Pillowman - Lesson 8 - 27th November 2015

This week Dan had returned from his operation meaning that we could rehearse act one and three like normal. We went over the first act like we had rehearsed before Dan had left but we were blocking the ideas so that we could work on making some comedic and some serious parts. For Ariel, the group and I thought that it would be comedic if I was to just lose my temper with almost anything that Katurian would say and would result in Ariel then throwing a bag/chair/anything around the room whilst mumbling things to himself. 

Types of staging for Education Piece

To finalise the type of staging that we want for the education subject, I've found a picture of how they have staged out the meeting scene from Future Conditional. We want to use this as an ispiration so that we can base our boardroom scene around what we saw.



The staging for furture conditonal is also in a traverse way which means when we get to our boardroom scene we will switch seats and then it means that the audience will see everyones facial expressions and therefore can gain more comedic value.

Future Conditional

With our devised piece, we were really influenced by the show Future Conditional. It relates rather well to what we are doing and highlight the same kind of problems and issues that we face in our education system. However, there is a major difference from our piece to Future Conditional. Our devised piece, focuses heavily on the time period of our education. How it has changed and developed over the years and how it has got harder and harder to teach students in modern day society. Future Conditional however focuses on what can change in the system and how it affects a specific student who is from an eastern country.


Here is an interview with Rob Brydon and he talks about the play and what it's about (although he then goes on to talk about what he was like in school and it becomes a bit random, however the first few questions are relevant and are helpful) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVmWnFdRd4I  

Character Profile - Teacher

This is what I imagine myself character to look like however with a tie and his top button done up. I'd like my character to be rather smart and presentable yet so the audience can see he's a teacher. My character in the boardroom is a rather sarcastic and unfocused teacher when it comes to meetings and discussions etc however he pays attention to what's being said just so he can throw in some really random and snarky comments to do with the subject of what's being spoken about. I'd say that he's probably in his late 20's or early 30's and has a rather big knowledge of the teaching industry. I don't think he likes the pupils at the school that much however when they don't annoy him he likes it. I've decided that I won't change my name for the character as it's something I can imagine myself doing and also it makes it more simple and straight forward when rehearsing. 

What You Own

In today's lesson we recapped what we have done from yesterday's lesson just so that it can stay fresh in our minds. We then got the script for the song that follows, "What You Own". Which is a song based around what Mark and Roger see in their heads which is telling the audience how they feel as well as think. As much as I find this song boring, it is rather important to the story as you see things in two characters perspective. So like yesterday's lesson, we listened to the song a few times over just to listen to what it sounds like and also try and inspire us for any ideas we have. We came up with an idea that half the company would sing a part with Mark and the other half of the company would sing with Roger. Whilst they are singing, everyone is scattered across the entire stage and frozen as it shows that it's all in their heads. This was we are all on stage and we are all able to sing together for the last chorus. I thought that this was a  good idea and it means that everyone is able to be seen and heard, however I think that we should probably have a montage of some sort of love and hate or friendship video clips as it shows that they're falling out yet foreshadows that they are friends in the end but the way we could do it is put an affect on it so it looks like it's a flash back.

Goodbye Love

In today's lesson we were missing the character of Angel due to him having an operation.Due to this it meant that we can't use him in anything for the next few weeks. So due to this we have started to work on Act 2 and we thought that it would be a good idea to start on 'Goodbye Love'. We listened to the track a few times just so that people who haven't heard it before. Once we had listened to it a few times and got the lines for it, we sang it through a few times. Just to try and see if we will need to adjust our voices to a higher or lower tone. Then after this, this is when we started to block things. Mark will have his lines at the beginning and then once he finishes, the song will begin. We wall walk out from the back of stage left and walk in a weird line however we're scattered out. I walk out first as the song is set to take place just after Angel's funeral and I'll need to show how Collin's is feeling but also to show that he doesn't want to be around anyone, really exaggerating how lonely he feels in that current moment. Once I sing my lines, I shall walk back to where we came on as I need to show the audience I'm going back into the church. Whilst I'm inside the church the audience will see that Mark and Rodger having an argument and personally I think that this is rather sad as Mark is realizing that he's probably going to be left on his own and all of his friends will be dead due to the aids. And Rodger is just the same as he always is in the musical which is confused as to why he loves Mimi and pushes her away. Roger then walks off stage leaving Mark, Mimi and Benny all together and they offer to help. The people playing these character are all mid stage at this point so that the audience can really focus on them. Once she has finished singing Collins returns out of the church and being verbally abused by the priest. He calls him a queer which leads to a small argument and leaving Collins with Mark and Benny.

The thing that I liked about staging this is that I can really imagine that the church at the back of the stage which will be good as I can then find it easier to walk in and out of but also it would be really good to set the scene. However, after watching how this secondry school have their staging and how where the church door would be located, I did think that it was a rather interesting way of having it an also have it can make the audience feel. ( 1:56:18 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Zs06bS-pQ ) One thing that I think that I'll have to do in order to play this part quite well is to look into what it's like to have the person you love taken away from you. I think it's going to be quite hard as I've been fortunate enough to not experience it however in a way I don't think I'll be able to make it as realistic as it could be however I'll have to give it my best. Another thing that I think that we we could potentially have in this scene is maybe having everyone in one section of the stage and if they're not being spoken to or such they should just freeze so then they can still be on the stage but also it can be an interesting technique we can use in the piece.

Pillowman - Lesson 6 & 7 - 13/11/2015 & 20/11/2015

For these past few weeks Dan has been off of school due to an operation on his nose which means that we can’t really continue with any rehearsals that include Ariel and Tupolski.

On the 13^th November, I spent most of my time thinking about what the Pillowman might look like. I have come up with two different ideas. The first one was a ‘cute’ or friendly looking Pillowman. I also kept on thinking of the character from the Disney Pixar film ‘Big Hero 6’.

My other idea was that the Pillowman is a sinister looking man who wears a pillowcase over his head and wears it like a mask. The lips would be stitched together and make a chilling smile and his buttoned eyes would be loose to show that he’s been through a lot and maybe has a rough time trying to get a child to end their life. Also the pillow would be slightly torn which again could show that he has had a bit of a struggle.

On the 20^th November our group has decided to move on to act 2 which includes Ashley and Tom talking about the story of ‘The Pillowman’ and ‘The Little Green Pig’ stories. Whilst the two of them have been acting, I took on the role of directing parts of the scene. When I wasn’t working with them, I would be designing a model of the Pillowman in my own interpretation. 

Santa Fe

Today we moved away from I'll cover you and Today for you and went onto the song Santa Fe. This is where Collins tells everyone about his dream of leaving his teaching career and going to work in a restraunt located in Santa Fe. The thing I like about this song is that you can speak some of the lyrics and sing the rest however I like to sing as much of it as I can as it's quite a blues kinda song with the bass and the low singing. We sung through it a couple of times to get a feel of it and also to know where we come in etc. I felt like the song was rather easy to learn and lick up. For staging it it's mainly just Collins and Angel for the first few half or so and I feel like I need to be more involved with Angel so I'm setting myself the target of adding in a bit more movement. When we get the second verse people start to come in and dance behind us as it's a part in which everyone sings to. And then once they all go off I feel like I should end up near Angel as the song then ends and then after we exchange some dialogue and sing I'll cover you.

I'll cover you + Today for you

In today's lesson, it was the last week that we had Dan who is playing Angel. So before he left for his surgery, we tried to get as much done that involves our two characters ( Angel and Collins). So the 3 main songs that we tried to get done was " I'll cover you ", " Today for you " and " Santa Fe ". We started on I'll cover you. I had been listening to this song a lot in the recent weeks so I already knew the words for it however one struggle that I had is that I don't feel as if my voice is as strong as the original Collins (Jesse L Martin), so I have to try and change my voice to a lower tone to allow myself to not damage my vocal chords. For the song we try to look as Couple like as possible, by achieving this we watched the film version and Broadway version. We looked at what kind of movement that they both had and how they make it look like they're a couple. When we looked they both hold hands and spin in a circle and they also do a little dance where Collins has his arm around Angels back and has his hand on his hips. And then we give some sort of jesters to each other when we say "You'll be my king and I'll be you castle". "No you'll be my queen and I'll be your mote." and then we pretend to put crowns on each other and then get closer top each other and then run around in a circle around the stage and meet each other at the front of the stage again and sing the final lines and passionately embrace.

When we were first thinking of the ideas that we could use in this, we found it rather difficult as we didn't know what we wanted to do with it, weather we wanted to use the film and Broadway as inspiration or if we wanted to make something up from scratch. So after we spoke to each other about it, we decided that we would do both. We chose that we would use some parts from the film and Broadway and then whatever we didn't have in it, we made up.

Once we sorted out what we were doing for I'll cover you, we moved straight onto 'Today for you' which is where Collins introduces Angel to his friends (Mark and Roger). At the beginning of song it has this strange circus/Caribbean type of music so myself and Ashley thought it would be funny to form a little 2 man conger line as we go on the stage and sing. And then we have our arms on each other's shoulders and sway from side to side as we sing 'oh holy night, he struck gold at MIT'. This is so that the audience can see they're really good friends and they like to mess about with each other. And then when Angel comes in Mark and Roger are amazed at what they see and are slightly frozen whilst Collins is going to be in his own little world and doing a drum beat kind of thing with a coke glass and a stick. For the drum part in the song, I thought it would be good for Dan to do a weird tap dance as he cant drum well and also he is a dance and it would look rather impressive to the audience however he is in heels and he finds it a massive struggle to dance in them. 

Tango: Maureen

In today's lesson we started on Tango: Maureen. We start off with Ashley and Freya ( Mark and Joanne) singing together about Maureen. We thought it would be funny if we show off Mark's clumsy side and make him dance like a bit of an idiot, however when they start to do there tango dance, we make him look more smarter. Mid way through the dance the rest of the cast come on stage with their partners and perform a small tango. We then do a simple step routine around the stage and then walk off.

I found this rather hard as I'm not used to any type of dancing, especially with a style such as the tango. I had to do it a few times to try and get used to it as I find it rather complicated. So I need to rehears on it more to make sure it looks perfect or so that it looks like I know what I'm doing. Another thing that I find difficult with this is that Dan (Angel) is taller than me so I have to look up a lot and I think that it looks a bit strange with the height difference.

Rent - Rent

For the main song Rent, Tom and myself decided that we would make a start on coreographing the first part of the song. When we listened to it we thought that it had a bit of a messy kind of feel to it, like the kinda music you could play over somone being stressed etc. When Ashely starts to sing, he will step forward and act whist singing as it singles him out from everyone else and he's the main focus as it's Roger and himself (and maybe Collins) who are in this mess. Once Ashley has sung his lines, Tom will then come forward and be level with Ashley so then they are both the main focus, he's also acting whilst singing. Whilst this is going on, we have people running around the stage tring to bring on props and scenery (ladders, bins, small flood lights etc). Then when we reach the chourus, everyone will freeze and face forward except for Mark and Roger. They slowly stand on the table and then look at each other, slowly getting louder with the "how we gonna pay" and then when they say "last years rent" they'll face forward.

The song Rent starts at 3:10 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK_WPczZJjU#t=191

Rent - Tune Up #1, Voice Mail 1 and Tune Up #2

For this opening scene we start of with Mark (Ashley) and Roger (Tom) on stage, Roger is with his guitar and the back wall is covered in posters as they live in what was once used as a music studio. We see Mark with his camera and he's filming everything, he films Roger tuning his guitar and then when he the answering machine goes off he zooms in. We have a guitar which Tom can use and all he has to do is make it look like he's playing it for this introducton and we'll also need to get a camera for Ashley so he can pretend to film things. What we might have to do is film things before and then edit them before the performence so then when we get to the part where Mark show's his film, we have all the parts done and make it look like he's put it together in his free time.

For Voice Mail 1, Meg is going to be playing Mark's mother as she has a very soft voice when she sings and she can also go rather high and she also sounds a bit like the actress in the actual song. When performing this part, she will be standing on the opposite side of the stage to Mark and Roger and looking stright ahead as this will actually show that she's not actually in the same place as them but also so they can get an idea as to how Marks Mum acts and shows a bit of her personality.

In Tune Up #2, it slightly repeats it's self and once the answering machine part has finished (we don't hear it this time), we see Tom aka Collins (Myself) standing on the main floor (we decided that we wanted to have some sort of levels to show who's inside the main building that the pieces are set in and who's on the street or elsewhere.) And then once Collins is 'detained', I shall be sitting on the steps that are right infront of the stage as it shows he's in some sort of shelter on the street and he's beein injured. After Collins has been introduced, Benny (Carl) then calls them to inform them that he's going collect his Rent (which he said they wouldn't need to worry about). Benny is going to be located on the far left on the main floor so that it shows that there is more than 2 locations being used.

This Song then leads into the song Rent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK_WPczZJjU#t=191 - This is a video of how it looks so far, Tune Up #2 ends at 3:10.

Modern School - Technique 2

This is our other version on the whole movement based idea. We thought it would be good to show the students minipulating the teacher in a different way. We showed both pieces to both of our teachers and they both prefered the differnet ones, so then we decided that we would keep them both but find ways to maybe have a transition so that we can have both pieces and also show both ways of the teachers being manipulated. I had an idea of that this should be the first one as when I pretend to knee Carl in the face he takes a seat. This would be good to have a blackout and then have a small soundscape of him teaching our class and then when the lights come back on we start the puppetry piece. I like puppetry idea more as it really focuses on our movement and manipulation of teachers. One thing that I need to be cearful within this part is that I'm using stage combat and need to ensure that I'm fully focused. As you can see from this video, I wasn't and because of that it went wrong, Carl wasn't in a lot of pain and as seen, I had realised the error and adressed it straight away.

Modern School - Technique

For this movement based scene we worked on ways we can show our audience the way that modern schools are run and how they are actually might be seen by some members of staff. In this piece, we have chosen to base it on movement and as you can see, we are focusing on a puppetry based piece. This way we can show that the teachers in modern day have no control over any students in the class and how that they are over powered and minipulated in most sitations. We did like having the puppetry idea as it can easily demonstraight the power perspective and also the whole manipulation part.

Pillowman - lesson 5 - 06/11/2015

In today’s lesson we focused on the dialogue and how we will set the first Act. We’ve already sorted out what we do when the play first starts. We want to show how dark and horrible the ‘police’ are so that we are confusing audience on who’s actually the bad person in the play. Katurian who writes these stories about murdered children or children being tortured in horrific ways, Michael who acts out a few of the stories, or Ariel and Tupolski who breach someone’s human rights and murder a possibly innocent person. For my character, I feel that it’s important to show how unhinged he is and also how he takes his approach to intimidate people, for example: When he walks in with a “Bloody clothing around his hand” however it’s just fake blood. However, when you compare this to Tupolski’s character, he’s very manipulative and uses his wording to an advantage. To really show these characteristics, Dan will take a ‘relaxed’ approach to his character as it shows that he can always be thinking and that he’s also a lot more in control. By his doing this, it then means that I can go all out with Ariel and find ways to really show his anger. I feel that a way I can show anger is by pacing around the room, screaming at either of the characters in the middle of a conversation or even start throwing things around the room. 

Rent - Beginning Rehearsal

When we started the rent reheaslals, we spent a lesson on actually choosing what we wanted to base our workshop unit on. Where as a lot of people in the class are into musical theatre, the class wanted to work on a musical that we could easily workshop in terms of style and the ways we can stage things. Someone suggested Rent and rather quickly people started to agree and were really up for it. There were some people in the class (including myself) had no idea about Rent and the story or even the characters. After this the people who knew the musical told us about it, telling us about the characters and a basic outline of the story. Once it was decided that we would do this workshop unit on Rent, we were given the first few pages of the script (just the song lyrics including the monologue at the beginning of the musical) and we were split into groups to see how people found certain characters (weather they found the vocal range achievable, weather they felt that they could achieve it, weather they wanted to go for that part etc). For my character in this "tester" session, I liked to play the character of Roger as he has a rather louder voice and it would be something that would have been challenging. However I did like the character of Collins as he has a similar voice range to me and I could adapt to his singing.