Unit 1 - Principles of Performance Task 1+2

 Task One: 

A - In class, we always begin with warm-up's in order to feel more relaxed yet energized and ready to be acting at our full potential. Warm-up's are also vital as they showcase the importance of how to communicate to one another, listening when someone's speaking, working in groups as well as being independent and so much more. An effective warm-up we all participated in class was the human knot game. The aim of the game is to start by crossing your arms and holding a random person's hand, both your left and right, but it can't be the two people's hands beside you. You should end the game by having your entire group in a circle, unknotted and still holding the person's hands you held at the start of the game. The purpose of the game is to communicate clearly with each other so that you don't make the knot tighter and harder to get loose from, it's a game based on teamwork, so you've got to be putting yourself forward and wanting to be a part of the game's success. I learnt from the game that it teaches you basic problem solving and how to be quick on your feet since we were trying to beat another team. Being quick with ideas inserts itself well with the course, as when you are doing improvisation you have to think on your own quickly without a prompt and invite new ideas into a scene to move it in a new direction or help a storyline be carried on. Another warm-up we have tackled in class is Bus Stop. The rules of the game are walk up to whoever the bus driver is in this scenario, and using a strong emotion, talk to them and ask them questions someone feeling that emotion would say. For example, someone who would be confused would ask the bus driver "Are you sure this is the right bus?" or "Is it going to Ingleby?" etc. Once they have sat down on this "bus", they then await a new person to walk on feeling a different emotion, where they two have to show that emotion. For example, a really overly happy person may be next, so the confused person then portrays happy emotions. The purpose of the game is to use your improvisation skills when thinking of questions from a character's perspectives. You also need to be quick with your reaction time, when it comes to recreating another person's emotion so that it's your own take on it, and you haven't just copied the person beside you. Make the emotion unique to you. I have learnt from this warm-up, that it gets you energised since you're constantly moving and changing your body language which is the purpose of a warm-up, to be ready for the challenges of the lesson and day.

B - A warm-up I found that I feel would be useful to use within the group before a lesson, specifically to help others develop their characters would be the Master, Master, Who Am I? The rules of this game, are to have everyone spread out around the room and one person to be stood in front of everyone. The people around them choose a person to have to speak in an obvious emotion saying Master, Master, Who Am I, for the person in front of the group to guess who said it, and the emotion they used. If the person guesses wrong, it's another person's go at saying the games' words using a different emotion for the person to carry on guessing. This warm-up is fun yet challenging, as some emotions are quite similar but you'd need to make them differ when speaking, and think of how they sound different. For example, if someone was excited, they would sound high-pitched, talk fast, and maybe squeel at the end to showcase they can't contain themselves. Whereas, if they were happy, they would be less exaggerated, but use a fast pace, and be light in their speaking. It keeps the person guessing on their toes, as they have to listen out for not just the emotion but who is speaking. It's also great as and it will develop people's vocal skills, and allow them to sound like an emotion they may have sounded like but not realised before. In addition, it allows other's to think of how they can make their character sound a different way but make it loud and obvious for perhaps an audience member to hear clearly. 

C - In class, we went through two main character class tasks, which both relied on being creative with your own thoughts on who your character is. These tasks were called Lonely Hearts which was a whole group activity, and No Context Scenes which meant working in pairs. For the Lonely Hearts activity, we were given a slip of paper with only a name, age and attributes that person looked for in a fellow partner, which meant that we were each given freedom when it came to expanding our character's personality and life. However, with our given circumstances, I made sure to expand upon them and ask myself questions such as "What are the facts about my character?" and "What does my character say about other characters?" Since I knew she wanted to find someone who loved the countryside as much as her, I developed that circumstance and decided to mention that I work on a farm owned by my father , and that my favourite past time is taking long walks during the day. It meant that there was a bigger reason for my love for the countryside as it was built inside my character from a young age due to her father owning the farm. During this activity, we also had to bring in an object that was significant to my character, so I brought in a flower, and explained that it was from my garden and it was an old flower so I hadn't ripped out a new fresh one. That showed a lot about my morals, and expanded on my given circumstances within my circumstances.  Our other activity was the No Context scenes, which involved myself and Adam, where we performed a duologue called the Audition. Each week we had to add something else onto our character that fitted with the duologue, so with our given circumstances, I knew that my character believed they had done awful in their audition so I was able to add more context upon that. I asked myself "How does my character appear?", in which I thought upset and clearly disheartened, since in the scene I talk about other jobs I could go for which shows I've already given up and I don't feel motivated anymore. This activity allowed me to use my improvisation skills, much like the Lonely Hearts, since I was using it more with how I appeared and how I reacted to things, rather than what I was saying since that was already given to me. Both activities gave me a chance to explore characters that were totally different and showed me how given circumstances work.

Task 2

See blogs from 5/9/22 - 20/10/22 = all of my first half term.