Contemporary: Rehearsal Prep

We start off this unit by reading through some of the plays that we might be performing. We were given the brief and told that we were going to be studying some scene from these plays before we put on a full performance. Below are a list of plays and there descriptions.

These plays were -

Motor Town - Simon Stephens

Written during the London bombings of 2005, Motortown is a fierce, violent and controversial response to the anti-war movement – and to the Iraq war itself.

Danny returns from Basra to an England that is foreign to him, the play’s episodic structure leading him through a bleak and bitter portrait of the country he fought to save. His brother tells him that his ex-girlfriend doesn’t want to see him after being frightened by the letters he wrote home. Danny visits her only to find she is now with someone else, sending him on a journey through his once hometown, a place of questionable morals and men selling guns, anti-war protesters and middle class swingers.

Chaotic and complex, powerful and provocative, Motortown portrays a volatile and morally insecure world. The play premiered in 2006 at the Royal Court Theatre, London.

http://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/motortown-iid-14115

I didn't have a scene in this play.

Shopping and Fucking - Mark Ravenhill

Shopping and Fucking is a witty and shocking look at a corrosive disposable world and a numb, desperate generation. The play opened at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1996 and is central to the Nineties movement sometimes called ‘in-yer-face theatre’.

Ravenhill takes the names of his four main characters from pop stars and shows them buying, selling and stealing whatever they can – drugs, sex and ready meals. Mark used to work in the City but is now a recovering junkie; after a topless audition for a shopping channel Lulu is asked to sell ecstasy by her interviewer; Gary, who has been sexually abused by his step-father, is an underage prostitute looking for someone to fulfil his violent fantasies; Robbie tries to make enough to pay the threatening landlord by setting up a phone sex line with Lulu. With a raw mixture of black humour and bleak philosophy, the play shows the lives of disconnected youth reduced to transactions by a dysfunctional consumerist society.

http://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/shopping-and-fucking-iid-11765

***

Jovan and I chose scene 3 of Shopping and Fucking. It is a interview scene where by Jovan's character Brian is interviewing my character Lulu for a drug dealing job. This entails a lot of intimidating scenarios.

The reason we chose to do this scene is because we felt this would show off our skills well. We did read through of the scripts and it had quite nice equal parts. The rehearsal process was possibly one of the easier ones to learn. I found it simple as the words were not as complex as the other plays. I was mainly only replying to what Brian's que lines were.

It was hard for me to link Lulu to other characters as she is very much original character however the play reminded me or a televised programme called 'Skins' very hard hitting and grungy, with distressing scenes.

Skins

Skins is a British teen drama that followed the lives of a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of sixth form. Its controversial storylines have explored issues such as dysfunctional families, mental illness (such as eating disorders and bipolar disorder), adolescent sexuality, substance abuse, death and bullying. Each episode generally focuses on a particular character and the struggles they face in their life. The episodes are named after the featured character. The show was created by father-and-son television writers Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain for Company Pictures, and premiered on E4 on 25 January 2007. The show went on to be a critical success as well as a ratings winner within its target demographic.

Over its initial six-year run, Skins proved to be atypical of ongoing drama series in that it replaced its primary cast every two years. Plans for a film spin-off were first discussed in 2009, but ultimately did not come to fruition. Instead, a specially-commissioned seventh and final series of the show was broadcast in 2013, featuring some of the cast from its 2007–10 run. The show's name comes from the cigarette rolling papers known as "skins".

Below you will find my analysed script -

Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads - Roy Williams

Roy Williams’s fierce and excoriating portrait of British racism is set in a south-west London pub, during the 2000 England vs. Germany match. As England lose again, their supporters in The King George lose it too – at full time, patriotism has become unapologetic racism.

Fuelling the xenophobic tensions is the blind venom of Lawrie, captain of the pub team; the articulate propaganda of Alan, active member of an anti-immigration party; and the hatred of Glen the landlady’s son, bullied and confused. The dialogue snaps with alarming authenticity in Williams’s challenging play about what it means to be British, and how people define it – whether it is a bulldog tattoo, or violence against those who don’t fit in.

Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads premiered in 2002 at the Royal National Theatre, London.one for the road

http://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/sing-yer-heart-out-for-the-lads-iid-15198

I didn't have a scene in this play.

One for the Road - Harold Pinter

This is a chilling study of power and powerlessness. Set in an unnamed totalitarian state, this play presents a violent, disturbing portrait of political horror in which an interrogator torments a tortured prisoner and his imprisoned wife and child

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196332.One_for_the_Road

I didn't have a scene in this play.

We then had some added scenes which came along later on in the rehearsal process...

HANG - Debbie Tucker-Green

Cataclysm in a small space. Explosion in lower case. Intensity and obliqueness are defining marks of Debbie Tucker Green’s plays. As is a lack of capital letters. What caused the damage to the heroine of her 2013 play, nut? Is the main character in her beautiful, mysterious debut film, Second Coming, visited by miracle or hallucination?

In hang, it becomes clear only gradually what has prompted the meeting of three people in a terrifying space. Jon Bausor’s design is a black tunnel lit by long rows of fluorescent tubes that pulse at prime moments.

At some indefinite point in the future, a victim of an unnamed crime is meeting a pair of officials. They will allow her to help decide how the person who has harmed her family will be punished – actually, how the perpetrator will be killed.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jun/21/hang-review-marianne-jean-baptiste-debbie-tucker-green

***

I was then asked to do anther scene as a member of Lily and Molly's group. We started to read through and then found that swapping some groups around may make things seem bit simpler with the rehearsal process. So Corrina was now put in to our group and took Mollys place and she replaced another in a different group. Corrina played ONE, lily played TWO and I play THREE. The good thing about this play was that they were not really gender specific so anyone could play whomever. Though in some cases my character would refer to having a husband so that slightly dampens my point. However ONE and TWO are very easy to gender swap.

During rehearsal I found this play most difficult as I had to interrupt on a lot of other peoples lines. This caused me to stutter over my words a bit or even cut at the wrong time so the girls would not get the whole line out. However I over came this by continuing to read through my script with someone along side me to help either a class mate or someone from home.

The scene we performed was half way through scene 3. It is when THREE finds out that there was a letter addressed to her from the prosecutor and TWO and THREE have already read the contents of the letter. There is a lot of secretes in this scene but they all come out when THREE decides to trick TWO in to telling the truth. My character is very forceful in the scene which is good as I can show my difference from the 'Shopping and Fucking' scene with my weaker character. The major differences in the characters will show through, which is the most important thing because as I'm playing three different characters.

I felt like changing my tone at some points like only exaggerating the key words in the text. For example 'Letter' or a swear word.

Confirmation

Well this was a full-on start to the Fringe: the new show by theatre maker and poet Chris Thorpe – for which he’s largely jettisoned the actual poetry – wallops you like an axe to the neck. Devised in collaboration with Rachel Chavkin of New York experimentalists The TEAM, it takes its title from confirmation bias, the phenomenon by which we all view and interpret the world in a manner that reinforces our pre-existing prejudices.

In this often deeply uncomfortable hour-and-a-half, nice guy liberal Thorpe regales us with the story of his attempts to attempt to shake his own bias and objectively comprehend the viewpoint of a white supremacist called Glenn, who he extensively interviewed.

Gone is the funny, oblique, studiedly understated verse that characterised Thorpe’s previous work (‘The Oh Fuck Moment’, last year’s ‘There Has Possibly Been An Incident’). In its place comes direct documentary account, coupled with a certain unnerving ambiguity – he often slips into talking ‘as’ Glenn without indicating he has done so – delivered with a violent bellowing energy, pacing around the bare floor or flicking his mic-lead aggressively.

http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/confirmation-review

***

I thought as I am performing one of Chris Thorpe's plays I should look up some information about him. So I read through this article I found on this website -

http://www.unlimited.org.uk/about/chris-thorpe/

Chris is a writer and performer from Manchester.

Chris is a founder member and a core artist with Unlimited, collaborating on all but two productions. He is also an artistic associate of Third Angel. As a solo performer, he is making a cycle of solo pieces called Eating Wasps and continues to collaborate with companies like Slung Low, Forest Fringe (for whom he curated part of their season at The Gate in 2012) RashDash and Soup Collective, with whom he wrote and recorded the piece The Bomb On Mutannabbi Street Is Still Exploding, which has been permanently installed at the Imperial War Museum North. Chris’s plays have been produced worldwide and he has toured with Unlimited and Third Angel in Europe, Africa, Asia and the USA.

Recent non Unlimited projects include Overdrama for Portuguese company mala voadora, which opened at Culturgest Lisbon, in July 2012, two new plays for BBC Radio, the first of which, Rio Story, which was a Radio 4 Friday night play in 2012, and a modern version of Robin Hood in verse for the NSDF Ensemble/Latitude Festival. He is currently developing new work with Unlimited and Third Angel, and is touring in Third Angel’s show What I Heard About The World into 2013 when the show will be touring Poland and Brazil. His play, House/Garden opened at the Centro Culturel do Belem in Lisbon in 2012 and is currently touring to Europe. Dead End, his next show for mala voadora was written for European Capital Of Culture in Guimaraes and then ran in Lisbon.

He worked with poet Hannah Jane Walker in 2010 to make her solo show This Is Just To Say. Hannah and Chris then worked together again to create The Oh Fuck Moment, which won a Fringe First at Edinburgh Fringe 2011 and will be touring sporadically over the next couple of years. Chris is developing a new piece at the West Yorkshire Playhouse with Belarus Free Theatre, who he worked with on the English version of their recent show Minsk 2011. He also plays guitar in Lucy Ellinson’s political extreme noise project TORYCORE.

Right now Chris is making a new show, I Wish I Was Lonely with Hannah Jane Walker, writing a commission for The Unicorn Theatre in London, and has just finished a commission for the Royal Exchange in Manchester, (There Has Possibly) Been An Incident, which opens at Latitude/Edinburgh 2013 and then tours after a run in Manchester. He’s also working on a new solo piece, Confirmation, with Warwick Arts Centre and Rachel Chavkin of the US company TEAM. He is proud to be a selector for the National Student Drama Festival, which is a brilliant organisation.

***

Pros and cons of the monologue

Pros – This play was performed very well when we went to go and watch it at Cambridge Junction Theatre there was one particular monologue within the piece that I took a particular interest in it was done so well that it made me want to give it a go also. I think it is a strong monologue as it has a strong message.

Cons – there are not very many cons, however I do think there could be a chance of acting it too over the top which is something I do not want to end up doing in the final piece but that does come with practice.

***

***

This play was hard for me to take on as it is very complex and opinionated. The reason I chose this part of the play to perform is because the monologue really gripped me when I went to go and watch it. It made me feel like I was the person he was speaking to and calling me a child made me frustrated so I felt he got really good reactions and that is the type of effect I wanted to have on my audience when I perform.

Its also a contemporary play so it ties nicely in with the contemporary themed 14 by 14 play we are putting on (14 by 14 standing for 14 scenes 14 actors).