PAB (Friday 13th November) company budgeting

HTop ten budgeting rules

One- be realistic with you budgets for each section.

Two- over estimate your spending rather than under.

Three- only spend on nessesatys, things that are luxuarys should come second.

Four- research about your company and how much things are approximately.

Five- negotiate for better prices.

Six- if you know you will be spending more on something's, try to cut down on other things, to balance it out.

Seven- make the most of publicity and promoting the company.

Eight- look around for the best prices

Nine- offer out sponsors in the performance, to get your name out there.

Ten- be innovative with fund raising, eg...workshops

Research into costs for rights.

£65 per performance (need to call to double check)

£9.99 per script X15 (only available in paperback)

Contacting hire company's and theatres

I began by calling CPS which is a technical theatre hire company, I called them to enquire about hiring out a truss unit but over the phone I realised that the cost would have gone over my insal budget, so I requested a quote for a 10x10 meter truss. They quoted me between £1000-1500 for full hire and recoverable side panels, and I also asked if this would include set up fees and they said that it does.

My second phone call was to 'stage electrics' and I was enquire about lighting hire, to do with special hires. I got quote about a follow spot and four programable, moving lights that can take gels. I am currently awaiting on the quote over the phone.

My final quote for the day was to the Capitol a Theatre and Bristol theatres. This was to get some information about the theatres and what they can offer. For Bristol they gave me this information:

Their theatre has 528 seats within three levels and then the dress circle is wheelchair accessible.

They have three dressing rooms, with shower facility's and a green room. 

In terms of their tech you can have anything within the theatre, including the basic rig and sound desk but you can hire in your own things independently or through them which may work out cheaper.

Performing Arts Course Funding

Uni Grants UK

They are a funding company that offer support and help to those looking to go onto further education to study a range of subjects.

They also help set up student bank accounts, this is useful as they often have better ratings and offer better balances. They also offer extras to draw people in but also help. HSBC offer 2 years worth or Travel Insurance with a student back account. NatWest give student discount and vouchers of laptops to students. Lloyds extend the NUS card for a further three years and give free music downloads. Finally Halifax offer 25% off AA Breakdown cover. By the banks offering this is gives students a reason to go with them and get benefits from it.

Uni Grants UK offer 'Crowed Funding'. This is where you put money into something with an idea and people can fund towards it to help you out, you then put a time scale onto it (IE how many months you want it last for) and then after that you have the time to pay back what you were given.

Dadas Funding

 



This stands for Dance and Drama awards, they pin point student looking to study dance and drama, they base how much you get off how much your family income is, for example if your family doesn't earn as much you would get a higher grant. They also go off how popular the course you are applying for is and if you would need more money to fund for it.

 

To be able to get funding though this company you have to be living in the EU for over three years, and have had at least one of these qualifications:

 

Level 6 diploma in acting (3 yrs)

Level 5 diploma in acting (1 yr)

Level 5 diploma in drama (in classical ballet or contemporary dance) (2 yrs)

level 6 diploma in dance (3 yrs)

level 6 diploma in musical theatre (3 yrs)

 

To be considered for this funding scheme you must be between the ages of 16-23 for the dance courses or 18-23 for the acting based courses.

 

They will only offer funding for students looking to study at these schools:

 

ALRA

ArtsED

Bird College

Cambridge Performing Arts

Elmhurst School

English National Ballet School

The Hammond School.

 

 

CDET Council for Dance Education Training

 

You must have a household income of £30,000  or lower to get funding through them. No fee will be charged but you will receive a scholarship. If your household is lower the £21,000 you will receive a maximum of £5,185per annual year, this can be put towards living costs and is also available for first years. To go the accredited drama schools CDET cover it costs between £7000 and £30,000

 

They will give funding to a range of different courses, this includes dance, drama, musical theatre, jazz, ballet, contemporary, commercial or street. They will also offer a smaller help towards vocal training.

 

Anyone is eligible to the funding all you have to do is fill out a membership form to see how much you are entitled to and where you will get it from. Membership forms have to go through Equity, UK theatre, Society of London Theatre and Spotlight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday 27th November (head shots and What you own

This In the start of this lesson, I focused on my production role, which is the film and sounds. To finish the filming all that we had to do was the solo head shots. This involves slow pace spinning around, I decided to have it in dark lighting and then quite shadowy. This gave it a dark and eary line. We are now ready to edit the film and add some effects too our footage.

In the second half of the lesson, I got the opportunity to have a one to one with a peer to focus on my singing technique, with the song 'What you own' in particular. I was happy to do this as she has a good understanding of technique when singing and what to do to get the power and right mood to the notes. I hoped to get some techniques that I could use when singing.

I began by wanting to focus on the first solo verse of the song and my pitching with it. I said that this was my main focus. During my rehearsal I was given advise to really push from my core when coming up to higher note, and once I focused on this they came out a lot easier if I didn't get my self worked up on them.

Friday 27th November (Evaluation of Music Stimuli)

For our music stimuli I wanted to play around with something different, and not just a contemporary piece. I once saw a show where they used the 'Benny Hill' theme song and wanted to follow the theme of cops and robbers.




We began by playing around with some general chasing movements, and how we could travel around the space. and movements that we thought would fit. Our main focus was old talkie movies and slap stick comedy, this involved comical faces and looking out into the audience. I think by using this style it really brought the piece alive for the audience and made it really interactive for the audience. I was happy with my performance in this as I thought that it really suited my style and my comedy traits.


To improve my performance I would like to look into lots of different styles of dance that would suit this style of performance. I think a mixture of jazz and contemporary would work well with this as they can work well with a faster beat and then can be changed around to fit in the movie style movements.


If we work on this dance again, I would like to look at creating a unison movement that could go in the middle of the dance, I have thought about using a movement phrase that I have used in a dance before and then just adapt it using dynamics and changing up the rhythm.


Video of my Music based stimulus dance

Thursday 5th November (Christmas Bells)

I began the lesson by reviewing act one and my progress in Act One:

• I feel really confident with the opening number of rent, this is now one of my most confident songs, and am feeling really relaxed with my harmonies and my placement within the song.
• Tango Maureen is now working more, and I feel that me and Joanne have got the right level of connection, and I have played around with the relationship, and I feel that it worked well when I was being really sarcastic and pitying her.
• Even though 'You'll See' isn't my main song, I feel confident with my characters objectives in this song and it now works well, with my emotion towards Benny/Betty. I think that it works best when I completely blank him/her and make them feel so unwelcome.
• The song that needs to improvement is the 'Tune Ups' as I really need to work on the timing and the pauses within the song.

Before the next lesson we need to learn the songs:

• I should tell you (which not in)
• La Vi Boehme (Which is my main solo song)
• Will I ( All I need to do for this song is find out which part I am in)

In the second half of the lesson we started to learn the song 'Christmas Bells', for a first run of this it wasn't great, I was not sure of the timings of my section with Roger, this made this rehearsal quite slow on my part but this has given me a target to improve on over the next few days to listen to it, and get the timing of it, so I can know my part inside out.

Friday 6th November ( sing through of act one)

This lesson we had the musical director for the full two hours so we did a full sing through, we did this stationary, and just put all of our focus onto singing and the songs.

'Tune up'

These songs I felt were quite hard, as there is no piano accompaniment, only a drum beat, I found it hard to keep my timings and then found it hard to work out where all of the pauses went.

'Rent'

My first song is rent, I was happy with this song, and because I had spent a lot of time on my singing technique in this song and was really confident with my harmonies, and I could then leave this song alone until closer to the performance.

'Tango Maureen'

This didn't go as well as it has done in past rehearsals, I was confident with my solo sections in the song, but the problem then came in when we sang together as I kept losing my pitch and then the harmonies threw me off. I would like to spend some more time on this to get the harmonies stuck in my voice and get more confident with it. 

My target for the next few weeks is to have one to ones to work on the tango Maureen and all of the tune ups.

Friday 13th November (happy new year b and speed run)

In this rehearsal we had our first half with out muscial director, and we spent this time to look into Happy new year B' and we did a sing through of it. I was confident in this song as I didn't have to many lines, so I took a leadership role and offered my support to others that may have had more in the song. My lines are simple, but the line in particular that I spend more time on was "friendship is thicker than blood" and " depends on not denying emotion" as these have a had melody and they are faster than everyone else's, I had to play around with saying these in different ways in order to fit them in to the timings.

In the second half of this lesson we went into the rehearsal room and did a ruff speed run of the second act, this involved looking into ruff blocking but this was mainly for the areas and then how we would link each scene. 

My initial impression of the act is that the pace is a lot faster than the first act, this is a big change as in the first act it covers about a month of the lives of the characters but in the second act it covers a hole year, and the characters lives seem to jump from one dramatic state to another. I think that the pace is one of the main features of the this show, and in order to fit in all of the messages within it the pace needs to be kept up. Although all of the characters go through a journey in the second act, I saw into my own character and how he is always thrown into the middle of everything, and everyone seems to take everything out on him, such as Roger shouting at him when mimi leaves, Maureen not liking him getting along with Joanne. 

Over all the second act has a negative feel to it, this is a big change to the first act, and would come as I big shock to the audience as the watch in comparison to the first act. At the start of this act we hear the song 'Seasons of love' this is a foreshadow of the act that is about to come, as the song tells the story of the life and how you should make every moment count, and that is the moral of life to the characters as they see everything changing.

We also looked into the narrative devices within the show, the main one is the in character narration, and my character plays a big part in that, as most of my lines and my earlier songs are out to the audience and narrate the characters and their lives. This helps to keep the audience on top of what i happening. But also helps to keep the story rolling as it does jump around a bit. The other narration devise is obviously the songs, as in most musicals that tell. Story either of a character (E.G 'tango Maureen, where it describes the character to the audience and highlights a lot of her character traits).

As a class our target for the next few weeks is to get on top of our act two songs, as we won't be spending time in lessons learning them but just running, so I will be taking on independent rehearsals for our own songs, such as 'what you own' where I have a arranged a one to one with the musical director, to get my half of the song down early.

Thursday 19th November ( goodbye love - I'll cover you)

This lesson we had some time with Kim, our musical director. This was a good opportunity to use as we could go through any of the big group numbers that needed tackling. We started by looking at 'Goodbye Love'. This is a big number within the show, and involves most of the named characters, the main focus for me during this song, is the latter, as I have a section with Roger. I was confident with my lyrics but not as much with the tuning of my notes and timings. My main struggle within the song was the line " perhaps it's because I'm the one of us to survive" this is was struggle because it was so high.  I don't think that this is out of my range but I think that it is a big jump from where else I have been singing before. To get to that note, It helps me to notice how it feels to sing the note rather than where it is on the scale. The feeling is a push that I need to work my way up too. Eventually I got up there and I hit the note.

Once I was confident with all of the notes I looked into my characters relationship with Roger in the song S we are arguing, this came naturally for me and James and we got to that tension level pretty quick as we felt it as we shouted at each other. The only other thing that I wanted to explore is how we got to and from these different mood changes, how we would link them.

For the rest of the lesson we also looked at the song 'I'll cover you reprise'. In this song I am part of the company and sing the verses of seasons of love over the top of everyone else, to keep it simple im singing the same melody line that I do in the original, which is the bass line, I'm the only one singing this so I have to work on projecting over everyone else. 

During this lesson people were also working on costume. I am part of the costume team and I am responsible for my my own costume and Max's who is playing Angel. I have my costume ready I think, so I just placed it on a hanger, but then went to max too discuss his costume and how he can use what he has in different ways to make it look different from scene to scene. He had a plain pink dress and I said that he could get away with that for most scenes if he changed what he wore it with, I said that we would look into his scenes and plan a costume for each scene.

My personal targets for my character development is to; create a scene list to get ready for the film, which is my other production role. And I want to plan a character plot line of my characters feeling throughout the play, and how he reacts to everyone else.

Friday 20th November ( filming of marks film)

ZThis was the lesson that I was able to dedicate to my production role, I took on the role of preparing the scenes for the film, I made a list of the scenes that I wanted to cover over the lesson, as I thought the more prepared that we were, the smoother that it would run. This is the running order of the scenes.

When we began the lesson we sat in a circle in the classroom and I talked everyone through the list above. This made it clearer of what I meant by each scene and what costumes I thought would go best for each. We began the filming by doing all of the homelessness scenes, this went quite quick, and we got lots of different shots that we thought would look good, from all angles. The next scenes tht we did were the couple scenes, this was set on the stairs, and the direction that I gave to everyone was to play around with the camera and each other, this worked well as It gave it a natural feel and made it look real and as if they were all having fun making it. 

I was really happy with my participation within my production role, and I feel that I took on board a strong leading role within the film, and for the scenes that I was in I gave the impression that I didn't want to be filmed, this again highlighted my characters shy side. 

Next Friday I want to do some more filming along side the lesson, what I want to explore next is song natural staged, solo shots that can be added in with the footage that we already have.

Thursday 26th November (blocking of act two, first half)

In today's lesson we began looking into the spacing of act two and how each scene looked next to each other. We began by running 'Seasons of love' in the theatre, for this we are spaced in a life going straight across the performance space and then every other person is facing the other way, this is so all of the audience can at least see some of the cast straight on. We spent some time looking into certain parts that needed some movement but still wanted to keep it minimalistic. On the line "it's time now to sing out" we all start clicking, going from up stage to down stage. This brings up the tempo of the song and makes it lively to lead into 'happy new year'. I made a suggestion to the director that we stop clicking on the word "measure" I felt that this was a good lull of the song and fitted well afte the crescendo.

We then went straight into the running the act. The first song is 'happy new year', I feel really confident about this song, after going through it a couple of weeks before. Today I explored more about my characters relationship between his friends in this song particuarly, I feel that in this song that he is almost at his breaking point, as he has been locked out of his flat and no body seems to be bothered. He first loses his temper with mimi and roger, I played this subtly. But then when Maureen comes in messing around, Mark gets quite short with her. But then when he realises that she is having a bad time with Joanne, I started to play on this, by giggling at her and filming her while they argue. I feel that this is now one of my stronger songs, as I'm confident with my singing and notes and now feel that I have a clear character path and objective for each interaction.

The next song that I'm in is 'Happy new year B' and I was confident with my lyrics and singing in this song like I was in the first one. But when we just gave it a go and ran it, it became very clear that the spacing needed some work and everyone was just standing around, and it looked very clustered. To break this up I tried to walk off and add some more levels by sitting down by the flat, I backed this up by using this as support of Mark trying to stay out of confrontation and being quite with held. At the end of a suggestion I said that we need to really look into everyone's objectives in this song, and how everyone would be feeling after finding out that the flat is empty. I think that my character of Mark would be quite calm about it, but would begin to shut him self out and not say much.

The last bit that I did in this lesson was 'Seasons of love B' for this im placed up in the flat, while everyone else is in the pairs around the space, at first I felt lonely as I saw everyone conversing with each other, but then I started to take this literally and thought that maybe this is how Mark would feel about looking at all his friends having fun and him all on his own. I tried to use that feeling to effect my singing, by making my words slow and lower and not putting as much effort into my speech.

The main things that I learnt about my character in this lesson was; the drastic change in my emotion from going from the end of act one and then to the beginning of act two which are polar opposites. The second one is his relationships towards everyone but then getting closer with Joanne as they begin to relate over Maureen.

Before next lesson I want to look into the setting and feeling behind the song 'Halloween' as this is my next song that is coming up.

Rent (Friday 2nd October) blocking today for you and tango Maureen

In this lesson we did some more personal tasks and then split off into smaller groups to work on songs that not everyone was in. I went off with the people playing, roger, angel and Collins and we began some work on 'Today 4 you', this song has a great feel to it and is such an energy lift for the musical. We wanted to reflect this in the way that we set it, so we looked into alternative ways of movement and moving around that space. We have set this song in the flat and my character and roger, have been bombarded by Collins who has a suprise of treats and drinks, followed by angel in drag. I wanted to think of my own character mood changes throughout the song and the song as a whole, this is what I suggested for the mood changes for me and roger.

Everything up to "no flow" (page.17) we are enthusiastic and excited about seeing Collins again and him bring the treats, I suggested that we showed this mainly through facial exspressions but also the way that we move round the space and how much fun we are having.

The next mood change is up till when Collins says "Angel Dumott Schunard" this is where we become more confused and thrown in the middle rather than excited, as angel has walked in and we are not used to this pep in the flat. I tried to show this through looking round for confirmation and awakard laughs to fill the time. I think this big jump in energy change works well as it really highlights the entrance of Angel. At first I don't think everyone was on board with the awkward change in the scene but after we ran it think it worked well.

At the last set of "today for you, tomorrow for me" that angel sings this is when the energy changes again. It then goes back to the excited mood from us where we get into the song and how much fun we see angel and Collins having. This is a gradual mood change and we show this through a slight head bob and a tapping foot, to slowly bring up the energy again.

I think with setting these clear objective changes it helps to break up the song, and doesn't seem to drag on. We ran the song, while focusing on these changes with created different sections to the song that weren't written in.

In the second half of the lesson I looked at some chreography for Tango Maureen, one of the actors playing Joanne has had some experience dancing the tango so we spent some time exploring the basic step patterns. I suggested that we looked into switching the dominate characters around and making Joanne the leader earlier on than the script says. This would help to highlight both of our characteristics as Mark is quite quite and submissive but Joanne is quite controlling.

Our target is to book a slot with the dance director and look into chreography of the song and how to make it flow with the song.

Rent (Thursday 1st October) blocking of pages 1-15

In this lesson we started our first blocking session, we are in our performance space for this rehearsal, which was a lot more helpful as we could see the space that we hade and could see where everything would be set in comparison to everything else. At the start of the show I have these small songs called, tune ups, this is what my main focus was on during this session.

Prior to this lesson I had looked over these songs and had down some work on the lyrics. We began by just running the song and seeing how it played out. I made a suggestion before we started that my character of Mark was to be quite annoying and up in Rogers face during this scene. I said this as I thought that Mark was going on at roger and was really up in his face, with his camera. I think this worked well as the motive and feel for this scene as its the first time the audience get to see any of the characters and I think this makes it clear what marks interest is in and how passionate he is about it. When we had run this scene a couple times, trying out different stagings, we found it best to be down in the main space of the flat, in section H, as it gave me room to move around. To progress this scene even further, I'm going to look into my characters objectives in this scene, and why he is being very up in Rogers face. My first impressions was to just get more attention, this i then linked back to my back story's and how Mark wasnt seen as much of a success by his mother and she didn't really notice him.

My next song that I'm in is 'Rent', I had noticed a problem with this as me and the person playing roger are the main singers in this song, which meant that i could not do the dance that we had originally choreographed. We were then blocked to just be on the blacony (G) and just sing the song from up there. This worked really well for the majority of the song as we were over looking the rough streets that were happening bellow, but when it came to the end where everyone was singing too, I thought that the energy dropped from my and roger, so I then started to improvise and see if it would work if we came down into the main space and do what was planned with the rest of the company. I think this worked as it brought everyone together and brought the energy up. When singing this song I tried to show some of my characterisation for Mark show through. I did this with my tone of voice, by trying to seem wordy and whinny with what I was saying, I think this began to come through but I think with time and learning more depth to the song it would come through even more.

At the end of this rehearsal we did a sing through of the song 'seasons of love', we began to work out some of the basic harmony and layers to the song. I do the bass line, which is at the lower end of my register and I can just reach the notes. With my part going under everyone else's I think it creates a very soulful tone to the song, which really helps create the tone of the piece. Before the next rehearsal I would have liked to looked at my part in 'tango Maureen' and see if I could work out some of the harmonys between my character and Joanne.

Rent Rehearsal one, Looking into character relationships and storys (Thursday 24th September)

This was our first lesson working on our character that we were given, we began the lesson talking about rehearsal discipline and what is expected. The main thing that is expected is for everyone to be involved and to know what they are doing at each time. With rehearsals this year we are expected to be doing something at all times, and when the rest of the group are working on a scene or song, we should be independent and work on something that may be coming up or something that we are not 100% with.


Once we got our scripts we did a starter work to come up with three background stories for our characters lives. My first story was that Mark was offered a big film directing deal and he was to move away from home to Hollywood, but he couldn't face leaving his comfort zone, so he lost the deal. Which made him lose a lot of his confidence with his work. I think  this story gave me a lot of reasoning behind my character feeling throughout the show and why he is always feeling shot down.


My second story is about his up bringing and how Mark's mother would really push him into be so successful in life, this pushed him so far that he decided to leave, and moved over to New York to live a creative life and do what he loves.


My last story was all about the current day, and how he was planning to return home for Christmas, but he didn't have enough money to get back, but his mother would pay for him to get home as she doesn't think that he works hard enough to fund for himself.




We then went round the theatre in different pairs and did some improvisation work, I did some with Holly who is playing the part of my mother, and we just set it in our childhood house, and it went off from there. From our improvisation together I got a lot of background facts to support my bad relationship with my mother. The main thing that I contributed to the scene was that I said about how my brothers and sisters all had good paying jobs and how my mother would clearly treat them better than she would to me.


I then moved on to do a scene with James, who plays Roger and we set our scene to the first time that we met. It followed the lines of Roger, Maureen, Collins and Benny already living together, and we did a scene with Roger showing Mark around the flat, and how there relationship blossomed. The main thing that I put in to my character from this scene was that mark was a bit of a push over to everyone when he first moved in and he would just follow everyone around, to do what they wanted to do as he didn't feel that he was in the right place for him.


I also did a short improvisation with Paige who plays Maureen, this was to explore the relationship between them, This went the best out of all of our improvs as we had a good pace and covered a lot of topics in it. We followed the main story of Maureen getting ready for a show and Mark setting up all of the sound equipment, this then led to a argument. From this I got a feel for my characters temper, and how far he can be pushed before he loses it, I played around with lots of different ways, but I think it worked better when he took a lot of Maureen's stuff then only broke at the end.


After we had done these improvisations we had to come up with some final decisions about my character that I have learnt from doing the improvisations.

1. The first one was about his feeling towards his work and how he is always doubting himself and not always believing in his talent.
2. The second is about his family and how pushy they are to him,  this put him off returning home and made him feel a bit more confidence about his choices to move to New York
3. And I also got a final feeling about the relationship between Mark and Maureen and why things didn't work out, they have left things with mark still wanting to be friend and make things work, but Maureen only really cares about mark, when I benefits her and she can get something out of her.

Dance Evaluation - Gernica Devised Piece

The Stimulus for our dance piece was a painting by Picasso which was influenced by the Guernica war, this painting was very busy and they were a lot of expressive faces, we came up with lots of words that we thought expressed some of the characters in the painting.


From the painting I saw lots of splayed hands and strong facial expressions, this gave the painting a very strong theme, which I first off thought was a theme of a riot or something, as there was so much going on.


To start off our work we looked at different ways of holding the body. This involved learning some different moves, these involved lunges and holds, all exploring different levels and different emotions.  Some of them were attacking moves and the others were taking shelter. We then made up our own solos that incorporated all of the moves and we then had to work on different transitions into each movement. I was really happy with my solo in this piece, as I thought that it showed good focus and had some good dynamics, this included changing the speed of how I moved, from slow, rigid movements and then fast, panicky movements. I think that this linked really well to the original stimulus and really showed all of the different emotions of the piece, and showed the destruction of what was going on.


Once we all had our solos we then were put into groups of four, within my group I think that I played a key part in my group when it came to devising, this was good as it gave me a chance to voice some of my ideas, while incorporating it with everyone else's solos. I gave a lot of contribution when it came the filling in the gaps of the dance and how everything should be spaced, I tried to make some sections really close and some really far apart, which would show the chaos of the war and then making things seem really spare made it look dead and empty.


During the final performance I think that I used really good strength during my solo, I did this during all of the holds and when doing some of the more rigid arm motifs and movements. I also thought that my co-ordination was successful, I think that was mainly clear in the jumping phrase that I learnt, this involved stag leaps and hops, during a travelling phrase. When it came to my Interpretive skills I think I showed great focus when directing things out towards the audience, this created the tension of the piece. I also was happy with my musicality and how we waited for certain points in the music which fit best with the movements, this particularly showed in the lull of the music, when we dropped our energy and then brought it back up when the music picked back up.


I think my over all strength of the piece was my performance skills, and how well I portrayed the stimulus and the meaning of the dance, I showed this through my facial expression and my focus out to the audience. I think that I could have improved on my extension and how I participated all of my body into the dance, this includes my face and not just relaxing with it, and getting to lost in what move comes next. For next time that I respond to a stimulus, I would like to spend more time looking into different movement styles and how they can be used to portray a meaning behind something.

LOU LOU THEATRE COMPANY

Two men and a pint of Orange Juice  -    Cast of 2

Lantern Theatre Brighton
Malbourgh Theatre
Brighton Dome studio
Dukebox theatre

We would need a cast of 2 people to perform the show, this would be because the show involves multirole playing. I would employ my own stage manager but would then use the technical team of the theatre. And then a general designer that would design costume, set and props, and then I would direct and producer.


To make set I would set up schemes through the local school to help create set


£2500 starting budget

This was my pitch towards the dragons. I thought that It went very well and I had fun when pitching it to them. during my pitch I feel that I covered all of the criteria set. I had a thorough Budget form that had some well thought section, where I took into consideration all the costs needed to put on the show. I feel that my research into technical requirements and venues came in need when pitching it all across.

For my funding I looked into the brighton fringe festival and spoke to one of their representerives. They told me about a scheme that they offer where they give money to new performers and new companys, so I then included this into my form.

This is my budget form for my theatre tour.

Profiles of Different Theatre Production Roles (Friday 6th November)

Artist Director


This person has overall responsibility of all of the work that goes through the theatre, they would make all of the final decisions when it comes to everything artistic, this would involve set, music and anything put onto the stage. This job role would work with everyone in the theatre, to correspond with the team leaders that would manage each department. This job role would respond to the director and the producer of the show. I think that this would be a good job to do as you can get to have a taster of each department. And I think that it would suit me as I could us my creative skills, and I am good at working in a team and supporting everyone.




Stage Manger


The role of a stage manager is to organise and coordinate the running of the show, they would make sure that every department in the building is in place, pre show. They would also be involved during the show, and they would be in the left wing, sitting at the desk and watching the show, and calling each department operator through the cans and would give them three queues, one to tell them that they have something coming up, one to tell the stand by, and then the last to tell them to do the queue. This role would only really respond to the director and theatre manager, but they would also be involved with most people in the theatre. I could use my coordination skills to do this job, and it would help to be in order and making sure everyone in ready.




Stage Hand


The role of a stage hand is to be based on the stage and is mainly involved around the set, and what is on the stage. they wouldn't necessarily build or design the set but the would be responsible for what it on stage, for each scene, and then sometimes the actors off the stage, I think that I would be good at this job, but I don't think that this is creative enough for me. This person would respond to tech manager and also the stage manager.

Rent (Friday 18th september) Characters and Role on the wall

In this lesson we got our characters for the show, I got the character of Mark, which was who I was auditioning for. I was very happy with this as out of all of the male characters in the show I saw the most potential for my self to add characterisation and get into the characters feelings.

We had a lesson just focusing on our own characters, we did this in the form of a role on the wall, and we did this while watching a schools edition of Rent, which is what version we would be doing. During this I came up with a lot of facts about my character, some that I knew from the show and a from watching the films and then some that I have made up to give my character depth in the scenes.

My Role on the wall explanation

HIV and AIDs


During the context of our piece, it is during the aids and HIV epidemic, and a lot of the characters are carriers, The difference between HIV and AIDS is that HIV is a virus that attacks your immune system, which weakens it down, until your body is unable to defend its self against the virus. Over time medication has been brought out not to stop the illness but to delay its effects of it. From HIV you can lead to AID's, you cant get AIDs without having HIV first but you can suffer from HIV without it leading to AIDs


Main Causes of Homelessness


Homelessness can come from lots of different causes, but the main two categories for  the cause of homelessness is Personal and Structural. Personal reasons can include things that our down to yourself, this is things like not getting enough qualifications when you were in education, not having the right social skills etc. Structural causes of homelessness is more general. such as poverty, lack of affordable housing, or not available to get benefits


'Starving Artist'

A Starving artist is someone who gives all that they can to achieve their dreams in the arts, this can mean that they are living of a minimum wage, and have to keep their spending to a minimum, in order to fund their art.

La Vi Boheme Working - Stimuli and devising (Friday 18th September)

In this lesson we carried on focusing on La Vi Boheme, so we started off by recapping what we had already set for the song. This went well but I still found it hard as we had not yet been given our characters so the show, so we couldn't really add any signature movements for our characters, but I came up with a character, for the purpose of this devising session, I just gave all of my movements a laid back and relaxed feel. But being able to recap, went well as we already knew the routine but we could now focus of putting different spins on the movements to fit either with the song or other character interactions.

For the second section of the song, we were to set and devise a duet with someone in the scene, I was with Emily and before we did this we looked at the different ways of devising with a stimulus and the steps that you would follow, first thing to do is too choose your stimulus, and ours would obviously be Rent and the song 'La vi Boheme' and from this we have already done some background research about the context and how people would have lived in this time. Then we would experiment with some movement materials and then see which ones we thought would fit the best. Once you have selected the movements that you think work best, you then refine them and refine them. This includes adding in all of your choreographic devises, this includes adding transitions and dynamics to the piece. I think that my skills came in use best at this stage as I could think of different ways of linking the moves. Once you have all of your moves and you have refined the transitions and everything, you just need to ensure that there is a clear structure and a climax to the piece.

In my devised section we had a mixture of using sections from the earlier bit of the dance, but changing around the positioning or the dynamics of it, this is done by fragmenting it to change up the order or using some repetition. To make our duet more climatic we added in some lifts that we saw in one of our original stimulus, which was the film version of this song. When we did some peer assessment with another duet, the felt that ours was a bit samey and didn't have much variation in it, which I understood as we did have a lot of repetition. So we then looked at changing some more of the movements that we had by changing the dynamics, use of the space that we had, timings ,levels and the relationships between us.

At the end of this lesson we watched back everyone's duets and from this I took on board that I don't need to focus as much on the precision of my movement and need to look at my character within the scene and help follow the message of the song by loving each other and friendship. My target for the next time we work on this song, is to add some more character motivations for each of my movements, which will be a lot easier when I have my character and can follow this through the story.

Early Choreography of 'La Vie Boheme' (Friday 11th September)

We began the lesson with discussing about what we thought a stimulus means and how we can use them in dance and movement. A stimulus is a starting point or a idea that you can develop and expand off of, to create new and broadened ideas. There are four main types of stimulus's in dance;

1. The first one is a visual stimulus, this can either be a photograph, colour's, films or anything that can be seen and take inspiration from.
2. the second type of stimulus is an Auditory stimulus, this can include a piece of music, sound, rhythm or speech. These are used as a starting point and you can either take words, phrases or patterns in the speech as inspiration and work off of that.
3. The third type of stimulus is just a theme for a piece, this can be a range of different things. Such as a fairy tale, a significant message or a personal story. This type of stimulus is often the starting point for more meaning full pieces.
4. The last type of stimulus is a piece of text. this is where you find words or dialog that inspire you and take certain words or sections to inspire and create movements. This can include; Scripts from plays, poetry, current or past news, literature or and historical recordings.

What Text based stimulus have you used before in a performance.


When I performed a duet piece in the winter dance show, we did a dance to the song 'Fix You' by Coldplay. We began by listening to the song and then discussed possible storylines and themes that we heard in the lyrics. We came up with the idea of a couple arguing and going through some tuff times. Once we had started devising it we began to look deeper into the lyrics and started to pick apart words and phrases out, one of them was "Tears stream down your face". We did some falling, downwards movements to show that the couple had let each other down. I found it easy to get inspiration from the words as you could take it direct or change the words around.


In the rest of the lesson we began to do some work on some of the rent songs, we began to look at the song 'La Vi Boheme'. We looked at the visual stimulus that were available, this was mainly the film, as they use a lots of different styles of dance, and had some really good  movements that linked well to the words of the song. We then created a mind map of the different movements styles that we picked up on in the scene and then some movements that we thought would work well in our version.


























After we had taken inspiration from the film we went on to learn the main phrase of the dance, while exploring parts of the dance and incorporating styles that we had seen in the film. I felt it quite easy to pick up this phrase as it was slow and didn't have a to fast of a beat. Before next lesson I want to explore a character for the scene and how we would interact with each other.

Lesson 2 (Rent Street Style Physical Theatre) Friday 11th September

In this lesson we developed our movement routines. We started to put what we already had to our movement sequences and then put them to the opening song of Rent, 'Rent'. I think that putting our big planned out movement routine to this song worked well as this is the first full song of the musical so it needs to have lots of energy and power to create a big impact on the audience. At first I found this hard as the song had a different pace to the one that we had rehearsed with, this meant that we either had to change our timing plan or cut out some bits. To get around this we held out poses for longer in each area, and then didn't pay attention to the beat when walking around the space.




Things that worked well in the first recording


Once we had worked out an order and spacing for the routines to the song, we recorded it and then watched it back to evaluate ourselves.

• What I thought personally went well was the whole pace to the performance. I really liked how groups didn't wait for the group before to completely finish but they overlapped it so there was no drop in the pace and the energy. I felt that this was important as it is a fast song, that creates the whole story and life of the show, and gives context of what the ruff areas of New York are like.

• The second thing that I thought worked was my groups reactions and response to the music, during our section. In our section there are a few crescendos, so we naturally held off of our movements until the music broke out, this highlighted our movements the attacking movements.

• The third thing that worked well was my groups motivations in the scene. When we were coming up with our routines we came up with a motivations for our characters for being there. We took on board this when performing as we looked at everyone in a menacing way, and we looked down at everyone.

Things that didn't work from the first recording.

• From watching back the first recording, I felt that it didn't have a enough happening at once as there was only one group on at a time, and didn't show the fast paced, busy streets in the city. I think that just by adding in more people into the scenes, of them just walking around and looking at what's going on. This would help keep the pace and make it look busy.

• What would also work is each groups stories were linked, and then we could have some more reasons to interact with each other. But once we are given our characters we would know of some relationships, and reasons for the characters to interact.

Once we had added in these improvements to our scene, I think it worked really well, and really portrayed the hustle and bustle of the streets and we also added in lots of different levels to the piece and made everything a bigger energy. At the end this tension and energy exploded with us in a pose in the center, with lots of different levels with Mark and Roger in the middle of everyone.

• f

Luke Scattergood's Acting CV

Luke Scattergood

Contact details

Email: Lukescattergood.ls@gmail.com

Phone: 077443485780

Adress: 99 high street, Worthing West Sussex bn11 1dj

Personal information

Height: 6'1 

Hair: brown, mid length 

Eye colour: brown

Playing Age: 16-21

Training

Starting in comedy performance certificate (2008)

Musical theatre diploma BTEC (present)

One day stage combat training

Films

Zombie land (student film in the guildbourne centre, Worthing) ( 2010)

Theatre

Blood brothers - Eddie (2013)

Teechers - Mr Nixson (2014)

Guys and dolls - nicely nicley Johnson

Dracular Spectacular - Herr Hanns

Fear and misery of the third rich - various characters

Into the woods - the Baker

Dissocia - various character

Rent - Mark Cohen 

West Side Story - krupke/glad hand

 

Lesson 1 (Thursday 10th September) Physical Theatre

In our first lesson, we spent sometime looking at the physicality of different characters and how we can use our bodies to create interesting characters without using a script or text to respond off of. We split up into groups of three and we had to come up with 8 movements that would make us come off as aggressive or thuggish. Our movements had lots of different styles, that ranged from very big aggressive attacking movements, we made these sharp and really in your face. Where as some of the others were a bit more subtly aggressive and more intimidating. One movement that we did that fitted an intimidation style was a brush of the shoulder and a head movement.






We then took this routine of movements and put then into a technique known as they known as a shoal of fish, this is where you parole an area but staying in a close group and when ever someone in your group moves off, so do you and you have to stay together. Once we had our routines of the movements, we started to add more depth, making some of the movements, attacking and then categorising the other movements into intimidating and then parole. For intimidating and parole we did some subtle gestures to show our status compared to others in the scene. To get more of a story to our routine we gave our characters a purpose for being there, we came up with that this was our territory and we felt a high status being in this area. Once we put this to music, it picked up the pace and brought our characters to life.




Over all in this lesson I found it quite easy to come up with lots of different movements that would fit the character, which ranged in different levels, dynamics and speeds. I think that having all of these different styles gave the routine some depth. My target for next time we work on these routines is to think more about my physicality and how a thug would hold themselves differently to I do. I would also like to look at changing some of the timings towards the song, to see if we can do somethings on certain beats and some on off beats.

Audition Evaluation 18th September 2015

I feel very positive over all with my audition, and feel that I responded well to the feedback and the questions asked during the audition. I first went in to the audition and sang my prepared rent song 'One song Glory'. I felt that this went well as I thought about what I had done before the audition when preparing for my audition. I was given advise to think more about the start note and then it set me off for the next song. I also thought a lot about the character of the story and really sold it out to the audition-er. I felt that this bring more to the song and brought it to life. I then went on to sing a bit of my west side story to show my softer side and what I could do in my slightly higher range. We then began our interview bit and i was asked some questions about what characters I liked in the play? I said that i was interested in the part of Mark, he was character I thought best suited me and my style, but i also saw a challenge in the character with his views and what he went through and why he loves to film. I was then asked to sing any of the mark songs that i knew from the show, so i sang 'What You Own' as i thought that i could show the style that i would like to give to the character.

I feel that i could have done better is my response to the questions about the themes and meanings behind the play. I thought that i could have answered the questions with more detail and imaginative answers rather than the basic yet correct answers to do with the play. I felt prepared when going into the audition as i knew a fair bit about the themes and plots and the characters of the play, and when i was asked my thoughts i had some answers prepared. I felt that this audition was a very different style to what i had done before as it was a different style, as it was quite relaxed. But it meant that we could work on my audition and try out different things during it. And i think that this is a good experiences to do different auditions that might come up in the future. 

My Top 4 Drama industry choices

I have made 4 cards of drama schools that I would like to apply for, I have included entry requirements and what the courses offer over the years.

Auditions Friday 11th September

An audition starts when you enter the room. The moment that you enter the audition room, the directors, casting team and everyone is making judgments of what your doing. This can also include when you enter the building as even a receptionist or as doorman may be in contact with the directors. If you are rude or unprofessional towards anyone that can effect your audition as a director would only know you from a negative note, instead at your potential in the room.

One of the key things for an audition is to be punctual for everything, its always worth turning up at least an hour early for a scheduled audition. This will show willing and may also be able to be seen early. If you turn up early you then give yourself time to relax and think about the audition and what your going to do in there, if you turn up later and your rushed you don't have time to prepare and settle in. In audition rooms, when waiting, you should always look at the information provided, often scripts will be in the room and it is worth having a read through as they may be referred to in the audition.


We then did a role play of audition interview. This went well for me, I played the part of the person being auditioned. This I felt was mort of a challenge as I had to think on my feet to answer the questions that were being asked. I was being asked questions as if I was being auditioned for the part of Mark Cohen in Rent. I felt that what I replyed with was well structured and I showed a passion in what I was saying, and answered in a range of different ways. If I was to do this again I would have liked to be more prepared with my answered as I wasn't sure on some of the facts about the play.

 

My Mock Audition Interview

 

 

Prior to an audition it is always essential to do some prep work and the main play/musical, directors and creative team. also about the company and their past shows. It is also worth thinking about your past experiences and how they can be linked to the show.

We then wrote some prepared some questions that we could answer in a audition or could imagine ourselves answering them. these are my mock questions:

1. What was your first impressions of the play when you did some research or watched?
2. Does any of your past experiences help you with the role?
3. Which skills do you think that you have would be suit this show and character?
4. Which characters do you feel best suits you?
5. What do you think of the themes of the play?
6. What was the last performance that you went for?
7. What do you think you can bring to this productions?
8. What can you gain from this performance?
9. Who is you favourite actor and why?

Once we had prepared our own questions we did some role plays of an auditions interview, I was answering the questions as if I was auditioning for the part of Mark in Rent. Prior to the lesson I had done a fair bit of research on the musical and I knew a lot about the plot and characters. But I did not think about the themes and messages of the play, so when I was asked the questions about themes I felt a bit stumped. In the few days up to the audition I will look into themes and what think that they mean and how they would effect the characters.