Road week 3

What have I done this week with my character?

This week I have been focusing on my lines. This has helped me understand my character more such as

'He has me pulling out my hair'

This line makes the character more mental as she has emotion in this monologue.The line is a sign of anxiety for the character. People with anxiety can go into into intense fear. I think that my character may have GAD anxiety disorder . It stands for  Generalised Anxiety Disorder. People who had GAD have something that they do all the time. People with GAD might be struggling with themes such as financial difficulties, bad things happening in the future or worrying about health or the safety of their family.The characteristics of GAD can be taken to develop Valerie's character.the worries go away sometimes because maybe shaking the worries feelings will stop. I think rocking back and forward will make the feelings stop for a while. Doing something all the time. I think that I should try different The disorder is when you continually feel tense and apprehensive, experiencing unfocused negative and out of control feelings. She feels worried all the time and feels that someone is watching her because of the description that he will come 'in pissed drunk'. She aims all her monologue to the audience as she is lonely and tired.

At the beginning of this week I started to read my monologue aloud more because I needed to work on reading the monologue aloud so then I can practise more before rehearsal. When I read aloud I began to add pauses for when Valerie's thinks.

I performed my monologue to Frank and Penny. The feedback was positive I was nearly confident with all of my lines which helped to deliver more of my character. They said that I should work more on my posture. Think about how Valerie would sit. I thought about this more as I was running through the monologue and I thought about having my character rocking back and forwards because she feels frustrated and she is trying to pass the time but scared to because of her husband bursting drunk. This made me look more interesting. Also fidgeting is a great effect because of the nervousness of the husband that effect the mood and her past.

Another part of the the monologue that I need to work on is the northern which I will keep practising and with the help of the sheet with the phrases such as clear, idea. This sheet will help me because the slang that people say such as 'Nowt' means nothing.














I watched Franks monologue this week. The first time he performed I wasn't imagining the character he was playing because his body language didn't change. The positives about Franks monologue was that he used a few pauses in the monologues which I thought was a great start. The second time I told him to work more on the accent. He thought that has his character was a young when in fact he plays a older character because of his experience of the war. He began to have a accent when he practised the second time. Things he needs to work on is the accent and research the feelings of how it felt going through the war.

For my character I added more movement into my monologue to make it look more abstract but naturalistic too. For example my says about fat hard hands I put my hand near my face. I thought that it was a nice tough to it because of the feelings that are going through match it too.

Week 2 Road

This week was the first stages of blocking the whole play. It was great to see the play come to life after reading the whole play. I can understand more about the theme in this play. I started working on Valerie's monologue more this week. I understood more about her monologue as reading it aloud with  Kirsty. I think that Valerie is at the last stages of giving up with her husband.

I looked up the monologue on

You tube and saw some many interpretations. The first one was I thought was in a constant panic and relied on her cigarette. She sat down the whole time at the edge of her chair. I think that she was scared for when her husband returned. I liked this part of the clip because it shows her fear in her body language. Her make up looked like it had been on for days. The make up adds to the image for the audience to imagine that she is tired and sick of waiting. Overall the monologue gave me a lot of ideas to develop my character. This week I will take the idea of related her troubles to the cigarette and see if it is a success.

Another monologue I looked was great. It showed Valeries emotions throughout using rises and falls by using her voice. I liked the way she used her voice like that because it showed her emotions in the monologue. Annoyance comes in because of the volume she uses. Sadness when she refers to

 'I would cry but I don't think tears would come '.
I think that this line is a crucial line because you can see that she has been going through this a long time. At home all day and sort out the kids. This is one of my favourite lines because the audience feels for Valerie. Valerie is going through a dark emotion that the audience feel empathy towards Valerie. I liked the version of Valeries monologue a lot so I will put in the rises and falls in rehearsals and see if it works when I rehearse. 

My character first line is 

' Im fed of waiting'.

I keep question to myself about who is waiting for. However throughout the monologue Valerie explains that she waits for her husband to come home although she doesn't say his name always referred to 'he'. My natural response would be that she is is waiting for her husband.

We also looked at the northern accent and how we can relate the northern accent to our character. We started by repeated words with emphasis on certain sounds. For example clear is stressed on the 'ea' sound. I already knew a little bit about the northern accent and how it sounded because i watched the performance of 'Teechers' which was performed in a northern accent. A northern accent goes up at the end of a sentence or a word.

We started to learn about connecting the vowels with the constants. I found this a little difficult because it wasn't a proper word that we were saying but it became easier as the exercise progressed. The exercise was to put the constants with vowels. Such as Ba. The sound Ba is not a short sound like I would normally say it. The northern accent elongates the a sound. 

Road week 1

We started our second contemporary play Road by Jim Cartwright. We started this project by having a workshop of some characters. I tried the character of Brenda with Kennedy as Carol. Once I read though the scene I thought that Brenda had a poor wealth as she is asking her own daughter for money for drinks down the pub. i thought that this would be a character that would step out of my comfort zone because Brenda is a lot different to my character in 13. I have not really been motherly character before but I thought that i would have a better character that would of suited me more.

The play Road is set in the 1980s up North where at people were losing there jobs and the Falklands war was happening and where people were highly unemployed.  This video explains the war about the Falklands. I think that one of the characters was in the navy at the time.

This week we read though the whole play and discussed the themes of the play. Cartwright has written a lot about sex.  Sex is a common theme throughout the play and it is a conversation that happens most in the play. Also alcohol is a key theme because everyone on the road likes going to the pub. Alcohol occurs in scenes particularly in the pub with Barry. As we read though I thought about what character interest me. I thought the relationship between Joey and Claire because of the love they are sharing whilst they are starving themselves.

Then I read the character Valerie's monologue and thought about how I could act this character though body language and facial expressions.  I think that Valerie is emotionally lonely because her monologue expresses that she is waiting for her husband to come home. i think i will enjoy this character as it is out of my comfort zone and will be interesting to get into a character of a lonely middle aged woman. I was happy with my character because it is a character that will challenge me. From the exercise that was led in class about animal i think that my animal for Valerie's  would be a mouse because a mouse is treated like dirt by humans because of the smell but however a mouse can be treated as a pet to others. It depends how to interpret her characteristics. It think that Valerie has two sides to her that makes the audience interests. The mouse has a interesting body language the way it curls up into a ball when it is frightened but then they can become a character who reacts very quickly.

We were thinking about staging which was a interesting discussion and exciting to listen to as it is a unusual to have the staging as what our group came up with. This is my interpretation to the staging of road. I wanted to make my design simple but clever at the same time because I like the little details such as the road is filled with little spots of yellow to symbolize the mood of the road. The yellow shows that everyone has a good time in the evening such as going to Barry's pub and then the morning after there is a brown atmosphere when no one is outside on the road. Most scenes are mainly in the evening because of the reason about the morning after the evening of drinking. The house represents the professors house as I imagine the professor having a big house because of his reputation on the road and that he is called Prof makes him have a higher status. The Professor could create animal characteristics such as a lion. A lion is proud with his head looking up high because he is the highest job. The same with a lion. He thinks that he is the chief of the pack.

We had many staging ideas that were interesting. An idea that was linked to group of people was to have the audience in a promenade stage where the audience can be taken around as a tour. I thought this was great idea because it will give the audience more imagination and that they can be apart of the such as being apart of the pub scenes by sitting down on chairs and table watching the scene. the tour guide will be scullery who is the narrator throughout so this will make perfect sense and that he will make it interesting as he is drunk at the time during the play. The idea was to connect the classrooms that connect to the theatre so it takes the audience by surprise. I also liked how we can use the corridor to perform the show because the shape of the corridor is shaped a road and there are places where scenes can happen throughout.

The activity that were done to introduce to us about status had a interested because the task was on the body language of celebrity's. A few from our class had some disagreements about the body language of some people. For example this picture.

There was some debate about where to put this picture in the line from high to low. I thought that the picture was holding a defense guard by having her arms crossed. However her facial expression says the opposite because she is smiling. Some people were battling between the picture of Dani Harmer and the picture of Taylor swift. Taylor Swift had a different facial expression whcih caused some discussion because some people wanted to swap the two picture over.










Next weeks blog will be about the blocking stages and how the play is coming to together in scenes.