Lesson 3 - 22nd of November

Last week we focused on creating truth. We try to create truth in our theatre because if a piece is truth full then the audience find it much more believable and may even find that they relate with some of the characters. We played a game called 'I don't believe you.' in which someone would leave the room, having been given a scenario, and then walk into the room from the scenario act just show their reaction, they where told to act as naturally as possible. We played the game to give us a taste of the kind of acting we will be doing in D.N.A as it is a naturalistic play. From watching people playing this game i learned how easy it was to accidental overplay things. Skye's scenario was that he had just been diagnosed with cancer, i think that he created a really truth full performance because he didn't overplay it e.g crying, screaming, lying on the floor, instead he simply locked the door behind him, sat in a chair and thought. The way he portrayed his inner emotions was through his thought processes, although he was blank on the outside you could see that on the inside he was terrified. After break we created a scene using only non-verbal communication, communication without sound. Me and my parter created a scene in which my parter was in a waiting room and I entered to tell her that her brother had not survived his operation. I think it was a truth full piece because the lack of verbal-communication seemed as if it fitted the situation, its wasn't a change to how that scene would play out in reality, many people would react in the way we did which was to sit down after a hug and reflect.

This is Konstantin Stanislavski (January 17, 1863 - August 7, 1938.) He was a renowned theatre director and is widely regarded as the king of naturalism as he was one of the first directors to move away from the classical melodrama and bring something much more real to the stage. We have been looking at him because D.N.A is a very naturalistic piece of theatre.
















Finally we had to work out 'sub-text' for one of Leah's monologues. Sub-text is what a character is really think or really means by a line. We write out sub-text so that we have a better understanding of a character, if we are thinking one line whilst saying another it allows you to deepen your character and make them more three dimensional. I think it will be very important that we make our production of D.N.A as truth full as possible as then it will have a profoundly deeper effect on the audience thus making it a far more interesting and enjoyable performance.

lesson 2 - 15th November

First of we created, in groups of 5, a 1 minute version of DNA. We did this to clarify us on the main points of the story. I think this helped me as i now have a better understanding of the plot. One thing i noticed was that all of the pieces has the same key parts; they killed Adam, they made a plan, they found out he wasn't dead, they killed him, they went their separate ways.
We then discussed  the role of the postman, i believe that the role of the postman (who is never seen or heard) is to draw empathy from the audience, strengthening the message of the poem.
Then we got into different groups and each group created a 'Role-on-the-wall'. an outline of a person (me) with their real feelings on the inside and what people see of them on the outside. This allowed us to clearly map out our opinions of what the characters where truly like. The character we looked at was Brian, we discovered that he was deeply insecure. We then created short scenes which displayed our characters home life, giving them a back story. A piece of theatre usually only shows a relatively short piece of a characters life, a back story is the rest of their life, before and after the events of the piece. Having a back story for your character is very use full as it allows you to further your understanding of your characters emotions. We created a scene portraying Brian's home life, his father was neglectful and ashamed of Brian, he didn't want to speak to him and whenever something went wrong he blamed it on him, in contrast Brian's did pampered and babied Brian's sisters making Brain nervous and insecure. Finally we discussed the idea of nature vs nurture. Personally I believe that your personality and habits are primarily determined by the environment you are in, the things you are exposed to for any period of time will shape the way you are, if as a child you play fought with siblings and friends you may grow up to be more aggressive than someone who was encouraged to read books, but this is also not set in stone, some people will react differently to different situations, for instance if someone has grown up in an abusive home they may chose to take the wrong path and give up on making a success of their life but someone else in the same situation may choose to pick themselves up and strive for better things, this is in their nature.

Today we did a first read through of the play and it looks like it could be great! I found the play really interesting and saw some great potential in a few of the characters. I am really looking forward to doing this play and can't wait for next week.