Her Majesty's Theatre

At PQA (Pauline Quirk Academy), we do end of term projects; I have already done a big project such as a film premier which highlighted what we do in film and television classes. Last term we did a musical theatre project which we performed at Her Majesty's Theatre! This was great experience and a lot of fun.

The whole of the academy were involved but we did separate performances and then a finale at the end together. We also shared the night with 3 other PQA academy's from different locations.

We had prepared for our performances for over 9 weeks and I choreographed the whole finale scene which meant that I worked for the afternoon academy as well as I had to teach the afternoon academy the same routines. This was hard work but a lot of fun as I got to know a few more people from the afternoon and it was good experience to be able to teach two whole academy's my choreography.

I also got involved with the media side of the performance too as I edited the music and put it all together for our performance. I learned how to do this in a B-TEC Performing Arts lesson and I was able to do it again at home. I personally didn't find it challenging as I knew the basics and so it was fairly easy as I knew timings etc.

The performances that I was in were from Legally Blonde the musical and Rent. Only my age group were involved in these. (14-17yr olds) It was just the girls that were involved in the legally blonde song and as a group we were involved in a song from Rent.

In the legally blonde song I played the bossy girl who told everyone what to do. We did the song OMG. In the song we are all excited because we think that El is about to get engaged which means we acted very stereotypical girly Americans. This was my favourite performance to do as I got to be with my friends, wear pink and sing solo in front of loads of people in the audience, which Pauline Quirk herself was in.

The other performance was called Rent and it was the complete opposite to Legally Blonde because we were poor and scruffy and negative. It was a very powerful performance and I enjoyed performing it as we all had loads of energy and therefore the outcome was brilliant.

I had a good night performing at Her Majesty's Theatre and I won't forget it! Great experience for me and I loved every second of it.

Stomp

On 25th September, as a birthday treat, I went to London to go see STOMP with my family. I searched on YouTube for some videos as I hadn't got a clue what it was about. Once seeing these videos, my excitement of going grew.

Stomp is about a group of people using common household objects to make a variety of sounds and then creating a spectacular rhythm. The group of people (10 at most) split up the show into scenes.  Each scene had a different object in it and every actor used this object differently. For example, in one scene, they were using pipes, however, individually they all had their own length of pipe, this created different sounds and when they hit the pipe to the ground with force at different times in a specific on going rhythm it sounded astonishing this was because they were putting a lot of energy into the performance.

The people that were involved didn't just use objects as we soon found out, some had tap shoes on however we didn't notice at first as they camouflaged in to what everyone else was wearing. There was an incredibly funny element to the show as well as the group of people were actors too and there were 3 men in particular which were really funny. They made us laugh by pulling faces and making funny noises and taking the mic out of each other. They also interacted with the audience which was great, for example, one guy would clap twice and get us to repeat it, and then later on in the show he's do it and we wouldn't do it right therefore he would look down in shame and we laughed.

A highlight was the scene where they used newspapers to create sounds and rhythms. The reason why it was my favourite was because the actors were making funny movements, faces and sounds. One actor in particular stood out for me because he was trying to make another guy laugh when the other guy was trying to be serious. Another reason why it was funny was because this actor was very muscular and tall compared to the other one who was small and had no muscle.

There were many objects that were used such as; pots, plungers, brooms, sinks, bins, dust pans, wooden sticks, huge water butts, metal bins and lids, chairs, newspapers, cups, basketballs, black pipes, lighters for light effect and clicking sounds, they clapped their hands and even used dust to add noise when they tapped their feet. In the sink scene they used water to add to the effect, for example when they tapped the cup it created different sounds as the water came out of the cup. Creating a rhythm by using these objects must have been very hard and complicated, however they all had their own individual rhythm which didn't look hard at all, however the outcome fo them all coming together sounds brilliant!

The scenery was incredible. They had different types of lids, bins and pipes all over the set, even up high which 2 men interacted with. These men were muscular and probably had to be as they were hitting very big bins right at the top of the set and they were on a harness for safety obviously and so that they could swing to another part of the set to use different objects that entwine with the rhythm.

Another highlight of my evening was that my dad's chair gave way several times which made us and a few members of the audience laugh which added to the humour of the night.

Overall watching the show was a lovely experience, was entertaining for all the family and I fully enjoyed the comedy moments that they put into the show. This show was very different from any other show; the objects that people throw away I wouldn't even think twice about to make sounds with it. These factors is what I believe made a 10 out of 10 show and I would recommend this show to anyone at any age as it was appropriate and entertaining for everyone.

Watford Palace Theatre

Watford Palace Theatre work experience

I have chosen to take on the role of being an actor because I enjoy doing this and I would like to have a career in being an actor as it is my passion. At Watford Palace Theatre we did many different workshops and we had a choice in what job role we would like to take on for our end performance. These were things such as, lighting, sound, and costume, set design, acting, directing, and stage management.  We had about 1-2 hours for each workshop and did this through-out the whole week on our work experience. This gave us an idea on what to do for a role for us individually focus on.

There were two groups within the group of 11 of us. There were 5 actors’ altogether, 3 in one scene and 2 in the other. I chose to play Alice from Alice in Wonderland for a scene with Chloe who played the white rabbit. This was great to work on because instead of me and Chloe deciding how to perform it and how to set the scene. We got advice and were directed by the other students from the group which I was not used to and it was different and made me realise that in a career of being an actor, this would be normal.

Thursday morning was the first workshop for the actors. As the other days had been workshops for stage management and lighting ect. I was looking forward to this the most because I enjoy acting the most. We did warm ups and were explained why we need to warm up in certain ways. I found that these were good tips as an individual because if I perform in a show later on in life then I know I can do these before the show by myself or share the tips with the other actors. If I get in to teaching then I can also use these warm up techniques in classes.

We played interaction games so that we became familiar with our surroundings and the people and props that were by us. We did things like memory games and awareness games and we joined in games that were played for us to be able to use all our senses.

After we completed the warm ups and interactive games we started to look at the scripts and get to know it a bit better by reading through and understanding the aim for the characters and where the scene is. This included thinking about how the characters are reacting with each other and their surroundings. Chloe and I discussed about the reaction our characters should have with each other and how the scene should go whether it be a calm or relaxing atmosphere. We were directed by one of the other student’s from our group and from there we improvised to see what we could work on to make the scene better or more convincing to the audience.

On Friday morning I went through my scene with Chloe and we went over our scene many times so that we could not get it wrong. At the end of the day the staff from Watford Palace Theatre came to watch our performance and so did a few parents of the students. I think that every student successfully took on the role that they decided to do and it made both scenes successful and entertaining. If I could do it again I would switch scenes as I would like to get to play a different character and act completely opposite to what I played on Friday.

I have chosen to focus on being the wardrobe supervisor for the show that the students of our work experience class are doing. The performance is based on two scenes from Alice in Wonderland. I contributed towards picking out costumes for the characters to wear for their scenes. The reason why I chose this role to take on from the performing arts industry is because I am a media student at school and I understand that representation is important for a character because then it is easier for the audience to understand more about what the character is like by the clothes that they are wearing. For example, for tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum, we wanted them to be like young rebels from London that are identical twins therefore we made sure that we picked out costumes that were the same and used a shirt and tie to help the stereotypical view of young teenage boys at school come across to the audience.

At work experience we did a workshop on costume design and I drew tweedle-dum and what my ideas of what a stereotypical teenage gangster would wear in London. As tweedle-dum is a trouble maker I drew on baseball hat, a puffer jacket and some dog tags to show a bit of ‘bling’. I thought that the character should also be wearing grey tracksuit bottoms and a pair of blue pastry’s to match his blue jacket.

Obviously we had no budget to buy any costumes from the shops to get the clothes that are similar to what I drew, however we did chose some clothes that would represent the characters personalities.

For the white rabbit character, we chose a waistcoat for Chloe to wear because in the film the rabbit is wearing a waistcoat, therefore it would be easier for the audience to figure out that Chloe is the white rabbit in the scene.

For Alice we picked out a jacket for the character to wear. As Kelly and I played Alice in the two scenes we shared the jacket to show that we were both Alice. The jacket was girly and simple to show that Alice is girly and innocent and when the scene changed I gave Kelly the jacket to show the switch between scenes.

Film premier

There are three groups in an academy and also there are the Poppets which is for children aged 3-5. Each group/class created their own performance to be filmed and then the poppets would have an advert filmed between each clip as they were too young to manage a bigger project like the rest of the academy.

As I work in the morning but do not assist the teacher of 'Film & TV' I had no idea what the other students from other classes were doing therefore it was a surprise when I watched the preview before the cinema screening. As I am a student in the afternoon academy I got to take part in the film project. My group's idea was that we would take little parts from romantic/comedy movies such as '500 days of summer', '10 things I hate about you', 'Juno' and we also did two music videos. There was the music video for the boys and they did 'every little thing' and made it really funny! The other music video was then choreographed by me and Lisa, I was the lead role in the video and it was to 'Dancing on my own' by Robyn and it took all afternoon to film both videos which was really cool to do voice overs and see the high tech equipment.

There is a morning academy and an afternoon academy and our films were shown in separate screens at the cinema. We had the cinema to ourselves at 10 in the morning and we were welcomed by a photographer and red carpet which was really cute, fun and exciting. After we watched the film we went into town for lunch at pizza express and then headed back to Bovingdon primary school where we were going for an award ceremony. The night before the cinema screening, me, my mum, and the principle and vice principle set up the hall for the ceremony. We set out a load of decorations from the party shop and placed the fake Oscars on the table. We made this look really nice by turning off the lights and just keeping on the spotlights which was bright enough but looked really classy. We had a number of awards for each group, the main ones being, best actor, best actress, best supporting actor, best supporting actress and as my group did music videos there was an award for best performance in a music video and I won which I was extremely happy about. Everyone clearly thoroughly enjoyed the whole day and it was a really great experience.

This picture shows my award and the paper that was read out to announce the winner of the award.

Platform one

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=1964096056539&comments&set=t.563622882&type=1

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=1964187818833

Above are two links to the videos of our performances at Watford Palace Theatre.
On 12th June me and 15 other performers went to Watford palace theatre to perform at an event called platform one. This event is for other schools or dance crews/schools and they perform at this event to show off talent and a performance.

This year there were a variety or different acts. There were some really good street dance/break dance routines and there were drama sequences that were mixed with break dance routines which was very entertaining. There was only a few that I didn't enjoy but that was only because the theme was boring and not very entertaining.

Our performance was based on witchcraft but was a cut down version of our rock challenge so we already had the costumes and the feel of what the story that we were performing was about.

Above is a photo of us in the rehearsal room on the day at watford palace theatre.

Rock Challenge

After over 6 months of hard work Kings Langley School have finally finished 2011 Rock challenge with a huge success!

Our theme was based on missing children in the UK and how for every 10 children that go missing, only 1 manages to escape. With a lot of hard work from last year's rock challenge, we have become Premier League for the first time! This meant that we showcased in Stevenage in February instead of competing in it to be able to get into the second round which is in Portsmouth. As we are premier league we had already got to the second round but as a premier team which is what we have always wanted!

Performing in front of everyone and the judges on Saturday 4th June had to be the best part of the day! The atmosphere was incredible and Kings Langley really did put a lot of energy and effort into our performance. The judges seemed very impressed and the audience were amazing! We were very happy that our school team did so well as we came 4th which is amazing considering this was our first year as a premier team!

this is a photo of Fiona, me and Chloe as witches at Portsmouth.

Musical Theatre Challenge!

As we are starting musical theatre in Miss Dolan's class, we have been given details on what we are going to be doing for our showcase on 1st of July.

Me and Alice Norris are doing a song from Chicago called Nowadays. We have already decided what parts of the song we are singing whether it be togther or solo or in harmony. Over half term Alice came to my house after a rock challenge rehearsal at our school. We went through it without the words and used the backing soundtrack, we rhen started to think about adding our characters into it, further on we decided to start to set out what props we will be using and where we will be poisitioned when starting certain parts of the song. We have decided to use two canes/sticks and a chair, hopefully we will sort out our costumes soon. We are both so excited about performing this as we know we can really do something with it to make it look as good as possible for our showcase.

All of the performings arts class have been given specific songs to perform at the showcase and so we have been working on that recently in class. We have also been working on another song as a group which is called All That Jazz from Chicago. This is such a great number to have been working on as it is so fun and enjoyable, it has also made us think more about Fosse movements as the choreography is very Fosse which we all love. We haven't quite finished All That Jazz but we have done quite a bit on it and have worked out who is singing what part of the song and have run through it with the choreography added in too.

I cannot wait til 1st of July, it's going to be so good if we practice and practice. Should be great!

Costume Construction - We Will Rock You

I am constructing a simple bodice that will form part of my costume for ‘We Will Rock You’ production. I’ve already constructed the skirt, the bodice will be constructed to match the skirt. The main material for the construction of this will be denim. I will be adding more detail to the bodice, using a variety of techniques, I will be using a combination of machine and hand sewing to construct this piece.

•To make the bodice, I am going to cut out denim using material scissors and I am going to use a paper template to make this accurate.

• I will then lay the pieces of denim out in the right order and then use pins to pin them together.

•I will tack the denim together so that it creates a guideline for me to follow when I use the sewing machine.

•When I have machine sewed all the pieces of denim together I will be attaching rosettes to the bodice and I will be adding edging to my bodice to give it a more finished look. I will be adding elastic or a zip at the back so that it is wearable and so then it will fit correctly when I wear it for a production.

 

Bhangra!

Bhangra!

Bhangra

Bhangra
We have moved on to our second Unit which is Bhangra. When I first found out we were doing this style of dance I was extremely happy as I hadn't done this before and I couldn't wait to find out about the culture, costume and moves.
In our first lesson on this unit Miss Dolan started off going through the theory side so that we had some information in our heads as to what Bhangra was about and like. We wrote down notes and Miss Dolan wrote some key words on the board.
Hands and Gestures,
Isolations,
Story telling,
Dance in unison,
Lots of facing each other,
Circles,
Coming away from each other and then coming back together.

We then started to experiment with the basic Bhangra moves. The class got into a group and we started choreograhing moves straight away. We started off in small groups and then joined together as one big group. We had things like 'Pat the dog' 'Put the buns in the oven', these names helped us remember the moves and how to do them.
After experimenting with different traditional cultral moves we decided to add a western style Bhangra to our dance which involved all of us. We choreographed a set of motifs using street/bhangra. This was great as we explored the different parts of the culture.

In our second lesson we developed this dance and eventually finised it!
Next, Miss Dolan got us to choreograph a dance which had one or two counts of eight using each part of the body. For example, we used just our hands in a count of eight, that was then followed by a count of eight by using our hips. In the space of three hours I had leant so much about Bhangra.

I have also completed my first draft of my Bhangra powerpoint presentation. I am going to put more detail into it though. I will add more information about Hrithik Roshan and I will research about the costumes and I will put into more detail as to why I like Bhangra.

Diversity!

On the first of December, me and my mum and sister went to see diversity in Hammersmith Apollo in London. It was such a good atmosphere and they had amazing supporting acts. We arrived at the arena and Marvell Crew were on stage playing their music, they were so good and me and Lisa (my sister) particularly enjoyed it as we both love the kind of music that they were doing. They introduced a male solo artist to the stage and he sung too, both of these supporting acts were clearly right for the targeted audience because it was heavy base and music that the audience would dance to. The lights went down as soon as everyone was seated and so the audience all screamed for diversity and a beat boxer appeared ‘Pete boxer’ he was the best beat boxer I’ve ever seen and heard of! He introduced diversity to the stage after 30 minutes of performing his amazing talent.

Diversity had a great story line to base their performance on, they were the ’Diversitoys’ and their setting was in Da Vinci’s toy shop. The plot was about a gifted toymaker Da Vinci and his envious rival, Mr Grief. Blueprints for a new toy are stolen, and must be rescued; the toys plunge into action. We never see Da Vinci or Mr Grief. The narrative is an excuse for the Diversity team to meet other toys, their guest-stars.

Aidan Davis, another Britain's Got Talent star, who struts through street-dance routines as Bionic Boy. There's no danger of forgetting Diversity's reality-television background. A video montage gives highlights of their television career, while Bionic Boy fills a lull in the story by reading the book of the TV series. That's an excuse for the greatest hits, with a huge cheer from the audience when they see the team back in their familiar costumes.

There are other toys that they meet on their journey. The female dance troupe, Sugar Free, appear as dolls, doing some candy-coated flirting with the boys of diversity. This made the performance more bubbly and fun, although I don’t think the girls in the audience were thrilled as Diversity have such a huge amount of support from screaming girls shouting for diversity and cheering them on, I am sure they wished it was them on stage with them.

Towards the end of their performance Ashley Banjo, creator and leader of diversity, invited a young female to the stage and sat her down on a chair and the boys of diversity danced right in front of her, she also got a picture with them and got their autographs, I am certain that every single girl wanted to be her then!

Diversity based their dance style on street dance, they used great music and it got the crowd going. However, they did contemporary style during some parts of the performance when they were with ‘The dolls’ but still added their own street style moves in parts of the routine which looked very creative.

Diversity added comedy and creative moments into their performance and as a whole I think that they smashed the stage! It was a great evening and it was a great experience to see Diversity live as I had seen them many times on the TV.

Corset homework for Miss Hearne - Costume Construction

Corsets

I have researched that in the 16th century, corsets were worn by many women. The corsets were mainly designed to make the waist narrower and to also turn the torso into the fashionable cylindrical shape. For women this most frequently emphasizes a curvy figure, by reducing the waist, and thereby exaggerating the bust and hips. However, in some periods, corsets have been worn to achieve a tubular straight shape, which involves minimizing the bust and hips. Men sometimes wore corsets too, they were normally worn to achieve slimming of the figure.








The corset has undergone many changes. The corset was originally known as stays in the early 16th century. I found out that in the past, a woman's corset was usually worn over a chemise, a sleeveless low-necked gown made of washable material (usually linen or cotton). It absorbed perspiration and kept the corset and the gown clean. In modern times, an undershirt or corset liner may be worn.


In research I discovered that an overbust corset encloses the torso which extends from under the arms to the hips.










Also, an underbust corset begins just under the breasts and extends   down the the hips.










Even though it is rare, some corsets extended over the hips and reached the knees.

There are other kinds of corsets as well such as a waist cincher. A waist cincher (sometimes referred to as a Waspie) is a belt worn around the waist to make the wearer's waist physically smaller, or to create the illusion of being smaller. It covers the waist area(from low on the ribs to just above the hips). A corset may also include garters to hold up stockings.

In my research I found that sometimes a corset cover is used to protect outer clothes from the corset and to smooth the lines of the corset. The original corset cover was worn under the corset to provide a layer between it and the body. Corsets were not worn next to the skin, possibly due to difficulties with laundering these items during the nineteenth century, as they had steel boning and metal eyelets which would rust. The corset cover would be in the form of a light chemise, made from cotton lawn or silk.


To immobilize and protect the torso, people with spinal problems such as scoliosis or with injuries may be fitted with a special form of corset. I found out that Andy Warhol for example was shot in 1968 and he unfortunately never recovered so wore a corset for the rest of his life.


Corsets were and are still usually designed for support, with freedom of body movement, an important consideration in their design. Present day corset-wearers usually tighten the corset just enough to reduce their waists by 2 inches to 4 inches; it is very difficult for a slender woman to achieve as much as 6 inches, although larger women can do so more easily.