Tuesday 31/10/17
acting;
we started by sitting down as a class and we spoke about how we did our evaluation for our piece medea. out teacher made us write down all the different things we thought went well and how the preparation went. i spoke about articulation as we need to make sure all of our words need to be herd by the audience. Another thing we spoke about was how you present your character and i found it hard because i had no lines so if people were focusing on me i had to make my character be noticed by the way i moved and acted. we then spoke about doing monologues that we had to pick to perform we then also spoke about what we were doing after the Christmas holidays and she said we will be doing a scene from a musical. when we were given the task to pick a monologue i instantly thought to do a twelfth night as its something i had done before and the character is Malvolio 
and then i also started thinking about different musicals we would do and i thought of Chicago and dreamgirls and hairspray i chose those because they have big casts and i think we could make it fit around the actors we have in our class.
project workshop:
in the lesson we sat in groups and we spoke about what we thought classic pantomimes were and how we think the character are. when we were writing down all our ideas for different things it made me think of miranda and mr bean as i think they are loosely connected to pantomimes. we were then split into different groups and we had to pick a character (i chose villain) and we had to create a scene using those characters about someone eating someone else's sandwich so me and my partner ended it by making the person who is the hero end up dying to add a sence of comedy. at the end of the lesson we were given a sheet and it had a scenario on it so we had to have it ready for next week
wednesday 1/11/17
contextual study:
we went to watch a show called follies i had never heard of it before so when we were invited i was very intrigued. when we got to the national theatre it was a new and exciting experience for mer as i had heard about it before but never had been. the musical was amazing and i loved that it had an elderly cast but it was still amazing and kept me engaged. the costumes and songs really made the musical special and the surprise twist was also enjoyable to watch.
monday 6/11/17
we had to perform our pieces that we were given but my partner wasn't in so i had to make a completely different piece with another person. our piece was about how someone in a high class wanted to buy shoes and someone in the lower class/status had to serve them so we decided to have a princesses walk into a shoe store and she wants to try on different shoes but then she ends up hurting herself, trying on shoes that dont fit and then finally she find ones that she likes but cant walk in so the person who own the shoe store shows her how to walk in them. i though me and my new partner did really well with the sort time we had and it was good to hear people laugh. watching the others perform was really fun because we all had different scenes so it was good to see a variety of different things. 
singing:
we spent this lesson working on a song that the second years needed to learn for their pantomimes the song is a classical upbeat musical theatre song. i found the song hard to sing at first because some parts of it are high and i really need to work on my rage to get there. although we didn't need to learn it for our project i found it fun singing with another class it brought a new perspective to the class as we all have different voices
tuesday 7/11/17
acting:
absent
contextual study:
to start the lesson we watched videos about pantomime and how the characters would act and how they move around. we then walked around the space of our class room acting like the characters of a classic pantomime i found it very awkward as i felt foolish walking around like a bird or being really silly, but after a while i found it fun as i realised that i was doing the same thing as everyone else. we then got into groups of 4 and we had to come up with ideas using the panto characters. at first our group found it really hard because we didnt know how to make all of our characters fit into one scene and make it funny, eventually we came up with an idea to make it a doctors office and i played the doctor and i treated all the people badly and they ended up worse then when they came in. we then performed our piece to the rest of the class which they ended up liking. we were then given a task to come up with a comedy piece called the fly for homework.
thursday 9/11/17
tutorial:
we spent the lesson watching different videos that linked to comedia we found them very funny and it gave me some ideas as we were told we would be doing scenes. the videos were good as it gave us an insight to how there are different types of comedia for different eras. we then were told that we were going to be put into different groups to do a presentation about a different comedia character. i was put with my best friend nerissa and it was perfect because we work well with each other and we speak alot so making this powerpoint will be a piece of cake. we were given the character Arlecchino
monday 13/11/17
we started the lesson by practicing for our fly story i kept on going through mine so that when i performed i was ready i decided to be the doctor trying to eat a sandwich and then i get disrupted by a fly who keeps annoying me,i finally kill it but then i start feeling bad so i bring it back to life. after we all showed each other our pieces we were then put into pairs and we had to somehow merge the two stories together. ours was easy because my partner's story was about falling in love with the fly so we had it that a girl is inlove with a fly and the dad kills it. singing
we started by doing a vocal warm up so that when we sing we don't strain our voices we then moved on to singing another song we had to learn for the second years pantomime. the song was happy which i love as its upbeat and i think it goes with my voice
tuesday 14/11/17
contextual study
we started the lesson by talking about all the different fairytales people thought would make good pantomime scenes. i said snow white because i feel like it would make a good fun and funny panto and we could modernise it. we then were put into groups and we had to speak about what we would do with the scenes and if it would link to the theme, we started by mixing snow white and cinderella together we then thought about how to modernise it and we came up with the idea of having the villain (me) who would trick the princess into wearing something ugly to the ball we thought this was a good idea as it had a classic comedy theme and it would appeal to our age group. when i was thinking about my character it made me think about regina george from meangirls as she is mean sassy and seen as a bad guy 
monday 20/11/17
we started by coming up with the scenes for our panto and actually starting to make it we all had out roles and a basic outline of whats going on so we decided to improvise until we had a basic script. it was fun to see something you have made come to life. we decided to make my character chavy and rude. we then showed our pieces and got some great feedback to help us make it even more funny
singing
we again sang happy and worked on different harmonies
tuesday 21/11/17
contexual studies
wednesday 22/11/17
absent
monday 27/11/17
project workshop
we spent the lesson going through our pantomime over and over and over again we had to work really hard because one of our team members wasnt in so it was hard to do it with out him because we were adding new things. we were even thinking about costumes for our piece i wanted to wear a mask or a cape to show im evil and then a wand and somthing pink for playing the godmother so that there is a clear difference between the two.
i found some wings and a bin bag as people in group needed them for our panto
wednesday 29/11/17
PERFORMANCE DAY
i thought our panto worked really well it was so fun to do in costume and it was good to hear the audience laugh it just shows that our hard work paid off
Pantomime began in 16th century, the word comes from the Greek words ‘pan’ and ‘mimos’ which translates to ‘all imitating’. The ancient Greeks would put on pantomimes as a popular source of entertainment (they were mostly comedies or tragedies) and it was performed as a regular part of theatre. Many silent movies had themes of pantos in them for example there was always a clumsy/dumb character in pantomimes and Charlie Chaplin was seen as a clumsy in his silent movies. Pantomimes are always being changed to fit modern day trends for example in the olden days they might have made jokes about kings and queens being rude to servants but now days pantomimes might make fun of the Kardashian’s, Beyonce e.g. by the early 1800s pantomimes started focusing on fairy tales, stories and/or nursery rhymes, Harlequinade is a British character (originally Arlecchino) who would add slapstick comedy You would often see a story where Harlequinade is in love with the beautiful servant Columbina but her father usually doctor or pantaloon, who is greedy, is on a mission to keep the lovers apart, this would create problems and difficulties for the characters. This usually involved a comedic chase scene. In pantomimes you usually always get audience participation and the most used one id “he’s/she’s behind you” i think that breaking the fourth wall and using the audience in your play makes it a fun experience and that’s why pantomimes are so popular it’s an experience for the whole family to enjoy. Pantomimes usually have double entendre so that when families go there is something for everyone in the audience to enjoy. Pantomimes are also so over the top and there are usually a lot of characters that are stereotypical, one character that is very popular is the dame character who is typically a man dressed up like a woman with really bad make up and awful drag this adds a sense of comedy as the person who plays the dame is really over acting the role.
In Commedia Dell’Arte there are stock characters who make the plays fun to watch as although they are who they are in different stories they go through different plots. The stock characters are Zanni who is the lowest servant, Pantalone who is rich and is sometimes played as the father of one of the lovers, the doctor who is always giving bad advice to people and is very rich and walks with his stomach out, Arlecchino who is another high class servant he is usually wearing a slapstick around his waist and he is one of the lovers, Colombina who is a servent who wears quite fine clothes and is very well mannered, there is also the captain who is usually one of the lovers fathers or trying to get one of the lovers. Commedia Dell’Arte really added the performance to pantomime as it brought a comedic and musical side.
When making our own pantomimes it really helped me to watch clips of different styles of pantomimes and also different times so I watched some from 40-50 years ago then ones that are recent so I could gather different ideas. When it came to making a piece from a story I started thinking how could we make fairytales modern and how could we add comedy to our panto. We started by merging different elements from different classic fairytales and slowly modernising it to the point where we were using themes like a high school dance and I phones and using ingredients for a potion that where body parts of famous celebrities. In the end I think my group really captured the themes of pantos there was comedy, classic characters and a clear story there was also modern songs to give it that extra push towards making it more this time. Watching the second years do their pantomime was really fun they had loads of interaction with the audience which is classic pantomime and they kept their energy up throughout which I though must have been really hard as no one walking around all day being extra happy and over amazed by everything. I think they way they modernised the jokes really paid of and the song choices they did was really fun and refreshing. monday 4/12/17
singing
we spent our singing lesson singing different christmas songs which i found nice as it was a good feeling singing with my fellow classmates
tuesday 5/12/17
acting
we started by talking about different scenes we wanted to do and we all instantly said dreamgirls as its something we have been wanting to do since the beginning, we thought it would work as an ensemble. we then worked on our monologues that we were asked to perform
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