Noughts & Crosses Evaluation

On October 16th, 2014, our theatre class performed the play 'Noughts & Crosses' to our parents and theatre teachers at Settling In Evening. Overall, I think that the performance went very well and I enjoyed being a part of it.
I think that I have learnt a lot and developed my acting skills since I started at the BRIT school. 
 I feel that we worked on our scene a lot and it turned out well in the end. We staged our scene to show the different status' and objectives of the characters. For example, I was seated away from the rest of the family to show that I was very distant to them. Also, I used a strong posture and different body movements throughout the scene to show that I was an upper class 'cross'. An example of a body movement was pointing my finger at Jasmine to show that I was angry at her. I also gestured my hand towards Sephy as if to prompt her to speak. Throughout the term, I learnt to develop my vocal skills, project my voice, use pauses for dramatic effect and change the tone of my voice to suit the character. By using my voice, I was able to show that I was in control and show that I had power. In my performance, I did this through using a bold voice with a low pitch to sound forceful. I took the comments from my peer assessment on board and raised my voice to show anger, focused more and stayed in role, even though there were minor distractions.
I think that we could have improved our scene by having more eye contact with the audience and better transitions due to some struggle with taking off the chairs and finding a place to put them. I could have improved in my scene by feeling more comfortable on stage. As I was feeling slightly nervous, I found that occasionally I rushed some of my lines. I should work more on my confidence and slowing down my lines.
I applied most of the skills I learnt in lessons to my performance and I have enjoyed my time studying Theatre at The BRIT School. I am excited to see what the next term brings.

Final Dress Rehearsal - 16/10/14

Today, we began the lesson with a few warm ups and quickly ran through the transitions of each scene. Then went straight into performing our play to the other theatre class. This was done in preparation for our evening performance. The play went well and there were very few interruptions. However, there were a few things our class needed to improve on.  For example, we needed to know all of our cues (for the bomb scene and the sex scene) so that the play could run faster. Personally, I think that the play as a whole went very well when we performed it to the other class. After we had performed our adaptation of the play, we watched the other class perform theirs. When their play had finished, each of the classes gave each other feedback. I really enjoyed watching their play as it was interesting to compare the classes and see what they had done differently. I thought that their interpretative dance at the end was very good as it made you think about what you had seen in the play and it made you remember the main parts of the play. The dance showed the point of view from each character. I also thought that their bomb scene was brilliant and the transitions were great as they happened really quickly.

.

Communicating Objectives

You can communicate a characters objective through different acting techniques and skills, including body language, movement and voice. In the play 'Noughts & Crosses', I portray the character 'Kamal Hadley'. His objective is to keep his daughter safe and away from the McGregor family. He wants Sephy to go to boaring school. However, she doesn't want to go and leave Callum McGregor. When I play Kamal, I raise my voice to show that I am angry and to show that I am serious about Sephy going to boarding school. I also change the tone of my voice to go low to make myself sound very forceful. I am not close with Jasmine anymore, as we are divorced so when I say 'Aren't we, Jasmine?', I make my voice bolder and deeper. I do this as if I am forcing her to agree with me. 
To communicate my objective, I use different movements and body language. For example, I show that I am very distant to the family by facing and talking in the opposite direction of them. I also point my finger to show Sephy that I am in control. When I say 'Thats the end of it', I swipe my hands across each other too show that the conversation is over and I have nothing else left to say. I feel that I have developed my character well and shown his objective whilst performing.

Peer Assessment By Robyn Harriot

Scenarios - 09/10/14

In this lesson with Ms Lee, we started with our warm up's and played an activity with many different scenarios. The teacher would read out a scenario and we had to find a partner to create the scenario with. It was interesting because each pair chose a different way to perform the scenario. Some of the scenarios included a football player yelling at a referee, an argument with the dentist and two lovers saying goodbye at an airport. However, in this activity we were only allowed to use movements and sounds, but no full words. This was difficult but also very enjoyable and it helped to work on our acting skills. It improved the way we worked with our bodies during a performance. It also helped us with improvisation and knowing how to react quickly if something unexpected happens during a performance. After this activity, we ran through our scenes again, trying to make them as good as they could possibly be. We were also put into groups of two, where we had to write a peer assessment sheet for another actor in a different scene. This helped us to see what other people thought of our performance and to find ways of improving it. When the teacher watched my scene, she told me that my posture and body movements were great as they suited the character. However, she said that I could improve by using more anger and disgust in my tone of voice.
In the lesson after this (13th October 2014), our class completed a full rehearsal of the play from start to finish, with Mr Crowther helping us to perfect it.

Practicing & Polishing - 02/06 /10/14

In both of these Theatre sessions, our aim was to start perfecting each of our scenes in the play and to rehearse it all the way through without any interruptions. In Ms Lee's session, we read through the script, went through many of the scenes and wrote up targets for ourselves. In Mr Crowther's, we rehearsed our scenes, gave feedback to one another and devised another scene to begin the play with. Half of the class are all together standing tightly in the middle of the room. We create a different action for each side we turn to. The first is a look of disgust, the second is a punch in the air, the third is crossing our arms and the last position is reaching out using our arms. Then, the other half of the class walk into the room and the 'pack' separates. We start chanting things like 'Blankers Out' and 'No Blankers in our school'. After this, Amaia screams 'Stop - You're all behaving like animals'. At this point, the rest of the class sit down at either side of the traverse stage. I think this is great as an opening scene as there is a lot of tension created and it shows what the play is based around, with the look of a protest going on and a large divide between two groups. It also intrigues the audience to want to know more about what is going on.

Staging In Slow Motion - 29/09/14

During this lesson, we completed our usual warm ups and started an activity to help us project our voice to a certain person. You had to point at someone and speak a line from your play to show who you were addressing. This helped to show us who was in command and how to address different people. After this, we got straight into rehearsals for "Noughts & Crosses". The teacher watched our performances and gave us some advice to make our scenes better. He helped me to develop my character using different gestures and body movement. For example, I point my finger at "Jasmine" to show that I am in command and that I am angry at her. After this, we rehearsed the intimate scene between "Callum" and "Sephy" again. This time, we added movement with our line. For example, you would walk onto the stage and address one person, then they would address the next person. We also began to direct the Dundale shopping centre bomb scene. We all have to run onstage and say "Sephy, you have to get out of here. Right now". We all surround Francesca (Sephy) until Ellis, who plays Callum, runs onto the stage. At this point we all kneel down on the floor. When the bomb explodes, we all have to fall back onto the floor in slow motion. At first, this looked very over the top, but the teacher showed us how to make it look dramatic and effective. I like this scene as it uses different theatrical techniques.

Technical Terms: Voice

Voice can be used in so many different ways to portray a character. In the play "Noughts & Crosses", I will be portraying the character "Kamal" using both body language and different tone of voice. Some examples are listed below:

"I worry sometimes that Heathcroft doesn't quite stretch you enough." 
I use a pause between 'quite' and 'stretch' to show that he isn't sure what word to use and doesn't fully understand his daughters situation.

"So, how's school going, princess?" 
At the end of this line, my pitch goes up to show that I am asking a question. If you do not do this, it will seem as though you are giving a statement.

"Your mother and I are in complete agreement on this. Aren't we Jasmine?" 
I use a very slow pace when reading this line to show that my character is quite bitter and spiteful to his ex - Jasmine. My tone of voice deepens and I emphasise my characters voice to show that I am being a very forceful and a slightly aggressive character.

"It'll all work out, princess. Trust me." 
My volume lessens in this line to show that I am more calm and relaxed than I was before. My voice also sounds softer when I read this line, as I am trying to make another character feel relaxed.

The Haka - 25/09/14

To begin the lesson, we completed our vocal and body warm ups, pronouncing vowels, using breath control, stretching and loosening up our bodies. To boost our confidence and help to use different gestures for different emotions, our class was put into groups to create a Haka - A war dance involving chanting which is performed by rugby teams. Our group chose to portray anger, by using loud, forceful noises and strong, stern body language. To degrade and humiliate the opponent team, we stuck our tongues. We also clenched our fists to show that we were angry and not going down without a fight. I feel that this helped to make me less shy and boost my confidence. After this, we rehearsed our scenes from the play "Noughts & Crosses". I now know all of my lines off by heart and can start concentrating on portraying my character using more emotion and body movement and gestures. Ms Lee was very pleased with our group's performance.

Traverse Staging

When the audience sits on either side of a stage, it is known at traverse staging.This type of stage is great at creating an intense atmosphere. Generally, the middle of the stage is used for direct address to the audience, where an actor must constantly turn their head to look at each side of the audience. Either sides of the stage are then used for different scenes in a play. Traverse staging is also a form of catwalk. There is generally not a lot of scenery for the performance and it doesn't have a large backdrop like many other shows do. An example of a play using traverse theatre is when The Derby Playhouse Community Theatre created a large production based on the events on Christmas Day in the trenches of World War 1 in 1914. The German and British armies face each other across the stage, creating a lot of tension. There were hundreds of people acting as soldiers when the play began in 1991.

Rehearsals - 22/09/14

With Mr Crowther's help, I helped to develop my character "Kamal" from the play "Noughts & Crosses". We got into our group and read through our scripts. As we had already staged our group's piece of drama, we were able to rehearse our lines, using emotion and tone of voice to portray the character. After this, the class was each given a few lines to learn as a part of an intimate scene between Callum and Sephy in they play. This way, we would all be part of a scene together and say a line each. This makes it a lot less awkward than it would be with only two people taking part in the scene. It also looks and sounds effective as the audience's heads will keep turning to try and see who is saying what. I like the way Mr Crowther has planned this scene out. After this, we rehearsed the whole play using traverse staging.

Why Should An Actor Warm Up Their Body And Voice?

An actor must warm up so they can feel and look less tense on stage. This can help to develop a character through posture, movements and also tone of voice. Warming up also gets you prepared, energised and less nervous for performances. If you do not warm up, there is also a chance that you could hurt your body or strain your voice. It is also best to warm up your voice so that you have better breath control and can fully project your voice on stage. To fully portray a character, you must get into the same mindset as them. Therefore, you must warm up your body and make yourself more awake to help your concentration and focus on stage. Warming up also helps to get your brain functioning better as it speeds up your reaction time and gives you better memory, which is important when remember lines from a script. Overall, I believe that warming up is very important for an actor due to many different reasons.

Tongue Twisters - 18/09/14

As usual, at the beginning of our lesson, we warmed up so that we wouldn't hurt our bodies or our voices. After this, we played a small activity that would help with articulation and the pronunciation of our words. We were put into small groups and had to "audition for The X Factor". In our performances, we had to include a genre and a tongue twister to show to the class. Our group decided to perform the tongue twister, "How much wood, would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck, could chuck wood?". The genre we decided on was Gospel. I began the tongue twister by clapping and speaking the tongue twister in a high pitched voice. Later on, two other people in the group repeated certain words for effect. We received good feedback from the rest of the class, who claimed our performance was "catchy" and "entertaining". I feel that this activity helped me to boost my confidence and it also taught me to open my mouth more when speaking, to make sure that people could hear me and to make sure my pronunciations were correct. After this, we were put into our "Noughts & Crosses" groups to run through our scripts and develop our characters. Ms Lee came around to watch each of our groups perform so that she could give us constructive criticism.

Character Profile

Name: Kamal Hadley
Gender: Male
Age: 48
Race: Black
Occupation: Deputy Prime Minister
Spouse: Jasmine Hadley
Children: Minerva Hadley, Persephone Hadley
Grandchildren: Callie Rose McGregor-Hadley
Clothing: Smart, Formal, Tucked In

Types Of Staging - 15/09/14

Today, we had our first lesson with Mr Crowther. As a class, we went through lots of body warm ups and voice exercises to make sure that we wouldn't hurt ourselves or strain our voices. Our teacher helped us to find our neutral position which we could form into our character from the play 'Noughts & Crosses'. Whilst in your neutral position, you should make sure your posture is upright, make sure you are in a stance where you can stand still and slightly bend your knees so that you can start walking quickly. After this, Mr Crowther taught us about the many different types of staging in theatre and why they are good for different types of things. For example, traverse staging can be used as a catwalk or a stage for when two people are reflecting each other, for example, if they had an argument, they would be very distant. Traverse staging can also be used to build up tension. An example the teacher gave us was a very long walk up to a desk where an important person is seated, like a boss of a company and an employee. Proscenium staging gives all of the audience a good view of the people on the stage as the actors can face the audience at all times. It is almost like looking into a window. Thrust staging generally consists of three sides of people around the stage and the fourth side being a backdrop. This makes a large square or rectangle stage involves the audience. In the round is another form of staging. It is made up of a stage, completely surrounded by an audience. This gives the audience a 360* view of the actors and really gets the audience excited. When we had learnt about staging, we were put into groups and given a script to learn for a performance on October 15th for settling in evening. In our group, I play the character 'Kamal' from 'Noughts & Crosses'. By the end of our lesson, we had staged our scene, according to how the characters were feeling and for the events that were going to occur.

Video Clip & RSC Pack Review

The video clip attached shows the trailer for an adaptation of the book "Double Cross" by Malorie Blackman. The characters in the video show their status in many different ways. The "Noughts" (white people) in the video show that they are from a lower class because of their bad posture. They also show that they are very 'Gangster' through their choice of clothing, for example, the scarf around his face to hide himself and wearing a baggy shirt. However, the "Crosses" (black people) show that they are from a higher class and status because they have a very good posture and wear posh, clean clothing. The clip shows that the white people want equality as its seems as though the black people are superior, but 'Callie' doesn't know what to do as she is in love with a white person from a lower status and class than her.
The RSC pack provides many helpful resources to help you get to know the play better. It shows all the main characters, their relations, and a basic layout and a summary of the story. It also gives details of what happens in the story as it progresses. The pack also shows the main themes of the play - some of these are; divided society, slavery, racism, terrorism, love and friendship. It explains how Malorie Blackman wrote the story, not focusing on the description and location, but on the concept and the characters. THE RSC pack also explains how "Noughts & Crosses" strongly relates to "Romeo and Juliet". This information pack was incredibly useful as it helped to give me a stronger insight into the play. It also helped me to understand why Malorie Blackman made certain decisions when writing the story.

Warm Ups, Improvisation & Transitions - 11/09/14

In Ms Lee's lesson, I learnt to develop my improvisation skills, creating smooth transitions between scenes and showing emotion through body language. At the beginning of the lesson, we had a small discussion about what "Noughts & Crosses" was about, and how each character had different feelings and emotions, based on certain situations in the play. We did many different warm ups for our voice and body. One of the exercises was to speak the vowels (a,e,i,o,u) in one long breath. This helped us with our breath control. Another one of the exercises was to hold a note for a while and go up the scale, to help us get the right pitch and tone of voice. As a class, we also warmed up our mouths to help with articulation. This is so that we could pronounce our words and speak properly without stuttering or mixing up our words. One of the exercises was to pretend that we were chewing gum. For this we had to exaggerate our mouth movements. To warm up our bodies, we did lots of stretching and some exercises using lots of body movement.
To improve our improvisation skills, we played an activity where we walked around until told to stop. When we stopped, we had to turn to the person next to us and start acting and creating a scenario. One of my improvisations was about me pretending to have a broken back, needing help to stand up from a fellow partner. This helped to develop our reaction time so that we could get into character quickly. After this activity, we created freeze frames for different words in the play, "Noughts & Crosses", helping us to show characters through different positions and facial expressions. This task also showed us how to create smooth transitions from scene to scene.
Overall, I really enjoyed the lesson and felt that I developed many of my acting skills.

Noughts & Crosses - 04/09/14

At the beginning of today's lesson, both year 10 theatre classes joined together to complete some activities and games to help develop our acting skills. To gain trust with fellow students we did a very fun exercise. The teacher numbered all of the the students from 1 to 5. When your number got called out, you had to pretend to faint and the other people had to catch you. This also helped to fasten our reaction time. It is important as sometimes you have to react to things in many different scenarios when performing.
After this, we played a game where two people joined together to make a 'door' and another person had to walk through the doors with their eyes shut. The people who were the 'doors' had to make many different noises; one was to attract the person, another was a warning sound and the last one was to let the person know that they had successfully made it through the door. This game taught us about having spatial awareness. It also helped us to learn how to relate noises to different messages (for example, a beeping alarm sound for the warning sign). I found this game difficult as it was hard to imagine where you were in the room with your eyes shut.
When we completed our activities, the theatre classes separated into two rooms. In room 411 with Ms Lee, we finished reading the script of the play 'Noughts & Crosses" by Malorie Blackman. All of us got to read for different characters in the play. There were so many big plot twists! I really enjoyed reading this play as it puts everything into perspective because it turns racism in our society around. The story is about black people (crosses) being superior and white people (noughts) being looked down on. It follows two young people (Callum and Sephy) who fall in love but are torn apart because they are not racially equal. "Noughts and Crosses" is strongly based upon William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". As the story progresses, Callum decides to join the Liberation Militia, a nought terrorist group. Everything turns from bad to worse at this point of the story. Many characters change throughout the course of the story. At the beginning of the book, Callum seems like a harmless, caring young boy, but towards the end you get to see an incredibly dark side to him. Noughts and Crosses was a very interesting book to read. I recommend reading this play as it keeps you wanting to know more - but be warned, you won't want to put this book down. I am very excited to begin performing scenes from this play in class.

My Acting Skills

Since a very young age I have enjoyed performing. My favourite subject at school was always drama. I am excited to bring my acting skills to The BRIT School, where I hope to extend them further.

I feel confident performing and acting in front of other people. I always try not to be shy around other people, as it can make them feel uncomfortable. Confidence is important as if you get nervous easily, you will never be able to develop a character fully.
Also, I believe that I am good at portraying a character's emotion and personality through different tones of voice, movement, gestures and facial expressions. This is known as characterisation. I have very good projection in my voice. Therefore, I can talk and act, so that my voice is loud and clear. In addition to this, I enjoy bringing scripts to life by taking on the directorial role for some scenes in plays. I like to bring the visions in my head to life, directing plays gives me the ability to do so. When involved in previous productions, I discovered that I am also very good at learning lines quite quickly. This is important as a lot of the time, you might have to put on a performance with not much time to practice. You need to be able to learn lines quickly, so that you can start developing your character more. As an actor, I also have a lot of spatial awareness, which is important as you need to be able to use the space around you and interact with other people.
At The BRIT School, I would like to work on my improvisation skills, and learn how to speak in different accents to improve my character portrayals. I look forward to pushing myself further to develop my theatrical skills at The BRIT School.