Thought tracking - Here we deeply entered the characters mind finding out their thoughts about what was happening in the scene, this was really helpful as it added another dimension to our drama work as we really had to get inside the character.
Mime - This was helpful when we were doing scenes, which involved a lot of facial expressions as it left us to fully concentrate on them instead of looking at our script, or remembering what we had to say, this was great for shorter scenes.
Script work - Here we read out parts of the play with a different person reading a different character. This was quite new to me in school, as we had only done it before when studying Romeo and Juliet, this was invaluable as it taught me a lot about the play, and we found out what happened. We also did scenes that involved us reading from the script, most of our scenes were like this. This was probably my least favourite activity as it was boring and you could not display full acting skills as you were constantly checking your script.
Tension/Lighting Work – This is where we acted out a very tense scene using lighting to increase and decrease tension. This was quite hard as it involved us to think about acting and if we wanted the light dim if we could read our scripts, and if tension is increased by having the light brighter or Dimmer.
Status – This is where we ad to convey a feeling of lower and higher status between two people. I found this quite easy and fun as I had done it a lot last year in Drama.
The scenes I remember doing are:
Rabid Dog scene: Here the drama skills we used were, script work, and staging. We prepared in groups of 6, to do a play where we would be focusing on a dog with rabies that was off screen, in the scene there was a porch, a garden, a road two houses and we had to work out where everything was. I found this quite difficult, as there was a lot to think about, and not very fun as it was very complicated and involved us reading off the script.
Tension Scene: Here the Drama skills used were, Lighting, script work. We prepared in groups of about 7 a scene where a man (atticus) gets confronted by an angry mob where there is a lot of tension, which gets slowly diffused by the innocence of a small child.
I found this scene similar to the Rabid Dog one, as it was quite complicated working with the lights and how they would be most effective and the fact we were reading from scripts made the acting stiffer.
Scenes of Jem and Ms Dubose: Here we did a few short scenes where first two young children get their father unfairly insulted by an old woman, instead of ignoring it, one of the children gets mad and attacks the woman’s porch by throwing over all her potted plants and wrecking the whole place. Later he was told by his Dad to say sorry, then we had to do a scene where he went to the old woman to apologise. The scenes where he wrecks the porch and has to apologise are not written in the book so were improvised.
These were some of my favourite scenes as it involved giving us a free reign to do acting. The Drama Skills used, were Improvisation, mime and Thought Tracking. When the boy was destroying the porch we used one actor to play the part of the boy in mime, and another to do the thought tracking of the boy saying what he would be saying or thinking at the time. This was very fun and interesting as we looked closely at how the boy would feel and then acted it. The scene where he had to apologise was a very interesting scene as again we were given a free reign in what we could do. Here we tried to convey status by making the woman seem in total control of the boy who had to apologise.
Interpretations: Here we acted out different peoples interpretations or viewings of the same scene. The drama skills used were, Script Work, and Improvisation. Here we based our plays on the script but did not use the script during the scenes as they were very short. I didn’t like this exercise as I found it rather tedious and not very helpful as we could have just read through it as a class and have had the same understanding.
Conclusion
Overall I enjoyed reading the play and acting the scenes. Most of the scenes were beneficial to my understanding of the play and helped my acting skills. The Skills that helped me the most were:
Thought-tracking – Helped me the most as it helped me really get involved and get a good understanding of the character and why they were doing what they were doing.
Staging – Although rather complicated this helped immensely as it was the first time I looked hard at staging and how it effects a play.
Script Work – Without this I would not have had much of an idea of what was going on even though it did get a bit boring.
Skills that may have helped me if we had done more of them would have been:
Improvisation – This is my favourite type of acting and it really helps you get a good understanding of what is happening and why, more of this would have enriched my understanding of the play further.
Mime – I found what we did of this very good as it concentrated on your facial expressions which are one of the most important parts of acting, more of this would have again helped me understand the play better.
I think we covered all the skills that we could have done.
By Leo Matlock 10MP.
