Project Workshop 30/10/18
I OBJECT
(the) Establishment
A business organisation, public institution, or household. For example, the government, police. Those who maintain the 'status quo'.
Orthodox
Following the traditional or generally accepted rules of beliefs of a religion, philosophy, or practice. For example, an orthodox church goes exactly by The Bible.
Subversion
The undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution.
Subversive
Seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution.
Dissenting
Hold or express opinions that are at variance with those commonly or officially held.
Dissent
The holding or expression of opinions at variance with those commonly or officially held.
Satire
Mockery and ridicule of those usually in politics or other positions of power/authority and influence.
Authority
Individuals/organisations with the power to enforce decisions/give orders/unsure obedience.
Protest
A statement/action demonstrating disapproval or objection.
Objection
An action of disapproval disagreement.
Ridicule
To make a mockery of someone/something.
I Object Exhibition 02/11/18
Pictures from the exhibition:
Project Workshop 05/11/18
Today in project workshop we looked at different reasons to protest.
Once we had our movements we were put into a group with Alexandra and Nehmei. We put our movements together and rehearsed it infront of another group at the same time they did theirs.
Unit 4 Research on Banning Plastic Protests:
Plastic has become an horrendous problem for sea life all over the Earth. With miles and mountains of plastic piling up in the water, sea life are dying from mistaking plastic for food or getting tangled up.
(https://phys.org/news/2018-07-marine-fish-plastics.html) (https://www.pinterest.it/pin/120471358756925304/)
Plastic is a huge problem as so many items in a persons everyday life are made of plastic, such as:
- Plastic carier bags
- Plastic cutlery
- Plastic straws
- Plastic cups
- Plastic bottles
- Plastic food containers
Plastic is currently a popular subject of protest due to the fact it is affecting areas world wide. Protests are carried out with banners, simply refusing to buy plastic bags or reusing them and even through dance (similar to what we are doing in our movement piece).
Source: ( https://youtu.be/-N9-2UWIBu0 )
(Source: Twitter)
Unit 4:
Write a report on the Q&A/Discussion with the Hamilton cast.
The musical is based on one of the founding fathers of america, Alexander Hamilton. The musical shows his journey from nothing to the top. When Hamilton was young his mother died and he became an orphan. At the age of 14 Hamilton was placed in charge of a trading charter which traded with New York and Britain. He sent a letter to his father who was over seas and let him know about a hurricane which had hit. The letter was published and the biographer Ron Chernow was amazed by the letter hamilton had written as only a teenager. The essay impressed many people such as community readers who collected a fund to send Hamilton to North America to begin his education.
Hamilton went on to fight in the American Revolutionary War in which he was a major general.
He became friends with Aaron Burr, Marquis de Lafayette, John Laurens and Hercules Mulligan.
Hamilton later marries Eliza Schuyler who was the second oldest daughter of Phillip Schuyler who was Senator from New York and a general in the American Revolution.
Hamilton eventually dies in a duel against Aaron Burr.
2. What did you learn about the skills required to be part of the production?
You need a lot of skills in dance because every character at some point during the musical dances. You also need to be able to sing in all different parts of the scales, depending on the character. You also need to be able to act whilst doing all these different things (dancing and singing) to get the emotion across to the audience as there is no speech breaks between songs.
3. What did you find out about the challenges of working as a performer in the industry?
During the Q&A with the Hamilton cast we got to hear about different experience the actors/actresses had experienced on stage. The one that stood out to me the most was from Cleve September who plays two characters, Phillip Hamilton and John Laurens. Both these characters die in the muscial. He spoke about how difficult it was to play as Phillip Hamilton (the son of Alexander and Eliza) when he dies on stage. He said he tries to get into a mind set where he is so connected to his character that he can feel Phillip's pain as hes dying and saying goodbye to his parents. He spoke about how theres been times where he's had melt downs due to this and wont be able to speak or stop crying. This shows how connecting to your character in order to act better can be dangerous and how it can affect your mental health. This shows that you have to be in a good head space to perform otherwise it can affect you badly.
4. How can this inform your own approach to your training?
This helps show me what I need to improve on to perform. I need to improve my dance skills in technique so that i'll find it easier to dance correctly. I also need to work on my acting whilst I am singing/dancing or both. To do this I am going to practise different songs that have different emotions and act out the song with my body language and facial expressions. I must also improve my head space and be more positive.
1. What techniques were used to tell the story of 'Hamilton'? How clearly did the production and its narrative, structures and characters communicate the historical context of the story and how did they update it for a modern audience?
Unlike most musicals, this musical uses rap and hip hop. This works well in telling the story of Hamilton because rap and hip hop is seen as being from the street and Alexander Hamilton started right at the bottom before climbing his way up. This style of music could represent Hamilton's beginning. All of the narrative parts in Hamilton were mainly done through a character named Aaron Burr. This works incredibly well because Hamilton and Burr start their journey together and finish it together. This means that Burr knows all about Hamilton and his journey to the top.
The songs in Hamilton were very informing and it taught me a lot about American (and some British) history which isn't something we tend to learn about in England. They update it for the modern audience with the music style, comedic characters (King George) and funny songs and making the characters lovable and keeps you routing for them.
2. How successful were the performance in the production - were there any 'stand out' characters? What made their performances special.
The musical 'Hamilton' is amazing because each and every character stands out and has a moment to shine. However, the ones that stood out to me the most were Alexander Hamilton, performed by Jamael Westman because of his different skills through out the performance and how he kept you rooting for his character throughout the play.
Eliza Hamilton performed by Rachelle Ann Go, because of her beautiful singing voice and how well she adapted to different emotions and moments of the musical.
Philip Hamilton performed by Cleve September who also performed John Laurens because he channelled so much emotion into his characters. Both of his characters die within the muscial however, Phillips death is the only one you see on stage. He acts it so well that you really believe he's dying.
3. How did the audience respond to the work at different points? How successful was communication between the audience and the performers?
During King George's songs he makes direct eye contact with members of the audience and involves them by looking out to everyone and even pointing. This made the audience feel as though they were a part of the musical but also made the audience laugh. In many parts of the musical the audience would be shocked by a characters behaviour (For example, when Hamilton cheats on his wife). During the different death scenes the audience would react differently to the different characters depending how attached they felt to that character. For example, John Laurens death didn't get the same reaction as Phillips or Alexanders. The audience shed tears for Phillips death because he was a very lovable character and the death felt very real whereas Laurens death does not appear on stage and you don't see very much of him individually throughout the musical.
Project Workshop 12/11/18
Today we did a warm up and then practised in our groups to refresh our minds on what we had worked on in the previous lesson.
We worked on adding to the movement piece and merging the groups together so we were all doing our own group movements however, in the same area and then moving on to doing the same movements.Project Workshop 13/11/18
Today we worked on our 'I Object' movement piece and showed it to someone from the britsh museum who came in to see how we were getting on. She really liked the piece and said we gave of a protest vibe with our movements.
We added our protest slogans to the piece. Mine is "We don't eat plastic, why should fish?".
We spoke about different ideas to add to the piece and different costumes we could wear that represented our protest. I had an idea to wear plastic bags and piece of plastic.
Project Workshop 19/11/18
We started off the class by warming up our bodies so that we could achieve our movements easily.
We started to work on our own solo movement pieces that would be included in the piece. The movements had to be based around our personal protest. To help us come up with ideas we did mind maps to that focused on keywords relating to our protest.
Words such as 'tangled', 'trapped' and 'helpless' helped me to create movements based on the consequences of plastic.
(I am the one on the left)
After creating our solo pieces we were put into duos. I was partnered up with Alexandra who was protesting against parents ignoring or neglecting their children.
We combined some of our movements and it worked really well.
Project Workshop 20/11/18
Today we continued to go over our solo and duet pieces to remind ourselves what we did. Me and Alexandra spoke about how our movements within the piece related to both of our protests. For example, in my movement that represents the ocean it can show how the ocean is desperate and calling for help because it being suffocated by the plastic but could also represent an abusive parent which links into Alex's protest.Another movement that links to both our protests is also when we put our hands over our mouths. This represents how the ocean and sea life can't vocally ask for help because they are unable to speak but also shows how abused children are often too scared to say anything.
To further develop our piece Alex came up with the idea of making the 'oceans' movements more violent so it could link in more to her protest. We started to make sure there was more contact between us.
Later during the lesson Nick from the British museum came to see how our performance was getting on. He really enjoyed it and said it was better than he expected and could really see our protests come to life throughout the piece.
To make our performance better I think we could be more coordinated on our speaking parts, especially when we all shout "our opinions matter". We could also be more coordinated on our movement areas.
We started to work on bring our solo and duet pieces into our main piece.
Project Workshop 26/11/18
We started to continue on our protest piece and then finish it.
- As a group I think we could project more in speech.
- Be more in sync in movements where we have to be.
- We need to consider spacing once we go into the second clump.
- We need to consider timing during our speaking sections.
The Performance
WKC theatre:
British Museum:
No comments:
Post a Comment