"From wonder into wonder existence opens." Lao Tzu

During one year studying drama at Lewisham College, I have improved my acting skills, have learnt new techniques and have built more confidence. It has brought me a greater understanding of text analysing and research and gave me a fresh look into my work towards becoming a professional actor.

I admired schedule and timings of the program. By the time of beginning of audition dates for drama schools, every student of the group was fully prepared. I certainly recommend the drama course to every aspiring student as a preparing step for drama school. I have so many things to take away with me and feel so privileged to have had this opportunity.

Reflection

What I have learned while being at Lewisham College is a lot about acting and things that I didn't relize you had to think about while your performing. e.g. knowing the context of your character, to continue acting even when you are not speaking, react and listen to others so if a line may be dropped you have the ability to pick it up and continue with the show smoothly. I have also learned about many techniques and different practicioners styles of acting for example Myisner and Stanislavsky. Another thing i have learned whilst rehersing 'POSH', is how to work as an ensemble on a mass scale.

More is goimg to be typed........to be continued.....

Over the period of the 2yrs, I have studied at Lewisham College, I have leant a lot about drama as a whole and acting in great detail. The fact that I have been thought the importance of research and detailed character development as well as commitment to character has played a big part in this for me. I have learnt about different theatre practioners and how to work with different texts (classical& contep) among other things. I feel better and more comfortable now when I’m performing either on stage or on screen. It has been a fantastic learning experience which has made a great impact on me as a person and has also opened up my eyes to the wide world. It has also exposed me to other parts of theatre practice that I wouldn’t have thought I would be looking to venture into. I now have directing skill (which I’m still developing), Workshop leading skills, I know what is expected from me when being auditioned and when auditioning. I feel I have a wealth of knowledge that I carry around with me and can be pulled out whenever it is needed.

Ibrahim Shote

George Balfour's Journey

OK, so it's our first dinner back at Oxford Uni, and the boys have decided we do it at the Bulls Head in Kingsbury. Very far but we are band from a lot of other places. The theme of this dinner is to dress like entrepreneurs. I turn up there and no one is there yet, so I decided to go have a drink in the bar. I met couple of nice people there. I bought them couple drinks and we all sat down and had a chat. I found out that one of them use to work for my father, so I was just catching up on things with him. After a few rounds of drinking, Guy Bellingfield came to get me from the bar. I was tipsy at this stage. When I entered the dining room everyone was standing behind their seats, I felt a little out of place because I didn't want to feel like I was the late one but I was in a jolly good mood so it didn't matter to me. As I was about to walk to my seat I heard the landlord say PIN number. I'm sorry but I found that funny, how can you say PIN number? We just say PIN. Any ways that was the joke of my day. So after listening to a whole of rubbish from this landlord, I wasn't listening to half the stuff he was saying, we did the president's toast and a few other toasts and I also found out that Harry hired a 'prozer'. I was even more tipsy near to drunk and I was feeling hungry. We had a nice Pate, and the main course was delicious! 10 birds roast. I have never heard of it but it was delicious! OK, now things are starting to go wrong. First of all apparently there wasn't 10 birds in our roast, there was 9 birds! It didn't matter to me but it did to most of the other members. Hugo did a great speech which was a highlight for my evening, but then we found something out about James. It wasn't good, but Allistaire read out a document about James applying for a middle class bank. This was shocking for the president to be doing that behind our backs. So things are carrying on to go bad for us. The prozer that Harry hired came but didn't do what she was meant to do! I had to carry on drinking to make me feel better, now the landlord came in and starting complaining at us! How dare he after we didn't do anything wrong. Some of Riot Club members were really ticked off at this stage, but what can we do? I guess to just try and enjoy the rest of our night. We played a game of Chelsea trots, but the landlord's daughter (a pretty college girl) didn't want to play with us so we involved her in the forfeits. She refuse to kiss Guy. I was shocked of the outcome of this. Now Toby came out his Lord Riots mood and threw up, and that is when we started to do what we do for fun! Which is to destroy! So we started destroying the pub and the landlord walks in and interrupted us. He started shouting and I felt like I was going to vomit at this point, I went to the side and put my head down for a bit. I jumped up after hearing loud noises, I turned around and saw Toby beating the shit out of someone, I looked down and it was the landlord! Everyone else was just watching, I had to stop it quickly. I was so shocked, and it had to be the moment when I wasn't feeling so good.Since I was the only one who knew about first aid, I went to help the landlord on the floor while the others decide on what we going to do. The end result of this was not good! They decided to frame Allistaire! I do not know why because I didn't know how it started but I was the last person to make my decision, and I had no choice but to agree with the others.

Knock, knock, loud knocking on the door, and over the knocking was the voice saying, ''Have you got my dad in there? Let me in, if you don't let me in I will call the police''.

It was the voice of the Landlord's daughter Rachel. I was still a bit tipsy but I knew what was going on at this point, and I was scared, I was scared to see what will happen next.

Rehearsal Reflection

After reading the play for the first time, I was happy about doing Posh for our final play. The characters were funny and interest, and the play itself was funny. I was happy for the character I got chosen to be (George Balfour), which made me more interested in doing the play and trying my best effort in succeeding in this performance.

The whole rehearsal process was a really good experience for me. It was hard at times because of the space we was rehearsing in, but we didn't have a choice. I am just happy it turned out really well after we only had three days to rehearse in our final space with lights and music.

The MPA (Method of Physical Action) technique helped me to learn my lines quicker for the play. I didn't struggle when learning my lines. Although I didn't have chunks of text to learn, but it wasn't as easy when I also have to know what is going on in the scene, and knowing my q's. So I had to read the play couple of times for me to understand it.

During the ten weeks of rehearsing, we have had ups and downs. Like 5/6 weeks through, not everyone learned their lines which was a problem, because by that time we should of been focussing on the acting and directions, not on the lines, but we had a talk as a class and from then things seems to be better. I had fun watching other people rehearsing and receiving notes and directions from the director, because in that way I found ways of improving myself and taking on other feedbacks such as connecting with my lines and reacting. Those are the main things in acting as well as clarity which is what I had my most problems with. Also using my posh accent with clarity. I gave myself enough time to work on my accent, but I don't think I focussed on it as well as I could of done, and I am talking about at home, not just in class.

A week before the play and the play was looking really good, and I am talking from watching the majority of the first scene and feeling the energy from when I get on stage. The energy was also another problem not just for me but for the class as well. This play takes on a lot of energy all the way through, and levels of drunkenness. We did improvs in class to help us with that which was the best thing about rehearsing and making things look realistic. My favourite improv is the once when we were doing different stage of being drunk from 1-7, from being kinetic to high alert.

We did four performance with different audiences, and my favourite performance was the final one on Thursday evening.

If I could do this play again, One thing I would improve on is my accent, and take more time in practising my accent.

A group of young Eton men meet up at a Gastropub to celebrate our so-called 'Riot Club'. The evening starts off well but as the drink starts to flow, tensions start to rise. There is talk of money, politics, control and lack of leadership. As the night progressed and promises of entertainment decline, the men and I trash the room in a drunken rage, sexually abuse the landlord's daughter, I was chosen to place a kiss upon her despite her refusal, and in the end grievously attacking the landlord himself to unconsciousness. Panic arises and the main ringleader of the night, Alistair, takes the fall through an unanimous vote. Not my proudest moment in life, and one I will forever regret.

Reflection of Posh

When we first found out that we were going to be performing "Posh" for our FMP and when we found out what it was about, I was excited because I thought that it would stretch all of us and would be an exciting challenge and I was right.

I have to admit even though I'm not the girliest, well....girl I did find it hard to play the opposite sex, but with great observation (luckily most of the class is men) I think I did a pretty good interpretation of a man.

During the rehearsal process, I have learnt the importance of backstage acting when you aren't speaking because if everyone checked out when they aren't saying anything the play would be very boring and in real life we react to things that are being said when we don't speak.

I am grateful for the vocal training that we had to help us speak posh because although I know that most of us thought it was torture, it did pay off.

I think that we had quite a difficult job working with water and food because we had to be aware of spacial awareness at all times and not just of each other but with bottles and glasses.

Overall, I have thouroughly enjoyed this exerience and I would happily do it again and I know I'm not the only one!

Rehearsal Process

As an student actor I would say Posh is a very challenging play. It made me have an experience of a lot of firsts. But the main one is from beginning of the play to the end except short breaks most of the actors are on the stage and acting becomes non stop.
Of course if even there’s no line to say or any action to do actor has to use body language, has to have natural respond to happenings and by listening to keep her/himself on.But to do this during whole play is challenging.
I discovered from rehearsal process that one actor’s energy effects the whole group and realized how it is difficult and disappointing for director to see somebody apathetic and insensible. I’ve learnt how to keep my energy up and to be able to take directions. I had chance to speak up my views about the directions and also listened other actors views in different scenes. I certified again that actors views most of the time could go opposite to each other and sometimes even with the director. I’ve learnt how to limit this views in respect. I’ve learnt that I can keep my character alive and fresh with my effort as well as others. Other actors behaviours, body languages and and tones show my characters place in the play as well as speeches and any mistake can drop it or make it higher so easily. So it means an actors performance doesn’t mean something. Others reaction makes the magic. Playing other sex is hard but I think I’ve managed to put it on my body ( walk like man and movements) but have struggled with hand gestures and voice.

Reflections

Rehearsal Reflections
The first chunk of the process was using method of physical action. I really feel the benefit of MPA because firstly it creates blocking that looks natural as it comes from the actor in character, it isn’t contrived, and it’s a work of natural impulse rather than a work of the director. Stanislavski was a practitioner that thought actors should take more control over character choices and not be merely pawns of the director. Another aspect of MPA that really interests me is the physical and psychological parts of a person working together at all times. Stanislavski discovered that the psychological and physical of a human being is connected by thousands of nerves. Every outer action is spurred on by an inner motive, a want. When Toby paces at the start of the play it looks realistic because that was a choice spurred on by his inner motive, pacing on stage can look forced but this looked natural because it was a intuitive choice by an actor giving himself up to the character. By using MPA at the start of the process we take text loosely memorised, we grasp the basic gist of one unit, and then we use our impulses and physical initiative working with our inner choices and create something that seems natural and real. The Stanislavski system works on creating natural emotion over and over again in a controlled environment which I think we managed to do because we connected physical life with inner life. MPA is enhanced by good imagination, Katie had laid down the basics for her character, the movements the blocking in the first few weeks, and then for the rest of the process she used her imagination to add layers of hilarious and believable actions and variations to her text.
I feel like I have learnt a lot about what big truth is through this process. Big truth is something that is necessary in the theatre more than TV/film because you don’t have the luxuries of close ups, camera angles, sound etc to give you the subtleties that occur in everyday life. In theatre we need characters big even when low status or shy so that they read to the audience, but we still need them truthful. Nico is someone who does this very well. The conversation when he talks about the history of England with Dimitri is a conversation between two people that is quiet in the setting of a dinner party of ten, and this reads. Nico comes off like he is talking at a conversational level and being realistic but at the same time he’s got a very big presence and is being big with his facial expressions and animated in his voice. It’s his ability to stay true to the character and commit to the character that it comes across hyper real, and there is the big truth.
Another thing I learnt a lot from was Nathan’s use of the Miesner technique when he is doing the science experiments. This came late in the process and he had already a solid grounding of Alistair, being comfortable in your character and then putting an action like the fiddling with the glasses looks so natural, because you allow your subconscious to take over with the lines that you know inside out and focus on the activity, this creates something that is a replica of real life, concentrating on the physical action firstly and letting the psychological work slide over the top is so believable. I have so many conversations at work while I’m constantly focusing on physical activity and this is the kind of real life moment that Nathan created on stage.
For me in this process I found it a struggle, but I think I always find things hard and rewarding. I don’t think acting for me is as natural a process as it is for maybe people like Tommy and Nico, I feel like I have to work quite hard to create an imaginary world around me and stick in it, to commit to a character and take it to the next level. It was a bit of a slow process at first but I think in the end it started developing. Again with Miles I see how beneficial an accent far away from your own can be. Miles doesn’t have a lot of lines and I had no idea what I was going to do with him, had no idea how I would connect and make that character believable. The same as with Phebe, an accent put a handle on a character that I struggled with and gave me a way in and something to build on. Rachel was a nice character to play because she was so innocent, I only found this really hard when I was having a hard time in the process, she would turn into some sort of south east London rude girl all of a sudden! I realised how hard it is to be someone else when you’re so wrapped up in yourself in this process.
Because I played three small characters who’s psychologies weren’t wrote into the play as much as some of the others I did different kinds of research and imaginative work to develop them. Charlie was the one I researched most because I found her quite interesting, what does make a well educated middle class girl turn to prostitution? I looked up some of the many articles on prostitutes about girls that went to private schools and where raised in privileged families. Money is the biggest deciding factor that pushes most girls into it, and the things that come with money, glamour, success, nice possessions. These very middle class girls are doing it because they believe it’s easy money and it’s their choice, they are not forced into it or brutalised, this isn’t the sort of prostitution where a girl receives £20 max and spends it on heroin this is prostitution where the girls are living in £300,000 homes and earning £500 to £2000 pound an hour. A ‘respectable’ tier of societies daughters are now joining the sex industry, and I think this has a lot to do with sex and porn being readily available and less shocking to us, it’s everywhere, its normalised. Because everything has such emphasis on sex, media advertising etc, it’s become a ‘profession’ that is seen as somewhat acceptable, at least to the privately educated girls that work in the business. However, the dark side is that some, in rare moments of vulnerability, do admit the grubbier side to the job where they sleep with undesirable men and have to block it out. For some there backgrounds of wealth have helped, with girls admitting that they used their knowledge in areas like art and horse riding to meet well off punters. I enjoy understanding the previous circumstances of a character and using research to create a back story and an empathetic approach to building a character.