Year 2

 Meeting the first years ♡︎

Today we met all of the new first years. I was surprised to see a huge group of 26 but also exited to get to know everyone. The first years went in pairs and us second years had to go around group by group to introduce ourselves and say our opinion of our first year. Everybody seems lovely and the class seems very varied. Kelly told us we need to focus on improv more this year so we played the game where we each say one word to make a story and then we split into two groups where one person layer on the floor and we each has to make a small funeral speech. I think over time playing these games will really help us think fast and improve our improv. 

12/9/22 ♡︎Day one 

Today was our first proper lesson of the year and we shared it with the new first years. We played a few warm up games to start of the day where me and Latoya quickly made friends with Millie and Adam. We had to get into small groups so me, Latoya and Emie joined with Adam and Millie. Kelly was telling everybody about the globe Halloween tour that we’ll be doing and we had to think of common fears that would make people more afraid of what they don’t know than what they do know.  We had to discuss scary stories that seemed paranormal, I spoke about dolls that had vanished and Latoya spoke about seeing family members from the past. We listed some things that scared us as a class. 

Things like;

Mirrors, dolls, mental asylums, clowns, death, the dark, harsh silence, small spaces, twins, children, spiders, the unknown, ghosts, unidentified noises, graveyards, fog, flickering lights, creaking, old fashioned music, blood, getting lost, red balloons, shadows, dripping, breathing down the back of your neck, babies crying, heights, laughing. 

This helped us get an idea of what to incorporate in our tour and also brought us closer as a group. 

We then had to get in groups for our task. I went in a group with Latoya, Adam, Millie, Freya and Emily. We were handed a piece of paper and told we had to write a story from the introduction sentence. Our sentence was about walking into an abandoned house hesitantly. Our group brainstormed ideas about what could be in the house and we decided to go for the typical dim building with a damp smell and howling winds however it had a twist, when the character sat down at the table suddenly she was in a new house eating dinner with her family when a shooter suddenly came in and shot her family, she closed her eyes and when she reopened them seen that it was a memory and she was in her house years later that had started to rot. We then had to turn this into a performance where we were the buildings as well as the characters and had to portray sight smell taste etc… me and Adam were walls, Latoya was a door, Freya was a table until we made her a wall instead and Millie was the wind whilst Emily played the girl. We all became the family for a while. This was quite had to make it sinister since we were literally playing wind so we still needed to work on it. 

14/9/22♡︎

Today we spent some time in the theatre. We started with a few games to learn each other’s names then went on to an improv task. We got handed a bit of paper with a sentence on it and we had to tap people out and use our lines int he scene. Our class struggled to move on from topics but overall we kept the scene flowing. It feels quite intimidating experimenting with new methods i from of about 40 people but it helps us grow. We then did another improv task where we had to go in groups and create different characters with a victim leader and the problem causer. Our characters had to keep switching roles. This was really fun and we managed to keep it flowing. I was in a group with Adam and Millie. This is helping us think on our feet and learn to be present in a scene.  

After this we went into the dance studio with just the second years and we worked on a whole new project. We’re planning on learning some of dear Evan Hanson because it’s a musical with no dancing. We only had a short read through of act 1 so to get to know it between I listened to some of the songs when I got home. I’m exited to try singing however I’m scared of singing in front of everyone. I sang in front of a few people last year but that was only ‘Marilyn Monroe’ and I thought I’d be able to talk the song more than sing it because that song is too low for my voice.  

13/9/22♡︎

We came in today and watched silent scenes that the first years had made, they were all filled with anger because it’s the easiest emotion to convey through body language. Then Kane told us to work on the scenes we were doing yesterday so that’s what we did. He then brought us all together to watch a scene for silence of the lambs. He told us our scenes should be sinister and creepy like that one. When we went back to our group we discussed he our scene was nothing like that and Kane said we could restart it he also said we didn’t have to be objects and could just be characters instead. We created a new idea which was to make it about spirituality instead. We were going into a haunted house when we tie the new girl up before sacrificing her to the devil. The way we did it was way more creepy than our original idea and we’re glad we got to change it, hopefully we can work on it more in future lessons because we’re having a lot of fun creating new stories. 

15/9/22 ♡︎

Today we purely focused on universities and  drama schools. We had to find a place that we aimed to go to and find a monologue to audition with. Me and my group al had no idea where we wanted to go so we spent the whole time finding and researching seaman schools and l stayed back a few extra hours because I wanted to write a list of drama schools that offered student finance or were under ucas. I went home and made a spreed sheet with my mam where I wrote a list of places I was going to audition for. After research, the place I’m most interested in is the Royal Central School Of Speech And Drama. This just seemed like it offered everything I want and has a good success rate. I went home and search for places and found one monologue but I’m going to keep looking over the weekend for more. I’ve also been trying to find songs to sing for auditions what works well with my voice.

20/9/22 ♡︎

Today the Zest theatre came in to talk to us. They wanted to give us the opportunity to have our voices heard as a young person. They said they’re looking out for looking out for people they would want in their own theatre productions that travel around. They started off by telling us about the project we were going to be working on this day. They printed off about 20 pieces of paper with a single word on. Each one said something, and example is; happiness, religion, LGBTQ+. We had to walk around the room and find a piece of paper that we struggle with the most. I stopped on ‘The Future’. The future is something I always worry about. Especially since I only have the qualifications to do acting and the acting industry is so unpredictable. They went around with a microphone and heard peoples worries and opinions and it was really nice to hear others thought the same as me. They asked us to write down our worries about that word on a piece of paper. I really enjoyed this task. Then we handed them in and they’re going to read them and see if they can get any quotes to share from them. After that we had tutorial and they said after we can go to and play some sports or go to a club. We’re thinking of going to gaming next week!

21/9/22 ♡︎

Todays lesson was in the theatre so it was mainly improv. We started by learning how to connect with a scene partner without saying anything. We had to find a partner and sit facing each other and tried to telepathically tell each other what to do. I was with Milly and I was trying to tell her to move her hair or scratch her head, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. She did it to me and again sometimes it worked and others it didn’t so who knows if it’s a coincidence or not. 

Then we got given newspaper dating articles that described the person’s appearance and interests. We had to give it to somebody we thought it fit. Mine was 

SARAH, 21, dizzy blonde, blue eyes, loves to dance, seeks affectionate, hunky,

fun male, to make her laugh and brighten her day.

I had to introduce myself to the class as this character and we were all supposed to be asked questions but by the time it got o me there was no time left. 

I think this character was brought up in a comfortable home where she hasn’t had to work for much. I think she’s had quite a few boyfriends but god for the wrong type of guy. 

Then we had a film and Tv lesson where we discussed the sitcom and they told us all about the storyline and how they envision it because we were told about it so long so. We watched some clips of sitcoms to give us the idea of what we’re going for. (The office & modern family) . Kane gave us a list of movies that’ll help out acting so I’ll have to watch them soon. 

♡︎ = watched 

ILA LA LAND

WHIPLASH

PRISONERS

DRIVE

LADY BIRD ♡︎

MIDSOMMAR♡︎

STAND BY ME

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

INTERSTELLAR

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET♡︎

STRONGER

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

FORREST GUMP

THE MACHINIST

BACK TO THE FUTURE♡︎

REQUIEM FOR A DREAN

A PLACE BEYOND THE PINES THE PIANIST

SCHINDLER'S LIST

SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

SOUND OF METAL

GET OUT♡︎

NIGHTCRAWLER

ZODIAC

THE TERMINAL

ELVIS♡︎

BROOKLYN

HANNA

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE

OF EBBING, MISSOURI

WHAT'S EATING GILBERT

GRAPE?♡︎

SPOTLIGHT

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK♡︎

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

/ DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

DARK WATERS

SEVEN

ARRIVAL

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

KNIVES OUT♡︎

HER

DJANGO UNCHAINED

PARASITE

22/9/22

Today we focused on units and finding a monologue to match. I wanted to research the audition needs for getting into unis/drama school that I’m interested in. This is the research I found;

Arden

•Self tape

Shakespeare monologue

Italia Conti

UCAS

BodyLanguage/ movement

first audition (digital)

1-30 Shakespeare 

contempory (1970 +)

Voice excersize - 6 excersizes

Singing

Audition

- Short extract About me Video

Answering question

Royal Central

Student finance

Audition£40

auditions

one Newcastle 

speech (2 mins)

speech(1960)

contemporary 

Devised piece

Storytelling, stand

puppetry 

movement

Piece inspired by a painting.

Bring sheet music - a song 2 mins

I was reading  ‘the lovely bones’ play script in search of a monologue and I’m half way through it and just have to finish at home. 

I’m going to continue looking through the plays we were sent.

26/9/22♡︎

Today we focused on our globe performance of the muppets Christmas carol. We started off with the singing warm up Mary did lots of different songs and warm up exercises. Then we got 100 the lyrics to the Muppets song Scrooge where we learned how to sing each line. We then started to stage it and added actions and movements. We’ve got most of it completed so we just have to practice it then stage to the rest. So far it’s going good. It’s fun to practice a different type of acting.

27/9/22♡︎

Today we were learning about monologues. we were told how there's so much research and character development you have to do to create a good monologue, my class already knew that from our lesson last year. we got told were having another monologue competition between the whole course this time though. our class is focusing on our uni/ drama school monologues but the first years are doing them from movies and TV shows. I've been looking at different plays like; the lovely bones, the clock work orange, one flew over the cuckoos nest, crushed shells and mud ect...                                                         My favourite to look at is the lovely bones so I've been reading more of it and i have found a few potential monologues I'll have to look at later. 

28/9/22♡︎

Today we did more improv for the lonely hearts characters. We had to enter the lonely hearts club and mingle to try and find people our characters bond with. My character made friends with Lexi and Heidi and had a connection to Mark who’s a boys boy. We had to do a pop quiz in our little groups to really try and get into the minds of the characters. It was really fun to try and bond with other characters as Sarah and I completely felt like the character it was weird, it felt like the character was when I was myself after ahaha. I had my prop which was a hair brush because she’s a hair dressing assistant ( I think that fits her) and she’s very thoughtful about her looks. I feel really confident about who my character is now. I find improv really really fun when it’s not in front of the whole class so I’m enjoying this :)

On the afternoon we were supposed to have our dear Evan Hanson lesson but instead we spent our time talking about UCAS. We learned what it was and how it benefited us and I actually feel quite supported knowing it will all be on ucas. It sounds very helpful and helps you get everything together. Then we went on to have a lesson with Carol where she helped us set up our UCAS accounts. I will finish setting it up at home :)

29/9/22 ♡︎   

Today we were focusing on our university and monologue top choices. We were given a sheep of paper to write our top ten of each. This was really stressful because my list for unis/drama schools is really long, I’m scared to shorten it because I feel like I need to give myself a lot of options. I was really struggling to find a monologue as well because I checked out all of the plays Kane suggested and there was no monologues for girls in there. So I thought I’d go and find a play in the LRC or at least a monologue book. I couldn’t find a play I was interested in so I looked for a monologue book instead. I couldn’t find one but luckily Kelly found one for me. Kelly said she knew everyone was a bit worried so she was helping a few people find books. I took the book upstairs and just went through it the whole time I found a few potential monologues but none of them made me feel confident about them so I decided to research some plays at home instead. 

We were working on our second years project ‘#yolo’. We’re still unsure of who’s getting casted yet, whether it be year ones or year twos. We’re thinking of casting ourselves in it so we can fully rehearse it on our own without having to work it around the other classes schedule. Also we’re all actors so of course we’re going to want to act haha. We started reading it and we only got about a quarter of the way but Ben just reading this little bit it was still so complex and deep, completely different to how the name portrays it. I think the name ruins it a bit but if we market it really well hopefully it won’t stop people from coming to watch it because the plot sounds incredible. 

03/9/22♡︎

Today is normally a lesson where we focus on a Christmas carol but instead we went to visit the globe. We needed the whole class to see the space we were going to be working with so we can envision our tour and plan it out properly. We also wanted to envision new storylines based on actual stories from the globe. Some of the stories included the two brothers who ran the globe where one had a sweet shop and one had a butchers. Then there was the story of the girl who ruptured her stomach screaming for the beetles, then there was the man that died in the audience and an 18 year old who died in a fire. All of these brought me inspiration of storylines that we’ll discuss in tomorrows lesson. 

04/9/22♡︎

Today we were looking at our globe characters. we found a lot of characters from old stories from theatres. These are all characters we thought would fit into our story. We spent the day talking about the characters and reading about their background to see if there’s any were interested in.

After this we went to tutorial and then we went to our first weighting class. We played lots of different writing games to begin our journey. We were mainly writing spontaneously without structure. This was helpful because it helped me get in a more creative headspace. Next we had to write a date a place and a character on paper and scrumple it up and get someone else’s. Then as a group we had to put al our papers together and make a story really quickly. We were in a pizza shop owned by Will Smith in the 80s. This was really fun and it made me more exited for my writing future. 

05/10/22♡︎

Today we had our last lesson of the lonely hearts column characters.  We had to go on our date with the person we felt we had a connection with last time. My character Sarah went with Adams character Mark. They went on a date to a bar where they bonded and has conversations where they got to know each other better. The date went well and they wanted to see each other again. After that we had to pick a club that our characters would join so we could do another activity where is focused on improvisation. My character picked salsa dancing and she danced with her friends she met from the lonely hearts column because she loves to dance. This was really fun and a great way to get into the headspace of the character. Finally we had a little go of our characters being at group therapy for alcoholism and this was really interesting. It was fun to put our characters into different situations and seeing what flows. Working on the lonely hearts characters has been so fun and really made improv something I’ll look forward to in the future. It’s helped me learn how to keep a scene flowing and fully create a character that I can become. 

Later on, Josh came in to talk about the globe Halloween tour with us again. We gave him all of our ideas and explained the vision we had created . He seemed so like it and see potential so now we just have to wait for Kelly to write the script so we can audition for the parts. Hearing the stone come to life again has really made me excited to start rehearsing it.

06/10/22♡︎

♡︎Alfred

♡︎Charles

♡︎Mrs Chadwick

♡︎Jack

♡︎Stage Manager

♡︎Stage Door keeper

♡︎Usherette - Doris

♡︎Usherette - Gloria

♡︎Show Host

♡︎Olive Thomas

♡︎Ivy Close

♡︎Architect

♡︎David Burlington

♡︎Witch 1

♡︎Witch 2

♡︎Witch 3

♡︎Vaudeville Performers

10/10/22♡︎

Today we continued to work on our Christmas carol performance with Tom. We did our warmup that we do to warm up our voices and muscles We went over what we learned and reminded ourselves of the blocking. Then we finished blocking the whole thing. After we did that we went over the song we learnt a few weeks ago. Then we went over the other two songs we had to learn and we taught how they’re supposed to go. I’m exited to block these songs and then put in the dialogue scenes.

11/10/22♡︎

Today we read the the script for the globe Halloween tour. It was really exciting to see it all come together and I’m actually exited for it now. I was stressed about it before but I have a clear vision of it now. When reading it Olive and Ivy stood out to me. However kelly had already asked Emie to do Ivy because she suited the part, but she was going to double cast it. I thought Olive would be more of a challenge for me since she’s bolder and more outgoing unlike me and Ivy. I told Kelly the characters we wanted and she told us auditions were tomorrow so I went home and practiced my lines with the accent I thought fit with Latoya. I took inspo from Lana Del Reys accent.

After that we went to watch the musical theatre dress rehearsal show so we could be supportive but the few of us in the writing group had to leave early because we had a special guest from the national theatre. She taught us about writing and the writing process and it actually really helped clear a few writing blocks. we did writing tasks on the first thing we think of when we see the colour red, a problem, free, I am and we also made a character where we discussed a plot. This lesson was really helpful and gave a lot of advice that we can carry forward in our writing career.

12/10/22♡︎

Today we spent our day auditioning for the Halloween tour. I went for Olive with Millie and Latoya went for Ivy so we rehearsed and auditioned together with Jack as the bartender. We all helped each other. We showed Kelly and she said they were good but to go off make them more angry and show her again so we did. We did it all again and Neely gave us some direction and said it was good. I’m not that happy with my audition because I watched Millie do it and she was really good but also I know we have different styles so her being good dosent mean I wasn’t good too.  after lunch we went to our lesson with kelly where we discussed our upcoming projects and talked about how were getting on with them. then i paired up with Harley and we worked together on a duologue from dear Evan Hanson. we broke down how the mother (who i was playing) felt during the scene and we did a task of putting our hands up when we thought our character had control in the scene, this really helped break down the scene and show the thought process behind it. After that we went with Carol and completed more of our UCAS applications.