proposal

During the past 3 years I have spent at Westminster Kingsway College, I have acquired much knowledge. During my first year we focused on presenting yourself as an actor. I created a professional acting CV and learned what to expect at auditions. I worked on how to promote myself as an actress in the performing arts industry. I also worked on my confidence and basic performance skills.
Through out my second year I decided to view the stage from a different point of view by studying technical theatre/production arts. I found this challenging as this was a whole new side to drama that I had not seen before. The skills that I learned are very useful when collaborating with the tech team during performances as I know exactly what to ask for, what is available to me and I can now appreciate the hard work the tech team puts into every production.
This year I have performed a variety of different styles and languages; such as Shakespeare and Anton checkov. I also spent a lot of time researching different practitioners approaches towards drama eg; Uta  Hagen and Stanislavski. I now feel more at ease when given a new script, even if I don't understand the text at first glance, with this new found knowledge I now know there are ways to help me learn and understand the text. During unit 8 I discovered the importance of developing an off stage life for my character, thinking about what this character would be doing during their free time off stage really helps me gather a better idea of who my character is.

For Love and Information my personal aim for the out come was for it so be very abstract and open to interpretation, so much that every member of the audiences imagination understood it their own unique way.
This is why my group decided to not wear costumes as we didnt want to show who are characters where but leave it up to the enjoyment of the viewers entertainment.
I enjoyed the hands off approach our teachers had with this unit, especially as this play can be very open to interpretation, it was up to our imagination to make our groups performance original. After the initial whole class read through, we also got to chose which scenes we wanted to do, meaning everyone chose a scene that they could personally relate to. I chose Message, Dream, Shrink, Fate and facts. The whole group will perform wedding video as a ensemble.

 7. Message: Mya and Phill
11. dream : Mya and diamond
19. shrink: Mya and diamond
26. fate; Mya and Micheal
29. Facts: Mya and Ben
Last scene- Wedding video: everyone

Love and information is a contemporary play by Caryl Churchill. The structure of the play is episodic, and consists of 29 short scenes that are unrelated but all have similar themes that reoccur.
The most similar thing that my mind can relate this play to is Netflix's 'Black Mirror'. In black mirror every episode is a separate short story within the season.
Message is a duolouge between 2 people with clear criminal instincts. However one does have higher status than the other and the character with lower status seemed to be more reasonable, so we interpreted it as if me and Phill where the good and evil voice in a terrorists head. I played the devilish voice and Phill played the angelic voice.
Dream Is a lunch time conversation in the park between 2 middle aged female office workers. They work in a very male dominated environment and their girly gossips are the only escape they have. During the scene my character explains how a dream i had convinces her her husband is cheating on her, and shes had enough of his nasty ways so they decide to explore their sexuality with each other.
In shrink I played a therapist who was a little closed minded and clearly didn't enjoy her job.
In Fate i played a physic fortune teller at a fair ground.
In facts i played a quiz show presenter.
During rehearsal i dedicated equal time on each scene with my multiple partners. Only until a week before the show did we perform the whole show chronologically and gave each other feedback.
During this time I found it interesting to see how the other group had interpreted the same dialogue into different scenarios.
We collaborated with the Technical theatre student during this project to, they came in and watched over a few of our rehearsals and took requests for production from our group. Then programmed our requests on tech rehearsal.
One member of our group done us a huge favour and typed and printed a running order for backstage.
We all agreed that costumes would be too difficult to do because everyone played multiple characters, so we came to the conclusion that performing in actors Blacks would be best.
Our first performance ran smoothly besides the fact that a chair broke during the 2nd scene, but we managed to improvise our way around it and replace the chair in between scene change overs.
Our second performance ran better than the first, no set was broken, and the whole cast gave their full energy. Unfortunately the examiner will be watching the video of the 1st performance.
I really enjoyed this unit simply because of how open to interpretation it was, and I feel keeping the costumes, set and lighting to a minimum helped leave it up to the audience's imagination.

I really enjoyed this project as majority of the scenes I chose I connected to on a personal level. However I did struggle to throw myself into the deep end and fully take on the role as the fortune teller in 'Fate'. From this experience I realised that its important to fully become the character you are playing; physically, mentally and vocally. During 'dream' I really found my inner monologue for the character I was playing and I would read through the scene before I slept hoping I could actually witness the same dream my character explains.

The Gauridan Newspaper quotes the following

"But one of the many points made by this exhilarating theatrical kaleidoscope is that we live in a world where information bombardment is in danger of leading to atrophy of memory, erosion of privacy and decay of feeling.

What is extraordinary about Churchill is her capacity as a dramatist to go on reinventing the wheel. All her plays, from Owners to A Number and Far Away, are formal experiments, and on this occasion she has come up with something that feels like an intimate revue written by Wittgenstein."

This research proved to me that Carroll Churchill wrote this play with an intentional message to put across and my aim while choosing the scenarios behind the dialogue reflected this as we tried to make the scenarios as out of the box as possible. The play itself asks you to reconsider what does meaning even mean, shows how weather you like it or not everyone is a part of the process. I really enjoyed performing this show as it was an eye opener and has helped me to think about life in a more open minded way.

My plans for next year is to possibly take a gap year to find myself, learn through travelling and experiences and put away some savings for my future. I will also attend as many auditions as possible. During this time I will come to the conclusion if I would like to go to drama school or university. There are many pros and cons to consider in making this decision. I  would like to go to a drama school with an agency as there is a higher success rate, however I do have my heart set on the royal central school of speech and drama, although I would like to get a teaching degree at uni and teach drama as I love working with younger children and have lots of experience in doing so.