Week 4-5

     This week, we continued to work on the Christmas play. The characters have gotten in shape. There are five kids and a dog. The parents of these kids have been taken by the Evil One (EO) because they broke the lows by trying to celebrate Christmas (C-word) giving gifts to their children. 
     The teenagers work together to bring their parents back and they found a mysterious book that takes them across history. There are several scenes where all the actors are on stage, for example, a market scene where everyone is walking around buying stuff from the market while the kids are lost trying to understand where they are.  There's a scene where the teenagers land in the middle of No Man's Land back in time where the Germans and British people have a war, but it turns out that they finally agree with each other because of the day it was (Christmas Eve) and they play football, eat chocolate and drink. Also, there are some dumb acolytes who try to find the kids but never succeed because the surroundings are always too important for them.
      The title has finally been revealed when we came back from the half-term holiday. A Questmas Story.
      We have also been given a script. By now, it is a working-script.

Speeches

      I have chosen 2 monologues by now, a classical and a modern one. My classical monologue is played by Hermione in The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare and the modern monologue is from The Cagebirds by David Campton.

      In the classical monologue, Hermione, The queen of Sicilia is accused of adultery and treason by her husband, the King. In prison, she gives birth to a girl and at the trial, she pleads NOT GUILTY. Her objectives are to assert her innocence, to shame her husband with her protestations, to honour and respect her King while maintaining her dignity, majesty and propriety. Also, she does not fear death as her life is so unbearable.
      In the modern monologue chosen, the character I play is The Wild One. The play is about seven birds each having the characteristics of a type of woman, imprisoned in a cage. They have become used to their capture and are now unwilling to return to outside the world. The Wild One, who has just been captured, thinks quite differently and tries to stir the other one's feelings, to join her in escape.

      In Soho centre, I performed the classical monologue. I believe that it went quite well.

Week 3-4

      At the beginning of this week, we started by doing stage presence exercises and improvisation. The improvisation was based on a piece of the play East - written by Stephan Berkoff and we worked into groups of five.

      For two weeks, we have worked as much as we could on the Christmas play, coming up with new ideas.