Songs! part2

This lesson we continued with the songs, everyone sung it with the help of the class, the hardest thing was to get the timing right and top get a good backing track for the song. Miss found some sheet music online so we might hire that.


We also staged silent night and Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas is going to be similar to the kids spotlight idea where there is going to be three separate spotlight and as your character you go to the designated spotlight and sing the solo, miss that we got to perform the song as our characters which I found very difficult.

First ever run through!

As we are performing Fantastic Mr Fox in a couple of weeks we decided that we should  run the whole thing, but first we need to update Rhiannon on what we have done. We showed and we decided that we need to polish the dance. Lorna and I figured out what we are going to do, we do a little dance where we run around each other and then do we do a couple of turns then Charlie interrupts us and he sings" there isn't anything I wouldn't do for you" and then Charlie Lorna and I link arms together as a stereotypical family, and Charlie cant resist to do "dad dancing" which Lorna and I got embarrassed about and we run back into our line.


We changed the start now we were supposed to be doing our own thing but now we  are in designated lines and we step sided to side where Badger and Fox is in the middle, the step to step will be continuous until everyone forms the line. The other thing we changed is the end where instead we will be in a Family photo positions and wave goodbye to the kids.


We decided that the farmers should have a little song at the start of the show, the song:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjvffx-h2KM, basically it starts with me running away with a chicken leg then I smile at the audience and I look at the chicken then I look back to see if anyone is behind me then I start eating the chicken, when Boggis comes up out of back and looks at me walks up to me points me the back and takes the chicken away from as I'm too small I take a run and I try to take the chicken when Bean comes up annoyed and takes the chicken away from us, then we get into our formation and do a couple of bops where Robert and Lewis Bop and then I bop. This is really funny with the music and it'll defiantly entertain the audience.


After this we went through the show to see what scenes need work on. I found this very difficult as I was in a lot of scenes and it was hard to catch up and keep changing character. After the run through miss gave us targets, she said that I need to keep my head up or the kids will just see the back of my head, more characterisation for the fox cup or I wont be able to show my skills and I need to improve my diction for Bunce or the kids wont be able to understand me. As a group she said we need to up our energy and don't use our scripts for next rehearsal.


Next week we need to make one more scene which will be the scene before we sing You've got a friend in me.

Songs!

 This lesson we worked on our songs, as we cant find the tune for my song we decided that it'll will be a poem instead, as I Had no other songs I helped to practice silent night with Kat and Hope.


When we merged back into a big group we went through silent night. After this we went through the final song "Merry Christmas" everyone has a small solo in it so it spent long time to get the tune of the song.


This lesson was quite productive as everyone knows most of their songs now. All we got to do now is stage all of the songs and our first show together as a group will be ready to show.

The Snow Queen Part2

In this lesson we began the making of the snow queen. The story consists of seven different parts therefore we decided theatre ach person will have a part, as Lorna has a immersive storytelling voice we decided that  she should start off the show, as the audience will choose if they like the show in the first couple of minutes, therefore we should start with a strong person. I have part 2 so I will have to maintain the concentration the audience will have. For this lesson we decided to concentrate on Lorna's part as it'll will be the hardest and longest to set up because it is heavily based on movement and physical theatre.


Here is the list of movement we came up with:

• We all start off in a circle facing each other
• On "Now let us begin" we all turn from our right shoulder band go into our designated spot, in a different directions
• On "Reflected" we turn 180 degrees
• On "Poor" and "mean" we do little inverted contractions
• On "magnified" we contract out with an over-exaggerated movement so it looks like we have been released from something
• On "In this mirror" we all form a straight line
• When she sais "their faces" we pick up a mask which will be directly in front of us
• "distorted" we put the masks on
• On "recognised" we turn 180 degrees from our left shoulder and walk into a formation
• On the second" magnified" we reach to our side , in front, or to the side depending where you are in the formation, the movement has to be slow and we have to be close together in order for the movement to work
•  "Oh, that's glorious fun!" will be in coral speaking to give a dramatic effect, and we will be in another line (I'm on the end"
• Then on " If a good thought" everyone does a movement with their hands in a cannon which ends with me, On "then grin" I make an expression of grinning with my hands as I cant grin because we will have our masks on
• After that we go into anther formation, and on "they ran about" Lewis and Oliver lifts Charlie by the armpit and bring him to the front of the stage and then back, everyone else will be doing a running motion whilst this is happening.
• The after that we do another lift on "how the world really looked" everyone besides Rhiannon and I lifts Charlie up and Rhiannon and I go on our knees, then we swap sides and catch Charlie when the others drop him.
• Finally on "million pieces" we all fall down except for Charlie

Next lesson we will create the rest of the movement.


I've read my part and I think It'll work really well If we use projection our maybe acting it out, Ill explain more on a later date.

Switching our characters

The main focus for this lesson was to see how a different actor view our characters and see how they would play them, therefore we switched characters, my role of the Innkeeper's dad got given to Ollie Kelly and I partook the role of Star's Dad.

I view Star's dad to be more suspicious as I don't think he is an astronaut therefore he won't be as outgoing as Lewis plays him, however he will be braggy and talkative, I also wanted to show that Star's dad had a real passion for Stars and his potential son, so I would add extra emphasis  where talked about him being in NASA, or him talking about Star. I wanted Stars dad to be very smart but have no common sense at all, this would be why he couldn't partake his dreams of becoming an astronaut.

I think Ollie Kelley played a good Innkeeper he was more intimidating then I was which created more of a "lad" effect, I'm going to try to be more intimidating for the role of Innkeeper's dad. However didn't like the way Ollie interacted with the other characters, personally I think that he would be outgoing and never really thinks of his action he would just blurt stuff out. I think Ollie didn't show his relationship very well with Shepherd's mum as he didn't interact with her or ague with her in the scene.

Overall I found this to be a great experience as I know what to do know to improve my characters.

Focus on Movement

This lesson we concentrated on the entirety of act one, but got told to concentrate on our movement. This made me think about how my character would move, run, stomp, etc. I found this difficult at first but it helped to embody into the Innkeeper more.

The Great Feast!

Today's lesson we decided to go through the last scene, out initial thoughts was that we it's going to be a busy scene with a lot of stuff happening. So we thought the best thing we could do was to use physical theater and a bit of Frantic assemblies exercises we wanted to do this because the kids will find it cool and intriguing as well I feel that our group is strong with physical theater therefore we can showcase our skills even further as a group.

Lewis and Ollie was trying to figure out the choreography whilst I was trying to decide what song we will need to use as I thought we actually cant do anything until we have the beat of the music. My first idea was "Food Glorious Food" from the Musical Oliver! I thought this as its a well known and liked song and it makes sense as we are celebrating because Mr Fox has brought back loads of food for everyone. Then our other idea was to have "You've got a friend in me" by Randy Newman we thought of this as its a low paced song and it gives our audience a morale that you should keep your friends! The song kind of goes with the show as at the end everyone is together and celebrating which relates to friends and family and the song is based on friends.

The rest of the lesson we choreographed the scene, it consists of this:

• At the start Mr Fox sings to Badger and lays in his arms
• At the second verse Lorna I sing to each other and we will choreograph a dance showing our strong bond as siblings
• During the third verse Rabbit and Mole sings a line then Mr Fox sings the rest as Mrs Fox kisses him
• For the last verse we come together as a big group of friends and then Rabbit, Badger and Mole depart from the line and then The kids depart and then Mrs Fox and Then Mr Fox and we are going to end in a tabloo.

The raid scenes!

In this lesson we got a lot done, I was assigned I decided that we should do the raid scenes as we haven't really started on these scenes. As this show is meant for children we would like the kids to still be entertained we can do this by making them laugh therefore we decided that the scene should be funny.

The raid scenes are all  the same except the characters in them Charlie and I are in all of the raid scenes. Lorna is in the first and second raid but then she leaves and Rabbit Mole and Badger are in the third raid. The third raid is the funniest as the Mole cant see so everyone has to put mole back on track.

The scene consists of everyone who is on who will do a mini sequence pretending to dodge obsticals and then we go center stage and we jump, the jump makes it look like we are on the surface now,and then we collect the supplies and do the same sequence but in reverse as we have to exit the tunnel, we found sneak music which works really well on the scene. Whilst the scene is happening Ollie will be narrating.

I think this scene will be very entertaining yet very simple, hopefully the simplicity of the scene will make the audience laugh and enjoy the scenes.



Whilst everybody was choreographing the raid scene, Lorna was creating Cardboard cutouts of cooked chicken legs. They look good!

After the raid scenes we had enough time to start the scene where rat is introduced, we got into a really cheesy formation looking around and then we are interrupted by Lorna who is Rat, we only got this far, Ollie said he will create a script for next lesson.

Snow Queen

This lesson we have merged into one big group for our storytelling research, and have been given the task to make a story telling piece around 20 minutes long and add as many techniques possible, I think this piece will be more of showcase as we can show the examiner and Miss what wee can do as a group together.

We came up with a list and this is what we have came up with:

• Physical theater/Dance/Movement
• Placards
• Monologues/thought tracking
• Multi Media
• Music
• Dialogue(Live or recorded)
• Storyteller
• props
• Communal voice/Choral speaking

Our ideas:

The first thing we would of have to consider was the age range which we will be aiming it at because we have concentrated on children storytelling we decided that we should aim it for an older audience, this gave me the idea that we maybe should do dark comedy as we have never tried it therefore it'll be interesting on what we will do.I also thought we should of done an original story therefore we change all of the factors and the plot of the story which would of made the storytelling easier.At the end we decided to do the snow queen, this story was based from Frozen.

Most of the lesson we planned out what we wanted to do, we decided to have as pattern of  recorded speaking and live speaking, this will be different and risky as if we get out of the time with the recorded speaking we would either have to improvise or somehow get back on track.

Near the end of the lesson we created a little movement bit were Lorna has her recorded speaking and we would have to contract twice then do one big movement, I think that this section will be entirely based on movement.

Within the deadline this will be a very hard performance to create but I think it'll be possible and It'll be a very different piece. 

Developing Sarah's breakdown scene

In this lesson we went through the adult scene of the play and we decided that we need to develop the scene Lorna's adult character: Sarah Bennett needs development. We did this by going through the lines together and to figure out the point of the line and who our characters are aiming it too. This way we will understand other characters and our characters more which will help us to understand what is going on in the scene. Everybody has annotated their script so next time they do the scene we know what to do.

Planning

In this lesson we decided to plan out what we will do for the next few lesson, we decided that we needed to concentrated on scenes which included movement with it, i the end we came up with the out line for three scene which are either incomplete or we haven't started devising for it yet: The race,  and Great feast.

The race-
For this scene we decided to have a stereotypical race, the farmers are elevated on a table or chairs, and the farmers are at a normal level, the narrator will narrate the race I decided as my character is small I thought to add comedy by having trouble to get onto the platform, when the race starts everyone is in slow motion with over exaggerated facial expressions this will create a comic atmosphere for our young audience. Eventually the farmers win and leave the farmers and Boggis starts crying again and then I say "are you crying again" this leads us into we never let him go.

The Great feast-
With the great feast we decided to have one big movement piece to hype the audience and to show our skills in movement as a group. We decided that its going to start off with everyone besides me and Charlie as we are together in the scene before therefore it will make sense that we are travelling to the home so everyone can celebrate together, I think we should have a sing song as it'll end with the kids being happy.

As I don't have my role as mole we decided to give it to Robert as its a better role to play than being a weasel. Rabbit Mole and Badger will be introduced later on in the play right before the Cider Celler Raid.

I feel this lesson was really important as its utilised on ewjhat we want to do in the next few lesson.

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The shooting

This lesson we created and polished the shooting scene. The scene consists of Boggis, Bunce and Bean sneaking through the audience, then Mr Fox comes onto stage and said that he smells "F... f Fried Chicken" this was bait set up by the Farmers so they can shoot him, this will also be funny for the children as its Fried chicken, not just chicken.

Whilst this was happening Rob was tapping on the windowsill which created a very intense atmosphere, so Lewis and I decided to add this in, we will do this by recording it and then playing it during our performance. The drumming will suit the shooting scene as we want to create more tense atmosphere rather that it all being funny.

We also came up with a funny joke when the farmers are in the audience, Boggis steps in Fox poo and moans about it, whilst Bean shhh him and I copy him but I do it for an extended length of time until Bean tells me to stop, this will make the children laugh.

Next lesson we will concentrate on movement for the race scene.

Revolution Arts - Fisher: Script Archive - Scene 5 "We'll Never Let Him Go"

Revolution Arts - Fisher: Script Archive - Scene 5 "We'll Never Let Him Go": LF and JBC walk enter looking angry JBC : Even with our diggers and machines we're too slow! That fox will get away if we don't...

Revolution Arts - Fisher: Script Archive - Scene 1 "The Three Farmers"

Revolution Arts - Fisher: Script Archive - Scene 1 "The Three Farmers": OK:   Down in the valley there were three farms. The owners of these farms had done well. They were rich men, They were also nasty men  all ...

First scene of being Bunce!

Today's lesson we concentrated on scene three, this scene concentrated on the farmers. The scene start of with Boggis and Bunce moaning about the Fox which turns into an argument,This turns into a slapstick comedy punch which turned into a little poke and then Bunce gets scared so he runs away from Boggis. Then Bean interrupts Bunce get so scared that he jumps into Boggis' arms this will make the children laugh. After this Bunce  complains about Boggis' and Bunce's ideas so he ask the audience in the end Bunce has an idea and leaves whilst Boggis and Bunce does an evil laugh which will make the audience laugh and the Bean comes back on to the stage and gets Boggis and Bunce.

I liked this scene its very funny for the kids but I need to concentrate on  my stance as Bunce is the smallest so I'm going to have a hunchback to I look naturally smaller than the other farmers.

I'm the new Bunce!

The other lesson Lorna dropped the role of Bunce and suggested that I should take the role because we decided that we don't want mole in the show which only gave me one minor role.I'm glad I've got this role as I can show my skills as an actor a lot more, before I could really only rely on movement because he doesn't really speak a lot. With Bunce I can concentrate on my stance, pace of voice, pronunciation, movement, volume, facial expressions, body language and voice.

The rest of the lesson we mainly concentrated on planning and specifying on what scenes we need to do and who is in what scene this way we can work on two scene in one lesson as we can split up into a group.

Recaping the slow motion scene

In this lesson our main focus was to go through the final scenes as the kids and the slow mo scene. Everybody sings silent night, this is the first time everybody knows the words as Mrs Horrocks puts on the back projector so everyone can see the words. After this Peter Crouch (the stick insect) is on the projector which scares the kids as it looks like a big monster this results into a slow mo scene where Ollie jumps in Lewis' arms and the Ollie accidentally kicks me in the face I get angry so I push Ollie and continue running in slow motion until I am offstage.

All the scene needs now is a bit of polishing and it'll be ready for the show.

Over the Top

In today's lesson Miss instructed us to go over the top to make the play more funny and to help us with characterization. I was confused with this as I see the Innkeeper as a more serious character, however I was willing to experiment and see if I can interpret a character in many different ways. When I performed over the top it gave the Innkeeper more comic, and I enjoyed performing him this way, I am going to aim to be over the top as the main purpose of the performance is to entertain the audience. My aim for next week will be to improve my blogs and to learn the entirety of Act 1.

Developing our Greek myths

In today's lesson we concentrated on Roberts monologue as the main aim for this performance is  to make the audience feel sympathy for the six headed beast. The two main concepts which is needed to  gain sympathy is the pauses ( when the pauses will be effective and how long they should be) and the characters emotion which is portrayed during the performance. Annotating the script is an easy way to locate the correct emotions and to use pauses effectively, I  do this to most of my scripts as it helps with my use of voice and characterization skills,it also helps you pick what tone/pitch you want, the volume of the monologue or if you want to contrast the volume to create effect, the articulation and pronunciation of the monologue (for example if you were crying your words wont be clear and well pronounce, there would be stutters and some of the words will be un-audible), and the pace this can change depending on what emotion your character is experiencing right now. Telling Rob about this has significantly changed his simple character to character which has depth and emotion this will way he will attract more sympathy from the audience. Next week we aim to do a movement sequence or something similar to that, we want to do this as it is story telling so we need to link the two monologues in a simple way so the audience will understand the plot of the story.

Odyssey monlogue

Our next task for the Story telling unit with miss Cordell is to create a storytelling performance of a Greek mythology, I paired up with Robert and we got given the story Odyssey. Odyssey is the name of the boat which was able to escape the inescapable: Scylla the six headed beast. Odysseus the captain of the ship just narrowly escaped Scylla by using a whirlpool evade the beast. This obviously infuriated the beast as now his reputation will have a downfall. Odysseus coming out triumph-fully will brag about his victory. Rob and I decided that I'll be the Hero whilst Rob will be the beast and we will perform monologues of the point of view from the battle, however there is a twist where we want the audience to feel sorry for the beast this will be hard to do but if we play our cards right it will turn into a great performance.


Here is my monologue I created during the lesson:

Odysseus is a foolish hero who is bragging about his victory against the six headed beast.

Odysseus: Ahh I’ve had a lot of victories that I can’t even remember all of them. Now let’s see there was my genius idea with the wooden horse during the Trojan, without that we would of never won the Trojan War! Regaining my kingdom and saving my son was the most recent, but my best triumph must be defeating the so called unbeatable monster Scyalla, nothing can beat me and my army not even that stupid six headed beast. I’m the only man who has defeated him, which must mean I am the strongest warrior in the whole world!

Polishing the first scene

Todays lesson we concentrated on the first scene. Miss said that you need to think what Mrs Horrocks is saying as we don't hear her voice, this helped me to understand what I need to do. Understanding Mrs Horrocks voice will help the audience to guess what she is saying, as they will be dependent on our reaction so if we don't react properly they might get a completely different interpretation of the scene which will ruin the performance as most of the performance they will not understand whats going on.


We decided to make my characters movement slow and sustained as the Innkeeper doesn't really care about the other kids impressions of him (besides Jenny Bennett as he has a crush on her). I also looked into the character in depth to realize that the Innkeeper is trying to act creepy to scare the others as he doesn't like them (besides Jenny) but as he knows no better to scare everyone he thinks that its the only way to get people attention hence why Innkeeper scares Jenny when he is trying to impress her.

Starving Slowly

The other day we decided to go through a new scene with the Foxes we decided to do the scene where Fantastic Mr Fox has been digging for a long time but has to stop as he and his family are tired and hungry because they been digging for a long time because the Farmers are trying to kill him.

The scene will start of with Mr Fox getting tired and then the kids moan saying that they are hungry and tired, after this Mrs Fox and Fantastic Mr Fox have a argument as Mr Fox is angry with Mrs Fox as she isn't helping and Mrs Fox is mad at Mr Fox for putting her and her children into the mess. The problem we had with this was that the argument was a bit inappropriate for  kids and are target audience is Year 1/2 kids so we cant scare or upset them.,In the middle of the argument the kids start to cry as their parents are arguing and they don't like it. Mr Fox and Mrs Fox stops arguing as they know that they shouldn't argue because the Farmers are looking for them, and the arguing upsets the children, so at the end they both make up and then Mr Fox pretends he has a Epiphany but doesn't so this gives him another chance to interact withe the audience this is important as it will keep the audiences attention as they want to be a part of our show.

The Framers and the Narrator worked on the opening scene, this is very simple but effective, basically Badger reads out the first chapter and introduces the farmers, The Badger also teaches the song to the children which will let them brake the fourth wall and sing a silly song whenever the Framers enter, this also makes the children laugh which helps us with our purpose of the performance which is to entertain the audience.

Bradley's character profile

This is a little modal of Bradley inside the man is his internal felling and outside around the man is the cause of Bradley's felling's.

Name: Bradley Jerems

Age: a couple minutes younger than Zoe

Family: Zoe, Mum, Dad, Big John and Big John's dad

Friends: ....

Girlfriend: Jenny (But don't tell her")

People who I don't like: Marcus, Ryan Gabriel, Poppy, Miss Horrocks and Zoe

Likes: Drawing, intimidating people and pushing bottle skips into people testicles

Dislikes: Stars, Angels, Fake donkey heads, Fish and Teachers who think they are right but there not because I'm right