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In these lessons we looked at Verbatim theatre and Anna Deavere Smith.
Verbatim theatre is a type of theatre that creates a piece of drama by using peoples exact words during an interview about an event including bits of speech like 'um' and 'err'. This type of theatre can be difficult when learning monologues  by people because you subconsciously want to adapt it to your own way of speaking. Its also challenging because when seeing an 'um' in the persons speech, you have to realize that that is not your um, that is the other persons um so you have to think about what that persons thought track was and what could have made that person say that um. Was it a sudden flash of emotion or a temporary mind blank? These are things that we are made to think about.
Anna Deavere Smith is an American Actress, professor and playwright. She is well known for performing pieces of Verbatim theatre, including the ones we have looked at in lesson, that central in Los Angeles about the beating of Rodney King.

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A soundscape is a series of sounds that are put together by using either noises from you or an object or instrument to present a background to a scene  and/ or to present a story.
We were put into groups and were told to make the soundscape of a beach. This wasn't too bad an activity for me as I enjoyed thinking up the sounds that you would hear at a beach and trying them out to see what sounds I could do with my voice.
Afterwards, in another group, we had a picture and were told to make a storyline by using just our voices and sounds using the picture as a stimulus.  our group came up with the storyline of a man walking with his horse but the horse runs off and as the man tries to catch up the horse he ends up falling off a cliff.  Our group was successful in making the soundscape of this.
Then in groups we were told to make a soundscape of something else but using our voices and instruments. My group chose the rainforest so we came up with the idea of various bird noises, thunder and rain and monkey noises. The feedback we got was ok as people said that they got where we were but they couldn't always hear what other people were doing due to our thunder being too  loud. next time to improve we can have louder noises in the background so that the softer sounds can be heard more clearly.
In terms of contributing my own ideas I didn't do much of this as  I didn't get the courage too so to improve I should contribute my own ideas because those ideas could actually help out the group and make something better.

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For this lesson we started off by looking at the typical archetypes in a story. The most obvious ones are King, hero, mother, fool, innocent and the trickster. we then had to portray these. For example to portray a trickster you could walk slowly, rub your hands together and be slightly hunched over to give the stereotypical evil look. To portray a hero you would most likely hold your head up high, walk with a slight strut to show the confidence that a hero has and when coming across someone playing an innocent girl , bow slightly.
When putting on a show for children you have to think about certain things that a basic story includes such as; good and evil, a basic storyline that's easy to follow, the language to not be too articulate so as to not confuse them and defiantly no swearing. you also have to think about the length of the story as if a story is too long, a child will lose interest and think about whether you would want your story to have a moral.
The purpose for putting on a play for children could be to teach them a moral, entertainment, or for just educational reasons.

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Today we first started off by talking about the research we had done on some comedians and what we observed about them and how they make people laugh etc. I had observed Lee Evans and had noticed that he takes ordinary things that people don't really notice and presents them in an exaggerated way. This made me think that I should set myself the target of letting myself go a bit more and just do what I think is right instead of worrying.
In the lesson we were told to go back into our groups that we were in for the previous storytelling lesson and were asked to think about the feedback we were given and how we could incorporate that into our performance and also if there was anything we could add or change about it.
We made sure that the girl in our group would speak up louder to take care of that problem. Our next challenge was the problem with our setting. for this we corrected the way the chairs were placed so that the audience would be able to see what was going on.
We added an extra scene at the end of our performance as our last scene had ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. We added a scene where 'Tracy' and 'Peter' make up and carry on being friends to give it a bitter-sweet ending.
I think this session went well as I felt I got some of my ideas across for our scene and we included them in our extra scene. I worked quite well with my group as we all listened to each other and took everyone's ideas on board and no one got offended by the feedback which showed that we were all willing to improve and become better. We applied the feedback by making the set slightly different so that to ensure the audience would see what was going on. We applied the storytelling techniques of comedy that children would get. For example, in our performance there's a bit where 'Tracy' tells 'Peter' that a girl liked him to which he replied that that girl had a weird obsession with fish. To make the comedy we then had the girl walk in and announce in over-exaggerated way that she had just bought some fish. We did this because we knew that children of a young age would find this sort of thing quite funny as they like over the top comedy as physical comedy is the only sort of comedy they get most of the time.
I think I did well in this because I managed to get my ideas across into our performance and with some probing from my tutor at the beginning of our lesson I was able to contribute my research which I wouldn't have done so if she hadn't of probed me to.

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Today we were put into groups and had tell them why we had brought in a specific object. I had brought in a band because it held good and bad memories and was special to me. The other objects that were in my group were a cracked mirror, a phone. we then chose one of these objects to make a piece of drama about.
We chose to use my band and decided to make a scene that held a lot of dramatic irony in it. We used this by making sure that the audience knew that 'peter' (ben) liked a girl called 'Tracy' i.e. me.  We then made it ironic by having him about to tell her that he liked her just as she said that she was going away up the country. This scene was effective because as my character kept talking, you would see bens character start to deteriorate slowly which had the effect of triggering empathy from the audience. We ended the scene by making my character find out that bens character liked her and we ended up with having her alone on stage. We tried to show that she was the odd one out by making her sit on a different colour chair to the others and by making her sit by herself at the end.
The feedback we had was that t was good and that we stayed in character. What was also good was how our storyline was simple to understand but it was also effective by the way it had been structured. To improve we were told that one of the members in the team could have louder and that at some points part of the audience couldn't see me so we had to think about our setting.
Our objectives for the lesson were to 'respond practically to a stimuli' and to 'develop performance based on our stimuli'. My group responded practically to the stimulus of the band because we observed how the writing on the band was faded and so we came up with the idea of something/someone leaving. We also developed our performance based on the stimulus we had because we included the band in the performance and pretended that the writing had 'I love you' on  it. This was also used to show how that love has now been forgotten because it was rejected.

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We looked at what can influence a story and how they can be portrayed. Dreams, past experiences and morals are all things that can influence a story. Ways to portray a story could be in a picture, dance, piece of music, or by acting.
We then went on to look at Augusto's game The Great Game of Power. For this game we had 5 chairs, a table and a water bottle. One of these chairs was chosen as the most important chair and we had to portray how and why this chair is the most important by using all of the objects in any way we wanted to to symbolize the power.
One person chose to symbolize the power by having the most important chair by itself with the table in front of it and the bottle close to that chair and the other 4 chairs on the opposite side. This showed that the chair with the bottle was more important because it was by itself and looking over the other chairs with a sense of authority. However another person looked at it differently which helped me to think more outside the box. What they did was stack the chairs on top of each other with the water bottle on top and the chairs acing the table on the other side of the room. The most important chair in this image was the chair at the bottom as it was the strongest because it was the one with-standing all the weight.
I liked this lesson because it helped me realize that the way you set a scene can have a real effect of those watching and it also helped me to see things in a more open-minded way.
My strength for this lesson was that I paid attention to others and again worked with those that I hadn't before. However to improve, I should contribute a few more of my own ideas to benefit my confidence and learning and to maybe help others around me benefit too.

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To begin with, we did a few games to help our brains focus. One of these was a game where we had to say information about ourselves. This was so we could get to know each other a little and to also prove the fact that we all have a story to tell.
We were then put into teams and were told to do a diagram of what you need in a story. My group included such things like; opening, climax, themes, genre, conventions etc. We were then told to pair up with someone else to help come up with a story about an object that was given to us. This object could have any story we wanted. It was helpful to work with someone else because even though when you're by yourself you can come up with some amazing ideas, having someone else there to help you can lead you to things you'd never thought of before and into a completely different direction. This can help you become more creative, imaginative which can be extremely helpful in drama especially if its a non-naturalistic piece or a scene where your trying to show symbolism.
My strength for this lesson was that I was confident enough to work with someone I hadn't worked with before however my weakness for this lesson was that I didn't say a lot when it came to telling the story of my object.