11/09/23 - 14/09/23 First Week of Year 2!

 Week 34 of Milly's acting journey

Monday 11th was the first day of our first real week back. The previous week we had spent time getting to know one another, with acting games and fun facts about ourselves, including a day trip to flamingo land on the Thursday. I found that we all got along really well with one another which is fantastic, since acting is a collaborative industry and communication is vital. On Monday, we further got to know more about each other by playing multiple games such as: Cat and Mouse, Human Knot, Name Circle and Word Association. They all allow us to use and practise our communication and listening skills, and being quick thinking sensibly. We took part in three games that allowed us to work with someone we perhaps haven't before, and with us meeting new first years, it was a great chance to collaborate with them. We played Introduce a Friend, where we said the person to our left's name including a fact about them. I got Sophia, who I already know quite well and said how she is an archer. We also played How are you? I'm fine thanks! which allows us to use our characterisation skills depending on the circumstance. I was in a partner with Layla, who is a new first year, and I feel like we worked very well together. We both didn't care about how we looked and felt and went straight in with our emotions. We then got into partners and played a game of Yes And, which allows us to keep scenes flowing and not stop them and force them to go wrong. I enjoyed this because it always let's me think of things on the spot and not give everything took much thought. Lastly, after lunch we got into groups and played a few more games before ending with a discussion on rules within our course. We each had a title where we then had to write down rules that we want to follow in order to keep everyone on track and allow no drama or silliness that isn't needed. Our group had Rules Backstage, so we straight away put rules that we NEED to follow behind the wings, like no talking and especially no moving of the wings if possible. It was a nice end because we all found ourselves to be on the same path in terms of creating a working environment. Our first day went by very quickly, and I already felt very comfortable after such a long time off. 

On Tuesday, we went in on the afternoon unless we wanted to go in earlier to start Peter Pan singing lessons. I went in earlier so that I could get a feel for what the songs sounded like, and see who I was leaning more towards going for. I felt that all the songs where very much what I expected, and it felt very pantomine-esque and something that would be catchy that our audience would like. I'm not very confident in my singing so I'm hoping this make me feel more confident and allow me to not to shy away from challenges like this. Our lesson on the afternoon consisted of just the second years, where we were with Tom talking about our University prep and writing our personal statement. I learnt a lot about how to word and what to write about in the statement and what to avoid in order to make it unique and stand out. Personal statements allow unis to see your first bit of writing and why they should bring you onto their course. It is shown to all the universities that you apply to so it must be inclusive and not single one specific university as other unis will look at it and immediately discard you. We also worked on Shakespeare and I remember reading an extract from 'As you like it' so I immediately went to find that piece of paper with Phebe's monologue on it. I'm looking forward to delving deep into my chosen monologue as I'm still very unsure how I speak it and what words I really empathise so that my audience can understand despite it's old timely English words. Afterwards, we had Kelly for an hour and she spoke to us about our second year curriculum and what we will really be focusing on including what we want to look more into. Last year, I saw the second years did stage combat and that's something that I would be interested in learning about to further my craft on stage. We are also focusing more on monologues which perfectly timed for our university auditions. I left tuesday feeling glad I already knew much more about what my future after college could look like. 

On Wednesday, we began the day by playing World's Worst where we had to act out a job but doing it really badly. I got World's Worst Weather Reporter, so I started talking about things dropping from the sky and having a vague idea about what the weather is. I got guessed correctly so it meant that I was out. I enjoyed watching everyone else World's Worst and trying to interpret what they were doing badly, and I managed to guess a few correct as the actor's knew what they wanted to achieve and they succeeded in doing so. We really focused on our horrible histories globe project, where we are doing another immersive project at Halloween, and I really loved it last year so I am really looking forward to getting started with this project. We got into groups of 5 and got given character cards on someone from history who died a horrible but weird death. I had someone who died because they thought they were powerful and could fly, when in actual fact they weren't and dropped into that hole and died. One person from our group got a blank piece of paper, and they had to write down their own made-up death. We had Keira lie as we knew she would be the least suspect due to our lie being quite vague. Our lie was about a man in the trenches falling asleep, which isn't too extravagant so people wouldn't really pick up on it and think it was the written on. Luckily, everyone thought the same as what we thought and we managed to trick anyone as the majority chose Adam instead of Keira. I thoroughly enjoyed our lesson as it allowed me to learn much more about characters in history, and it allowed some people to come up with ideas for our globe project. 

On Thursday, the night previous we had been asked to come in with one fact from the list of subject primary schools teach in histroy on their sibilus. One of them was Titanic, which I chose to find a fact out about and instead found lots on. Here are some of them:

We had Tom in this day's lesson and we were placed into groups to research on a specific subject. I was placed into group 3, which was on The Great Fire of London. Upon first look, I felt that there was lots we would be able to discover and delve deep into, but a lot of what we found out was quite normal and didn't relate to Stockton. For example, thankfully there was only 6 deaths, but for our horror piece, we would have preferred the statistic to have been more intense. The timetable was quite simple, and we only found one character called Samuel Pepys who fortunately wrote all about his point of view during this time. We started coming up with how to stage an event like this whilst keeping it straight forward and not extreme. Me and Freya went into the LRC to find some books to help expand our knowledge and find atleast one string that connects the Great Fire of London to near us. Overall, I feel like our first week had been productive and got me really excited to start all of our new projects.