My character Simon

In the play I am playing a young man roughly I have placed his age round about 17 only because not only has he now family but teaches himself a number of things and I wanted him to be roughly near the same age as Bonnie and Sylvia or maybe older as he does protect both of the girls without fear and he has no one in his family apart from geese which he sells to make money for himself and lives in a forest cave which i picture being big as in a circle but not to far in the mountain hill, I think of this only because of the things which he would have belonging to him like food, bed and a pen to keep the geese. I do have a picture of what i have been told to dress my character but my camera quality isn't as good but i have put what type of clothing i will be wearing------->

Next is about my posture, now this will sound silly but I have done some research on archery about different stances which they position themselves before shooting and how far they should pull the string back (archers always pulling the bow string back to their chin, any less their wont be enough power in the shot of the arrow and pull it to far back their is a chance of the bow string will snap or it will strain the archers wrist and forearm dis-balancing the shot). Archers never hold the position for long because the target could move and it would be a waste shot so most archers which i have researched never normally aim they ''quick shot'' if they want to get a clean shot at a target, these shots are normally used for medium to short range shots, if the target is at a long range distance the archer does take his time at aiming and takes a deep breath......slowly breaths out to calm to body.......release and the arrow will have enough power to piece the skin on animals and non-armored people, sometimes it can work on armored solider's if the arrow hits the right position were the armor is less protected or their is an open space. Here is a picture diagram of other positions from a different culture who uses a bow > 

Real 1832 versus the fictional 1832

Why is it important for us to know what people were like then?

Can you think of anything that may have been happening at the time?

England

Who was on the throne in 1832?

How did people travel around the country at the time?

What sort of clothes did people wear?

Task

In your group, you have 15 minutes to research what England was like in 1832.

Work together to find as much information as possible.

Women clothing in the 1832 was fashionable because of how their clothing was big and bright in different style of colours, they had large (leg of mutton or gigot) sleeves above the large skirts which frill outwards, the waist of their dresses was small and tight know as a corseting design which was narrow for the bulkiness between the top half and the bottom half of the women’s body to make the waist look a lot thinner than it was.

Hair was parted in the centre and dressed in elaborate curls, loops and knots extending out to both sides and up from the crown of the head. Braids were fashionable, and were likewise looped over either ear and gathered into a topknot

Men’s clothing was a lot simpler because men's fashion plates continue to show an ideal of a silhouette with broad shoulders, and a narrow, tightly cinched waist.

Frock coats increasingly replaced tail coats for informal day wear. They were just midway calf length, and might be double-breasted (short on the torso but easy enough to button up around the chest area. the Shoulder padding fell lower on the top part of the arm and the shoulders were sloped and puffed sleeve heads gradually shrank and then disappeared. The Waistcoats or vests were single- or double-breasted depending on what type of coats they wore.

Real 1832	Fictional 1832
King William the 4th was the real king at this time	King James the 3rd was the fake king at this time instead of William the 4th
Clothing was similar	Clothing was similar
Heavy steam trains which are too heavy and hard to get knocked of the tracks by animals.	Steam trains as they were in the real 1832, but they weren’t as heavy as the real ones in the 1832 and was able to be knocked of tracks or bordered by animals such as wolves.
Men were the more dominant and in control then the women and the women could not talk unless they are spoken too.
The channel tunnel wasn’t made until the late 1800’s and was finished in 1994	In the fictional 1832 it said that the channel tunnel was made and that’s how the wolves gotten through into England.
Orphans were treated badly because children were seen as liabilities that could be exploited	Sylvia is a lower class orphan who gets treated well and has the opportunity to live with her rich uncle.

How the show is starting

We have finally got the start of the show sorted and how we are going to start and which part of the stage we are all going to start from. Now that we have the intro for the play finally on-going we have now added the dance, so how it starts so far is that:

it starts with a blackout and no one is on stage (everyone is stage back left) and slowly the lights will light up and Beth (alpha female) walks on stage in the middle, Meg then goes on and stands on Beths left and I follow and stand on her right (three strongest wolves in the pack). Then one by one everyone will follow but not standing behind us they will slowly push through me, Beth and Meg and get in front of us and form a backwards triangle shape, soon as the last person has gotten through to the front Beth will then move again to the front and Meg and I follow but then everyone follow but stay behind us then after everyone has stopped moving the person at the back puts their hand on the persons shoulders in front of them for them to do the same until me and Meg have put our hands on Beth to give her the cue to kneel down and we all follow, this was a great way to show that we was the pack of wolves hunting or prowling through looking for a prey then we wait a couple of seconds and when Beth is ready she will stand up and all of us follow but not at once because it would make the movement look to plain so we all ripple up line by line and we would run around the stage blocks which we had up for the dancing wolves run into the center stage ready for the first routine. 

This was the main start of the beginning to show what the wolves would look like and how they are in a pack, even though it is a children's play we all got focused and made ourselves look hungry and ready to kill so at the same time we had to look scary and the best way for the dancers to do so was to stare someone out from the audience only because this would give of a better effect of us standing out as wolves.

 Meg

Jay       Jess

Lofty

Chloe       Amy

As the dance phrase begins the six of us all start of in unison and part of the movements which we do show positions which wolves do when they are hunting or have found something moving for example: quick head movement to the right and back to the front at the same speed: this shows the audience that the wolves see something and have quick and swift movements to find what they want to find. We have also added a cannon movement part way through the routine and it starts from the front to the back: Meg starts, me and Jess follow, Lofty then Chloe and Amy: as we all start to rise up from the floor we come up slow but staring out some of the audience and walk back slowly then turn towards the back and continue to walk off stage but we do a quick look back to the audience before we finish walking of stage.

This is the full start of the show to have a cue ready to enter the first scene of the show which brings Willoughby chase alive as the starter scene.

The wolves Evaluation

The show has finally happened and I'm not going to lie but it is upsetting that it was my full proper last show with my final year at college but I am happy how well it turned out and the feed back which I had gotten of a few people who watched the show.

We had all decided to go for a Brecht style technique for the play which the projection and the card which we had used to make the projection look more real and stand out for what is going in the scene, these are also known as Placards. Each scene had went very smoothly and everyone knew where everything was (props) as we had had them on stage, in chests or on the sides of stage and we all knew when and where to grab them and come on from the correct side for their next same. The energy which everyone had put into this performance is high and strong and didn't disappear, no one came out of their character on set and off. The dances between so many scenes which had :

• Meg
• Jess
• Jay
• Lofty
• Chloe 
• Amy

was all in sync and no one was late on any movement, our facial expressions for being the wolves in these three pieces always stayed and didn't come out of it which made it more interesting to watch what movement and phrase was coming next and also the music which starts of the dance scenes didn't come straight on after a scene, we had a bit of time to get ready to go on stage on time and in order to do the dance like I had to take my boots off and so did lofty but we kept our main costume on which made it stand out as the girls wore black and me and Lofty was wearing white shirts which made it stand out making them know that we was the male wolves. 

the lighting was always on cue for when the scenes started and when they had to fade one side of the stage with some of us on and light up a tiny part of the stage which had Meg on when she had done her little solo for a scene hat me, Danielle and Sian was in and other scenes with the darkened but had enough light to see us to make that scene look more stronger to get the audiences attention to what and where it was going on.

The story made sense as we was working our way through the performance and that we didn't stop on our second run of the show it kept up to track with the students from Cronton who had been our audience as it happened, the narrator who was Amy was the one who was telling the story and what was happening and where it was taking place as well as everyone being helpful and being in the chorus saying so many lines and doing actions which made sense of what was being said.

The costumes which we had brought in looked a tiny bit like what people would have worn in 1832 and for some characters we had to improvise a bit and mix and match little bits to see if we could make the character look more like they are from 1832 then modern day, we went for a Victorian look and what i mean by that is that the dress style which Danielle (bonnie) and Sian (Sylvia) had to wear long old styled dresses which had pattens around it a frilly bits and as we looked at some of the pictures from 1832 it was a similar look and style of what they had worn back then so it became our advantage to using them dresses.

We had a lot of physical theatre in the performance and mime which most i was using for my scenes because in my first entrance of my first scene i have a bow and have to shoot a wolf but the dangers of using a bow and a fake arrow is missing and the audience will loose the concentration so i had mimed it which made the moment of my entrance look like WOW in my eyes. the physical theatre moments was the small fight scenes which was choreographed by the people who was in that scene as well the wolves and the wolves dance, when i say wolves i mean how the beginning started with no noise or music, and the movement which was happening and forming into a triangle as choreographed and everyone's body language for being the wolves was strong, we had always stayed in sync with the breathing we had done together on stage and how to act when the wolves was on stage.

All together I liked how both days of the show went extremely well and It made me become closer with everyone but as this was my last full show before I leave but I am glad that the experience of how well the show had gone has made me become more ready for what gets thrown to me when I go to university, and I have learnt a lot more about how to use techniques which could make the performance look more fun or amazing or just plain better. I like how the show had been finished with a big massive bang and I loved being the character Simon, he was the hero I played. 

18th March 2014

The wolves beginning scene

Today we have now got music for the ''wolves dance'' scene and has now been sorted and rehearsed a lot during our first lesson and now we have the main six wolves doing the main dance as well as everyone is doing the beginning walk at the start of the play.

the wolves who are in this scene are:

Meg

Jay            Jess

Lofty

Chloe        Amy

This is the order we are in after we have done the run off at the start as a pack so as we do the wolves dance so the audience will be watching us as the other cast who start the first scene get ready by getting their clothes from the chests which are on set. After a couple of rehearsals we had been asked to go all full out so we could see if we needed to change anything to make it look better and we had followed what was said.

The focus was really strong at the start which will start silent as we come on the stage one by one as soon as Beth (starting point) goes on stage, the stage will also have a small dim lighting on the stage which will give us a better feeling to give the audience a dark view on the wolves.

We do still need a few more rehearsals to work on due to a few people who are not pushing through the pack at the start because they are just walking on the sides to get to their place for the next part, this will be obvious to the crowd because they will stand out and it will break the atmosphere.

We then started working through the lines as normal but this time we had used the cards with the projector which will make the picture look 3D in some way which gives the performance a bigger strategic way to draw the audiences attention, the scene which he had started practising was the scene we're James (Adam) Bonnie (Danielle) and Sylvia (Sian) try to send off a letter to the Doctor for help because of what has been happening in the Willoughby residence.

11th-13th of March

Missing the rehearsals 

11th-13th of March

Due to an illness which I had gotten last week i was off three days of our rehearsal time which i regret because i feel like I have let my class down since i fell ill, but now that i have recovered I am willing to find out everything which had gone on and make myself useful so I can get back up to speed and also help out with ideas, setting props etc.

Its good to be back though i am still weak from the illness but over this weekend hopefully i should be back to good strength and ready to get the show going with my lines, I have learnt so much of my lines due to not having a script but i have gotten a Kindle which i will buy the script and put it on my kindle and get through the lines as quick as possible to get everything going more smoothly.

05/03/14 

my idea for the wolves of Willoughby Chase

Today we was talking about how we was going to block the show in a different way then we normally do at the performance date. The ideas which was given were:

• have the stage bare (not a lot of blocks on the stage) and use the actors as the staging
• have white cloth hanging down from the stage to project 3D backgrounds and include A1 cardboard to bring the shapes/objects out.

All of us have agreed to do the white clothe and cardboard idea as it is a new experience for us and will make the performance stronger and will draw the audience into our performance.

We also have been working on Bertolt Brecht's work to get an idea to put in the show which will also boost the performance level higher and make the show grow and be better by the performance night. One lesson we had not done rehearsals but instead we had learnt about his verfremdungseffekt or Alienation as some people call it and had done some of his work using Ipads using two apps which were called:

• gf
• hj

By doing this we was put into groups of three and had to make a little improvisation using a skill which Brecht had mad called Placards. Adam, Lofty and me was one group and we had mad a small story of a boy who didn't fit in because he didn't believe in himself and blamed himself for everything and he had to fight his mind to make him feel like nothing was keeping behind and then became more happy with himself and was able to move on. the Placards we had used gave it more effect to the performance we improvised.

Since we had done that lesson on Brecht we all have had many ideas using the Placards in our show as well as having the three projectors and white cloth over the set as well as our training and ideas.