Monday 28 May 2012

Saturday 26th May - Of More New Stuff

What a fantastic session!

The earlier group worked hard on bringing to life some of their new writing. We now have an immense selection of new work from our students and I will be incorporating it all into the new script that will be performed on July 7th.

The later group worked on putting the script into a series of tableaux or freeze frames. There were three stages to this.

1) Create 5 freeze frames, each with a title, that tell the story of 'The Legacy of Fingerless Gloves.'

2) Add a line of dialogue and a response to every freeze frame and come up with 3 new freezes that further the story.

3) Add a narrator who tells the story of each freeze by addressing the audience.

It was great to see this group working closely together on a really detailed piece of work. Each stage grew the story and we were delighted with the results.

This group are still bonding and getting to know each other so this was a perfect demonstration of their potential as a group and as individuals.

I'm looking forward to hitting the writing desk over half term and creating the final version of 'The Legacy of Fingerless Gloves'.

Half Term

Hi All,

There will be NO Windmill Young Actors for the next two weeks. We will NOT be meeting on 2nd and 9th June.

We will be seeing each other again on June 16th!

Also - here are the details of where the summer school will be held. Places are filling up first so be sure to book early to avoid disappointment.

http://bringactinghome.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/blatchington-mill-summer-school.html

http://www.blatchingtonmill.org.uk/info/contact.asp

Tuesday 22 May 2012

The Grey Walls by India Knipe, aged 9

The grey walls that enclose,
My life
Know only fear,
Hurt and strife.
Even idle dreams that
Run around our heads
Quickly vanish as we arise
From our stone cold beds.
They wash us down, they dress
Us well then send us off 
To die.
To the three stony doors
Where once a child did cry.

Blatchington Mill Summer School


Monday 21 May 2012

Monologue by Morwenna Silver, aged 12

I touched the place where I could once feel a long smooth cascade of hair, but in its place I found dry, grey, old crackly wire. I touched the place where I could once feel a smooth sweet smelling cheek, but in its place I found only wrinkled, thin, ghostly skin stretched across mean bones. I touched the place where I could once feel a kind, fresh, young heart beating, but in its place was...well...nothing.


Back in the days when I could remember my age and didn't have enough fingers on my hand to count all my friends. I could have had the pick of any man in the whole village but I was greedy, I wanted more, I had built myself up in my head. I had decided that I was worthy of a rich man - maybe even a lord. I suppose I was almost vain. As my friends and admirers grew tired of my foolish fantasies of becoming a lord's wife, they began to mock me...


"Hey there, your highness," they would call at me, "Who would have thought it! An orphan whose parents were nothing but filth." And so on. But here's the thing - all the kind villagers that had taken care of me had told me horrible tales of the cruelty my ma and pa had inflicted upon me. But I had refused to believe it. I told myself that my ma was the most beautiful, kind person the village had ever seen and that I was to inherit a great sum of money that she had and that was why I should marry a lord. I was in denial about who I really was.


This childish game cost me everything - my friends, my reputation and any hope of marrying. All gone. Just like that. Now people would call me 'snob' and they would say that I would live alone for the rest of my days. So I did and I earned my living by curing sick children with my remedies. And that was when it all began. People started to whisper and things get round quick in our village. Country folk don't like the idea of a woman living alone on the edge of the village. It spread quick - quicker than chicken pox - and pretty soon the word was out. And that word - I can hardly bring myself to say - is witch.

Saturday 19th Of Windmill Young Actors

I wanted to post briefly here as I won't be doing a full report on this session. The reason is that I am about to post work done by the students that typifies the talent and inspirational work that they bring to every Saturday, week in week out.

We are building new work, new characters, new scripts and new talent. The next few posts are simply a taster!

Thursday 17 May 2012

Saturday 12th May Of Character Creation

We continued with our final week looking at the basics to approaching text.

Following on from this we have begun to look a bit more about how we create brand new characters. What do we give them in order to make them interesting?

Over the next couple of weeks we will be coming up with all of the new writing, characters and scenes that are going to add to our script for the final showcase on 7th July.

So where do we start?

1) The basics

There are a number of places to start when creating a new character but often the simple can inspire us onwards. What age are they? Where are they from? How do they speak? Are they human? Where do they live?

One exercise to really help with this is called, 'hotseating'. A number of the Windmill Young Actors spent time brainstorming today. We asked them what would their favourite character be to perform - who is their dream role, if you like. 'Hotseating' is where the actor sits on a chair and the audience ask them questions that range from the simple of 'what is your favourite colour' or 'where do you live' to the obscure of 'what are you most afraid of.' They have to answer 'in character'. The idea is not that the actor has all of the answers but that they are made to think of an answer. This can help them more fully develop their simple characters into more complex and interesting ones.

2) The advanced

Once the basics are there, it's time to start giving them relationships. Who are the people in their world and how do they feel about them. How do they speak to these people? What do they think about the world around them - do they wish it was different and why? How do they place that character into a scene or place and make them believable?

3) The 'Want'

Every story needs conflict in order to make it watchable. Every character needs to 'want' something. As I've spoken about previously, without a 'want' or 'need' there is little to move the character forwards or backwards and they will tend to wander around stuck in limbo, boring the audience. They need this 'want' because we all have this 'want' and in order for us to get interested we see to recognise those 'wants' in who we're watching. Once we know what the character wants then we can begin to see what is getting in the way of that want. Once we know that then we begin to see the conflict and so the stories starts to live. Right?

By the end of the session a number of students were beginning to get much clearer on the character that they want to create. The hope is that I will then incorporate all of these characters into our final showcase in the form of small scenes, monologues and duologues.

Friday 11 May 2012

Saturday 5th May Of Trusting Silence

This week continued our exploration into simple text work.

We repeated the same exercise from last week with greater expectation and then developed into some work on silence.

Silence on stage can be magnetic. However, we only earn these moments if we build to the silence. There tend to a lot of semi-pro or amateur productions, especially in Brighton, that drag - they contain very little pace. The main reason for this is that actors are not directed away from the pauses. It is a very natural, if bad habit, to think through the thoughts of your character before speaking. However, this does not reflect real life. In life we think at the same time as speaking. Our brain can work through things extremely quickly and we can change topic or expand on a subject without having to take a long break to think about it. If we want to create naturalistic performance then as actors we need to think through the line rather than before it. This will increase the pace and demand that the audience pay attention. If they don't then they might miss something. Once this pace is established we can then begin to concentrate on finding the moments of silence. Why do we choose those moments and what does the silence create? The last thing we want to create is a sense that the actor is thinking about their next line!

So how do we earn that silence when dealing with text.

Often a good rule is to build to that moment of silence in terms of pace, rhythm and potentially volume. For example, Shakespeare makes things extremely clear when he writes verse. If the iambic (10 beats per verse line) is broken then that quite often suggests a pause for thought or silence or if he begins dialogue half way through the verse line (on beat 4 or 6) this often suggests that there is room to build silence into the performance. But when two actors are talking it is important to know exactly what is going on in that silence and why we have paused with the text. Are we trying to build tension or are we wanting the audience to focus on an action rather than the text?

Tanushka lead a fantastic exercise where two actors started off stage. On stage were two chairs and a table. On the table was a white envelope. Each actor took it in turns to make a strong move (or action). Each action had a clear beginning and end. For example, one actor might choose the action that involved picking up the envelope and then holding it up above their head. The other actor would respond to this with another action. The point of this exercise was to build drama in silence. It demanded a fantastic focus from both performers and allowed the audience to build their own story in the silence.

Once that focus was established and both audience and performer were gripped, we began to introduce small pieces of text but this time really embracing the silence between the words.

It is often the case with young actors that they are afraid to leave too many pauses. Even with professional actors, standing in silence on the stage can be terrifying. If we're not careful we can use the text to hide behind and not allow ourselves to be vulnerable. But it is in showing vulnerability that we have more of a profound affect on the listener/watcher. Silence exercises in rehearsal can also be one of the best tools to show actors exactly what their bad habits are.

Coming back to the text, the temptation can also sometimes be to rush through it - get it out the way. With this exercise we explore the fact that this isn't always needed.

It's a fine balance between pace and earning silences but sometimes starting with silence is the way to create dramatic and enthralling drama.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Windmill Young Actors Showcase - CONFIRMED 7th July

Dear All,

The showcase for Windmill Young Actors at The Windmill Theatre has now been confirmed for Saturday July 7th.

This will be a showcase in two halves. The first half will contain the final version of 'The Legacy of Fingerless Gloves' and the 2nd half will be a selection of small scenes, monologues and more.

I am also hoping to invite a number of industry professionals and build expectation around the event. Please put it in the diary now and start talking about it.

Thanks!

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Saturday 28th April Of Text, Context and Character

This Saturday marked the start of getting back into some solid technique.

I have wanted to do some detailed text workshops for a while and with the summer showcase in mind, there was no better time to start.

Tanushka and I wrote 6 mini scenes with no stage or character directions. The plan was for the students to get into pairs, pick a scene and create their characters from the small about of text that they had been given. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have based these workshops on three easy steps:-

1) The text itself

William Shakespeare was a master of creating character through pace, rhythm, structure and composition of a line or lines. His characters literally, with study, leap off the page. Therefore, the words themselves are a good place to start - before character, before the scene or before anything else. What do the words tell us about the characters or the world of the scene? What can we glean from the language and rhythms used?

As this was the first in a series of workshops, we kept it very simple. One example below:-

A:     Yes.
B:     No.
A:     Please.
B:     Yes.
A:     No.
B:     Yes.

Six lines of dialogue and a world of discovery for the actors. So where do we start with this? Well, on the face of it there seems to be disagreement between the characters. But is that the obvious choice? Where could they be? What could they be doing? Are the characters human? What difference does pace make to this scene. The text itself gives us very little clues but what it does allow is a huge amount of diversity in performance. For example, what happens to the scene if we read it extremely quickly or add long pauses between lines? These are all choices that the actors have the freedom to make. Which leads me to -

2) The context or world of the text

Where are these characters? What makes sense to the text? This will have a profound affect on the performance. For example, it will be a very different portrayal if we set the scene in the future, in a dystopian Germany than it would be if we placed it in medieval England on the eve of The War of the Roses. Are these two aliens who are busy discovering English? The imagination is completely free to create context around the text but the key is to recognise that the performance will be different if the context is different! The sub-text or if you like, the unspoken meaning, will change depending on the context or the world - and this leads me to:-

3) The character

Once we are familiar with the words and have a good idea of the situation or the world where they are spoken, we can begin to explore the character. How does the character speak in this world? What motivates them? Why are they saying what they are saying and who are they saying it to? There is something that professional actors call, 'actioning' - this is basically where I place an 'I want' before every line. This 'I want' gives me an action to play on the line and gives me a wonderful place to start with a strong vision for what my character is doing and why. For example, if I take the action for character A as, 'I want to eat her pie,' then that gives me something strong to play. It means that I make a strong choice as an actor.

The key to all of this is that at this stage, no acting choice is wrong. Rather, making a strong choice is powerful - no matter what it is. It is then down to the director and actors to look at what the best and most suitable choice is for the scene or play as a whole.

These are three simple steps but they succeed in the task of both empowering the actor and giving them clear guidance on how to create a living, dramatic scene. From what on the face of it can seem a boring or difficult piece of text, we can pick it apart and take control.