The play Love and Information was given to us beforehand, we were only given the play to read through, my first thoughts on the play were confusion because I had never seen a play that was split into 7 sections, made of lots of scenes (29 to be exact as we had to make it shorter, it was originally 52) these scenes didn't even link together however I really liked the idea I believed it to be interesting and also it gave me a challenge which I enjoy, furthermore I thought the structure of it was fascinating as it had no stage directions or characters and this way I could interpret my thoughts of how I wanted my scenes to be like. Before we were even told which scenes we were going to work on I decided to read them and think about which themes were suitable for each one, for example the scene "secret" as I was reading through, it revealed the idea of drama and trust, I thought each scene had it's own individual theme that made it different from each other however the only similarity between some of scenes were they covered on the idea of love between friends or family which made understand why maybe Caryl Churchill called her play "Love and Information". As this really intrigued me I decided to find out some information about it and I found out that her play when watching it makes one wonder what is information without love? And from that I gathered that she wanted the word Love to symbolise passion and emotion. This was when I started to assume that these different scenes had a different emotion, from looking at ideas directors in the past had come up with I could see that the actor expressed themselves through emotion to portray their scene and that was the concept behind it, to tell the audience that information is given to us and processed through some kind of emotion, moreover it also shows that people show passion towards a certain topic in any shape and form. In addition to researching the play I researched who Caryl Churchill was and what she had done in the past which could give me and in sight to what her plays influence.
On the first week we were told that we're going to be split into two groups. My group for the whole play was Me, JP, Daniella, Ben, Roman, Chloe, Danielle, Kieran, Pedro, Troy, Madeline, Dejaa, Tristan, Mya J and Favour. We were also told which scenes we were going to do and with whom we were going to work with. I was given "Grass" with Ben, "Mother" with Chloe and "Savant" with Madeline I was very happy with whom I was working with, however from reading the script I wasn't really overjoyed with the suggestion of the scenes but, as an actor you have to work with what your given and so I did. I decided to look at each scene and try to get an understanding of what they were, to begin with I looked at the title of the scenes so that way I could see how to analyse it further and what I could interpret from it, then I read it at least twice so I could notice the key parts of it, for example the scene mother, when I read it I researched the bond between a mother and her child and I found out that even if a mother gives her child away there is this special bond between the two of them that never breaks even if the child was separated or was brought up without the biological mother. So this got me thinking that I had to make my character feel that bond and realise who the biological mother truly is but still have the doubt in the character's head of is she really my mother? I did the same thing for each of my scenes and then just made a note of these ideas in my head and on the script so then I would use them.
Week two I had a think about just working on my longest scene with Ben (grass). Me and Ben decided to share ideas and he had some very interesting ones, I wanted to go with what he suggested as it was different and quirky. Before we started working in our scenes it was suggested by Shenagh that we come up with backgrounds and stories for our characters as the play was designed for the actor to consider ideas and create a scene based on those ideas. Me and Ben came up with a huge story behind what we wanted our scene to be about. The idea was going to based on 1920s mafia and gangs and from that we created our characters. My name was Bob, I was a single father ( I got the idea from the word children and kids used in the scene) I work 16 hours a day for minimum wage, I decided to make my character do that as one of the lines in the script are "I'd like a day out in Brighton" this suggests he works very hard, he's tired and wants a break and also he has to work in this job as he has children to look after. Ben's character was called Gio and he was a friend We then thought about process of why Gio would grass on who and we came up with a complicated timeline for this story.
We read through the scene together in many different ways, firstly just saying our lines normally and then we added some emotion to it, this was so we could combine some of our personality traits into our characters that way we could understand the character in depth, however due to us not having any information and having to come up with ideas our selves I found the process difficult, but I managed to connect with the character I created by trying to put a bit of my life into it. When we read through it a lot of times I felt that my character Bob was getting annoyed at Gio and also being very impatient as a result I spoke my lines rapidly and also using pitch to make my voice higher I believed this to be effective as it showed that Bob really didn't like what Gio did, when I first showed it to an audience everyone liked it but during the week I began speaking my lines more faster than before and it looked like I just wanted to finish my performance quickly so I had to change it. I had to change my character frequently as I needed to fix some of the smallest details to my character like his position and if he would be moving or standing still. I thought that the feedback that I received helped me elaborate my character especially on my actions and movement.
We also looked at other people's scenes, one I found rather good was JP and Troy's scene Virtual I found it hilarious which was what they were aiming for, the only feedback I would have given them would be to not laugh and also do not push the humour let it come naturally because if you to be funny then it ruins it you have to be normal and just let the audience find the humour in the scene.
Third week in I chose to work on my other scenes. I started to think about all the ideas I had for Savant, this was a very tricky scene as Me and Madeline thought about what to do with the scene. To start with we read through our scene again and again so we could see what we wanted to do and Madeline thought of setting it as a therapy session it was a good idea nevertheless we wanted it to different and be more than good, we looked up what the word savant meant before and it said it's "a learned person, especially a distinguished scientist". Synonyms to this would be an intellectual or a scholar. From this information we thought of acting out as a mad scientist however it still didn't look like a nice story and other people were going to use that idea. We thought long and hard about what to do with the scene, I even thought of looking at what directors in the past have chose to do with the scene and one that read did a simple idea of a mother asking her son's friend questions as she knew of his incredible memory. We had so many choices but none of them really made us excited and that's when Madeline thought of an ingenious idea to set it in the army, I loved the idea it was original and brilliant, we tried it out and showed everyone and they loved it, although it impressed our audience we still needed to tweak it so that our lines fit with the story.
Our first time showing an audience, Me and Madeline were pretending to shoot targets and I was asking her about her life trying to distract her, trying to get to know her, we chose to use levels to do this one of us on the ground and one of us crouching down. It went really well but we thought there should be something more to it. We as a group decided it would be a good idea to do some hot seating, one of the people in our group asked us random questions and it wasn't until one of the questions where we began thinking we need to do some research about the army, who were our characters? Why were they in the army? And what was relationship between the two characters. We came up with all the answers to these questions, we were privates in the 2007 war, my name was Aiden and I was 34. While rehearsing one of the teachers Monique said if it's set in a war try thinking of a conflict that might happen, after hearing that feedback we came to the conclusion that my character Aiden would be shot and that he would need assistance and support and that would be the reason why he would be asking questions. When we first changed it, Monique said she liked the idea of me being wounded and asking questions to ease the pain, however the relationship between the two characters wasn't being shown. As a result of that I began thinking of different movies and began researching things about the army, I considered using the scene from Forest Gump where Bubba Blue (Forest gump's friend) dies in the army as a idea but also using it as a base. Madeline and I had a talk about it and we agreed on the idea however we believed that we needed to be more emotional and depressing than we were, we tried various techniques to get us in the mood, an example would be a new technique we learned from a company called broken heart youth theatre the Meisner technique. This is where you and someone else go back and forth and comment on something, this makes the actor get in touch with their emotions naturally instead of pushing for them, the aim of this technique is to make the actor "get out of their head". I thought it supported me a lot because it made me reach out to my tears easier.
Finally I began working with Chloe on our scene "Mother" this time we decided to just read through it a couple of times and then put some emotion to compliment the lines, this was quite easy to perform nevertheless it then became more difficult to handle as we had to make the audience see what was actually happening and how each character felt through out. The scene went as follows, I was a child/young teen and Chloe was my mother and she goes and decides to tell my character that she is my mum and that the person that had brought me up was in fact grandma and the scene is just the conversation between the two characters and them expressing their feelings. When we first discussed on what to do with this scene we told each other that it was a very emotional topic and to try and imagine that this actually happened in our real lives, this was to see what we would do if we were in that scenario. In addition I used the research about the bond between a mother and her child and used it to show the type of relationship that our characters had, the way I showed that was in the ending I looked back and realise that she is and was always my mother, my biological mother. From that we tried to have a more bigger reaction happening between the both of us, this was effective because when we showed Shenagh and Monique they said that they felt the scene and that they felt sympathy for both characters.
We saw different people performing their pieces that they come up them selves and I really thought that they used a lot of good ideas, used different styles and made fantastic scenes.
Week 4 and 5 we choose to work on the play as a whole, to think about what our finished piece would look like as well as improve our individual scenes. We looked through everyone's scenes and then made a note on the specific things that it showed such as the themes and settings, as a result we came up with the order we wanted the play to go on. We ended up changing it a lot because as a group we were kind of indecisive about what the order was going to be as some scenes made sense to be put in a specific order.
As well as the order we decided to make the whole story based on the idea of the scene "Wedding video", where we would all take part and say lines throughout the play from the scene so people could understand that we were watching a video. Furthermore Daniella who was our director came up with a terrific proposition of adding quotes about love.
These were such a great addition to the play, they really showed the audience what our play was based on.
We had a lot of run-through where we kept on helping each other polish up and improve our scenes as well as block them, we didn't really have the stage but we were shown what it would look like and the measurements of the stage so then we knew where things would go. While rehearsing we took notes on what we wanted for the production side of the play, lighting, sound, props and costumes. Daniella decided that we all wear white shirts and black bottoms but if we needed to change for different characters then we would wear jackets on top of our shirts. For example for my scenes I was only going to wear my hoodie to show my teenage years and an army/camouflage jacket on top to show I was in the army.
During rehearsals we were given more lines to learn these were the "Wedding video" scene lines.
We choose to put the play in this order because people had an idea of combining some of the scenes together, they had come up with a story to it. When we first began the play people thought of different ideas to combine some scenes such as ex and flashback were going to be about a girl and a boy and in the end of the scene they were going to have intercourse which lead to flash back of the girl having a baby. Some of our scenes made sense together but some didn't like my scene which was set in the army but some how we made it work.
As well as the scenes we had to think our set and Daniella stepped in and said due to the play being called love and information she decided that we would put a bunch of news paper on the stage spread out and it worked so well. In addition to that the quotes about love that we choose to say really added to the title and theme. We had a look at some of the staging that had been done and Maddy our stage manager said she wanted it done in a geometric shapes, it was an an "upside down U" shape with pipes on on the corners of them, Daniella said that we should stick to the idea and instead of using tables and chairs we would use boxes, it was effective because everyone got the idea and it was perfect.
Final Week, our performance week, this was when we had the tech team Maddy and Adam. We gave them our ideas and suggestions and they tried to do everything we said. We had our stage and lights and sound it looked amazing. We did a full dress run-through, we had costumes, props and everything we needed, it looked great. We started out by just saying the order that our scenes were in so that Maddy could record the lighting cues, we just said our lines just the 1st part and last and then decided what we wanted to do.
There was no pressure or problems as we knew exactly what we wanted for each scene, there wasn't a lot of colour used it was mainly a dim light or a spot light/moving spotlight, the reason for that was because some of our scenes were serious and very emotional and colours don't really reflect the idea that we had so we needed lights that would set the mood and tell the audience this is a serious play. For my scenes I just had a dim light as it made it dramatic and made the audience aware that this is "no laughing matter", however "savant" my scene with Madeline was different we had to make it look like we were in battle/at war so for that we asked for a war sound effect with shooting and explosions, furthermore Maddy suggested if we would like a moving spotlight moving in circles to present a helicopter searching. I believed this really added to the scene as it presented a war scenario extremely well which is what we were aiming for, the spotlight then focuses on me as I'm about to get shoot, this is effective as it makes me to the centre of attention and the audience are directed towards me and Madeline as she tries to assist me.
After the dress rehearsal we took bits and pieces of newspapers and just spread them round everywhere it looked outstanding I think that my first thoughts when I saw the completed versions of the stage was exactly what we envisioned it to be like. Overall we did a marvellous job and to see that all the effort and time paid off.
In my opinion I really enjoyed the show and i think that our group did better than expected, the audience absolutely loved the show. After the show I got feed I got a lot of feedback from teachers, parents, friends and colleagues. They said that the acting was "top notch" and that some of my performances really hit them emotionally, the scene with me and Chloe was very heart felt and made some of the audience start tearing up and even made them cry. This made me feel so confident towards my self as I now knew I was a good actor.
From this experience I learnt quite a lot, that all the techniques that I learnt had helped me create this heart felt performance and that without them I wouldn't of been this strong an actor. I also learnt to work as a group and to listen to everyone's ideas as they can be part of this fantastic and high quality project. In the future I will definitely use them all the time when I'm acting because they supported me so much through this whole project.
