Ensemble
The theatre ensemble in our piece is crucial to the success of the final
performance.
Ensemble: The movement, speech or doing at the exact same moment done by more
than one person to create one single effect.
Teamwork and patience is key to develop success in the rehearsal
room when creating an ensemble piece, everyone has to work together but also
try not to get frustrated when something goes wrong or when that one person is
always 3 seconds out, which is often the case with ensembles. In order for us
as actors to stay positive, we need to congratulate ourselves on the little
amount of progress we have made rather then the fact that we have hardly done
anything this lesson, because this is a hard topic which everyone needs to be
committed to in order to achieve anything.
My favourite ensemble piece so far is Tale 4 with the old lady;
I love how we embody shelves in a shop and how the finding of a shopping list
is found by a line full of people passing it back, one behind the other.
However I do feel as if this scene could use little improvement e.g. the old
lady pretending to look for it in her handbag whilst producing ad-lib and then
when she finally finds it she could reach up and take it. However I also really
like the pub scene (tale 4), we all get the opportunity to become lads in a
pub, embodying half drunk and cheerful chaps that are all happy and in the
moment. I love the fact that we over exaggerate
certain parts such as the drinking of beer which we all lean as far back as
possible as we glug it down and then slowly come back up only to slam our glasses
on the table. The slamming of the empty glasses is really effective because it
marks the beginning of the next scene, it kind of acts like a transition,
giving the audience a taster of what’s to come in the next scene and to set a
fixed location. The only downfall to this is the trickiness of timing, everyone
need to take responsibility and make sure they are slamming their glasses down
at the right time.
Today we focused on creating Tale 3 and the start of Tale
4.
We decided to stage Tale 3 in an open but slightly closed
manor, by this I mean that most of the time the actors are either in a circular
shape facing the audience (open), or in a circular shape with their backs to their
nearest audience (closed). I feel as if this effect creates a mixture of
an intimate feeling with the audience and but later on a more intimidating
effect. By this I mean, the Tale starts off very open, happy and together (both
literally and metaphorically as it was done as an ensemble piece), the actors
mainly speak outwardly to the audience and the lights are on creating a warm
atmosphere, however later on in the Tale the lights go off and the actors face inwards,
as if talking to each other and heads are always following the person that is
speaking (creating a steady flow). This makes it seem as if the audience has disappeared
and the happy part of the story has taken a sinister turn. The actors are no
longer smiling, they no longer speak or act as one, they have become one of
many and alone, just like little Jack.
In this Tale I played a young lad, James, 21 years of age, he
has just broken up with his girlfriend but has been persuaded by his mates to
hit the bar and look for a new chick because he is now a free man. This doesn’t
go too well though of course as he gets too caught up in the drinking and completely
forgets about the chick and before he knows it he is glugging a whole pint of larger
down his throat and slamming it down on the bar.
Tale 3 holds a
cheerful atmosphere however not for very long, the scene quickly becomes dark
and grim, and it’s almost a misleading illusion for the audience however they
have no choice but to watch it out.
Tale 3 is
different from tales 1 and 2 because firstly it uses the whole class and
secondly it is the one only tale that starts with ‘If the east end was my
friend’ that doesn’t just describe something but actually creates the imagery,
we don’t just tell the story we show it, and in a unique way that the other two
scenes don’t portray.
TALE 4
We use umbrellas in
Tale 4, making staging quite a difficult thing; we have to make the piece look
good and smooth without anyone loosing an eye. The umbrella enables us to
practice different movements e.g. pulses, spins etc. but also forces us to be more aware of the
people around us as not to cause an accident. The staging is abstract and
constantly changes formality and levels.
In this
Tale I play a teenage girl, 17 years of age named Amanda. She is happy, kind hearted
and funnily enough loves the rain and doesn’t mind getting her hair wet,
however on this particular day she has straightened her hair and so there is no
way that she will allow a single drop of rain to befall on her head. She also
happens to be really shy, so she would be the kind of girl that would have all
the intentions to help an old lady cross the road but would be too shy to go
over and help.
Further questions...
Over the past few
weeks I have managed to continue to develop skills such as
teamwork, I feel as if I am getting better at becoming one with the class
rather than one by myself. Any day I would pick a monologue over an ensemble
piece with the class but I am now learning to be able to do both with ease and
I hope to continue to develop the skill.
I managed to discover that if I really try then I can achieve a
skill that I don’t particularly like.
Lines to sum up each Tale that we have staged so far:
Prologue: Knoworramean?
Tale 1: ‘Can stick up for himself’
Tale 2: ‘At night, she dreams of rainclouds’
Tale 3: ‘At home on his own Jack cuddles the
quilt’
Tale 4: ‘Crushed soggy from her fist’
Tale 5: ‘You’re free’
