FINAL EVALUATION
East End Tales is a series of nine stories inspired by photos and news articles from local papers in east London. It was written as part of a Half Moon Young People’s Theatre Scriptworks project for Mulberry School for Girls in Tower Hamlets, London. We performed it with no specified set, props or lighting and every scene was devised from scratch. It was performed in room 415 at The BRIT School on Friday the 12th of February. This project was for our scripted plays unit (page to stage) and it was a complete ensemble piece with minimal props and set.
We used the lyrical verse style of the poem to split lines up and allocate them out to different people. Every scene was improvised from scratch and every scene was performed as an ensemble. We were also split into two groups to devise our own scenes with very little direction from our director. This helped us all because we could use our creativity and put that on the stage. I thoroughly enjoyed working on East End Tales as an ensemble because it really improved my teamwork skills and strengthened relationships with many of the other cast members. It also made me realise you don’t need to have specific characters already laid out for you to create an amazing piece of theatre. It also made me realise that a theatre is not only a literal space, but also a place where we dream together; not merely a building, but a space that is both imaginative and collective. Theatre provides a safe frame within which we can explore dangerous extremities in the comfort of fantasy and the reassurance of a group.
We were set many different dramatic exercises to help develop different elements of being an actor. Things like:
Monologues:
Every actor wrote a monologue playing the part of their favourite character from East End Tales. This really helped me develop my characterisation.
Role-On-The-Wall:
We had an outline of a body and we had to choose a character and write things that we have found out about the person(s) emotionally, and internally on the inside of the body, and everything that we find out about what the character looks and feels like to other people, on the outside.
We also worked in small groups to devised a piece of work from scratch with no direction that had to consist of ensemble work and monologue work when we had a lesson with Chris. This helped me with the later development of Tale 7 with the group that I worked with.
One of the moments that worked the best was definitely the pub scene. I feel that there was a certain energy that was maintained throughout the points there needed to be, and then a sort of sensitivity as the scene progressed. I also think this scene captivated the audience the most as it was loud and full of things to look at. These are also reasons as to why the pub scene was my personal favourite scene. Another scene that I think worked really well was Tale 5 (The domestic violence scene) because of the way we had the “mum” and “dad” set up in the middle of the stage as a setting for the story telling.
Roseby did a really good job in Tale 5 of story telling. The way she developed that character really helped her in captivating the audience during that moment where she talks about how the whole thing was an anti climax. The atmosphere she created was sensitive but also slightly comedic, this would make the audience feel more comfortable about a sensitive topic.
A definite weakness of devising a play that needs to be a polished as this, was that if one person wasn’t focused, the whole cast will be thrown off guard because someone dropped a line or because someone wasn’t somewhere they were supposed to be. The staging also proved to be a challenge that we manage to overcome. Because it was decided that we would set it in thrust staging (audience on three sides), it meant we had to create a piece of theatre technically for three audiences. We had to think about projection, our positions on stage and putting on an evenly good show for each side. Characterisation was more difficult for this play as we all had more than just the one character to think about. This meant I had to do much more research than I would normally for one character. This also meant learning lines for different characters was a challenge as you had to think about what the objective would be for each line said by a different character. This has also helped me develop my line learning and characterisation skills.
I absolutely loved the style of the play. The way it was poetically written in a lyrical style was so new to me but was a great experience. It was almost like urban Shakespeare in the way it was written in verse.
Physical theatre was still fairly new to me, as I have not done much of it previously and even though we did a small bit of it last unit, I still felt very amateur on the subject. Now I feel so much more experienced in physical theatre after the countless amounts of exercises we did. I really enjoyed all the physical parts of East End Tales, especially when Miss Goodall gave us creative reign over a scene; I really felt I could use my creativity to our advantage.
The whole multiple role theme made me progress a lot these past 2 terms because I didn’t just have to think about characterisation of one character, but many! It enabled me to explore different personalities of people with different age, race, gender, ideologies, morals and values.
The whole multiple role theme made me progress a lot these past 2 terms because I didn’t just have to think about characterisation of one character, but many! It enabled me to explore different personalities of people with different age, race, gender, ideologies, morals and values.
The style of storytelling was also a very progressive factor of this play because it helped me interact with the audience and really exaggerate everything so that the audience feel like they are present in the play. It also gave a definite sense of objective to the play, as if we were actually telling the stories for a reason. That reason could be different to everyone. This term, as an actor, I ‘ve learnt that to create a good piece of theatre you do not need a fancy set with expensive props and lighting. All we needed to perform this play was a space. This is good because it again gives you complete creative reign over anything you want and puts you under no limits.
My line learning this term was pretty good. I didn’t forget any lines in the final performance and my cues were very accurate as well. My focus in the classroom was very high in most circumstances but sometimes it dropped due to the fact that we were running the same scene over and over or the fact that our director was focusing on a part in the scene that I wasn’t involved in. I think my rehearsing throughout this unit has been to a high standard and I really enjoyed working on East End Tales.
Participating in this project, I feel I have developed skills such as: Line learning, characterisation, ensemble work, tone, articulation, devising, improvisation, special awareness and movement.
Benji Lord
Benji Lord
