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.

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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.