Tuesday 30 April 2013

Preparation&Rehearsal-Suitable Audition Material Exploration




















SCHOOL PLAY

Brief Synopsis:

  • Fifteen year old Charlie has serious ambitions- to mess with teachers' heads, to front a gang, to ride the motorbike that blows all competition our of the water. But when a new music teacher, Miss Fry, arrives, things start to change.
  • First produced at the Soho Theatre, London 2001
  • Charlie Silver is bad news in south London's Comprehensive School:
  • An ongoing problem to all theatres and a bad influence on the rest of the school,
  • Charlie is given numerous detention as punishment for her misbehaviour at school however these detention periods she used to develop her learning into focus on her suppressed musical talents.
Main Themes


·         Suzy Almond's remarkable first full-length play offers variations on a familiar theme by using music as a practical metaphor and by suggesting that the teacher is often as badly screwed-up as the taught.

·         The play focuses on the edgy relationship between tough-girl Charlie and supply teacher Miss Fry

Charlie Silver

Charlie Silver is known as the schools clown however when she is influenced by Miss Fry music which not only changes her way of thinking about music but also herself.

We see Miss Fry trying to turn Charlie from a biker girl into a piano girl and allow her latent creativity to overcome her destructiveness.

Equally, Miss Fry paints a devastating portrait of the future that awaits disruptive troublemakers such as Charlie.

For each of them music offers the  one hope of redemption. But, even here, Almond resists facile uplift by showing the teacher interrupting Charlie's piano practise to find a missing chord that will resolve one of her own songs.


Why this monologue is appropriate for me?

The main reason i selected this monologue is due to the age of the character being 15. This is a similar age to me and only recently i was 15 myself so i am able to comprehend well with the age of the character. Also the monologue relates to school life and also being a similar age i have recently experienced the school environment and have seen peers of mine act in a similar way to Charlie Silver. Also in addition i have the physical appearance similar to a 15 year old


The time period of when the monologue is set was in 2001, this is beneficial to me as i have lived in this time period and are familiar with the social trends.







MY MOTHER SAID I NEVER SHOULD

Brief Synopsis:

·         This play is about difficult relationships between mothers and daughters and explores the themes of independence, growing up and secrets.
·         A story which explores the lives and relationships of four generations of women: Doris, Margaret, Jackie and Rosie. Their loves, expectations, and choices are set against the huge social changes of the twentieth century.
·         When Jackie falls pregnant with Rosie, without a husband, she is unable to cope and hands over the baby to her mother, Margaret. The play looks at the consequences of this secret and each woman's opinion on it.
·          The scenes do not follow in chronological order, so in one scene Margaret will be a young child during the war being comforted by her mother Doris and in the next Jackie will be a child visiting her grandma Doris. This can also be slightly confusing because it is not specifically mentioned how old the characters are in each scene, but mostly it is very self-explanatory.

Main Themes:
·         The main themes of the play are relationships and motherhood. It addresses the issues of teenage pregnancy, career prioritisation and single motherhood. It is also about how the different generations break free from their parents' traditions and culture.
Jackie Metcalfe: ACT 3 SCENE 5
·         Born in London in 1952. 34 years old in scene.
·         Scene set in the garden of Ken and Margret’s suburban semi, Raynes Park, London
·         Late May 1987
·         Jackie run her own art gallery in Manchester but is back in London due to Margret recently passing away
Recurring Issues
·         The structure of the play does not follow a chronological pattern-It highlights how emotional issues are passed down from generation to generation and how this affects their present and future possibilities.
·         There is a vast amount of information, history and emotion passed on through the generations through advice and repeated behaviours.
Historical and Social Context
·         My Mother Said I Never Should was written in 1985 at a time when the opportunities for woman were far greater than they had ever been before.
·         The 1980s is another decade famous for the amount of social change that occurred. During the 1980s there were a number of nuclear stand-offs between the allied USA and UK and Russia. Protests about the American nuclear presence in the UK were rife, and were particularly lead by women.
Why this monologue is suitable for me?

Thursday 11 April 2013

My Contrasting Monologues

SCHOOL PLAY by Suzy Almond


CHARLIE has serious ambitions - to mess with teachers' heads, to front a gang, to ride a motorbike. But when the new music teacher, Miss Fry, arrives, things start to change.
Here CHARLIE talks to her friend Lee about one of her music lessons.


CHARLIE:

 "She... One lesson.. .you see, some lessons she didn't actually teach. And sometimes, especially at the beginning, what she did was boring, you don't wanna hear, she drones. But now and again... One time she was about to play a song about a lady who drowned in a river, but it was nothing to do with the lesson, it was just that she liked it. I said it sounds miserable to me, miss, but she said hang on, and she told me the story: It's a sad song, she said... she fought for love and she lost. . . and now her skin is white as a lily, her lips are rose red, she's still, and floats downstream. She told me to close my eyes and imagine it was a dark moonlit night and that the water was lapping around the lady, taking her in. She said that when she got to the bridge of the song there would be a special note that didn't sound like the rest of the tune. It was a high sound, extra sad, a black key near the end of the piano - and when I heard it I had to imagine it was like a shooting star bursting across the river, trying to wake up the lady. I told her I couldn't be bothered, but when she started to play... And at the end of the second verse, when she hit that key and the sound broke, I felt the note shoot through the roof of this room like a bullet and I saw the star burst and I wanted the lady to wake up. I couldn't wait for that note to come round again. So that she'd open her-eyes." 



MY MOTHER SAID I NEVER SHOULD by Charlotte Keatley


The play is about four generations of women living this century in London and Manchester. In 1971, 19-year-old JACKIE had an illegitimate baby, Rosie. Her mother, Margaret and father, Ken, bring Rosie up as their own child, but when Margaret dies in 1987 Rosie finds her birth certificate. Here, Rosie has just accused JACKIE of wanting her own life more than she wanted a child.

JACKIE:

"How dare you! (Goes to hit Rosie but cannot.) You're at the centre of everything I do! (Slight pause.) Mummy treated me as though I'd simply fallen over and cut my knee - picked me up and said you'll be all right now, it won't show much. She wanted to make it all better. (Quiet.) … She was the one who wanted it kept secret … I WANTED you, Rosie. (Angry.) For the first time in my life I took care of myself - refused joints, did exercises, went to the clinic. (Pause.) 'It's a girl.' (Smiles irresistibly.) - After you'd gone I tried to lose that memory. (Pause. Effort.) Graham … your father. (Silence.) He couldn't be there the day you were born, he had to be in Liverpool. He was married. (Emphatic.) He loved me, he loved you, you must believe that! (Pause.) He said he'd leave his wife, but I knew he wouldn't; there were two young children, the youngest was only four … we'd agreed, separate lives, I wanted to bring you up. He sent money. (Pause.) I took you to Lyme Park one day, I saw them together, across the lake, he was buying them ice creams, his wife was taking a photo. I think they live in Leeds now, I saw his name in the Guardian last year, an article about his photographs … (Pause.) It was a very cold winter after you were born. There were power cuts. I couldn't keep the room warm; there were no lights in the tower blocks; I knew he had an open fire, it was trendy; so we took a bus to Didsbury, big gardens, pine kitchens, made a change from concrete. I rang the bell. (Stops.) A Punjabi man answered, said he was sorry … they'd moved. By the time we got back to Moss Side it was dark, the lift wasn't working - (Stops.) That was the night I phoned Mummy. (Difficult.) Asked her. (Pause.) I tried! I couldn't do it, Rosie. (Pause.) It doesn't matter how much you succeed afterwards, if you've failed once. (Pause.) After you'd gone … I kept waking in the night to feed you … A week … in the flat … Then I went back to art school. Sandra and Hugh thought I was inhuman. I remember the books hat came out that winter - how to succeed as a single working mother - fairytales! (Pause.) Sandra and Hugh have a family now. Quite a few of my friends do. (Pause.) I could give you everything now. Rosie? …"

Sunday 7 April 2013

Preparation&Rehearsal-Tension and Relaxation

Another exercise we done to make ourselves familiar with the monologues we would perform for the audition and also help us with the process of learning our lines featured us again reading the monologue out loud however when we came across a form of punctuation in the monologue we would do a 90 degrees turn. This helped us with the points of tension in the monologue and also made us aware of any rising action in the monologue.

This excercise helped me particaully with "My Mother Said I Never Should" monologue as this features a range of emotions and tension at specific points of the monologue. For example i noticed after doing this exercise that at the beginnning of the monologue there is lots of punctuation this influenced how the lines were spoken in the performance. As there was more punctuation at the beginning this therefor made the lines sharp and snappy, this portreyed Jackie's emotions at this point of the monologue as she is angry and shows the monologue starts at a high point of dramatic climax. As the punctutation decreses this shows how she has calmed down and explains in more detail her feelings towards the issue raised in the monologue.

In my other monologue "School Play" i noticed that the highest tension was towards the end of the monologue. This was as Charlie was telling the story of her experience with Miss Fry. The increase in punctuation and having to physically turning 90 degrees at every full stop showed me that the character was experiencing an increase of mixed emotions as she was facing the realisation of how her behaviour at school would dramatically impact her future career if she didnt change her ways soon!

By doing this excerised it not only made me become more familiar with the more in deapth emotions and feeling my characters were experiencing in my monologues i would perform for the audition but it also enabled me to physicalise the points of tension making them more significant and rememberable for the final performance. However i may not perform at the audition using the highest emphasis on tesion but i can use this over dramtic exercise to influence the way the lines are spoken.

Saturday 6 April 2013

Tension States

To help us as actors not only become familiar with the lines of our monologue but also to help us build understandings in a more indeapth sense we used a few specific exercises to help us develop our learnings and understandings about our monologues we would perform for our auditions.

One of these exercises we done during the rehursal process was "Tension States":

  • This exercise requires the actor to read through the monologue to firstly become familiar with the text after a breif warm up
  • Next use the full space of the room your are rehursing in by standing at the far end
  • Next the actor needs to read through the monolgoue but now thinking more indeapthly about the specific words being spoken and mainly the reasoning behind why the character would be saying these words and finally the emotion the text would be portreyed in
  • Now to apply this exercise to tension states the actor will walk across the room reading aloud the monologue but using levels to show the heights of tension.
  • For example at low tension the actor will be low to the floor and at the highest tension the actors will be streached as tall as they can be.
This is a very beneficial exercise for the actor to gain a better understanding and knowledge of the monologue but also it allows the words which hold the most tension to be emphasis. However in the final performance maybe not to as much as an overexaggerated way but the actor can use this excerise in moderation to apply small hints of the heights of tension to the monologue performance. Also the exercise helps visualise the tension states even more.



Reading each line then walking across the room using height and levels to show the amount of tension

90 degreese right turns as the end of each sentance to emphasis tension