Thank You

I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog and find it useful.

Overall

Through out this assessment I felt like I was experiencing something truly special and new! Even though at times I all felt frustrated I was determined to put as much into the task ahead. Because of the dedication of the class and Anna I think we created a truly human piece of theatre. It had a story, scenes and a clear message that the class could respond to. After the performance I felt happy and close to everyone just like the family in the performance.

Music influences

I really love listening to all types of music. Anything from musical theatre to electronic house music. The music that inspired me through out this assessment were interesting pieces;

I listened a lot to the soundtrack of the musicals 'Hair' and 'Spring Awakening' as they have strong emphasis on ensemble work and harmonies. This is very apparent in the songs 'Aquarius' in 'Hair' and 'The Song Of Purple Summer' in 'Spring Awakening'.

I love the atmosphere of singer/songwriters such as Agnes Obel and Kate Rusby. The former creates interesting sounds with a mixture of classical and folk techniques and the later has a beautiful voice that works well to an audience.

I listened to film score to look at how the music was used to capture a scene and listened to alternative groups like Cocorosie who used different styles and genres to influence their music and the sound is sometimes quite eerie and unworldly.

Focus

One of the things I tend to struggle with is switching off. I find I have lots of thoughts swimming around in my head and I really had to focus to turn it off. Luckily the more I enjoyed the piece the easier this became and by the final performance I was ready to focus on what was happening in the moment and this helped me embody the performance more.

Weeks before the performance

In the last few weeks before the assessment we run through and set the piece in more detail. These sessions were my favourite as I felt like everything was working well and finally coming together. It seemed like we were all putting more energy in and enjoying working together. Through out the second semester people were missing from class. I  also missed two sessions due to illness. This made it hard to work consistently but in the last few weeks it became easier to motivate each other and I think the result was really good.

Characterisation

When characterising yourself into the performance world it is first necessary to create a world.
'The Tiger's Bride' is a dark fairy tale similar to the story of 'Beauty and the Beast'. Lindsey had lead a interesting character workshop in on of the lectures which helped us imagine the world of the Tiger and create a character to interact in the scene.
When imagining a character I remembered my cat mask from first semester and developed it more in depth. Sensing so of the other characters I saw my animal to be stand offish and more wary than some of the younger characters. I imagined that I would avoid the Tiger and Daughter to avoid trouble but defend the more naïve characters. I still involved some of the cattish movements and wanted  human and animal mannerisms.

Class discussions

In the second semester we were led into more class discussions on the division of the piece. We talked about how to tackle the story of 'The Tigers Bride' by Angela Carter. We discussed how the piece felt and how much of the story should be represented. We talked about whether the story should be linear or more broken up. There we discussions on the involvement of none related texts. It was decided that the performance would not be a complete retelling of 'The Tigers Bride' but set in our imaginations where the character create the world of 'The Tigers Bride' focusing on the relationship of a Father and Daughter. The main elements were; day, night, love, fear, loneliness and family.