LESSON FIVE - 24|4|13 - 'Berkoff - Vocal Workshop'

Sir made us stand in a circle and project a humming noise for as long as we could. This was because we were going to focus on ways to develop our vocal's in a way that fits the style of Berkoff's exaggerated and excessive tones that help to define and determine the meaning of his poetical writing style.

We had to produce a humming noise, but alter the pitch and projection to fit a certain emotion. This made us think more about the undertones of what we were actually projecting from our mouths. This is something I will be using whilst choreographing my tone in 'Lunch' so I can pick a correct intonation to help decipher the poetic language. By using a tone that suggests something more than the words themselves, it'll make it easier for the audience to follow. This is different to Stanislavsky, as we are bringing any subtext to surface, and my tone will not be a sarcastic as I had to make in 'The Pillowman' because I am speaking my thoughts which will obviously have a more truthful dialogue.

We were then given the dialogue speech:

"Do you drive? Do you speed

That my Volvo

Slip into the back seat

Do you like the leather on the wheel?

It feels like dead skin wrapped around metal"

Working with Mr Chipp, we devised a quick piece where we returned sentences. I elongated the 'Vol' in 'Volvo' to show how I was proud of my car in which I was allowing him to look at. I also said 'slip' with a fast pace to mimic the meaning of the word. Sir then responded with an uninterested tone, as my car is clearly not to his taste, so everything I say is said with the intent of showing how proud I am of my car which is why I insist on asking him the question. I raised the pitch halfway through the word 'wheel' to mimic the shape and emphasise how interesting I find the car. This is similar to the previous exercise in the way I can incorporate it into 'Lunch' but here I was able to develop the technique through practice of a different piece of text.

I've linked this style into the line where I say 'soon, quickly' as I drag out the 'soon's' to emphasise eagerness and then for 'quickly' I increase the pace to mimic the speed in which I want some communication to happen with the man. This shows the audience that there is a side of the woman that is desperate to become in contact with this man providing the audience to see the fighting conscience behind the woman which provokes humour and a chance to relate to similar feelings they may have had by showing a visual representation of the the battling thoughts. 

LESSON FOUR - 17|4|13 - 'Lunch - Page One'

As we are self directing the play, I wanted to make sure that the movements created were constantly bringing the true meaning of the subtext forward. This is because the language that Berkoff uses is very poetic, and although is very interesting - we want the audience to understand the feelings of the characters, if not by vocal, by actions.

We started to play around with the idea that if Ciara (suppressive emotion) starts behind the confident being, it shows that the knowledge of this man observing the woman brings out the shyness, so we started by allowing Ciara to lunge out behind me showing this. As we do not make contact with the boys until the second page, we decided it would be best to create the movements as two separate duality pieces. Therefore the boys choreographed movement that suited them, and me and Ciara did the same. This allowed us to focus on our emotions and reactions rather than bouncing of the boys actions.

For most of the first page we stay sat on the bench, this shows how we feel the man should be the one to initiate the conversation. This is supported by when Ciara pushes my face after I say 'turn around' as she's telling me to be patient. This makes it clear to the audience that the feeling between both man and woman of wanting to talk is mutual and produces slight humour as the shy sides of each character restricts progression of interaction.

On 'poor beast' Ciara slaps the top of my head. This can show how I am beating myself up in the head about what he actually is. This also presents very clearly to the audience within the first page that me and Ciara are very conflicting emotions of the same person.

On 'he wants to' - I walk my fingers along Ciara's leg to show want the sexualised thoughts the woman is having. Ciara then cuts of this thought by lifting my hand and putting it over my mouth and saying 'talk', creating humour as the cut of is clearly the battle of the characteristics and their thoughts of what the man should be thinking. It also sets a tone for the play because there are a lot of sexual innuendo's from both male and female character, hinting at the sexual thoughts from the beginning makes the final result later on in the play not seem to unrealistic to the audience if their thoughts were fairly sexual from the beginning.

The stage direction said 'woman moves as if to leave', so me and Ciara wanted to create a bit of movement that showed duality and battling emotions. We stand up irritated on 'dumbstruck' and start walking on 'dead'. I run in front of Ciara as if to stop her, I then pull her in, as if I am trying to push her back into myself, but instead she weaves around me, but I still have control on her arm and therefore try to pull her back but she is also pulling. By this time the boys utterance should have finished in time for Ciara to say 'too late too late' and then as the more dominate characteristic, I pull Ciara back as we walk underneath are arms and finish where we started. This is definitely more visually interesting to watch as we do not get up from the bench until this point, it shows how active both thoughts of both woman and man are upon their first meeting. By ending up in the same position before walking away, it shows how it was only the shy thought taking over wanting to leave the situation but that the dominate characteristic won and managed to stay standing before moving on in the script.

For the rest of the lesson, we went over the movement separately until they were very slick, before joining them together and making sure it all fitted. We thought that it was a good start as the movement from me and Ciara prevented the performance from becoming static, and wasn't making the performance look messy which was our only fear.

We will continue to work on the script once we have completed some more workshops that will help provide idea's and give motivation and inspiration for what we can do in our performance and keep it at the strong standard we started it at.