Unit 9 log

For the first weeks of developing A Christmas Carol we began by reading through the play and educating be and ways we could present them in the story. We began to create a few tabloids which delivered a particular message and was focusing on the period in which A Christmas Carol was set in and the different people that may be around. In the videos of the tabloids below with the first two being an idea for Fred's and Fezziwig's party. I found this exercise very useful as it gave us an insight into what the party scenes could potentially look like.

Friday 21st September
Today we had the auditions for A Christmas carol and I had auditioned for the role of Belle which I then received the role Belle and Belinda after the auditions. For the auditions I read off the script , a song which I read as a monologue. The reason why I had auditioned for the role of belle is because she is a strong  character and also shows changes of emotion, which will help me work on character development and exploration and learning to express. I would also love to look more into her story and create a background to her character so it will help me portray her character in the way she is meant to be portrayed ,but to also get a better understanding on the narrative and her role in the play.

Monday 1st October-
In today’s lesson we started to think about dances that we could add and songs in the scene of the ghost of Christmas Present  . We decided that we’re were going to use “Hard Knock life “ from Annie as a song to represent Ignorance and Want. Me and Dylan play the characters of Ignorance and Want in the video which are officially played by Marshall and Faith. Through this it tells a story of how children in that day and age lived and how their lives were hard living in a orphanage. We also went through the scene with The Ghost of Christmas past and Scrooge including the song once upon a December sung by Dylan. Working on these scenes helped us stage and discuss anything that could be added or changed. We wanted to make the movement basic and not too technical as the actors are not used to doing the amount of dance we do in our lessons. Working on the dances also helped us create scenes around them in ordered for the play to flow through softly.

Thursday 4th October- 

In today’s lesson we showed the actors “It’s a hard knock life” and taught them the movement. We then rehearsed that through a couple times and then moved on to working on the scenes before and after that . This morning we went through the scenes with Ghost of Christmas past , Fezziwigs party and blocked out where everyone’s meant to be at each Particular moment. By blocking the scenes before hand gave us a chance to see what would fit where. We then worked on young Scrooge ( Kamarl's) and I ( Belle’s) scene of the proposal and the exit of Fezziwig's party which led and followed after our scene. From blocking and reading the scripts I’ve decided that I may want to add a few more lines in order to explain more of the story and show more narrative through my role. This scene  is then  followed by a duet with me and Kamarl singing “Rolling in the deep “ by Adele. Going through these scenes were very useful as I was able to see the structure of  the scenes and now can work on developing and expanding my scene. One thing I need to work on is learning the lines of Rolling In the deep and work with Kamarl on the verses we do together.

Friday 5^th October-

In Today's lesson we began by going through the play and working closely on the scenes of Fred's party. I didn't have any lines in this scene but I was someone who attended the party therefore I had to work on somewhat developing my own character . I worked on building an relationship with the other characters who spoke and learnt to react by facial expressions and little comments such-as “oh yes , I agree” and “that is very true”. Shortly after ,we began to work on Bob Cratchit's Dinner and Tiny Tim's Death. In these scene I played one of Bob Cratchits daughters called Belinda. During these scenes I interact very close with my siblings by paying games and getting ready for Christmas as this was a time to look frward to as a child. In these scenes we developed games and things we could be doing to open the scene . We decided that before the dinner my younger sister( Rebecca) and I would play hide and seek beginning with me counting. This was good because it created an atmosphere similar to how it would be with in a house hold with children and gave us a way to show the way our characters were. This character was a contrast to Belle as she was much older and Belinda was young girl so it was important to show the difference in age apart from costume change. How I did this was I used how I was as a child around Christmas , the excitement , the carefree and fun times where you had nothing to worry about but to play with your siblings and open presents all day and used being innocent as a way to develop my character.

Wednesday 10^th October

We decided to remove Hard knock life for the scene of ignorant and Want because there was not enough characters to play the children as they would need to play their other characters. We then decided to create dances for Fezziwig's and Fred's party. As mentioned above we didn't want to make the movement to technical and came up with the dance for Periwig's and Fred's party in which we made repetitive. I found today's lesson helpful as we had started the dances and had something to work from. We went through what we had to far , discussing and exploring way's we could present our character's as individuals throughout the dances. For example in Fezziwig's party I play the character of Belle and I am dancing with Young Scrooge . I used eye contact close movement and facial expressions show the relationship we had with each other in comparison to the other people who were at the party. Doing this helped the audience the comparison to how I relationship was before the party to after the party where I now cant stand Scrooge and don't want to be with him anymore. This is shown through the song we sing together.

Thursday 11^th October-

Today we worked on the dances as we had changed a few movements and taught them too the actors as when we learnt it the actors were absent. We then went through the scenes before hand and afterwards to see how we were able to transition between the dances and the scenes. Me and Karmal worked on ways we could go from Fred's dance into our proposal. We then figured out that we could finish dancing with the others and he would twirl me around and he will go down on one knee to propose , we decided this would happen centre stage with everyone frozen while this is taking place. Things that I need to work on in dances is timing for Fred's party. Now that we have learned parts of the routine it's time to focus on the details and doing every movement full out.

Friday 12^th October-

Today we continued working on everything that we done yesterday and focused on getting the dances correct and working on timing and characterization. Above is a list, we wrote a list of songs that we could use as background music and songs to sing and dance to. This was helpful because we then could filter out songs that might not actually be useful in comparison to what actually would be. Although I decided that Rolling in the deep would be the song we would sing I also thought about other songs that may help deliver the message of Scrooge and Belle's relationship and current situation.

Wednesday 17^th October-

The main focus for today's lesson was too work on the dances as they weren't yet finished nor understood by some. We spent the beginning lesson working on each dance this included Fred's party, Fezziwig's party and the final dance. By using the beginning of the lesson to focus on this was an advantage because everyone was now on the same page and could use the whole lesson to catch up. I also individually worked on my duet focusing on my verse and how I could get how I was feeling across through the words I was singing . The words “ there's fire starting in my heart”. These words explained how I was feeling from within and how much pain I was going through.

Thursday 18^th October-

In today's lesson we worked on character development. We used the Stanislavsky method to explore our characters and did hot seating in pairs to find out more about our characters individually. This exercise helped a lot because it allowed me to find out more information that I hadn't known before and made me think about different ways I could express my feeling to Scrooge about how I felt towards him . We then worked in pairs with someone who we may be interacting with a scene and said a few of our lines and focused on what the meaning was for an tried different ways of saying that to each other.

Friday 19^th October- During the lesson today we went through the scene of Tiny Tim's death and the rest of the play, Going through all the dances and songs that we have worked on so far. This helped us a lot because we became familiar with the order of the play , all the entrances and exits , songs and dances. Working on tiny Tim's scene wasl helpful as we haven't had a chance to mainly focus on this scene. I was able to work on my character and how she behaved after finding out Tiny Tim had passed as a young child and showed how close I was to my older siblings.

Wednesday 31^st October- For today we went through the dances and ran through the play again. Focusing on our entrances and exist and working on the tabloids focusing on the beginning one which will be held until the audience are seated and settled.

During today's lesson we again went through the play and then created a dance for the end of the play which everyone would be part of. This dance showed how everything turned out good in the end and the importance of change now everyone is happy. The dance was more upbeat and showed off the joyful side and how everyone loved Scrooge in the end .

Friday 2^nd November- Today's lesson consisted of going through the play and we focused on my scene with Young Scrooge going through the proposal and the break up scene. Going through the scene we decided on the song rolling in the deep and that I was going to sing it alone , verse and a chorus after the break up. We worked on movement that could be down between me and young Scrooge through out the song but ended up having me sing the song whilst young Scrooge was at the desk ignoring me.

Monday 5^th November-

In today's vocal lesson I worked on the song with Young Scrooge and worked with Charlie on how I could create emotion within the song and express that too Scrooge. I then found a backing track but decided that the backing track wouldn't work well with the story line because it was more a karaoke back and felt like a piano version would be better. Charlie recorded it ,then I tried singing along and I felt comfortable with it.

Wednesday 7^th November-

During today's lesson again we went through the all of the dances and went through all the scenes and I helped my partner as he was sick so I taught him the dance steps so he became familiar with it .We then went through I and Scrooge's scene and decided that we were going to only have me doing the song as karmal hadn't prepared and it was thought to be done better if it was a solo. This happening meant that I had to change my stage presence and sing more to the audience and have less contact with him in the song as he wouldn't be playing much attention to me. One thing I need to focus on making the song matter and make work on ways I would put my feelings across. What I will be doing to achieve this is practising singing my song In different tones and also imagining a time where I felt pain to help me make the moment feel more real and I will also study the words in depth and emphasis any important verses

November 8^th- November-26^th –Through out the 3 weeks from the 8^th -26^th We ran through the play and worked on every dance and song and started choosing costumes. We also had a Midpoint Assessment which we performed to an audience. From there own we realized that the dances need more work and focus and some scenes needed to be developed. For example my scene with young Scrooge didn't feel as if there was enough emotion so through the lesson we worked on building that connection between the characters. We also worked on the transitions into each scene to make them for fluent and not have a gap into each each one we were also told buy our teachers to project more and that we couldn't be heard when singing so we worked on projection and did  exercises to warm up our voices and bodies. One of the exercises we did was where we shouted one of our lines to another person across the circle in different emotions or the emotion your character has to portray each time getting louder and louder.

3^rd -7^th December TECH WEEK

This week we ran through everything , sorted out costume , staging , lighting, entrancing and exiting from stage. Being in the theatre allowed us to use more space and set the scene more . We were able to work on projection and timing of the dance. I  also found the Tech week useful because it allowed us to finalize everything and do any last minute changes for example, during this week we found that one of the tabloids wouldn't work because there wasn't enough people that weren't going to be in the following scene. After adjusting this we carried on going through the play thoroughly.

Unit 9 – A Christmas Carol Evaluation

Through the process of A Christmas Carol I did numerous amount of Research to help support the development of my roles in the play. As I played two female role a woman(Belle) and a child ( Belinda) .I decided to research the history of woman around that time period and found out a lot about the limited power that they had at the time but that slowly changed for better over the period. I began research to research about woman's power in marriage and owning their own properties and again found out that only later in the period did they gain that power that they were able to do so. This was important to me to find out because as my character is experiencing problems with her fiancée which leads to a break up, it allowed me have the knowledge that I had somewhat power over him and that I can still do things without him and this mainly showed through my emotion and tone in the song “Rolling in the Deep”. In regards to rolling in the deep I researched different songs that would to some extent express how I felt from within and I found the words relatable to my circumstances for example the words “We could have had it all” explains if he didn't change on me and let money and wealth change how he felt about life then there was potential for our relationship. Another verse from the song that I connected as a character with was “ There's a fire starting in my heart “ and “Finally I can see you crystal clear”. These words made me feel the emotion as she was sad and broken but also frustrated, also having founding out what he really was like ,was powerful as she realised that he's not who is was anymore. Ways I developed my characters were I used the Stanislavsky technique to help me explore my character in more depth outside the script. This was useful because I was able to find more purpose for my character and able to express through her lines and narrative.

The feedback and advice I received was to when singing and saying my lines to project out more to the audience they way I reflected on this and took action was I did a number of vocal exercises and took part in game which I mention in my logs where I shout one of my lines to the person across the room in different volumes starting from quiet to extremely loud using different emotions and tones. Doing this made me able to be louder when made me comfortable knowing when I thought that was shouting , I wasn't. Another advice that I got was for my character Belinda , I was told to in the scene in which before the dinner started where I ran out to play hide and seek ,to act as If this is something we normally do instead of just coming on stage and beginning the game. The way I approached this was I decided to tell my younger sister from behind stage to shout “let play hide and seek” as we ran on they were already in their hiding spots as I began to count.

Some of the strength and weakness of the rehearsal process was that unfortunately Musical Theatre/ Dance and Acting didn't have the same table so we were unable to work together as much as we wanted to and it was difficult as were were doing the production as one and it would have been useful to work together everyday as a whole class. One strength was were able to teach the actors who aren't familiar with the dance aspect or performance, the dances that we had included. One thing that I would have differently is added more songs as well as dances because I feel like there were many songs that could have as well as the lines , tell the story of A Christmas Carol. Something that I learnt throughout the rehearsal process of A Christmas Carol was that was time is essential as mentioned above not having the same time table meant not having as much lesson, unfortunately around this time of year people became unwell , myself as an example, some people has outside issues that had to be dealt with which meant there was days where hardly anyone was in and it became frustrating at the time but we managed to work around it and anything someone had missed they would catch up on it as soon as they returned back ,ready to move on by the following rehearsal. The skills that I developed were good stage and vocal presence as that the beginning I was not performing as much to the audience where as towards the end I began to be more grounded and began engaging with them more. One thing I need to work on more for unit 12 is projection and vocal registration as well as breathing techniques to enable me to sing any songs with more control.

I think the final performance was fairly effective as it told the story of A Christmas Carol. One positive strength was I was able to deliver the message of how I felt across to the audience for example throughout the song and my facial expressions and gestures. One improvement is too project more as at some points you couldn't hear my words, for example after the song when I said “ May you be happy in the life you have chosen” this was completely lost in the video and wasn't able to be heard by the audience.