UNIT 7 - "FUTURES"

This unit is linked to unit 5 and 6 and enables you to reflect, analyse and report on your current and future progression.It will encourage you to take stock of your skills and abilities and make realistic choices when its looking at work for unit 6' collaboration performance project.

I picked the monologue "The Bachelor Party (Paddy Chayepsky). This monologue is about a Bookkeeper Charlie Samson who is attending night school to become an accountant when he finds out his wife, Helen is pregnant. The news upset Charlie because he believes a baby will prevent him from continuing his studies. His reservations came out during a wild and work friend, Arnold. When single man Eddie Steers the group to parties and strip clubs, Charlie becomes tempted to stray from his wife.

Just by reading what this publish play is about - the story is what attracted me into wanting to do the monologue, there is a lot of Drama, there is marriage and pregnancy - One doesn't want to have the child - worried because hes got a good job - his studies are going well, he loves his studies. There is a lot going on by just reading what this play is about.

ANALYSE PROGRESS AND PERFORMANCE
Since starting this course from finishing level 2 performing arts, I have witnessed great progress. I had a lot going on at the start of the course but I overcame it and never gave up. I did feel vulnerable at the start because I wasn't expecting to have a rough time outside of my course which effected me because I didn't want to start off that way especially because its a fresh new level for me after I did great in level 2 performing arts and got a MERIT!. 
I've made mistakes in the beginning where id forget my lines and so on but I've learnt from it and since then id put aside everything that will distract me from performing and become the confident actor that I was in level 2. I've taken a lot of things from level 2 to guide me through this course a long with the new lessons and skills I've gained in this course.

This year there was a lot of Team Work involved this year because our class is so big so which is different to me because my class last year was really small. Building something as a group benefits us individually, you gain the skill to be able to help others and yourself, giving ideas of your own to help your group and gives others the confidence to do the same- this gains a very creative performance and most importantly to get the story across to the audience. This skill also help us to be able to help other people in the future with those we don't know when we are in a different environment.

I have many plans for my future.I definitely want to go to Drama School because It offers an intensive three-year course that prepares students physically, vocally and mentally. Drama offers a focused and practical approach of training - so ill be attending Brits School.
I love to be in front of a camera so YouTube is also another thing ill be doing, share my life with my subscribers and when i gain a lot of subscribers I would like to work with children, visit children in different schools and help them build a good school play. 
When I find myself an agent then ill start my acting career depending on where my life takes me, I believe if you chase your dream, you will gain it and succeed no matter where your life takes you

24th June the day everyone performs there monologue. I was pretty nervous, i always get nervous before performing I guess its normal the character I was trying to play was just a girl talking to her friend but is also in her own world when shes talking about the man she loves, but in my head I was thinking about the lines line by line which made me realise that I should've went through my lines over and over again so it doesn't seem like I am ticking off lines in my head because that's what was making me nervous when I was performing my monologue but I got through it.

When everyone had there turn to perform their monologue we had a little break and then we had to sit in a circle - Rob then gave us our feedback...

My feedback was to:
- Be less robotic
- Go over the lines more
- Play around with the speech
- Add different emotional levels
- Drive it more in terms of voice

I will for sure take these feedback and carry it with me in the future when I go off to second years, I feel like this is my chance to now use everything iv'e learnt and use it to guide me into the actor I am meant to be. 

PROPOSAL

Learner Name: ROSELY LITITIYO-LITOYI
UAL Reg ID
Centre Name & Number = Westminister Kingway College 11072

Project Proposal Title = Performance/Direction

Tutor: Rob Alexander & Shenagh Cameron
Signature
Date

CONSONANTS
I didn't know what to expect when I started level 3 performing arts as did level 2 last year. It was a real challenge for me because that was my first time doing drama, I feel like I have came a long way as I learned and gained so much from that experience for e.g knowledge, skills and understanding. I used my knowledge from level 2 to help me overcome this year and ofcourse I learnt a lot alone the way. Im confidet ive gaind skills ths year like vocal sounds where I train my voice as it must be abke to communicate a range of emotion, Im still working on it, so every word in my voice can be heard
with enough strengths to fill the whole room.
Rob taught consonents, I also remember him teaching this last year when i was study level 2, consonants represents sounds Z, B, T, G and H are all consonants, corresponding letters A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y and not consonants.
Pacing, dictated by the dramas, action adventurous move faster then suspense.
Energy throughout, I was taught a lot about energy, and I was also taught about creating my movement through the line the thread of a character. I use a level of comfort and energy to make a character my own.
I made a lot of progress and achieved a lot by doing these skills I was taught.
What Ive learnt about all 7 units is that the language is very different, it makes you sound different and changes your body language a long with it when you rehearse. 

PROJECT CONCEPT
The aim of this project is to put together a performance for an outside audience. As well as a performing role, we consider opportunities to work in a supportive, technical, administrational etc. Developing roles in rehearsals, taking full resposibilty for our lines.
Building our roles in a supportive and collaborative manner, using skills and imagination that weve gained to use in our interpretation. Carrying our research on "Love and Information" the background and the world of the play, its context, themes and finding out how ths helps with developing my roles.
In rehearsals we should reflect on our developments and how this assisters on my learning.
Types of resources in performing arts that helps me present in my project is the body.
Other key opponents are time, space and the relationship between performer and audience.
Gives opportunity to engage the mind, the body and emotions into collaborative expression of all that it means to be human - Caryl Churchill would use that and she found that out through studying and her plays, exploring and presenting great themes and ideas.
Method acting helped me because with the amount of training that I had from Level 2 performing arts to now, I was able to adapt the lifestyle - traits or habits are a reflection of the character I was trying to portray by immersing myself into my characters mindset has enabled me to understand their motives and actions and gain a better understanding of how they feel.

EVALUTATION 

As a L3 student and Actor I've don't a lot of reflecting and evaluating with my work, outlining the success and areas that may need developing and feedback from rehearsals - thinking about my journing from L2 erforming Arts to now that I am in L3 Performing Arts, I've learnt so much from then, its turned me into the actor I am today and I know that their is still more for me to learn and gain. understanding your characters makes helps you bring it to life in your own way - making it into your own, this is the main area I developed since L2. Practise problem solving develops my skill in reasoning and understanding. When being asked to continually develop my skills, when practice I learn the skills and techniques I never give up. 

I feel like this journey helped me express my own personality with characters that I play a role in. It's like discovering the characters I play through my own experience, I'm being able to express emotion, What's exciting about coming into practical is playing roles you never thought you could play. I'm looking forward for second year L3 I'm excited for what awaiting for me.

INFORMATION ABOUT CARYL CHURCHILL

Caryl Churchill was born on the 3rd September 1938 in London.
She Is a British playwright known for dramatizing the abuses of power, for her use of non-naturalistic techniques, and for her exploration of sexual politics and feminist themes. She is the daughter of Jan Brown, a fashion model and Robert Churchill, political cartoonist. In 1961 she married David Harter. They have three sons and live in Hackney East London After World War 11, her family emigrated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Churchill was ten year old. In Montreal, she attended Trafalgar Schools for girls.

She returned to England to attend university, and in 1960 she graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, a women's college at Oxford University with a degree in English Literature. She also began her writing career there. Her four earliest plays, Downstairs (produced 1958), You've No Need To Be Frightened, Having A Wonderful Time (1960) and Easy Death (produced 1962) were performed at oxford by student theatre ensembles. 

Love and Information was first performed was first performed at The Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Sloane Square, London on Thursday 6th September 2012. 

Cast
 Nikki Amuka-Bird Linda Bassett Scarlett Brookes Amanda Drew Susan Engel Laura Elphinstone John Heffernan Joshua James Paul Jesson Billy Matthews Justin Salinger Amit Shah Rhashan Stone Nell Williams Josh Williams Sarah Woodward
 
Director   
 James Macdonald Set Designer   Miriam Buether Costume Designer  Laura Hopkins Lighting Designer  Peter Mumford Sound Designer   Christopher Shutt Casting Director   Amy Ball Assistant Director  Caitlin MacLeod Production Manager  Paul Handley Stage Manager   Laura Draper Deputy Stage Manager  Fran O’Donnell Asst Stage Manager  George Cook Stage Mgmnt Work Placement Maia Alvarez Stratford Costume Supervisor  Jackie Orton Musical Director   Simon Deacon Choreographer   Stuart Hopps Dialect Coach   Majella Hurley Set Built by   Miraculous Engineering Ltd Scenic Painter   Kerry Jarrett 

CARYL CHURCHILL'S PLAYS AND AWARDS
Plays (most recent work listed first) 2012: 
Love and Information; Ding Dong the Wicked 2009: Seven Jewish Children 2008:  Bliss/Olivier Choinire, translator 2007:  Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?  2005:  A Dream Play, new version of August Stringberg's play 2002:  A Number 2000:  Far Away 1997:  This Is A Chair 1997:  Hotel 1997:  Blue Heart 1994:  The Skriker 1994:  Thyestes, translator 1991:  Lives of the Great Poisoners 1990:  Mad Forest: a Play from Romania 1989:  Ice Cream 1987:  Serious Money 1986:  A Mouthful of Birds, with David Lan 1984:  Softcops 1983:  Fen 1982:  Top Girls 1980:  Three More Sleepless Nights 1979:  Cloud Nine 1978:  Vinegar Tom 1977:  Traps 1976:  Light Shining in Buckinghamshire 1975:  Objections to Sex and Violence 1973:  Owners
 

Awards 2001:  Obie Sustained Achievement Award 1988:  

Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play, Serious Money 1987:  Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Serious Money 1987:  Obie Award for Best New Play, Serious Money 1987:  Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year, Serious Money 1984:  Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Fen 1983:  Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Top Girls, runner-up 1982:  Obie Award for Playwriting, Top Girls 1981:  Obie Award for Playwriting, Cloud Nine 1961:  Richard Hillary Memorial Prize 1958:  Sunday Times/National Union of Students Drama Festival Award, Downstairs

 
Her early works developed Bertolt Brecht's modernist dramatic and theatrical techniques of Epic Theatre to explore issues of gender and sexuality.
From A Mouthful of Birds (1986) onwards, she began to experiment with forms of Dance-Theatre, incorporating techniques developed from performance tradition initiated by Antonin Artaud with his 'Theatre of Cruelty'. This move away from a clear Fable Dramaturgy towards increasingly fragmented and Surrealistic narratives characteristics her work as postmodernist.
It was while raising a family in the 1960's and 70's that Churchill began write short radio dramas for BBC radio. These included the Ants (1962), Not, Not, Not Enough Oxygen (1971) and Schreger's Nervous illness (1972). She also wrote television plays for the BBC including The After Dinner Joke (1978) and Crimes (1982). These, as well as some of her radio plays, have been adapted for the stage.

HOW DO HER PLAYS EXPERIMENT WITH THEATRICAL CONVENTION 
Caryl had made every theatre trip on adventure into the unknown with relentless urge to experiment the hasn't abated over almost 40 plays. Caryl has an active political conscience on succeeding generations and is a relentless experimenter with form.

That last quality is, for me, the key to an extraordinary career that has yielded close to 40 days and made Churchill an iconic figurehead. At Oxford she focused exclusively on short plays for radio. She had her first stage play. Owners, put at the Royal Court Theatre in 1972 at a time where there were scarcely any role - models for women dramatists.

Caryl Churchill is a materialist playwright. In her work she begins with the material conditions which testify to the power relations within society at a given time in history.
She builds her plays, which range widely across such subjects as the witch-hunts of the seventeenth century in Vinegar Tom (1972), the sex lives of contemporary Londoners in cloud Nine (1979). Caryl Churchill combine theatricals inventiveness with social critique in her plays. Churchill consistently relates to political ideas in theatrical terms.

Churchill examines political structures through a conscious evaluation of traditional theatre structure. In particular, Churchill finds epic theatres politics invaluable to her socialist feminists dramaturgy. Detailed analysis of the two works enables us to determine the extent to which Churchill applies epic techniques to a politics that incorporates various orientation and class.

Churchill explores to artificially of power structures, especially in patriarchal society, more over by using devices, Churchill connects the way in which an actor represents his or her role in her role in the audience to the way in which and individual represents a self society.
Churchill makes a link "Playing a role" in theatre and playing "role" in society.
Churchill continues and extends her interests, including issues patriarchy, social structure and economic changes.

Churchill builds up theatrical techniques from both Brechtian epic theatre and personal areas of theatre, reshapes traditional devices and melds than into an original style.
Churchill uses Brechtian historization to analyse the relationship between women at different social positions through history.

Churchill examines the different class consciousness and conflicts that characterize women in different moments of capitalism. By examining these two works, this study explores the independence of the theatrical and political in Churchills new grammar of discussing, viewing and writing plays.

It is this writers assertion that the use of structure is another technique that can be affectively employed to positively engage theatre audiences with work that responds to global events, making redundant any likelihood of simply telling an audience what they already know.

Structure, the internal framework of the play is a powerful way in which playwright can articulate and symbolise that relationship with an response to global events. Allowing the structure of work, the size and shape and length of scenes for example, to have a symbolic representation can moon the structure itself acts as a metaphor silent yet effecting narrative, beyond the ordinary manner of conveying themes and meaning through words, dialogue characters.

Structure can be used to influence and impact upon an audience in an almost sublimely manner. The modernists notion that the structure of an artistic work is intrinsically link with its ability to engage with the world is of particular relevance to this idea.

Structure is important because it allows the playwright to either impose order onto a seemingly chaotic world, or indeed impose chaos onto an ordered world.
Plot structure is a way a dramatist forms reality into a play. Structure is necessary because it creates a logical sequence from chaos, it turns the random action of life into the structured action of a play.

Themes, Churchills dramaturgy is above all the staging of desire - that's the theme and Desire.