Theate Lesson Notes 6.10.14

This theatre lesson was our first theatre lesson on our Shakespeare monologues and this made me quite nervous as I have never done Shakespeare before and I didn't know if you had to do the same things you would do on a Morden monologue.


during the lessons we did basically did the same things I would normally do a Morden monologue. this made me more confident to perform as I had my objectives, read the play, learnt the first 5 of my lines, beats and thought tracks before the lesson.  the only thing I didn't do was my given circumstances however we did this during the lesson. this made me become more comfortable about my monologues as I was going to change the given circumstances to a modern version. during the lesson I struggled trying to think of one however after hearing everyone else's I started to understand what people did with the text they had and how they changed it. 


firstly, in the lesson we talked about the differences in a Elizabethan script to a modern script  and they are their are no stage directions apart from the exits and entrances. William Shakespeare did a very clever thing due to he made the text explain itself and made it clear what the actor would need to do. I like this idea as it given the actor more freedom to express their character how they think the character is. Also, its makes it easier for the audience to understand the actors more as the answers are within the text due to Shakespeare working with non psychological actors.  Also, the text this similar to the poem/song with continuous conversation with little pauses. which tells the actor where to breathe within the lines. Furthermore, I leant the that the lines are Iambic Pentameter where each line has beats like a song. each line is in 10 beats however some are 11 or 12 at time s but most of the are 10. Also, the beats are broken down to syllables not words. I never knew or realised this until Mr Rennison told us. This tells you what words are weak and what lines are strong to emphasis the meaning of the actors line. Also, this helps the actor to director themselves and adapted their around this method Shakespeare has used. In addition to this, the pause where you breathe is mostly in the middle of the of the line. 


After this discussion we got into pairs and we had to play each other objectives around the room. I found this a helpful warm up as I used the space wisely and to  warm up the mind mentally. also, sir stopped the class to help individuals.  which even though he didn't choose individual I did find this really helpful. As it made me think more creatively my objective and gave me some good ideas for other objectives that I could use for my monologue.


After this, we got back into are original partners and we stared rehearsing. My partner was Samantha and firstly we did her monologue first thing we did was her monologue. As we were
rehearsing during the week we knew what we needed to sort out during the lesson which was her objectives. so we tried some objectives and whenever Sam felt like she wanted to say the line she said it. This helped Samantha develop her objective within her given circumstance and improved the energy flow within her monologue as before it was more stop and start but now the transitions are more natural and look instinctive.


After this we started to do my monologue however when I started doing my monologue I realised that my objectives and emotion state is quite similar to my modern monologue and Mr Rennison agreed. however I still continued with this monologue for the lesson as the techniques I have leant I can do in my own time for my new monologue.


I found this lesson really helpful as it gave more confidence to perform my Shakespeare for next weeks lesson and to realise the things I do with my modern monologue I have to do with my Shakespeare and nothing is really different when it comes to performing a classical monologue.