For paper one unit two we were told by our teacher that we have to become an actor and a director of certain plays. The plays that we choose and are using for our coursework are 'West Side Story' and 'Blood brothers'.

24th August ‘04

Paper One, Unit 2 – Essay Five

For paper one unit two we were told by our teacher that we have to become an actor and a director of certain plays. The plays that we choose and are using for our coursework are ‘West Side Story’ and ‘Blood brothers’.

In this essay I will be describing the experience of the director and actor. I will explain positives and negatives and how things work out. Thought this essay I will be mentioning explorative strategies that helped me develop into becoming an excellent director and actor. For example ‘Thought Tracking’ where you pause the scene and the actors say how they feel the character is feeling at that apparent time. That would be an example more from an actor’s point of view, from the directors point of view we used ‘Forum Theatre’. Forum theatre is where the director helps the actor improve on the scene by telling them what to do, for instance, facial expressions or the use of space. Another way this can be shown in Forum Theatre is where the director trades places with the actor and show the actor what they should be doing, by doing it themselves!

Through out the essay I will explain in detail our experience as a group and as an individual.

On day one I did not really know what to expect. Fortunately I had seen ‘Blood Brothers’ in the theatre recently although I had never seen ‘West Side Story’. When we watch the film I was pleasantly surprised and was ready to start this task.

As soon as we had started acting I was given the role of a director. I was pleased with this as I had not done too much before. The roles were given out and ...

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Through out the essay I will explain in detail our experience as a group and as an individual.

As soon as we had started acting I was given the role of a director. I was pleased with this as I had not done too much before. The roles were given out and I started to direct. I used many ways to get across what I wanted them to do. At first it was quite hard as you have to get them to respect you but that came quite quickly. After everyone had got into there roles I made them sit in a circle and do ‘Hot Seating’ the first of my explorative strategies. This is where one person sits in the middle and literally fire question at them. This work really well as it got the actors to really connect to the characters. After a while we went back into the acting which I had to use ‘Forum Theatre’ to show how to portray the scene. I started telling them what to do. I found that this was not too successful so I traded places into the scene and show the actor how I wanted it to be done. I was pleased with this as from then after they understood what I was trying to tell them. From a directors point of view the chosen scenes were coming on really well.

Next it was my turn to be one of the actors. I was given a good part of which I enjoyed playing. Using mediums like costumes, accents and facial expressions. It was strange being just an actor now but good as I realize that the director has a lot of responsibility, which is good but not for to long! The new directors used many techniques that I had used which I was pleased about as it made be feel that I have affected them when I was director. In the scenes we always used ‘still images’, the third of my explorative strategies, at the start; this gave the audience time to gather what is going on in the scene and also to show our skills of using ‘levels’ a medium. This worked well as many in our group have good facial expressions and response to stage. My forth and final explorative strategy was ‘Thought Tracking’ much like I explained earlier in my essay. We froze the scene at important times in the scenes for maybe just one or all of the actors to say what they are feeling at that time. I good example of this is in ‘West Side Story’ where Riff asks Tony to fight the Sharks but Tony can not for the love of Maria. This was powerful as you could really see the situation is.

Overall I believe that with out the use of explorative strategies the drama world would not work. I feel that the plays were done to their full extent and I have successfully become a better director and actor. As a group we have improved upon the whole as now we know each other a little better and we can talk more about the improvement that could be done rather than a group shouting at each other!

By Laurence Gagen 11SK