Voice

As I am playing Hannay in our production of 39 steps so my understanding of voice is a lot similar then everyone else as I do not multi role so I only need one voice. My voice for Hannay needs to be a well brought up posh man from the thirties. I was able to mold my voice into this easy but I had a recurring problem. My pronouncing of some words isn't great due to the area and people I was brought up with I naturally slur words and don't pronounce all the letters of a word. I spent a short time working on this as once I became aware of this I was able to adapted and change my speech pattern. I had another bigger problem with my voice that was later pointed out to me and that was with my "f" and "th". I had a speech pattern where I would naturally say "th" as "f" making words like "that" into "fat" or "thirty" into "firty". This was becoming a big issue for me that I was struggling to overcome as I found my self naturally saying "f" for every thing.
To try and help with thus issue I looked up some tongue twisters that I could use to help involving "th".

"I thought a thought. But the thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought I thought"

"They threw three thick things"

"Father, mother, sister, brother- hand in hand with one another"

I used these tongue twisters before practicing Hannay's monologue at the start of the show. These tongue twisters over time helped with this issue but has not got rid of it. While playing Hannay I have to really thing about the movement of tongue because. Eventually after focusing on this issue I was able to use my voice with thus only being a little issue in my performance as I still naturally find myself saying "th" but the amount I do this has definitely decreased since I became aware of the issue and started working on it.

Pace

This is the definition of pace: "the speed at which someone or something moves, or with which something happens or changes". Pace can make or break the performance of "The 39 steps". The 39 Steps is a much beloved english comedy play and one of the reasons that it's such a successful comedy is because of the pace of the show and the amount of energy put in by the actors. Each scene needs to be treated like a little sketch where we focus all our energy and focus on because if we are splitting our focus across the show, we won't be using all our energy in each scene. The show doesn't work if the actors talk really slow and their movement is lacking the energy the show very quickly becomes boring so the high energy is needed to make 39 steps the spectacle that it is. Pace is enssntial weather the scene needs the slow pace reaction for an old man moving and talking or the face pace speak between Hannay and the milkman when he's trying to run away, Pace is constantly used in the show and without the pace the show becomes a bit boring as it goes from scene to scene needing to change pace every scene to what is suitable for the interractions between characters while still keeping the fast pace sketch like performance tone. In Thirty-Nine Steps pace is most important to the two clowns as although Hannay and the girl do alot, the clowns have an endless number of quick changes and characters to perform as. Like in the train scene in Act 1 when the two clowns are constantly changing between the two underwear salesmen, a policeman, a paper boy, Mrs Higgins and the train assistant. This scene would lose all comedic value if the clowns pace is slow because the changes between the characters needs to be fast and chaotic.

Characterisation

I'm playing Hannay in Act 1 of our production of 39 steps. Dan S is also playing Hannay but in Act 2 instead so we had worked together to create our character of Hannay by deciding certain characteristics that we can share in our acts. We talked about how are Hannay should stand in every scene, we thought it was obvious that Hannay would have strong posture because he is use to a higher living and would of had a strong upbringing which also would mean Hannay has a very clear and well pronounced English accent. After me and Dan had sorted this first part of details we were then stuck deciding what to do with our hands in the posture, whether to hold then at our side, fold them or hand over hand in front. We didn't like the idea of having folded arms and having our hands by our side didn't seem right either so what we do is hold our hands togeather in front of us as Dan and I agreed that Hannay would use alot of hand gestures and this hand position we have agreed on will help this.

Another part of Hannay we worked on together was how Hannay should sit. We had already said Hannah was of upper living so I suggested we sit up right with legs together but Dan then said he thinks we should have our legs crossed which would show Hanny's comfort and control in scenes wgere he gets to sit. We cross left over right. I then suggested that we should do something else begore we sit. I said we could like brush our legs before we sit and kicck our leeft leg forward before we cross. We would place our hands on our stomach when were not moving them.

The last bit of characteristics we decided was when Hannay enters a scene. We agreed that no matter how tired or beat up Hannay is from the previous scene he will always take a second to sort out his clothes/smarten himself up before moving on with the scene.

The 39 Steps

Today we started to work on our next unit which is "Appling acting styles" and for this unit we are going to do our own production of "The 39 Steps". For our own performance of this we have split our class into 2 groups and each will be given an act to perform for a production. The 2 groups are Freya, Dan S, Toby and Tom in one group with Dan S playing Hannay, Freya playing Pamela and Tom and Toby as the 2 "Clowns", they were given Act 2 to do. My group is Meg, Dan M, Carl, Dom and I, our casting is me as Hannay, Meg as Annabella, Margret and Pamela, and then Dan M, Carl and Dom as the "Clowns", we were given Act 1.




Vaudeville research:
Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. A typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a "vaudevillian".
Vaudeville was variety entertainment, consisting of a highly diverse series of very short acts, or "turns." The acts ranged from singing groups to animal acts, from comedians to contortionists, from magic tricks to short musical plays. A typical vaudeville bill consisted of approximately 13 acts, most of which were typically 6-15 minutes long. Many of the modes of performance developed in vaudeville had a profound effect on popular culture that continues into the present day. For example, many of the ethnic stereotypes prevalent in television and film -- Jewish, Irish, Italian, African American -- derive from the ethnic caricatures that were a mainstay of Vaudeville comedy. The comedian Frank Bush, whose act is recreated for Virtual Vaudeville, exemplifies this brand of ethnic humor.


Appling:
Vaudeville is a very useful acting style to apply for "The 39 Step" as Vaudeville is very fast pace and full of energy that we need to show in our performance. The way Vaudeville is performed with sketch after sketch is similar to "The 39 Steps" as each scene in "The 39 Steps" gives an impression that it being performed as a sketch by it's uniqueness and quirkiness that needs to build more and more each scene.

Workshop Evaluation

We had just finished our workshop performances of "Rent" which went very well for our first production of the workshop. If we were to take this production further into a bigger venue we would need to listen and respond to the feedback given about the performances from our audiences and cast. Our biggest complaint with our workshop production was that our audiences members struggled to hear what was being said as well as sung during the show. I thought about this issue and how we would resolve this issue if we were to continue, my first thought was to use radio mics instead of having our mics at the front of stage which we did have but I was then made aware that in a lot of professional productions the cast didn't have mics at all and would project their lines across the theatre with no problem. Thinking about this point I then thought that with the type of rock music "Rent" is projection wouldn't work well so that help me realise that if we were to take our production of "Rent" to a bigger venue we would use radio mics on our cast so that our audience wouldn't have trouble hearing our vocals.

If we were also to take it to a bigger venue I would like to of had a production team to focus on our use of Props, Costumes and Stage crew. Props we would need to work on as we lacked a lot of props needed for our first production and some of the props we did have wasn't decade appropriate. Costumes we had for our version were nice but we had a member of our cast sort them so it would help further our production if we could have a separate team to create our costumes for the show. If we were to take it to a bigger venue, having a stage crew would help with our scene changes we have to do as before we were moving everything so we had to add over score so we could set up. Having a stage crew would really help but if were to have the, I think it would look good if they were dressed in costumes and appeared to be apart of the show but having them as just stage crew would be nice as they could just focus on set. Overall I would probably have them dressed in costumes because then we could change set with lights up and have it not look strange.

Taking Rent to a bigger venue I would have like to change some of the numbers we had cut, I think the production would further itself if we had re-added numbers such as "La Vie Boheme B", "Halloween" and "Happy new year A". I feel these number would help improve the production as one of our complaints about our production was that our audience struggled to follow the plot of the show, so I think by putting these numbers back in to the show would help improve the narrative but I would also take some number to shorten the run time, I would remove "We're okay", "You'll see" and "Vociemail #1" because these numbers serve no massive relavences to the narrative of the show as well as being song that take alot of time while still serving no character development relvences. Another objective I'd like to achieve before we would moved venue would be to add more dances to our show, in our whole show we only really had 3 dances and I believe we could better the show if we improved the dances we have in our show. As an example I would like to make our version of "Tango Maureen" more dances orientated, as the whole number is ment to be a tango but we only started to dance a little at the end of the dance. I would like it if we looked into making it a much bigger ensemble number from the start with a visually appealing dance. One last improvement I would make to our production before we took it to another venue would be changing how we performed some of our songs, I feel our narrative of the show would better itself if we didn't sing the whole show. I would take a song like Tune up #1 and change it into a scene, by doing this I feel it would help our audience to understand the whole story of our show as one of our audiences complaints was that they struggled to follow the story.

Maureen

Today we had Lorna for the whole lesson so we focused on all the numbers she is in for this rehearsal so that she could know what she is doing in our show we started bu working on "Rent" and adding Lorna into our dance as well as our frantic beginning were we move objects around our stage. After this we then went through Tango: Maureen so she could practice with her partner, lucky we had already showed Lorna the dance before so we only practiced the number a couple of times so she could get use to her partner (Carl) and the timing of the dance. After this we showed Will I+ which we ran quick as all she had to do was sing in group 1 with me and Tom. We then moved forward to "La Vie Boheme" which we put Lorna in, showing here our first Choreograph part of the number at the table and then showing her the level of energy needed for the rest of the number. We then ran "Seasons of love" which was simple but we then had Lorna sing the very high solo at the end which he previously removed because none of us can do it. She sounded great doing it so we added it to our version before moving on to "without you" which had to show Lorna the movement to as I was the one who created her movement when we created this piece. After showing her this we ran through Goodbye love onwards until the end integrating Lorna into each part she needed to be involved in vocally and physically.

Finishing our run through

Today we continued with our whole show we had started a week ago starting from where we left off which would be Voicemail #4.
Voicemail #4: Voicemail #4 went well as Dom performed Alexi with very big actions like he was ment to and portayed the wacky agent.
I'll cover you reprise: The number sounded nice but we were told to remember that we are at a funeral as we didn't look upset enough like we needed to at the furneral.
Goodbye love: Goodbye love started off well but we ran into a few timing difficulties with the backing track as after everyone leaves excluding Tom and I we struggled to find our correct place in the song  we should be at for our lyrics but it didn't work each time we tried. We also learned that the backing track didn't include a part of mine and Tom's dialogue but instead jumps straight into Meg's verse we had to work with timing to pause the track at the right time so me and Tom can talk as well as then have meg come in at the right time with dialogue.
What you own: This number sonded alright but I had to spend sometime of finding my notes for the frist half of the song as struggled to pitch myself at the start as I would sing lower than i should.
Finale A: We spent alot of time on this song because at frist we worked on christmans bells at the start because we were told there wasn't enough attitude with the singing, we then worked on mine and Rogers part which we were suggested to speake not sing so that we could stay in time as well the problem being that there is no tne to sing to at that part of the song. We then spent while working on the part where Mimi comes in dying as non of us knew the timing of the words within the tune of the song.
Your eyes: This number ran well.
Finale B: Other than a little bit of timing truble at the start of the song the rest ran smooth sounding very nice for our ending number.