Thursday 18th, Lesson 7

Character that I play in East End Tales and how I develop them

Prologue 

In the prologue I am headlight for Matteo's taxi, along with Anya who is the other headlight. I cannot characterize this, so instead i focus on the physicality of it. I am sitting on the floor on my knees, whilst Anya is mirroring me on the other side of Matteo. One Matteo starts speaking, I make a humming sound to represent the engine running, and I slowly sway my torch back and forth to represent the movement of the taxi. At the end of the paragraph Anya and i lift our torches up to Matteo's face and say 
"Shit. Jumped a light there."

Tale 1 

In tale one I am a girl who is describing what kind of a man the East End would be if we could personify it. I have chosen to have her as a stereotypical teenage girl who is constantly checking her appearance, spends most of her time on her phone (texting, tweeting, instagramming) and is also obsessed with a boy. I have given her habits like constantly twirling her hair, rolling her eyes etc. I have added these subtle movements so that I can help to fully characterize her in my own way. When delivering my lines I am firstly writing a text, and then for my second line I am on the phone. 

Tale 3

In tale 3 the whole class works as an ensemble to personify the East End. In the tale  I vary between a typical lad in a pub, to a electrician who is eager to make sales, and then to a narrator who is telling the story of a man named Jack with a haunting past. During the scene the girls are sat on the floor and i have made a choice to sit casually with one of my legs crossed whilst the other i rest my arm on. I do so to make it more visually interesting. 

Tale 4

In tale 4 we all play the part of a young boy who helps an old woman with her shopping. I think that the act of kindness that the character shows towards this old woman really effects his outlook on life, and to portray this i am constantly aware of my facial expressions to make sure i am portraying how i feel about the woman, and about my father.

Tale 5 

In tale 5 i start off by playing the girlfriend of the man that lives next door; the man that has been abusing her. At the beginning i am applying makeup to cover the bruises and scars that the boyfriend has left. I often flinch when miming this; i do so to show both the emotional and physical pain my character feels. At one stage, we all as an ensemble morph into animals, and i have chosen to be a tiger who is violently ripping apart his prey. I made bold physical choices when doing so, and then we all slowly start to stop what we are doing- as if we have realized what we have done. This is effective as we do this along side Alex saying

"Less like a plate and more like an Elephant

Yeah

Or a baby pig"

Throughout the tale the babies of the parents who lived next door are constantly described as "baby pigs" so by the whole class starting to slowly morph from animals back into ourselves, we show the violent truth behind what is being said.

Eventually i am the narrator again; the son of the parents who live next door to the couple who are constantly and violently fighting. I allow my character to feel uncomfortable when talking to the girlfriend; i make subtle movements like wringing my hands together and shifting the weight between the heels and balls of my feet.

Tale 7

In this tale i start off by being a creature that is constantly hissing behind the racist man who is described as a "bulldog". Throughout the scene i use the hissing to portray the cruelness of the racism that is exchanged between the shop owner and the customer. Eventually, i become the shop owner and i am describing how i am proud of both my family and ethnicity. 

Next, write out some of your lines from each tale and next to the line write your OBJECTIVE for saying the line. Think about why are you saying the line and this will help you with finding how you might say this.

Tale 1- "Cos his dad used to smoke"
I think the objective of this line is that the girl is exposing flaws in the mans past, and i chose to make it seem as if she is gossiping about the man; just like any teenage girl would gossip about a boy.

Tale 3- "One of life's jugglers"
The objective of this line is to show how Jack is a man that doesn't have a particular passion towards something certain; he doesn't have a particularly structured life, but instead does what he wants when he pleases. 

Tale 4- "Try and keep the rain off her pensioners trolly"
The objective of this line is he is feeling some sort of sympathy towards to old woman who is clearly less able (in many ways) than he is, so he tries to shelter her from the rain that is not in her favor. 

Tale 5- "She just stands there, looking sad"
I think this line is trying to portray that the woman who is clearly being abused is not angry or does not have a temper; she is worn and tired and defeated by what she has been fighting with.

Tale 7- "Domestic bliss"
The objective of this line is my character finally realizing that he should be proud of his family and his ethnicity, and the strength of his bliss could not be conquered by the "pissed bulldog man" and his racial slurs.