warm up with imaginary chewing gum and also doing humming exercises and tongue exercises by exaggerating the action to help being clear and having good pronunciation when we are on stage performing in the future.Rob mentioned that the warm ups and games that we were doing during the class would make us(the class)feel comfortable with each other and build a good friendship with the peers in the class.But during my first lesson I felt so uncomfortable as the exercises that we were doing were quite different to what I've done before but I started to loosen up towards the end of the lesson as i started to become comfortable with that people in the class.After the warm up Rob told us what our first project would be, Identity. Shenagh asked us in the class what we think our identity is and what it meant in our own definition and told us to brain storm our ideas.

The next couple of lessons were exactly the same with warm ups, the imaginary chewing gum and tongue exercise and some improvising games. After, Rob made us partner up and and do some devising work with our partner.This was difficult for me as i didn't really interact with most of the other people in the class as Rob made us split up instead of going with your friends in the class to get use to working with others instead of friends, so this was quite awkward for me during this lesson.I was also told that i had to practise staying in character during the devising pieces also working on projection.

What is devised work?

Devised work is a non-scripted performance made by a group of people In class we usually do more devised work than improvisation for example in Rob's class he would put us in groups and makes us brainstorm in teams what identity really means. For example age, gender, ethnicity, family, culture, name etc...

Week 2:

On Monday morning, Shenagh started us off with a warm up by making us chew an imaginary chewing gum and exaggerating the noise, doing humming to get good voice projection when devising a piece or when improvising pieces. Once we were warmed up Shenagh made us watch a video about verbatim theatre and what it means and how we will be using it in our unit 1 Identity project . After watching the video about verbatim theatre Shenagh made us brain storm ideas where verbatim theatre maybe used in performances. During that lesson on verbatim theatre we had to interview one another and ask questions about their background and where they are from.




https://youtu.be/ui3k1wT2yeM - Introduction to Verbatim theatre

Verbatim theatre

what is verbatim theatre?

Verbatim theatre is theatre created from interview or real life events that have happened, and those real life people that were interviewed or have experienced an event and replaced in a performance on stage with actors acting out the interview said by the person in real life exactly how it is.

what is it's purpose?

Verbatim theatre is form of documented theatre in which plays are constructed from the precise words spoken by people interviewed about a particular event or topic 


After researching in class and covering ideas from others in the class, Shenagh told us to make our own verbatim pieces with others in class and have a normal interview/conversation with our assigned partner while recording our conversation. At the end of the lesson, Shenagh sent homework to do another verbatim piece at home. For this set homework I decided to interview my Nan as she isn't from this country and thought knowing more about her life back home in Barbados would have been interesting to share with the class through my verbatim theatre work.

Week 3:

By the start of week 3 we all started working on the performance, Rob mentioned in the class that we could share some of our ideas to him and the rest of the class to make the performance fun as we will be the one's performing. In our first rehearsal class Rob gave me the role to introduce to the audience what our performance is about and what the subject of identity means to us. After rehearsing the first part of the performance we started on sharing our verbatim pieces to the class and Rob and Shenagh
Rob told us to pick 5-6 lines from our interviews with our chosen person so it can fit in with our performance.

When we were in rehearsals and practising our piece i found it really hard as i had to come out of my comfort zone and try and be more confident when saying my first lines in the piece for the performance. During the piece my verbatim interview of my Nan and her 'fabalous' life in Barbados before coming to England.

                                      CREPPE

Context

The context behind our identity pieces is to show our different personalities and what makes everyone different individuals. The piece that we have been focusing on is about every individuals background put into one performance using verbatim theatre.

Research

For our verbatim piece performance we had to do research about what verbatim is and interview people from home to add to our performance. For example Hanna interviewed her brother Mark interviewed his uncle Amelia interviewed her dad and Azo interviewed his sister and I interviewed my nan. Once we interviewed our chosen people we brought then to class and we performed the verbatim and added each interview in one at a time.

Planning

During this time

Problem solving

During rehearsals it was quite hard because there was so many corrections that were given to us by Rob and Shenagh. One of my correction was to be more confident and be over the top when introducing the play to the audience and when performing my verbatim piece in the play. Another problem was when Henok made a routine for the class to perform in the identity piece and I felt very uncomfortable and not confident enough to perform due to the routine because of the style of dance.

Evaluation

When it was time to perform it was a lot of fun and I never thought I would like Drama at first as it was my first choice for me to study for my first year but it was really fun to perform. I felt very confident after I introduced the piece to the audience, I felt confident and used good voice projection good eye contact with the audience and facial expression.