Unit 24 - Auditions for actors

Monday 19th March

We started the session with a warmup and then moved onto working on my pieces. 

The main aspect that I was working on for my Shakespeare piece was the movement. I have carried out some research and found out that this monologue is set in Juliet’s bedroom. Therefore, we pushed 3 white blocks together in the performance studio to make a bed. We then added a sheet of lace and a pillow on top of the blocks to make it look more like a bed. This made it feel more like a bedroom which is where the scene is set. This therefore enabled me to improve my characterisation which is something that I have been struggling with at the moment because I have struggled understanding the text. We then worked on moving around this piece of stage furniture. At first, I started to improvise and move when I thought that I should but at some of the points when I was moving, it looked awkward and didn’t really fit. During the piece I will be using 2 props - a vial and a dagger. Using these props during the piece will help me with my characterisation as it enables me to connect with the character more as these aren't items which I would use in everyday life. I have never been in a situation that is similar to the one that Juliet is in during this piece so using the props makes it easier for me to draw on these emotions and use my emotional memory. The props will help me to connect with many emotions during the piece such as fear, uncertainty, apprehension of what's to come and understated excitement. I needed to work out when I was going to put these props down and where I was going to put them down. After working on the piece for quite a while, we finally got something that we thought started to look right and natural. Here is a video of what I have been working on:

To finish off the session, I went through my contemporary monologue. However, we didn’t really have much time to work on this piece today because we had spent a lot of time working on the Shakespeare monologue because this needed more development.