How did we devolved the piece and character? The piece was developed by trying to block the scenes with a transverse audience, my character was developed as I fight back against being robbed as well as working on selling the kick to the rib that I get from jimmy as I am deciding to hold onto my ribs during my scene after I get the kick 

What went well 

I feel like my accent has improved that is one thing that I think that went well although I fell like its more brunmy or Liverpool like, another thing that I fell went well is that everyone was motivated to do work I’m not sure why but everyone was ready to work and get the scenes done 

What was challenging 

I fell like the biggest challenge of the rehearsal and the production in general is the traverse audience this is because it’s soo unique to the play 

How could we improve 

To improve we could try and get the first scene done as they are a big set peace of the whole of the play, another thing we could improve is by doing the accent that is needed though the whole of the lesson to ensure that the accent feels natural when we have to perform 

What did we do? In this session we worked on the scene after the fight scene where the characters of George and joe say goodbye to Susan we did the scene over and over so that everyone had a chance to get the scene right as it would be the last thing an audience would see 

How did we develop the character and the piece ? During this session we developed the final scene of the whole performance this was developed by adding smaller human details to make the scene resonate with the audience,my character got developed as I thought about how I Would react to the fact that I had killed 2 people, would I show some remorse for that the character did or would it be the case that he would be happy with what he did 

  What went well?in this scene I think what went well was how invested everyone was in their characters, everyone was thinking about how each of us could give the character that we where playing an good send off as we wouldn’t be revisiting them so we wanted to give more to the audience in this scene as it signified an end to all of the characters 

What was a challenge? During this rehearsal we struggled to stay on task, this was the biggest challenge as because our lines where not learned yet so there where times when the magic of the scene would get broken because of the fact that we had scripts in our hands as well as this during the rehearsal we would sometimes get distracted by talking during the rehearsal

How could this be improved: for the next rehearsal the thing that we need to improve is getting into the habit of being quite when we are not on stage, otherwise if the audience can hear us then it will take them out of the show, this is unprofessional as it wouldn’t be acceptable in the actual world of performing arts 

Uta Hagen’s Nine Questions 

1. 

Who am I?

Who is your character? Identify all the details: name/age, physical 

traits, relatives, education, personal opinions, likes, dislikes, 

hobbies, fears, ethics, and beliefs. 

2. 

What time is it?

The year, the season, the day, the minute. What is the significance 

of time? 

3. 

Where am I?

Identify the country, the city/town, the neighborhood, the building, 

the room, the specific area of the room. 

4. 

What surrounds me?

What is happening in the environment around you? Weather, 

landscape, people, animate/inanimate objects. 

5. 

What are the given circumstances?

Identify events in the past, present, future. What has happened, 

what is happening, what is going to happen? 

6. 

What are my relationships?

This is more than your relationship to other people. Think about 

your relationship to objects, characters, and events. 

7. 

What do I want?

What do you want immediately? What does the character want 

overall? 

8. 

What is in my way?

What are the obstacles to getting what you want? 

9. 

What do I do to get what I want?

What actions do you take (both physically and verbally)? What 

tactics? 

Questions

Details

Answers

Who am I ?

Who is your 

character? 

Identify all the 

details including: 

•

●

  name/

age 

•

●

 physical traits 

•

●

 relatives, 

enemies 

•

●

 education 

•

●

 personal 

opinions 

•

●

  likes/

dislikes 

•

●

 hobbies 

•

●

  fears 

•

●

  ethics 

•

●

  beliefs

Thomas Clayton is 16 years 

old, he has slick back hair and 

chews on a tooth pick he 

believes that this is what the 

Cool gangsters do, his father 

Thomas Clayton senior was the 

king of the tigers supposedly, 

his enemies are anyone who is 

on the other side of the bridge, 

he strongly believes in 

loyalty.he went to primary 

school and is clever but he 

didn’t go on to do any more 

education and went out to learn 

a trade he left home at 15 after 

getting a letter from his dad 

telling him about who he was, 

he wants to be like his dad.he 

left his family didn’t want to 

have to rely on someone else, 

he wants respect and 

admiration from his peers, he 

knows and is aware of the law 

but he doesn’t really care about 

it and will break the rules if he 

has to, he likes to drink it allows 

him to get away from his pain in 

life he also likes dancing, he 

knows that if you are mobile 

you have an advantage  in a 

fight, he dislikes people that are 

not loyal and don’t know the 

value of belonging to 

something bigger than himself 

he likes to play with his knife 

and knows how to do tricks 

with them, he is scared of being  

alone and being a nobody, he is 

a rule breaker but no for the 

sake of it he will only break 

rules that he disagrees with, he 

believes that loyalty is the most 

important value in someone  

What time is 

it?

●

 Year

●

 Season 

●

 Day

●

 Minute 

What is the 

significance of 

time?

Its 1882 its winter but in 

ancoats the summer are just as 

cold as winters the winters are 

hard and only the real hard 

people go out in the winter 

Thomas acts di

ff

erent at night 

Where am I?

•

●

  Country 

•

●

  City/town 

•

●

 Neighborhood 

•

●

  Building 

•

●

  Room 

•

●

  Area of 

room

Thomas is in Manchester in 

England, in ancoats,he lives on 

bengal street but has no where 

to stay and so he sleeps on the 

streets he sleeps in the 

doorway of the bakery when 

he’s not shewed o

ff

 by the 

baker, he sleeps in the corner 

of the doorway its falling apart 

but its warm, 

What 

surrounds 

me?

What is happening 

in the environment 

around you? 

•

●

 weather 

•

●

 landscape 

•

●

  people 

•

●

 animate/

inanimate 

objects

 Currently its snowing around 

Thomas he puts there is a 

Christmas market, many people 

surrounding him he does up his 

coat and puts his flat cap hat 

on over his short hair, the snow 

is hardy visible the black smoke 

is covering the upper layer of 

snow, the peoples 

conversations around him are 

inaudible but he doest see any 

one who he would have a 

problem with, his gloves are 

hardly doing much to fight the 

bitter cold 

What are the 

given 

circumstance

s?

Events in the past, 

present, and future. 

What has 

happened, what is 

happening, what is 

going to happen?

He has left home and is going it 

alone he is trying to find some 

people who can look after him 

and back him if he has to fight, 

little does he know that he is 

about to in some capacity join 

the bengal street tigers 

What are my 

relationships

?

●

 Objects

●

 Characters 

●

Events

One of his prised possessions 

are his dads knife and hat 

which here left with him in the 

letter that encouraged him to 

leave home he would die for 

these positions, he idolises 

Sean and jimmy as well as 

respecting tharessa and 

appreciates that she treats him 

badly just to test his limits 

Nine Questions Reflection 

Reflect on using these nine questions as part of your 

character development.  

Which is the most important question? I think the most 

important question was the first question (who am i) this is 

because asking who the character is very important so I 

can play the character better if I know exactly what I have 

to portray  

 Which question was the easiest to answer? The easiest 

question to answer was the what do you want question I 

think its really obvious what my character wants to 

archive in the script  

What do I 

want?

What do you want 

immediately? 

What does the 

character want 

overall?

Right now my character wants 

respect and admiration from 

the people overall he wants to 

be in charge of the bengal 

street tigers

What’s in my 

way?

What are the 

obstacles to getting 

what you want?

The obstacles that are stopping 

him Is that people think he’s a 

wimp and don’t think he can be 

a tiger 

What do I do 

to get what I 

want?

What actions do 

you take? 

●

 physically 

●

verbally

Thomas flicks his hair a lot as 

well as chewing all the time, he 

chews on gum or a pick stick or 

a match, he speaks with a 

cockney accent, when he gets 

what he wants he’s going to 

show it o

ff

 to everyone that 

doubted him. 

 Which was the hardest? I think the hardest one was the 

who am I one  

Why? I believe this because it had to be the most detailed 

and really needed to give me a good indication as to who 

Thomas really is 

 How can answering these questions impact your acting? 

This way I know what motivates Tommy he know who he 

is, he knows how he fits into all this, he knows that he’s 

going to get what he wants its just getting there he’s got 

something to prove to everyone, I can visualise this as 

Thomas and use it to motivate the characte

How did we develop the character and the  piece: we developed the character Of polly as we needed her to have a fiery attitude as when she’s getting kidnapped she’s losing the power and the aura that she’s has since the start of the play polly acts tough this is the scene where the act falls apart we wanted to show this . The piece was devolved as this gave the character of polly some development as throughout she doesn’t get much development at the start of the play so we developed the character, we also developed the piece as this scene Is very important to the end of the play when the tensions between Sean and jimmy blow over we did this by making it clean and snappy in the parts it needed to be and then making it messy when it came to the physical ff in reality more physical things like fights are very messy we wanted to show this

What went well? During this rehearsal the class had a good energy we knew that we were going to work on this scene we came in ,did our warm up and was ready, Evan though not everyone was involved in the scene we where doing and  a lot of people where standing around doing nothing, they made notes on the people on stage and gave those on stage their full attention  in order to make notes on them, what also went well was when we where doing the other scene that follows up after this scene everything clicked and it just worked well

What was a challenge? I think the biggest challenge was the fact we still had scripts in our hands ,we made a creative decision to cut some scenes out of the production due to the fact we had a lot of other work to do, because of this no one knew our lines so we had scripts during our rehearsals which made character development way harder 

How could this be improved: what I think could be improved is getting rid of scripts in order to really work on our characters we need to forget about the script so we can do more things with body language as well so an improvement would be getting rid of scripts 

How did we develop the character and the piece: during this rehearsal we worked on development of the character as well as the piece my character was developed as I incorporated some of the method acting to try and become more of my character I looked at the character sheet that I did when we first got the scrip for scuttlers I used those in this rehearsal to further my character by thinking about who my character was, we developed the piece by working more on the end 3 scenes to make that the best thing that the audience see to send them home happy 

What went well: during this rehearsal what went well was the fact that the physical parts that we worked on such as the fight scene worked in the theatre the same way that it did in the ekt this was helpful because this is where we where meant to be performing it we adapted this scene to a different space that we created it and practiced it in 

What was a challenge? :during this session the biggest challenge was keeping practicing the last few scenes because we where practicing a few scenes  instead of 1 it can get very repetitive this is a big challenge as we aren’t really used doing it all at once 

How could this be improved: next time this can be improved by keeping working the same way through out as the rehearsal went on the performances of the cast got more and more fatigued and tired next time we need to keep working Evan if it gets hard 

How did we develop the character and the piece: my character didn’t revive much development because I was focused more  on working on the the piece as this was when all of our rehearsals came together as this was one of the first time where we put together all the scenes that we worked on since we got the script for this, so we developed the piece by getting used to performing it with the lights and with having all the scenes working together 

What went well:I feel like during the full run that we did what we did well in general as a group was keeping the scene transitions quick and snappy Evan though it was one of the first times we did a full run of the production without doing it scene by scene and stopping in-between  the feedback that we got from the a level students who where studying how to analyse productions  was useful this is another thing that went well 

What was a challenge? :personally I think the biggest challenge again was going without scripts most of us still are not fully confident on our lines so glancing looks are needed at scripts to get the gyst of the lines which made performing harder, another challenge was the feedback wouldn’t be specific enough for example the would give some good feedback but no one would know who they are talking about so it’s would be hard to improve 

How could this be improved:next time to improve we need to learn lines in order to have more fun with the characters and work on more characterisation and accents 

How did we develop the character and the piece: this scene was less about character development and more about the development of the piece as my character to me was already fleshed out and I knew who my character was. We developed the scene by working on all of the physical moments in the production. Staring with jimmys assault on Thomas, the fight scene between jimmy and Shaun, the end scene, we showed the stage combat man all that we already worked on and then he showed us what we could add to make these moments more impactful for our audience 

What went well: I think during this rehearsal one of the biggest things I think that went well was how the stage combat man was thinking about the scenes how we where he would give us feedback on what we already did and then showed us what we could do better we used both of these to help us with all of the physical scenes in the play 

What was a challenge? :I think the challenge during this was slowing things down especially when doing this physical work injuries can happen easily and I feel like we would have benefited from  slowing down a bit 

How could This be improved: this can be improved by taking out time more with things in general, i think that when it comes to combat it’s better to take the time to show the audience what’s happening slowly 

How did we develop the character and the piece: during this dress rehearsal I wanted how my character acted at the start of the production during the movement pice to be more important which before I didn’t think about this was meant to be some foreshadowing so I needed for me to play more of an evil person at the start, the piece got developed during this rehearsal as it was the first time that we would perform it with sound and lighting this being added to the production improved upon it a lot as performing with lights and sound makes it better as you really feel the spotlight and it encourages you to do well 

What went well: personally I think that this dress rehearsal could have gone a lot better I thank there where not many positives for me I think there was great accent work and characterisation but I know we could have done better 

What was a challenge? : I think the biggest challenge was lines, again most of the cast me included still where not confident on liens to the point where there was scenes where it was just awkward silences we didn’t want this for our dual play as well as this another challenge, another challenge for me was the fact that we kept doing it it was getting very boring to all of the cast but we just had to keep on going to finish it 

How could this be improved:  this can be improved by prioritising line learning because otherwise sound and lighting cues get missed out 

How did the rehearsal process go in general? I feel like for how big the whole piece was we did a good job with the time we had, I definitely missed some sessions which didn’t really help me or the cast,but I think that I slipped well into the character ,I also think that as a class how hard we worked on this and how important it was to us changed as it went on, when we first go the script I feel like people didn’t really see it as important  as at the time our main aim was to get the panto work done however when this was out the way people where more focused on the script, we also had a good range of rehearsal types, we had close single rehearsals where we would work on one scene then we would do the same with the class taking notes then as it went on we had people coming in to help us put together the fight scenes then we had big runs of it so it was a good mixture

What worked well during the final performance: during the first final performance we had everyone had good energy this was also the case during our second performance this was because it was the last performance and we knew this was going to be one of the last times that we got to perform until we where going to say bye to the characters another thing I think went well was the fact that no one was noticeably messing up on their lines which before was one of the biggest problems that we had during the rehearsal period, another thing that went well was the fact that all the transitions where smooth and quick 

What we could have done as a class: I think one of the biggest things we could have done as a class to improve it would be commitment to the character, I felt like some people sometimes where not really believing what their character was saying or Evan trying to pretend to believe what they where saying, if you don’t make the audience think that you believe what you are saying you have lost them, because I’m general no one wants to listen to someone who it’s obvious doesn’t really care what they are saying, also as a class we really could have been more quiet in the wings as some people would talk during the first performance and the audience would be able to hear those talking in the back over what’s happening on stage, another thing we could have done  as a class would be to be a lot louder, although when we did both final performances the theatre wasn’t full and people where only sitting in the front 2 rows if it was a sell out show and there where people in the back who paid for their ticket then they wouldn’t be able to hear anything

What where the biggest challenges: I believe that the biggest challenge during the final final performance we had to change a lot this was because one of my cast members are hurt his leg during the first performance that we did so we had to cancel that formance and redo it a few days later this was a big challenge as the lines weren’t fresh in our head and a because the character of Jimmy was not no longer able to do physical staff we had to change a lot like for example during his Jimmy and Sean’s  fight scene we had to switch  that up so that he wouldn’t have to fight him and then during the actual final fight scene we are we just did it without him but it was still odd getting rid of the character that we where used to having. However change in the scenes help to me personally because I thought I thought that we would have to make the more tender emotional past the more speaking part is more important for the audience because before we win we were weren’t necessarily relying on the 5C is to provide an impact on the audience but it was quite is quite a big thing that we had so that switching out the biggest fight scene and Mike toning down a little bit meant that I personally was like okay I’m going to make these more he’s more speaking emotional past more resonate more with the audience by just like trying harder to show emotion 

How would you do it differently next time next time I will definitely invest more of my time learning my lines this for this would be useful because if I knew my lines then it would be like a lot easier to start showing characterisation in my work next time I will definitely make the case to keep it as a full production because of the fact the proper the original script of Scotland is very interesting the way they play the characters the very unique concept the fact that was based on the London riots which we where around to see,The mix between the old and the contemporary music the old and contemporary some outfits is also unique in the characters and the script was very reminiscent of peaky blinders so I think that next time I’ll deafly make the push to have it as a full production because we only got half an hour to perform and I think we could have definitely done better had we known all lines alarm and shown the director that we were willing to learn our lines for most of the scenes then I feel like they probably would’ve ended up being a full script but I think in general overall we did quite well with what we had next time I deafly say I would like to do the full thing to challenge myself as an actor The mix between the old and the contemporary music the olden contemporary outfits is also unique in the characters and the script was very reminiscent of peaky blinders so I think that next time I deafly make the post to have it as a full production because we only got half an hour to perform and I think we could have definite done better had we known all lines and shown the director that we were willing to learn all lines for most of the scenes and I feel like it probably would have  ended up being a full script but I think in general overall we did quite well with what we had our next time I would  say I would like to do the full thing to challenge myself as an actor.