unit 9 final performance (A Vampire Story)

The last play we are performing for is a play called a vampire story, it is about two main characters that are vampires, the oldest is Claire she works in the pub, and the youngest  Eleanor goes to school she is in year 12 she studies drama during  a truth exercise in her class and Eleanor has been alive for 200 years old and has survived by drinking human blood. Her class mates thinks she is utterly crazy, mint her teacher puts her in counselling, and she makes one friend Frank a boy that was home educated and is much of an oddity to Eleanor. He tries to get to the bottom of the vampire delusion, franks parents believe that Eleanor is anorexic that's why they don't like her, Eleanor she started to to write about her life story as a play, Eleanor describes Claire's background as a prostitute in the 19th century in London and her own as a child in an orphanage. The traits of  modern day vampires are pretty well established,  also they drink human blood, also they cant see themselves in the mirror. They could be killed with a stake through the heart , some like Dracula are aristocrat who live in castles, the modern conception of these Halloween  monsters  evolved from various traditional beliefs that were held throughout Europe. In extreme cases, teeth might be stained reddish brown, also they have sharp teeth to kill people and turn them into vampires, although they have really scary eyes that can put human in trance, so they obey vampires commands. 

 

The playwright of  the play for a vampire story, firstly it was set in Northern Ireland in 1812, it was

 written by Moira Buffini she was born on May 29th in 1965, she is half  British and   half  Irish women, she was born in Cheshire London. Moira is a dramatist, director and a actor. She went to a college at Rhos - on sea in Wales and attended at St Mary's college as a day girl, she studied  English  and drama at Goldsmith college, university (1983- 86). She subsequently trained as a  actor at the Royal Welsh college of Music and Drama in Cardiff. In 1992 she won a time out award for her performance and writers  guild award play. Her 1997 play Gabriel  was performed at  Soho  theatre, winning the LWT plays on stage award and the  Meyer-Whitworth award. She also done a play  in 1999 called silence and she earned the Blackburn prize for the best  English - language played by a woman. She did a Love  play followed at the RSC in 2001, the national theatre in 2003 which transferred to the west end and was nominated for an Oliver award for best comedy. The themes of the play are horror, terror, also fear, its dark and very gothic  story line also it has happiness and it can be very enthusiastic and its about prostitution, love and hate. The role i am doing is Marianne  she is a child prostitute  who works in  a  brothel  in other words which is a whorehouse. There is a lot of people that is older than her where she works,  the young women dress up as  sluts so she turns out like a whore like the rest of them, she goes to older men for sex and gets what she wants and then leaves and keeps on going to different men because she wants all the attention because she might not get  the attention from her family. 

In the rehearsals, all of us did  some good warm up's  for our body,  for example stretches for our arms. legs and neck exercises. shoulder rolls back and forward also we put our hands and head forward and we have to try and touch our  toes without bending our knees.  We extended our  arms to open up our chest  to warm up, and become ready and calm, also voice warms ups we was told to make weird sounds and massage our jaw and then we did  tongue twisters  for example peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers a peck of pickled peppers peter piper picked, also she sells seashores by the seashore. Although then we read through our lines without our script and then i also read in for a class mate because she was not in and i enjoyed playing that character it was really fun but overall everyone did there best they could to learn all there lines in all the rehearsals before the actual  performance. 

In  one of the lessons we was talking about eating disorders which helped us understand about the play because in one of the scenes one of the guys has a eating disorder,  i feel like this was a good way to know more about eating disorders in general and understand more about the whole play and the scene about eating disorders. What i think went well was our listing skills, also our focus on the lesson and rehearsals we did speak really quite but i feel like it was clear.  The part that didn't go well was the lack of energy and resolution towards the lesson,  we had a lot of  ideas and used our imagination  to think about  some eating disorders, and then in Shenaghs  lesson we was talking about the plots and think about what the metaphors are of the play in our groups.  In Rebecca's lesson we watched a film called Byzantium which was kind of based on our play, to learn and understand more about our play and understand more about the characters and i feel like everyone gave good ideas on the play and film which was a great success, we all learned how to work as a team and discuss about the ideas we all had about the scenes and plays. Although  for Robs lesson  we was doing a bit of dancing for fun and also we did some tongue twisters to warm up our voices, following that we did some fun drama games and improvisations.  We  had to improvise  a  scene based on a topic that was assigned to us in groups  for me Ola and Aya  we created a scene where it is one of our bestfriends birthday party and she was a spoiled brat. Who only thinks  about herself, she thinks like if you give then you receive, the birthday girl she started an argument because one of her friends didn't get her a present.  This was a dramatic and crazy scene, we had to put our minds into the improvisation and use our imagination and creativity, also i learned how to project my voice and be clear when speaking into the audience and be ready for a audience to watch us perform and become more confident.. I  think in the rehearsals this helped us become more confident and Rob made it more enjoyable for us to be more concentrated and it helped us understand more about how to be more confident and project our voices louder while acting and leaving space on stage so you don't block other characters out.  

On  one of   the  rehearsals  we  had  with  Rob,  we  worked  on  our  play the  vampire  story  from scene  one  to scene two, in scene one it was with Clare and Ella they were long lost sisters and they was trying to guess each others names the actors was arranging the scenes with Rob. These two scenes was the best because it went really well it was really fun, funny, the actors had a lot of good acting and  reactions,  it was funny for Rob when we was rehearsing. Rob directed the characters in their positions and asked the school characters for example Point, Debit, Moon, Briggs and  Ella to show more reactions to the teacher which was mint.  In this scene the students, characters was told to react to Frank when he was in the hot sit in the middle, the students was told to question frank about he's life  who is the odd kid in the class. Although with Ella she is the new kid as well and she was put in the hot seat,  and questioned also she was asked to speak the truth, Rob asked some of the characters to create a tableaux, which is a scene from a history from her past that is present by figures. What went well  was the energy and all the characters had really funny reactions. We all worked on and learned how to avoid blocking any characters or the audience while performing on stage. The lesson we had with Shenagh we were practicing tongue twisters and then later on we was playing some drama games to practice our memory and listing skills, then everyone worked on scene one to scene three we had to show Shenagh where we got up to with Rob after these  scenes we carried on working on scene three to five. In scene four some of  us had to do some slow dancing in the front of the right hand of the stage which was really fun,. Also i had to play the character Eleanor in scene four because Tee didn't come in which was really fun and i enjoyed playing that character and then in scene five i was playing Marianne and i was asked to sit on the floor and lay my head on his leg which was good. Then we had a lesson with Rebecca and we was talking about our productions parts that we had to do for example i did sound, music we had to have for the play. I feel like i learnt how to commit myself to my characters i had my main charter Marianne  but  i  also committed  to another character i  read in for and played Eleanor,  but overall i enjoyed playing the character Eleanor  and it was experience for me. This  helped  me with  my confidence  in the rehearsals  and  i feel like  i become less nervous  and gained more confidence but i need to be more confident in acting in front of an audience. 

On   Tuesday   the  1st   of   June   we   had   our   first   technical   rehearsal   with  Shenagh. Rob   and Rebecca  was   at   the  back.  We   was   doing   some   finish   touches   on   the   sounds,  music   and lighting   which   went   well   but   the  only   thing   is   that   not   everyone   was   in   so   we  couldn't   go   through  the   sounds   properly   because   all   the   music  wasn't   set   up   properly  but apart  from  that  it  went   pretty  well. Although   we   had   another   technical   rehearsal   on   the  7th of   June  this  time  it   went  a  lot  better  we  had   everything   ready  so   we  went  through   all   the scenes  and   it   was   really   good,  everyone   had   reactions   to   scene   two   also   all   the   scenes had good actions it was really funny and enjoyable to see,  it went really smoothly  everyone spoke really   loud   and   clearly   some   of   us   was   really   nervous   but   overall   all   the   scenes  went well  and   this  was  a   good  technical  rehearsal.  Tuesday  the  8th   of   June   on   this  day   we   had   our  final   performance   and   a  full   costume   run   through  which   went  very   well,  everyone  put   their costume on time and did an excellent job   on   acting  out  their character.  Everyone  was   trying   their  best  to   speak   the  loudest   they could,  also  i  feel  like  i  did  a  good job  staying   in  character,  this  rehearsal  went  really well  it   had   a lot  of  energy  and  laughter  everyone  did  the   best  and  the  whole  play  stood   out. 

Evaluation:    In   the  performance   i    think   we  all  did our  best,  we  had  good  pace  in  between scene  changes  and  i  think  it   helps  everyone  pick  up  their  cues  of there  lines  also  it  made  it and  had more energy. When  i  was  watching  from  back  stage  i  think  the  first  two  scenes  was  the best of pace it was really fun and funny to watch, it was really lively. The audience reacted really well they  enjoyed   it  because  the  audience was  laughing  which  is  a  good  sign. This  gave  me the confidence  for  my  scene, but  i  feel  like  i  got  to  nervous when  i  went  on  stage  which  affected me  to say the  right  lines but  my  nerves over  took  me.  However  as  the  middle  of  the  scene  i got  the  rest  of my lines  correct,  i  felt  like  i  was  in  character  because  i  did  what  i  was directed  to  do. Which  was  i had  to  put  my  arm  on  the other  charters  shoulder  but  i  feel  like  it  would  of  been  more  better  if  i  made  a  more  of  a  physical  move , if  we  had  a  chance  to redo  the  play  i  would  of  did   it   differently  by  doing  more  of  a  physical  move  like  to  sit  on the floor with me putting my arm on his lap and put my head on his lap. I feel like if i practiced more with  my  lines  and  being  less  nervous  each  time  i  practiced  i  would  of   become  more confident  with  performing  in  front  of   a  audience. Overall  i  think the  whole  performance  was great  and  i  feel  like  it   stood  out  really  well,  everyone  of  us  did  our  best  with  the performance  we   learnt  our  lines  and  i   feel  like   everyone  came  out  of   their  shell  a  bit, because  everyone  of  the  actors  was  nervous  but  the  main  thing  is  that  the  audience  enjoyed the  play  and  we  didn't  mess  up  a  lot  of  the  lines. 

What  helped  us   focus  was  walking  around  the  room  saying  our  lines  and  then  the  vocal  exercises  which  was  humming  and chewing  gum  to warm up our voice  and jaw,  also  we  did a few tongue twisters. This helped us keep calm before the performance and prepare us for the actual last  performance  and be  ready for a   audience.