5th December - year 13 T.I.E assessment

Today the year 13's showed us their T.I.E pieces which were created from old Irish stories. There were four groups and around 5 people in each group. The names of the groups were 'The Feather', 'The son of liam', 'Selky woman' and the 'legend of Fin Mc Coal'.

The Feather

Storyline: In this piece from what i saw, it was about a boy who wins a feather and then takes it back to his mother who then asks him to get the bird the feather came from. A witch keeps hold of the bird but manages to control the boy and changes him.

Characters: Charlotte who played the step mum had a very effective tone of voice, she made it obvious to the audience that she was not happy with her step-son and only wanted to get rid of him. Megan who played the witch didn't speak to add a mysterious nature to the character, i felt this was a good character development because it adds effect. Dylan who plays the boy who wins the feather was very energetic and made it obvious that he was a young boy and that this feather had really excited him and how he was eager to get the bird.

What worked: I felt that how they used puppetry worked well, and when they did do this Megan and Dylan worked well together and they didn't once fall out of unison.

What didn't work: I didn't fully understand the storyline. I feel that they could of made the story a bit clearer.

The Son Of Liam

Storyline: In this piece from what i could see, it was about a family, the step mum having magical powers and who doesn't like the son, turns him into a swan.

Characters: Patrice spoke a bit too fast, i didn't catch some of the points that helped the description of the story. Alice came out of character.

What worked: Good use of props. I liked how they used the cardboard around their necks as it showed clearly throughout the scenes who was who and it added effect. The chair duet was effective and the character were clear. How they used the sheet for a rug and to represent the sea.

What didn't work: 

Selky Woman

Storyline: It was about a man who had everything and lost everything and then fell in love with a woman he met. The woman had hit her head and had forgotten that she was half seal.

Characters: All characters had strong, loud and clear voices. It was obvious each one of them knew the story well and that they had rehearsed it well and thought clearly into the ways they could present the story.

What did work: I thought the ukele was very good and conveyed the mood of which he felt at different points in the story, i like how it was played underneath the other members of the group who told the audience the story of his life in small short sentences. I liked how they used a narrator throughout. I liked how they used physical theatre for trees, doors etc. I also liked how they used the signs, their variety of props, i thought it was comical and the chair duets were good.

What didn't work: The main point of the story was the fact that she was half-seal but i didn't understand that part and the end of the story confused me a lot.

The legend of Fin Mc Coal

Storyline: I didn't really get the story, the only part i really got was that there was a magic fish that two mean fought over.

Characters: I feel that they had very strong loud voices and each of the members in the group stayed in character throughout.

What did work: Humorous, good use of chair duets, freeze frames, levels.

What didn't work: Sometimes not clear when acting and when not. Speaking over eachother. Drags out a bit. I found it much harder to follow then the others.

Tuesday 11th December 2012

Today we had our auditions for 'Grease' which we will be performing next in musical theatre. For the songs i had prepared two solos, Roxie from Chicago and Kiss the girl from The Little Mermaid. We performed the songs to Lena and Sam, and then later on we performed our monologue to Rachel, i chose to do the female monologue, which was Frenchies. It was only a few lines long but we had to show clear American accent and perform it. We also told Rachel which parts we would prefer, i would like to play Sandy or Frenchie.

Singing assessment

Today we had our singing assessment with Lena, it was our first milestone, we had to show her our practise routines in distinction and range, so i sang 'la' in rising range and sang 'unique newyork' and 'red lorry, yellow lorry' in rising range as well.  We were filmed as well, we were meant to sing the 3 songs we had prepared, 1 being a duet 2 being solos but because Lena sat in in our auditions on Tuesday she didn't feel the need to hear us again.

MT year 12 all that jazz rehearsal

Singing workshop with Stefan 25/10/12

Today we had a singing lesson with Stefan which Lena organised. He introduced himself then instructed us to lie on the floor with our knees bent and feet flat on the floor with our hands on our stomach. He told us to relax and release all tension from our body. He told us to take a deep breath in and out and feel it with our hands. He spoke about our diaphragm, where it's located and how it works. We then took a deep breath in and had to release it with a sigh, releasing with a sigh made the output very short, so then we released with an 'sssss' which we found lasted much longer, we also breathed out with a 'zzzz' sound which also lasted much longer then the sigh. He asked us to try different pitches and we repeated the process several times. We then stood with feet on the floor but with knees fully bent with our bum rested on the back of our calves, we then did the same exercises but found it a little bit harder, we then stood up a little but still with knees bent and arms limp, then standing up with an arched back and limped arms and then finally we stood up straight with correct posture and we all found it was easier to do the exercise when lying down.

He then spoke to us about the fake vocal folds and how it's very difficult to sing if they are contracted so he said we should think about a funny joke or something that would make us laugh to retract the fake vocal folds which enabled us to project our voices. When we did this exercise i could actually feel the difference.

We then learnt the song from Sweeney Todd and split into two groups to sing it. Then two people from music played the piano accompiament.

We then sang Kambaya and 4 people got up to perform it to the rest of the group but with different emotion, for example Charlotte and Lauren from year 13 sang it in an angry way then a sad way to eachother.

I really enjoyed the singing workshop with Stefan because it's taught me about different styles of singing and how i can improve my voice for Lena's assessment and also the Grease auditions.

Pictures for the snow queen performance 4/12/12

 

On the 4th of December we performed our Snow Queen performance for the nursery children who were aged 2-4, I feel the performance went well and it lasted 40 minutes which was a perfect ammount of time for children their age to sit still and watch. The children interacted well when we asked them questions in the performance for example Beth (Gerda) asked the children if the Snow Queen had taken Joe (Kai) they all responded with yes.

Here are some pictures i took before the performance, i have a picture for each corner scene and a group picture of all of the year 12 musical theatre group in full costume.

-The flower garden

-The Snow palace

-The robbers forest

-The palace

Review on 'Beautiful burnout' by Frantic Assembly

We went on a college trip to southampton where we saw the performance 'Beautiful burnout' by the company Frantic Assembly. It was about boxing and showed the difficult training leading up to the title fight. They used minimal staging, they had a raised rotating stage block. They also had a washing machine and fridge which rose from the block for the mothers scenes. Additionally to add to the boxing training scenes they had 2 punch bags on a pully system which they could pull onto stage when needed. It was a multirole performance, performed by about 8 people who took on various different roles. The performance used physical theatre, mainly to show their exercise routines in boxing. They used very upbeat loud music when they did their insync routines to build atmosphere. They had tv screens on the back wall in which they showed different images for example when they were doing their routines they showed a stopwatch. As for lighting they used strobe lighting, over-head white and blue lights and floor lighting.

I really enjoyed the performance, even though i don't really know a lot about boxing or have ever really been a fan on it Frantic Assemblys energetic take on it made me enjoy it. I especially liked how they presented the training, it made me as an audience member want to get up and exercise with them! i think the actors and actresses used fit very well with the specific parts, they were all very fit and it showed me how in shape you need to be to be a boxer.

Grease audition and Lena's assessment

I have chosen to do 'Roxie' from the musical Chicago for my solo, take me or leave me from the musical Rent as my duet with Lyndsey and Honey Honey from the musical Mamma Mia as my other solo and for the Grease audition i will do Roxie and Honey Honey

Production arts with Kim 29/11/12

In the lesson with Kim today we all focused on making and improving set. We were all appointed different areas of the set to work on. The trees needed to be fixed, re-spraypainted and have little bits of tinsel attached to it, the sleigh needed to be painted and have tinsel put around the rim, more flowers needed to be made and my job in costume was to make icycles to hang from the frozen children at the Snow Queens palace. I did this by cutting squares out of the silver paper and curling it into a pointy cone shape, i then attached it together with tape and then added the decorative blue fabric to it with tape for added effect. Jess and Polly helped me and we managed to make 15 so each frozen child has 3 each, we also used the green wire threaded through the top into a hoop so that the icycles can be hung from the arms of the snow children.

Pictures from the dance show

Pictures from our performance of 'All that Jazz' from Chicago that we had been rehearsing in the previous two dance lessons with Sam Lebihan

 

 

20/11/12 - Drama lesson with Rachel Maddix

In todays lesson we went over the Snow Queen storyline, first of all we did a quick run-through and whenever Rachel thought something needed improving or we needed to add something she stopped us and told us. I found this very helpful because it gave us an outside input from an audience member. After we had run-through it once we cut into our first scene groups, for me i was in the Flower Garden scene with Abbie and Lyndsey, and we reflected on Rachels notes and decided on changing a few things and adding a few things to make the scene more interesting and easier for the children to follow. In the last hour we all sat down with a pen and paper then Rachel gave us specific things to work on. I've got to work on props and costume, for costume i'm going to make icycles to hang from the 'frozen children' in the Snow queen's palace scene.

In academy time me and Abbie collected lots of dry leaves and then painted them with white and silver paint and coated them with silver glitter.

I also helped Polly spray paint the trees for the forest with Silver and White spray paint, i feel this made a really good effect and because we'd painted it brown first it shows that the Snow Queen has covered a once warm brown-tree'd place into a wintery snowy cold place.

Production arts with Kim 22/11/12

In todays lesson we created mind maps based around our specific job role in our performance 'The Snow Queen'. Mine is costume so i stuck down things that show the colours chosen for the play, because it's got a wintery theme, the colours are silver, white and blue. I stuck down images from magazines for costume ideas, coloured tissue paper, bubble wrap etc. I also created snowflakes out of the resources i had.

Research for Drama with Rachel Maddix

Research into source:
When i was growing up the childrens books that interested me were Blinky Bill (an australian storybook), hungry hungry caterpillar, baby beebee bird, Peter Rabbit etc.

I remember that in Blinky Bill he was a koala bear, he wore red dungarees with golden buttons, and he was always with his group of friends, his friends included his adopted sister Nutsy, his kangaroo friend Splodge, a platypus, a mouse and a wombat. Blinky bill is naughty and mischievous.

Research into Target Audience 1 – Curriculum (Snow Queen)

Drama 13/11/12

In this Drama lesson Rachel was absent. We spent the first hour improving our blogs and completing The Snow Queen table. Then in the next 3 hours we were in the drama studio where we practised the first scene with Kai, Gerda, Grandma and The Snow Queen, we were trying to show clearly how close Kai and Gerda are, we did this by when they got scared when Grandma was reading the story they would look to eachother for comfort by hugging eachother. We also added music to this scene for when the Snow Queen enters the room to give it more impact and make it clear to the children that the mood has changed and to ensure the children know that she is a 'baddy'. We then tried to improve the other scenes but we were missing a few people so we were unable to do that, so instead we worked on the scenery for the show, we painted one of the large trees brown, created some more flowers and made another tree for the robbers scene, and in the last half an hour of the lesson we showed Sam as much of the show as we could.

The Snow Queen (Worthing 2012 Version)
Scene	Title	Development Suggestions
1	Grandma’s Introduction	We need to build the 'six senses' in this scene as it introduces the audience to both the play and life for the characters Gerda and Kai before the Snow Queen. **The audience have to care about them getting this life and their friendship back or there is little point to the story** Better description of the environment. An activity for Kai and Gerda before the story that can show how close they are. Introductory music Make it obvious which story it is and explain the story better so the kids have a better feel for it before they see it. Make the Snow Queen seem more scary, describe her in a worse way.
2	Snow Queen Kidnaps Kai	We need to establish a distinct change in atmosphere via lighting and sound for the Snow Queens entrance. The dialogue needs additional detail particularly the benefits of living in the snow palace. **There has to be a plausible benefit for Kai to go with the SQ as he is fascinated by her before she puts ice in his heart** Snow Queen Music or snow sound effects Additional tempting description of Snow Queen Lifestyle in dialogue Design/Make sleigh  Lighting change to add to cold atmosphere Make it clear that the SQ has put Gerda and Grandma under a spell thats why they aren't waking up. (Jackie in Art is willing to help)
3	Magic Flower Garden	A playful introduction would improve this scene. Perhaps Gerda could wonder at least for a little while if she should just make new friends whilst being enchanted by the flowers. **The scene will work best if we feel a bit sorry for the flower witch and the flower girls and if it contrasts more with the other scenes** Demonstrate the girls having fun together before we see the witch Gerda to use '6 senses' to ensure we understand more about the magical garden Find way of making flowers stand! Make it clear that the flower witch wants Gerda to stay. Emphasize that its the chamomile tea that makes Gerda forget about Kai.
4	Snow Queen collects Flower Children	We need this scene to have more clarity. The best way to do this would be to strongly establish an ongoing relationship between the SQ and the Flower Witch. **This scene is the second time we see the SQ and once again she is abducting children. We have to make her heartless but not too scary!** Reveal Snow Queens bigger plans and the control she has over her magical kingdom Make some reference to life before the Snow Queen's reign Ensure the sleigh can work with two passengers Ensure that the children realise the reason that the SQ are taking the flower witches 'children'. Show the relationship between the Flower witch and the SQ.
5	Palace and the Princess’s Party	Create a clear plot for this scene. Make it obvious that Gerda rips the princesses dress and that is why she's helping her sew it up. While the music is playing the Crow and the King could dance to show a lighter side to the story. Make it clear that the garment the princess gives to Gerda is expensive.
6	Snow Queen Plots & Plans	Ensure that the children understand that Kai is under the SQ's spell (blank expression, vague recall) Show that the minion/servant is obediant and does anything the SQ asks. Ensure that the children see that the SQ has a way of watching Gerda travel across the magical world.
7	Robbers in the Woods	Ensure that the children know that the robber girl has ice in her heart because she is alot meaner than the rest of the robbers. Show the reindeer is a friendly companion. Show that Polly wants to help Gerda and that she isn't a 'bad guy' like the rest of them.
8	Journey to Lapland	Show the connection between the reindeer and Gerda. Ensure that the children realise that going round the center a couple of times means they have journeyed for quite a long time.
9	Minion Reports	Show that the minion/servant is frightened about what the snow queen will say. Ensure that there is a clear obediance from the minion to the SQ.
10	Finn Man’s Wisdom & the Gossips	Create an interesting way to introduce the gossipers. Show that the gossipers think the Finn Man is crazy and that they're sure going to him would help Gerda out in no way at all. Make it clear from the gossipers that he's a bit of a nut job. Ensure that the Finn Man is quite gaudy and strange.
11	Ice Palace Rescue & Release	Use 6 senses to describe the gate and how difficult it is to get into it. Have the 3 items to ask the audience which one would work to open the gate. Ensure that the children understand that everyone is frozen. Show the reindeer's heroic side.  Make it clear that the reindeer's special power is melting ice with his antlers (have the reindeer show Gerda in one of the walking scenes) Make sure that the children understand that Gerda crying on Kai is what melts the ice in his heart.
12	Back to Grandma	Make sure it's all very happy at the ending and the children aren't afraid that the SQ will come in the night to get them. Ensure that the reunion between Gerda, Kai and Grandma is a very happy one.

  

Singing Lesson with Lena 08/11/12

In todays lesson we started off by Lena telling us to use a certain technique to getting into the correct stance for singing, i used the technique in which you walk around the room really curled up and shy and then you switch to walking around head high with long strides etc then stopping with feet shoulder width apart and arms dropped by your sides and chin held high. I found this one to be the most successful. We then did a couple of singing warm ups, we breathed in for 4 seconds held for 4 seconds and then exhaled saying the words vee ee arr arr vee whilst Lena accompanied us on the piano. We were then asked to get into pairs and go into the practise rooms and show one another the practise routines we've done at home, i showed Emily the one

Drama with Rachel Maddix 6/11/12

We started off the lesson in the music room where we spent an hour improving our blogs then in the second half of the lesson we were back in the drama studio. We recapped the order of scenes for the Snow Queen and which locations were in which corner of the room. We went back over who was which character, in the piece i am (in order of appearance) the flower witches 'child', snow queens minion and a village person in Lapland. Rachel then asked us to go to the location in which we first appear in, for me it was the flower garden. We then did a speed walkthrough of what we thought we would do, but we kept stopping when people wanted to add in ideas, we kept doing this a couple of times and then we split off into our first scenes to organise properly what happens in that scene. In the flower garden scene we decided that we needed to somehow educate the audience about me and Abi not actually being the flower witches children and that she kidnapped us and used her special camomile tea to make us forget the past. We pushed this point across by me and Abi telling our mother (Lindsey) that we'd both had a dream the night before about a family, not knowing who they were etc.

We had about 10 minutes to configure each scene to work out what to say, how long each scene goes on for and what everyones doing. In the village gossiping about the finn-man scene we configured a short string of movements to make it more interesting and we put chorus speaking in there for added effect.
Once we had spent that time working on the scenes we did a couple of runthroughs of the whole thing and we all thought it was quite successful. I think there should be another scene for the snow-queen and Kai though because they only appear in the first and final scene.

I thought this was a successful lesson because we got a lot figured out about the scenes. It was also productive to practise each scene in the actual order they occur in so that it improves how well we know the running order.

Flower Witch scene
Props needed: Flowers, teapot, watering can, mugs, camomile tea, vase, household objects.
Objective: To help Gerda escape once the flower witch is asleep.

Minion scene
Props needed: Minion costume, minion staff.
Objective: to be obedient.

Robber scene
Props needed: Robber mask, loot bag, jewellery.
Objective: to capture Gerda and rob her of all her costly posessions.

Character profile
-Name: Icelandier the Snow Queens minion/servant.
-Character traits: obedient, devious, mysterious, evil.
-Appearance: crooked back, limp, mask, small, icey, white outfit.

The Snow Queen (Worthing 2012 Version)
Scene	Title	Contents
1	Grandma’s Introduction	It's a cold winters night, Beth and Joe are young children listening to their grandma (polly) tell them a story about the snow queen.
2	Snow Queen Kidnaps Kai	Lizzie turns Kai's heart cold and kidnaps him. Beth realises Joe is gone and Grandma gives her a few magical items to take on her travel (a flower and a hankerchief)
3	Magic Flower Garden	Me (Daisy) and Abi (Lily) live with our 'mother' (Lindsey). We want to let the audience know that she isn't actually our mother and she kidnaps children for snow queen, snow queen let her keep me and lily. Beth comes to flower garden, smells flowers, starts to feel faint, flower witch gives her camomile tea to make her forget, she falls asleep, but Lily and Daisy help her escape.
4	Snow Queen collects Flower Children	Snow Queen comes to flower witch to see if Gerda is there, flower witch doesn't realise she'd escaped, snow queen angry, takes Lily and Daisy away, makes Daisy her minion.
5	Palace and the Princess’s Party
6	Snow Queen Plots & Plans	Snow queen orders minion around, asks Kai if he remembers Gerda, he doesn't she tells him she is a horrible girl, she then instructs Kai to go to the robbers and tell them to rob Gerda and hold her hostage when she comes through the woods and tells her minion to make sure everything goes smoothly.
7	Robbers in the Woods	The robber girl (Emily) tells Polly to pretend to be hurt in the woods, all the other robbers and minion hide, Gerda and Crow come along and try to help Polly, everyone robs Gerda, throwing her in cage with Reindeer, Polly lets Gerda & reindeer out with key.
8	Journey to Lapland
9	Minion Reports	The minion reports back to the snow queen saying that Gerda escaped and pleads for forgiveness but the snow queen freezes him/her.
10	Finn Man’s Wisdom & the Gossips	The village gossipers are gossiping about Finn-man, tell Gerda where to find him, Gerda and Reindeer speak to him and find out where to go to find the snow queen and Kai.
11	Ice Palace Rescue & Release	Gerda, Reindeer and Crow get to ice palace, don't know what to use to open gate, ask audience, gate opens, reindeer escapes, crow gets frozen to save Gerda, Gerda asks to see Kai, snow queen instructs Kai to kill Gerda, Gerda cries on Kai, the ice in his heart melts. Reindeer returns and uses his special magical antlers to melt all the frozen statues and kill the snow queen. All the children escape and run back to their families.
12	Back to Grandma	Gerda and Kai return home, happily ever after.