Love and Information
Love and Information
The play we are working on is Love and Information, by British writer Caryl Churchill. The play is made up of seven parts mainly being regarding love or social situations. In the play there are a bunch of characters but none of the characters have names therefore the actors/director have to pick their own lines, the setting, and decide on how production can be done with originality. This style of play is great because everyone gets to freely plot their own ideas with no wrong answers making it your own.
Caryll Churchill
Caryll Churchill was born in London, United Kingdom on September 3rd 1938, at the age of 9 years old Caryll moved to Canada with her family where she studied in Trafalgar School in Montreal. Caryll then returned to England at the age of 18 and was given a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Language and Literature. Caryll has written over 45 plays and has been rewarded over 12 awards for her writing.
Initial Reaction
My Initial reaction to learning and having to perform Love and Information was quite a puzzled/50-50 reaction, I wasn't sure on how it would turn out as the play is quite hard in many different ways to understand because of the fact that there are seven parts the have a set order but can be in any order, and also having no character names meaning all lines etc have to be chosen yourself. This made it very hard to learn who your character is and can be tricky while selecting the lines as you can literally form into your own version, the other side of me thought this was great because we could do something our own way and give off our own story to the audience as well as having a lot of freedom while learning it.
Context
We were handed the script (Love and Information) just before the
Easter holidays giving everyone enough time to research about, come
up with their own ideas regarding character emotions, staging, lights
etc...
The play is all down to your own perspective which is why when researching about it I found that I could literally plot the scene however I liked, and there were no wrong answers. I realised that throughout Caryl's plays there was a consistent theme of feminism, this was perfect because I could therefore study her other plays and incorporate things from them as it strongly all linked with Love and Information this was great because it vastly helped expand my idea range. Also after researching more into Love and Information I was familiar with the fact that there was an order of the seven parts of the play but it wasn't completely necessary, therefore our group came up with the idea together to rearrange the parts of the play and make it our own story in a way that still held smoothness throughout as well as telling our own version to the audience and helping them to understand our ideas in action.
Rehearsals
During rehearsal times we spent most of our time, reading off of script, learning the backgrounds of our characters and thinking how we can portray our emotions and help the audience understand what is happening, we also worked a lot alongside the technical theatre group which was super handy, while with them we discussed a whole range of things such as lighting, sounds, staging, props and so on...
Production Ideas
Affair:
I felt that I was able to contribute a lot of behind the scene ideas for the staging, lighting and sounds etc for our performance, especially in the parts I was involved in due to being more engaged in them. In affair me and my partner decided to have me based in the audience, while she had a spotlight on her so that people felt more interactive to our part of the play as I was sat with them, Affair was about a phone call between the two of us so me being in the audience in our opinion made the audience feel like they were part of the phone call thus giving the audience a better understanding of our emotions.
Recluse:
In Recluse we decided to have an imaginary door that we can hide our body language behind from the person on the other side of the door, this was great because I was able to thoroughly have more of a comedic scene as I could act as if the person on the door was a pest and I could pull faces and seem fed up, without the person reacting. My partner on the same side of the door as me was sat in another room but still able to hear what was going on at the door and chucked in comments every now and then to add more of an understanding emotionally to the scene.
Evaluation
The play we are working on is Love and Information, by British writer Caryl Churchill. The play is made up of seven parts mainly being regarding love or social situations. In the play there are a bunch of characters but none of the characters have names therefore the actors/director have to pick their own lines, the setting, and decide on how production can be done with originality. This style of play is great because everyone gets to freely plot their own ideas with no wrong answers making it your own.
Caryll Churchill
Caryll Churchill was born in London, United Kingdom on September 3rd 1938, at the age of 9 years old Caryll moved to Canada with her family where she studied in Trafalgar School in Montreal. Caryll then returned to England at the age of 18 and was given a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Language and Literature. Caryll has written over 45 plays and has been rewarded over 12 awards for her writing.
Initial Reaction
My Initial reaction to learning and having to perform Love and Information was quite a puzzled/50-50 reaction, I wasn't sure on how it would turn out as the play is quite hard in many different ways to understand because of the fact that there are seven parts the have a set order but can be in any order, and also having no character names meaning all lines etc have to be chosen yourself. This made it very hard to learn who your character is and can be tricky while selecting the lines as you can literally form into your own version, the other side of me thought this was great because we could do something our own way and give off our own story to the audience as well as having a lot of freedom while learning it.
Context
We were handed the script (Love and Information) just before the
Easter holidays giving everyone enough time to research about, come
up with their own ideas regarding character emotions, staging, lights
etc...
The play is all down to your own perspective which is why when researching about it I found that I could literally plot the scene however I liked, and there were no wrong answers. I realised that throughout Caryl's plays there was a consistent theme of feminism, this was perfect because I could therefore study her other plays and incorporate things from them as it strongly all linked with Love and Information this was great because it vastly helped expand my idea range. Also after researching more into Love and Information I was familiar with the fact that there was an order of the seven parts of the play but it wasn't completely necessary, therefore our group came up with the idea together to rearrange the parts of the play and make it our own story in a way that still held smoothness throughout as well as telling our own version to the audience and helping them to understand our ideas in action.
Candidate
Name
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Tristan Oliver Archer-Fernandes
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Candidate Number
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-
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Pathway
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Level 3 Acting
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Project Title
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Final Major Project
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Section 1: Review (Approximately 100 words)
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This term has been very efficient for me in terms of improving my skills and professional attributes.
During this term we learnt Antigone, Antigone drastically helped me to come out of my shell and be more open minded and really boosted my confidence and communication skills. I also was able to develop bringing true emotion in such as joy and sadness. After Antigone we are now studying Chekhov, Throughout Chekhov I was taught how to use Stanislavsky's famous techniques to help me reach the audience with my emotions, I used this to help me better myself which also helped me better my link to my character. We are now studying Macbeth, during Macbeth we really focused mostly on characterisation, this was very beneficial to me personally as I was playing 5 all completely different characters, Witch 2, Murderer 2, Donalbain, Doctor and Servant. Learning characterisation really helped me be able to switch between the characters mindsets as well as try to portray their feelings on stage. | |
Section 2: Project Concept (approximately 200 words)
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Our final performance is Love and Information by Carol Churchill. This play is very different as there are 7 episodic sections, meaning none of the scenes have an exact order and they are all different characters. All the lines can be done differently and read in your own version and none are set to a character, which gives you a lot of freedom to do it your way, I really like the idea of doing this play and I am really looking forward to it because we can collectively make our original version of it which makes you feel prouder of what you do. Because there are a lot of scenes of about 1-3 people, I am able to up my communication skills and expand my range of experience by acting with different people. This is great because I get to dig deeper into my more creative side of things working around different people everyday including the technical theatre group. This is also great because we get to make up our own backstory and even implement our own real situations and emotions into it as well as deciding on our own lighting, sound, setting etc. To top it all off, not being given characters and lines allows us a lot more freedom to play around with the lines and switch it up to make it our own story.
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Section 3: Evaluation (approximately 50 words)
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This term I am going to evaluate how I can better myself to help better my character as well as evaluating how I can relate to my character and understanding my character, on top of this I am going to evaluate how well I can react off of people emotions around me during the rehearsals and performance, I also want to evaluate how well I can match all the skills I have learnt such as characterisation, playing off of each others emotions and mainly just focusing on reacting on the spot rather than saying lines.
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Proposed Research Sources and Bibliography (Harvard Format)
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Rehearsals
During rehearsal times we spent most of our time, reading off of script, learning the backgrounds of our characters and thinking how we can portray our emotions and help the audience understand what is happening, we also worked a lot alongside the technical theatre group which was super handy, while with them we discussed a whole range of things such as lighting, sounds, staging, props and so on...
Production Ideas
Affair:
I felt that I was able to contribute a lot of behind the scene ideas for the staging, lighting and sounds etc for our performance, especially in the parts I was involved in due to being more engaged in them. In affair me and my partner decided to have me based in the audience, while she had a spotlight on her so that people felt more interactive to our part of the play as I was sat with them, Affair was about a phone call between the two of us so me being in the audience in our opinion made the audience feel like they were part of the phone call thus giving the audience a better understanding of our emotions.
Recluse:
In Recluse we decided to have an imaginary door that we can hide our body language behind from the person on the other side of the door, this was great because I was able to thoroughly have more of a comedic scene as I could act as if the person on the door was a pest and I could pull faces and seem fed up, without the person reacting. My partner on the same side of the door as me was sat in another room but still able to hear what was going on at the door and chucked in comments every now and then to add more of an understanding emotionally to the scene.
Evaluation
On Thursday, we did 2 shows, one during the day at 2pm and one during the night for the adults and parents to watch, both went great. I strongly believe the first show went much better because we were focused on getting it right as this was the one we were being recorded on. I feel that during the first performance we were all much more focused and took less risks to be on the safe side of things and just went out and got the job done. As an individual, Personally I feel I gave my best effort towards the performance and didn't have any hiccups during it all which is great.
In the second show, I felt far more relaxed going into it because there wasn't a camera on our faces and because we had already performed it before and felt like the weight was off my shoulders, I also feel that the communication in the second show was better because we now knew how it would all go and were sure on how the turn out would be therefore we were all able to feed off of each other and play around with it a little more.However I feel that I wasn't as in character as the first as I had decided to relax more and take more risks during the performance and just let it flow more than just getting the job done.
In the second show, I felt far more relaxed going into it because there wasn't a camera on our faces and because we had already performed it before and felt like the weight was off my shoulders, I also feel that the communication in the second show was better because we now knew how it would all go and were sure on how the turn out would be therefore we were all able to feed off of each other and play around with it a little more.However I feel that I wasn't as in character as the first as I had decided to relax more and take more risks during the performance and just let it flow more than just getting the job done.
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