link to devision blog

http://alihfield2.blogspot.co.uk

more pics

dress rehearsal

The dress rehearsal did not go very well, it took a lot longer than anyone had hoped, this was due to the fact that not many people knew their lines or didn't feel comfortable without there script in hand. The dress rehearsal was also one of the first times we rehearsed in the main hall and the new space threw some people off ( myself included ) however as the days went on we became more accustom to the new space and people started to learn their lines so we could rehearse better. I feel i always act better when i am in costume because then i can really get into the head of my characters and achieve a better understanding on how they are feeling at that moment in time. I also felt it went well because i knew how long it would take for me to change character outfits due to the fact that i played 4 different people so i had to do 1 or 2 quick changes, this helped me on the night so i knew i had to put my costumes somewhere behind stage that i could get to them when i needed them, over all i think that the dress rehearsal was a huge success and i am glad it went as well as it did because it could have gone a lot worse.

the music we used

http://www.tim-baker.com/grapes-of-wrath/audio.html

Improvised Scene

Opening Scene

dust bowl research

the dust bowl is a name given to the a drought that occurred in America in the 1930's it caused crop to stop growing and covered vast far land in dust. Okalahoma texas and many other southern states had little rainfall, light soil and heavy winds, this was a terrible combination of events that helped cause the great depression of america, because of years of repeated dust storms,100 million acres of farmland no longer had enough topsoil to grow crops so this caused families to become desperate as they could not grow food to sell or feed themselves, thousands of people moved west to states like California hoping to find work by 1940 it is estimated that 2.5 million people moved due to the dust storm.

Performance pictures

Dance scene

In this scene the family have been staying at the weed patch camp for a while and are about to have a dance. I run onto stage after the scene with Ma Rosa shaun and a crazy religous lady called Elizebeth. In the dance scene i stand on a block infront of the truck and direct the dance i do not interact with any characters reaply in this scene apart from shaking peoples hands after the dance i feel this scene qent really well as everyone remembered the dance and i did not mess up and lines when calling out the dance moves. Becuase i was standing on a block away from the other i did not have to worry about getting in anyones way during this scene.

Propietor scene

In this scwne Tom Al and Casy arrive at a camp to pick up the family who they left at the camp ( this happens inbertween scenes ) I play the propietor who runs the camp. He is a very mean and greedy man as he doesnt allow Tom and the other 2 stay there unless they pay another 50 cents. I feel this scene went really well as my interaction with Tom went smoothly as we both knew our lines. In this scene the propietor is suppost to be a strong in control character. I achieved this by the way that i sat and stood. I decided that he would sit relaxed in his chair and not react when people talked to him. When Tom shouts and me i decided that i should stand up and go right to his face and shout to show the amount of power he has. I feel that i did block Phil when he came on as the man going back as when i am sitting in my chair he walks around the back of me them to my right. On the performance night i could not prevent this as i was sitting down. I tried my best to rock the chair i was on so that the audience could see it

Weedpatch director scene

In this scene the family just escaped the hooverville fire and end up at a camp run by the government. At this point i play the weedpatch director who is a government officail who runs the camp. The director is a lot diffrent to the propietor as he doesnt care if the family has money or not as long as they earn their keep 'picking up garbage, keeping the play clean stuff like that'. I think that this scene went really well as i didnt forget any lines and neither did liam so the scene ran smoothly without any stops. Because it was only me and liam on stage of the most part i did not have to worrg about blocking as no one was on my side of the stage.

proprietor writing in role

All these shiftless fella’s on the road these days, it sickens me. They just sit around a cause trouble with my campers, everyone has to make a living and these Goddamn shiftless fella’s are making people move on faster than they normally would and I’ve started loosing money. Those damn Okies that camped here earlier expected me to let them have three extra people for no charge, those Okies are so damn dumb that they don’t know what they are asking half the time. But as long as they paid for who ever come n stayed I guess that’s alright I made my money.

weinfield writing in role

Ma says that when we get to California things is going to be better; she says we are going to get a big house and we will get jobs and money, I’m really excited to be on the truck maybe Al will let me drive it, Al is my best brother. But I’m glad that Tom is back, I don’t remember him much but he was always nice to me, and grandpa said that he done the right thing, but grandpa aint been speaking much since we got on the truck, he’s just been asleep and grandma is real upset about something. Pa says I aint aloud to sit in the back to the truck till later cos there is something there I aint aloud to see that im too young, but im not too young im 10 years old I aint a kid no more I help out on the farm with Noah and I help ma around the house, when we get to California things are gunna be different.

Family table scene

In this scene Tom comes home and the family welcomes him with open arms. In this scene i play weinfield.

In this scene i walk on with uncle John who speaks to Tom. Tom says "how you kid" to me but because weinfield proberly doesnt remember tom due to his young age he only says "hello" uncle John then gets me to set up the table. The first time we done this it went a bit slow but the more and more we rehersed we got more comfortable with the stage and where props are. I run around a lot in this scene as i am playimg a 10 year old but Pa and uncle John both tell me to calm down so i sat on the end seat of the table next to Noah, i almost block Noah from the audience so when i sat down i made sure to sit hunched with me lega crossed on the chair to make sure he was visible. When Al comes in he kicks me off the seat, this is to represent that weinfield is the least powerful person in the family and is pushed around by the whole family. I found it difficult to play such a young character in the era the play is set as i did not know if he would understand or relise how his family where struggling in the time but i feel the more we rehersed the more i got into the head of weinfield and starting to think like him.

the weedpatch director

The weedpatch director is the opposite to the propietor, he is kind and open hearted. The weedpatch director doesnt care about money as much as he does taking care of people in his camp, this is shown by the fact he doesnt actually want money ' the camp site costs a dollar a week, but you can work it out' this means that the family can work for their keep and dont have to pay if they havnt got the money. The weedpatch director doesnt have that many lines so i dont know how i want to act him, i want him to contrast with the propietor so the audience knows it is a diffrent character.

proprietor

The proprietor is a horrible person, all he cares about is making money, this is shown by the way he speaks to Pa, the propietor wants the family to pay an extra 50 cents so that four me people can stay, it would not make any diffrence to him if the Tom pa and uncle john srtay with the rest of the family, if they stay in the same area and dont have more food it would not make any diffrence to him if they stay or not and i think he knows this but wants the money anyway. The proprietor is a very strong character this is shown by how he stands up to Tom when he asks about the deputy sheriff, the proprietor almost snaps when he says ' No he aint, and the time aint come when us local folks got to take no talk from you goddamn bums neither.' this shows that he is quick to react and that he is very proud of if state and town and he doesnt like people coming into his area and making trouble, he also snaps at 'the man going back' because he starts to talk to the joans about how there is nothing waiting for them, i think this is because the proprietor is worried that the joads will turn around and leave and he will loose 50 cents, he tries to undermind the man going back by calling him a 'labour faker'. i dont yet know if i want to base the propietor on any character from other plays or if i want to make him my own and play him how ever i feel is right.

winfield character

Winfield who is a 10 year old boy, because he is the youngest character in the play he has the least power because of this, all the characters push him around, when we were acting out the dinner scene i was kicked out of my chair by danny's character, i feel like im going to play this character as a quite boy who keeps to himself as he doesn’t actually say much even around his family, because Winfield is a young boy he is going to move a lot so I plan to only stand still very rarely and when ever I have to stand/sit I will still move because young children rarely sit still. I plan to base Winfield loosely around Mickey and Eddie from blood brothers, I want to base him around Mickey’s movement and Eddies quite personality, I think Winfield doesn’t say much because he is too young to understand what is happening and because of this I fell he will adapt to life on the road better than the other family members. When Tom first appears he says hello to Winfield, I would expect a young boy who hadn’t seen his brother tom since he was six would be really excited about Tom finally coming home but all Winfield does is say ‘hello’ then runs off, this could show that Winfield is not comfortable around new people, even know Tom is his brother, because he hasn’t been there for four years it means that to Winfield he is a stranger and he could be scared of Tom because of all the stories of how he killed a man with a shovel.

23rd october

I am really happy about what happened today, Miss Cordell told me that when the cast is dancing I get to stand on a higher platform and direct the dance, Miss wrote down all the things I will have to say and I will try to learn it by friday. Miss Cordell said that she would like me to play guitar whilst on the platform, I think I would like to base my character on Johnny Casino from grease, and I would like to wear a cowboy hat and a waistcoat, I will discuss my characters costume with miss closer to the performance day.

11th october

Today i felt went really well, we manage to do most of the first scene. I feel like my character of weinfield is coming on really well i feel like i am really connecting with the character. I need to do more research on my other character the purpiotor as i am not confident playing him yet i plan on reading his scene ans memorizing his lines by next lesson so that i can really grt to grips with the character and how he acts. Miss said that he is the owner of the camp so he is going to be very confident and be very strong towards other characters.

10th october doubles lesson

today we got a lot of work done, we started off by writing down a structure for our performance so that we knew what we had done and what other scenes we will have to do, after we got the structure of out performance we started off by going through all of the scenes that we had already made so that we knew where we had to go and what we had to do. I did not feel that this lesson went as well as it could have and i have a feelinh that our doubles performance with miss will not be ready in time unless we start to work together more and reallu get working hard.

tuesday 1st october

Todays lesson went really well, in miss Cordells lesson we got our parts for the play 'grapes of wrath' i have four parts in total, the 2 roles in the first act the only character i acted today is winfield who is a 12 year old boy, because he is the youngest character in the play he has the least power because of this, all the characters push him around, when we were acting out the dinner scene i was kicked out of my chair by danny's character, i feel like im going to play this character as a quite boy who keeps to himself, so far he has had one line, this shows that he is shy even around his family. In Mr Nobiles lesson we were set the task of making a 15 minute performance based on the title 'morning routine' and we have to base it on a certain performance group, my group consisted of Me Rosie Liam and Zach, we decided to use DV8, i had my guitar today so my group asked if i would play it in the performance, for the music i decided to use 'give me love' by ed sheeren as i felt this fitted in with the movement the rest of the group was doing, after lesson sir asked me if i could play guitar and talk at the same time, i can so he asked if i could write a monologue for the start of the play about a morning routine, i tried to at home but i havent been able to write one as of yet, i plan to have it written by monday.

26th september

today did not go as well as i hoped.

we started off really well and rehersed the first scene of our workshop. this went really well because we hadnt rehersed in a while but everyone remembered what they had to do.

however the rehersal went down hill when we were discussing the next scene the group split in two and both discussed what they thought should happen. however this was not planned so when we discussed as a group we could mot agree on what should happen. one group wanted jake ( who is playing a child) to be older in the next scene. however not everyone wanted this so the group couldnt agree on that. also one group wanted zach to be the one who wakes up the toys ( all the cast apart from jake and zach) this created confusion as no body knew what to do. we decided tp sit down and talk through what everyone wanted but we couldnt decide on anything. miss had to eventually step in so that we could do something. with only 10 minutes left of lesson we decided to put all the diffrences and argueing aside and come up with a scene. this scene would be one of the final scenes and jake would get turned into a toy. it starts with jake standing on his bed and all the other cast walking around his bed singing a childs song repeatedly 'round and round the garden like a teddy bear, one step two step tiggley under there' we would repeat this 3 times. then jake will fall into our arms. we will lower him down and pull the cover over him. he will then put his make up on and make himself look like a toy. the lesson did not go as well as i would have hoped but im glad we finally got a scene made. 

thurday 19th september

Today we started off by disscussing what we would like to do for our performance work shop, first we were going to do a young girl being scared as she sits and watches a circus performance, but we decided that this would be to difficult to do in such a short space of time so we changed the idea to a young boy who is going to sleep after packing his toys away, after he does this and falls asleep his toys come to life and crowd around his bed. I play one of the toys, at first i couldnt decide what type of toy to be, i was sitting against the wall and thought about a replica revolver handgun and thought i could use it, that gave me the idea of being a cowboy as the costume will be easy to make as I already have most the items needed, we started to create the first scene to our performance, it starts of as a blackout then jake walkes in and turns the light on, he the proceeds to pack away his toys, after he does this he turns the light off and gets into bed. Zack walks across the room and turns on some music, as the music plays all of his toys come to life and slowly crowd around him, Jake then screams and the lights turn on as this happends we all drop to the floor exept Zach who stays standing, this is when the scene ends.

my first post thats a little late

Today in class we had Mr Noble, for the past few weeks we have been focusing on physical theatre, he showed us a video of a dance group who was focused on exhaustion so sir had us do a bunch of exercises to get us tired out such as running around the class room as fast as we can, running up the steps as fast as we can, punching the air for 10 seconds, jumping up and down for 30 seconds etc, this went on for 50 mins, by the end i felt like i was dead, i couldnt breathe properly, my vision was a tad blurry and i couldnt walk straight very well, i had a really bad pain in my throat and mouth that lasted for about 10 mins, all i wanted to do was sit down and rest, i think sir done this so that we knew exactly how someone who was worn out completely would feel so that we could act it better and really connect with our characters also i think he done it to show us our limits and how far our bodies can go, i was able to do this exercise for a lot longer than i thought i would and when sir made it into a contest i was able to go a little longer.