Thursday 11th December, Lesson 6

What does ensemble mean to me?

To me ensemble means working together, feeding off one another's ideas and talents to create a piece of theatre. It also means that the focus of the piece is not divided- its shared between every performer. Choosing to do things in ensemble creates a completely different feeling when on stage and as an audience member, for example if you chose a group of 10 people to deliver a line rather than just one person, the line automatically holds more importance and strength.

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What has to happen in the rehearsal room to develop a successful ensemble?

We all need to create a comfortable environment in class so that everybody feels confident when taking risks. We all also need to be extremely focused because we are only as strong as our weakest link!


My favorite ensemble piece so far is Tale 5, as at first when I read through the piece i did not particularly feel connected with the piece, but now that we have developed this piece i have grown to love it as my favorite. I think this is because all throughout the piece everybody has sharp focus and the energy is almost palpable. I especially like this piece as we all get to take on roles of being animals at a certain part of the scene which is interesting as it allows us to stretch ourselves to be something other than our own bodies, and gives us a sense of freedom with our physicality.  The scene touches on some dark issues- like domestic abuse, and i feel as if by allowing the piece to be ensemble it handles the issues with sensitivity and creates more emotion towards the subject.

Tale 3:

We start off tale 3 by the boys using the stools to sit down on, whilst the girls stand around them around the room and we all take on a role of a loud-mouth man at a pub, who has a pint in his hand. The music "London's calling" is playing as we all simultaneously in slow motion drink our pints- and when the music stops we, as an ensemble, open the scene with the first line "If the east end was my friend". Throughout the play we take on roles of business men who are able to interact with the audience, but then become narrators of Jacks past, where we tell the story of a man who holds dark secrets that are disguised by his persona. We use a white bed sheet which stretches across the stage and whilst Roseby crawls underneath it, we use our torches to illuminate her body, to symbolize the "body of a man lies covered in snow". I thoroughly enjoyed this tale as I feel we all had high energy and the interaction with the audience was a good way to show our improvisation skills as well!

• What characters do you play in this tale? 

In this tale I start off as another typical lad in the pub, but on the queue line "A bit of this, a bit of that" I turn into an electrician, which is when I interact with the audience. 

• What is the atmosphere of Tale 3? How is this different to what we have created for Tale 1 & 2?

The atmosphere in Tale 3 starts off where we are all making the decision to be loud and rowdy pub goers, however this abruptly changes as we progress through the scene. It becomes more haunting and mysterious as we talk about a fight that ended badly between the main character Jack. This is different to Tale 1 & 2 because both of those scenes are much more choreographed and somewhat lighthearted in comparison to Tale 3.

Tale 4 

• How have we decided to stage Tale 4? 

The scene starts where we move from our ending positions of tale 3 and all stand in separate groups with out umbrellas. We change the bar made from the stools into a chair for Will who is playing "Dad" in the scene. When we finish our opening paragraph, we all move out of our groups and sit spaced out across the floor; back to back with a partner. After this we then go into 3 lines that represent the aisles in a supermarket, when Nina says her queue line 
"We dodder across".

 After Nina has made her way through the aisles my line (which is the middle) go to our knees downstage center stage to create the counter of the shop. I take on the roll of somebody who is scanning items at the counter, and i continue to do so as Nina delivers her lines. I stop and sit back down when we, as a class, deliver the lines: 

" She says
  She says "

Benji and I then form the doors that Nina rushes through, to symbolize her walking back into her flat. We step together once Nina as through, to show the door has been slammed.

Further questions...

• What acting skills have you continued to develop over the past few weeks? Is there anything new you have discovered about your own skills?

One main acting skill i am continuing to develop over the development of East End Tales is my confidence when using physical theatre. I often find using physical theatre to be a big risk, which I can find difficult to do, but I feel as though East End tales is helping me to gain confidence with that. 

I am also continuing to improve my projection; due to our staging it is always important that i am projecting as much as i can without staging, so that I am allowing the whole audience to hear my lines, rather than just certain parts of the audience. 

Return to all of the sections of the text we have staged so far. Select a line from each that sums up that tale.

Prologue: Knoworramean?
Tale 1: Even the traffic stops for him when he crosses the roadTale 2: At night she dreams of rainclouds Tale 3: You can see all of this if you look in Jack's eyesTale 4: Nobody's ever helped me before