Double - Group Work

In last weeks lesson we were split into groups, I was put into a group with Tom, Ashley and Dom. We decided to base a story of Greek mythology around the fallen Greek God Hades. In a group we came up with Brain Storm around things that are quite dark and sinister and evil, an Idea of the 7 deadly sins came to mind and we looked into them and decided that we would use Anger, Greed and Envy. I was given the Character of Anger which is a type of character that I'm used to playing.

The Start to our piece begins with the 3 men blindfolded, meaning they are not able to see where they are and are unsure of how they got there. We thought we would add a bit of childish humor into the piece as we are performing it to year 7's, so somewhere in the beginning scene some of the dialogue goes like this:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
(Blindfold Man 2 hears breathing)

Blindfold Man 2: Did you hear that?
Blindfold Man 1: See what?
Blindfold Man 2: No! Did you hear that?
Blindfold Man 1: Yeah I'm hear!
Blindfold Man 2: NO! FOR CHRIST SAKES, LISTEN.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

This week we decided that we would make a start on telling the stories of each character. The first Character is Anger, Then Envy and Finishes with Greed.
The story starts off with a man named 'Edward Smith' (Anger/Blindfold Man 1) walking into an interview at a multi-million pound Bank. After a Small interview Edward is offered the dream job he's always wanted. He then has a short phone call with his wife sharing the excitement, and promising a better life for the family. To show his feeling happy, the song 'You make my dream's come true' is played as it tends to have that happiness about it and is a good song to show movement. When the movement ends and Edward reaches home he opens the door to find a letter from his wife on the floor, explaining that she has left, and that she has taken the children with her and that she doesn't love him anymore. Whilst Edward reads out the letter, "What I've Done" by Linkin Park is played in the background and one he has finished reading the letter, Edward unleashes his anger, throwing chairs, shouting, crying. He then pauses and notices that there is a man in his house, with out hesitation he pins this man up against the wall and tells him to leave. There is a pause and the man replies with "I'm just here to get here stuff". Edward then gets even more angry and starts a fight with this man. The fight is choreographed and starts with Edward throwing the first punch. The random man picks Edward up by his hair and knee's him in the face and throws a punch. Edward then turns around and tries to show masculinity by picking up this man and throwing him on the floor, Edward then gets caught up in the moment of rage and brutally beats this man to death. Once he is calm he then realizes his mistake and hangs himself, leading him into the underworld. Edward then wakes up on this island along with the blindfolded men we see at the beginning. He then get furious when he see's that this man he has killed is also there with him in the underworld and tells the other 2 men to leave him alone. With all this shouting and suffering me tries to sleep.

Research into 'The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-Time'

The Making of 'The Curious incident of the dog in the night tim'

Single - Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Performance (Man With Socks)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Time. 26/11/2014

In this production, one of  the characters I played was 'Man with Socks'. As there was no real give away with this character, I decided to then look into way in which I could reveal this kind of character in an obvious way so that my character was easy to identify if people were to have scripts. I decided to go for this kind of skater look, hence why my hair is tied up and why the bottom of my trouser legs are rolled up and why I was wearing some Nike SB's (a type of shoe brand that is designed for skaterboarders) and also due to the fact that it is an activity that i partake in outside of school, I thought the fact that the front part of one of my shoes is slowly deteriorated due to this. 

Single - Developing A Character (Police officer diary entry)

12/04/2012


Well last night was a long, tiring experience. It was late at night, 8 o'clock to be more accurate. And the station had received a few calls about some loud behavior from a lady named Linda Shears, which we thought was a bit unusual seeing as she's a rather well known lady with in the community and even though she is rather sad and upset a lot of the time, when you have a conversation with her, she's really nice. Anyway I was called out to the scene and in her front garden was a young teenager, around 15 year's old and he was crouched down next to a dog (belonging to Linda) with a pitchfork going straight through it's stomach. So I approached the young man and ask him a few questions: 'How old are you' , 'Is this you're pitchfork?' and 'did you kill the dog?'. So anyway, this young man started to make some sort of groaning noise and tucked up into a ball, so I thought that he was either on drugs or he had special needs, so I asked him if he could stop and he didn't so I tried help him up by touching his shoulders and then the bastard right hooked me. That put me in a bad mood instantly, so I was able to detain him and put him into the back of the police car and then the Sargent took him in for questioning to find out what he was doing there in the first place. Meanwhile I grabbed a few paracetamols to try and stop my thumping headache but it didn't really work, so when I finished my shift, I asked my wife if she could drop me off at the hospital as the paracetamol did absolutely nothing.

Single - London Paddington Station

revolutionarts2016: London Underground Sequence - Curious Incident

So this week we have worked on some sort of introduction for Chris's arrival into London (we assumed that it was based at Paddington as there is a line saying "Paddington Bear at Paddington Station") So the link above shows what we were able to come up with as a group.

This week I've been thinking about the Man with Socks character that I play as i find him a fairly difficult character to play. So I've been thinking about how people genuinely react when put in the situation of a stranger (especially a child) jumping onto the train tracks. I've come to the conclusion that this character should be very stressed and could show that by pacing up and down the platform and shouting at Christopher to get off the tracks.

As far as strengths and weaknesses are concerned I believe that I have defiantly improved on the Man with Socks as I've actually managed to remember dialogue for this character. One weakness that I could improve on is tensing my "muscles" when being lifted in the Paddington Station Scene as I can understand that that it can be a bit of a struggle for people if all my body weight falls on them

Double - Starting the Greek story of Jason and the Argonaughts

My small group of 3 (including myself) came up with an idea that takes place once Jason and his crew sail of and land at Cyzicus, we came up with the idea of showing everyone sailing/rowing the boat and then meeting the king (who we thought would be good if he was camp to show a slight bit of humour ) and then when they return to the ship they start fighting with the Giants with 6 arms. Then we thought we should show the crew rowing the ship again and then when we return we have a stage combat scene to show the villagers and king mistaking Jason and his team for thief's. In the stage combat scene we though of putting mats around the bottom of the stage so then we could throw people off and make it look realistic .

Single - Parts of the play we can improve on

This week we have been working hard on trying to improve parts of the play and give it that 'wow' factor. Earlier on in the week we focused on how we could improve on the opening and we went of into small groups and made up whatever we thought would be good for the introduction. Everyone came up with really good ideas and we ended up merging them all together. When researching the play I came across a video that shows the rehearsals for the production in London. They had people in groups of about 7, all moving in time and doing the exact same actions. It inspired me the share the idea of sticking together and moving but in a different way, we came up with a type of dance that is very organised and not a mash up of different things, nothing is going on at the same time and the more we done it, the more we thought it would be good to use as it mans that the character of Christopher doesn't freak out!

For this week I believe that a strong skill that I have developed even further is script reading, I've managed my time with 'outside school' activities and have given myself time to learn my lines thoroughly and I believe that when we rehearse certain scenes it shows that I've acknowledged my parts and lines and also stage directions.
My weakness however is trying to remember the lines of 'man in socks'. This is one of the final lines that I have and I find it quite a struggle to remember, however my solution to solving this weekness is too give myself a 5 minute break when learning the lines as otherwise I can find it stressful and it can cause myself to get in a slight panic.

When we are ready to perform the play,I'm suggest that we should play it to year 7's or 8's to get some feedback and see what we can progress further with.

Single - Rehearsals

In this weeks lessons we have progressed to the point where we are starting to rehearse the play without scripts. It is coming along very well and is looking rather good. The physical theater that is included with in the play is also coming along very nicely (the making of Christopher's house and when he looks for his book). However I do believe that some scenes (mainly the physical piece at the London train station) we could have everyone standing in the position, ready to catch Christopher and once they have finished their part with Christopher they start to walk around. The whole idea of this is that we can let the audience see how Christopher thinks it's going to be like any other train station and then finally it's the reality of the train station. Busy.


I think the character of "man in socks" is a challenge for myself as the name doesn't really give much away about the character and there are quite a few interpretations for the name, for example:

• He might be homeless 
• He might be wearing some bright socks under his clothes
• He might be wearing nothing but his socks (a very unlikely thing to witness on the underground)  

So, a way to decide an outcome for this character in the play is to ask people in the class "What do you think of the 'Man in Socks, appearance wise?"

Using my feedback, I shall decide on what the character will look like etc.


In a warm up we had focused on in class, we allowed ourselves to select a character that we play and walk around as that character. However when we sat down we were normal and out of character. We then practiced the skill of walking in and out of character which will help us improve our character skill for the play as it is a very common piece that is used.  

Double - Why we chose Jason and the Golden Fleece

One of the main reasons we decided it would be a good idea as a class to perform this Greek myth to a class of year 7's was that it suited our research into that kind of interest males at that age would be interested in. For example, year 7's are very much into violence, gore, and danger. One very good thing about this myth is that there are many characters to play, if that there are loads and I believe that when we perform this to them, we will have to multi role, however a down side to doing this is that there are too many characters (in my opinion) and I think that they might get a little confused on which character is which.

The story that I voted for was the story of Aries, as it was easy to modernise and that it is something that can be made violent and something that the year 7's can really engage with as it's something that they would really like.

Double - detailed Jason and the Golden Fleece

Jason was a young man who arranged a strong group of men (also known as the Argonauts) and set off in a quest to find the Golden Fleece. The first stage of their travel was at Turkey. On this land, the males had been wiped out and the country was run by women, they soon left after some of the crew didn't like what was happening. 


They then traveled to Cyzicus in which the king told them about what was beyond bear mountain however, he didn't mention what lived there. What did love there were Giants with 6 arms. When some of Jason's crew went and searched for supplies in the Forrest, the Giants saw that the ship was being guarded and decided to raid it. Most were killed and the rest ran off when Jason and the rest of the crew returned, shortly after they set sail. 
Soon after the battle, they all decided to leave and attempt to travel to Colchis however in the way stood huge rock cliffs that came together and crushed anything in its way. They decided to release a dove and if the dove made it through, they would try and power through it, if the dove didn't make it then they would be sure to fail. With luck the dove made it through and Jason and his crew decided to row as hard and fast as they could. They managed to make it through! 


When Jason arrived to Colchis, he was greeted by Aeetes the king of the land. They discussed the Golden Fleece and then Jason was given 3 tasks and had to complete all three in order to gain the fleece. His daughter Madea fell in love with Jason and decided to help him. In order to get the fleece he had to get past a sleepless dragon, Madea gave him a postion and the dragon soon fell asleep and Jason was then able to grab the fleece and walk away. Aeetes found out about Jason being assisted by his daughter and was outraged so he chased them as they fled and in rage he murdered his son and started throwing body parts at them. 
On the journey home they came across sirens, they lived by small rocky areas in 3 different locations. They were renoun for luring people with their beautiful looks and singing and then drowning them. Tragically some of the crew were lost when they encountered them in the journey home. Soon after the encounterment with the sirens Jason and the remaining Argonaughts reterned home safely.





Shortly after that encounter with the Giants, they sent some men to find food and water, other me. We're gathering wood to build oars as the ones that were used were damaged in the fight. One of the men looking for food and drink named Hylas, came across a group of nymphs, they were attracted to him so they lured him into the stream and drowned him, keeping him there forever. Later on the Argonaughts departed but somehow lost their bearings and ended up on the same place they were. As it was dark, the people of Cyzicus mistook Jason and his Argonaughts for enemies and tried to attack. This resulted in a blood bath as Jason and his crew fought back, killing the king and most of the people that lived there. Shortly after the queen committed suicide. 

Single - Research into 'Drunk Two'

When looking at this photo and looking at the dialogue for this character it makes believe that the two drunk men are mid 40's or so, looking a bit scruffy if they have had a drink and also looking as if they're going to game of football (so a possible football shirt)

Single - Research into Police officers

In this photo we can see that the two police officers look rather serious but quite civilized at the same time. Using this photo my character at the beginning could  show this by using a fairly film tone to my voice and then when Christopher assaults the police officer we can hear and see that type of strict police officer that you see on tv shows like 'Road Wars' etc

Double - Idea for the story of Aries

Myself, Meg and Dom were put into a group and we came up with this more realistic, modern day version of the Greek tale of Aries. We use the song 'The Scientist' by Coldplay at one point to show him being 'humiliated' by all the people in his school, this way we can see him slowly progress in being more aggressive and angry through out the rest of the story.

Single - Ideas for the Play

One idea that I have had for the play is to have other characters with worst or just as bad cases of autism. I think it would be interesting to see how Christopher and other people like himself act around each other and hear how they might handle their condition. And with in this scene we can see different people process, for example where as Christopher counts all the prime numbers up too 7507 to calm himself down and is incredibly talented at maths, other people might click really fast with their fingers or whistle a song. If this idea was to be used then i believe that the audience would be able to see a wide variety of autism and  a very good skill of multi-rolling and a strong skill of characterization.

Single - Excersises Developing Characters

On Thursday's lesson, we started the lesson off by playing a type of 'game'. In which we would be put in a scenario and would have to act that scenario but in our own interpretations. For example we would have to be popcorn stuck in candyfloss and try to get out. Then we would have to act upon a colour. E.g if the colour green was shouted out then we would have to go with our instinct and just change straight away. So everyone was doing something completely different to each other and would change their facial expression, body language. By doing this exercise I believe that it allows us to change personalities quickly which would benefit us as individuals for this play as we are multi-rolling many characters in the play. 

Single - Christopher in London Scene

Christopher in London

In this scene we get a clear picture of where Christopher is as we have the sounds that you would hear in London. We see that Christopher is confused as he has never been on a tube before and keeps repeating the same question. By using the sounds that we as a class have created, this makes the audience feel as if they are in London, when we start to walk around however, it creates that feeling of being in the middle of rush hour, making the audience pay more attention to the play. Personally I like the idea of having the whole scene as it wakes the audience up slightly but also makes them feel as if they can relate to it because they might have been in a similar environment at some point in their life.

Single - Improvisiation Police Scene

Improvised Police Scene


In this scene, as you can see we was set the task of improvising a conversation between all the police officers in the play. By doing this we are able to see how other people feel towards Christopher and how he has had an affect on them because of his Autism, I also like to think that by doing this, it lets our audience change their moods and ideas slightly as it is a conversation in which people can relate to (eg, knowing someone/looking after someone who's wet themselves).

Strengths & Weaknesses

My strength for this task is that I was able to work in a group and we came up with a very brief structure to this scene. We worked well as a group as we thought like our characters.

My weakness for this task is that I did find it hard to keep in the role of my character at times due to my childish like humor, so one thing i would need to improve on is staying so focused that i stay in character and don't let my humor get to me.

Double - Greek Gods/Stories

Ares - The son of Zeus and Hera, they both disliked him and because of that therefore made him bloodthirsty and violent. He committed adultery with Aphrodite and when her husband (Hephaestus) found out he publicly humiliated Ares.

Jason and the Golden Fleece - "Jason was the son of the lawful king of Iolcus, but his uncle Pelias had usurped the throne. Pelias lived in constant fear of losing what he had taken so unjustly. He kept Jason's father a prisoner and would certainly have murdered Jason at birth. But Jason's mother deceived Pelias by mourning as if Jason had died. Meanwhile the infant was bundled off to the wilderness cave of Chiron the Centaur. Chiron tutored Jason in the lore of plants, the hunt and the civilized arts. When he had come of age, Jason set out like a proper hero to claim his rightful throne."

Madusa -  "The Medusa was an ugly creature. Let's have a look at how she came 
into existence, for she wasn't always that ugly... Again, the Gods played their role.
The Medusa was the daughter of Phorkys and Keto, the children of Gaea (Earth) and Oceanus(Ocean). She was one of the three sisters known as the Gorgons. The other two sisters were Sthenno and Euryale. Medusa was the only mortal out of the three. 
She was originally a golden-haired and very beautiful maiden, who, as a priestess of Athena, was devoted to a life of celibacy; but, being wooed by Poseidon, whom she loved in return, she forgot her vows, and became united to him in marriage. For this offence she was punished by the goddess in a most terrible manner. Each wavy lock of the beautiful hair which had so charmed her husband, was changed into a venomous snake; her once gentle, love-inspiring eyes now became blood-shot, furious orbs, which excited fear and disgust in the mind of the beholder; whilst her former roseate hue and milk-white skin assumed a loathsome greenish tinge. 
Seeing herself thus transformed into so repulsive an object, Medusa fled from her home, never to return. Wandering about, abhorred, dreaded, and shunned by all the world, she now developed into a character, worthy of her outward appearance. In her despair she fled to Africa, where, as she passed restlessly from place to place, infant snakes dropped from her hair, and thus, according to the belief of the ancients, that country became the hotbed of these venomous reptiles. With the curse of Athene upon her, she turned into stone whomsoever she gazed upon, till at last, after a life of nameless misery, deliverance came to her in the shape of death, at the hands of Perseus."

Double - Mad Hatter's Tea Party

In the Mad Hatter's Tea Party Scene, we wanted to create a rather atmosphere and also show how characters feel towards 'The Hatter'. We got it so that when Ashley's character spilt tea on the table (made up of a wooden box and a few pallets), The Hatter looses his temper and stands on the table and starts shouting, at this point everyone goes and hides under the their chairs and with when the hatter notices Alice, he's very calm and questions her as a person. Characters under their chairs leap up and sit down and repeatedly saying 'no room'. Suddenly Dan and Meg start ripping into Alice as to say that she isn't welcome there. There is an exchange of dialogue and then when Meg's character falls asleep, The hatter and everyone else at the party perform a surgery on her but stuffing biscuits and tea into her. Eventually she stands up and the hatter pushes her head back and she falls off the table and lands into the hands of everyone else at the party. 

Single - POV from Judy

To me I beleieve that Judy struggles to have Christopher and care for him as he has autism and doesn't quite understand most things people say. He is very straight forward (to a point) which also angers but also upsets Judy at times (where she asks to hug her own child and he says no because he doesn't like it). I think that having Christopher as a child would be very troubling and difficult because he just does things that would drive people's patience.

Single - characters p.o.v on Christopher

one of the characters that I play in the show is a Police officer right at the beginning and gets attacked by Christohper as he feels like he was defending himself. I believe that the police officer is rather calm as it's apart of his job and also because to him Christopher might come across as weird or strange or even that he has special needs (when he groans and tucks into a ball). Even when the police officer gets hit by Christopher he never looses his patience or looses his temper p, he just raises his voice slightly to show Christopher that he is angry, proving that he might understand Christopher has special needs.

Single - Physical work

In the past few lessons, the class have been working on the introduction to the show that we're doing "The curious incident of the dog in the night time". We have done an exercise which involves us walking around in a space, our paces get faster and faster until we are nearly running in gaps however we aren't allowed to run into each other or communicate with each other. I believe that by doing this exercise it will help us create a "busy" atmosphere later on in the play.

Today (29/09/14) we started to do some physical work, carrying other people and leaning ways in which it is easiest to carry them as the character of Christopher is involved with a lot of physical theatre . This will prepare us as a class for show and it will help me and some others in our physical theatre lessons as we are gaining the ability to work together as a team and slowly trust each other when throwing our bodies at each other.

Double - Story Telling Through Dance

At the beginning of the lesson we watched two different clips of ways people tell story's within performing arts, we noticed that in one show there was some sort of narration so the audience were being told whereas in the other clip of 'The Lion King', the audience would intemperate the show in their own way. In my view it is a lot better if there is no narration as everyone sees things in a different way and some things can mean more or less to others. We started to do this dance in which it tells a story of a man who falls in love with a prostitute however he is married, the way we tell the story in my view shows his emotions for this woman and how her 'job' puts him down as he knows that there are other guys performing sexual acts with her, the end of the dance in my view shows that he has to go back to the 'reality', as in he has to go back being with someone that he clearly didn't want to be with seeing as he cheated on her with a prostitute. The lesson was challenging as I'm not used to dancing however my target for this course is to push myself out of my comfort zone as it would help me gain a full experience of the performing arts industry.

Single - Performing Arts

Myself, Tom and Kyle have been put into a group of 3, our task is to come up with a piece that tells the story of "The deathly hallows" in the Harry Potter franchises. So far we have come up with the idea of introducing Death as he plays a major role in the story and we can tell the story a lot more easily. Our introduction includes death taking a loved one from one of the brothers as it shows the audience that we have considered different views and a different way of adding to the story. Our way of showing death is put into a dance showing the power that death has, it will be danced to by  No more sorrow - Linkin Park