Director's Challenge - Part 28 - Tech and Saturday Rehearsal

On Saturday, we had a full day rehearsal and used this time to work out our tech in relation to specific cues and adjust certain aspects of the piece. As this would be our final proper rehearsal before the performance, it was vital that we used all the time we had in order to get the piece as close to perfect as we could make it.

The video below shows our final lighting design:

Scene 1 - lighting

Stage left side light 1: 7
Stage left side light 2: 5
Stage left side light 3: 5

With our scene 1 lighting, we wanted to go for a more artificial look. Using the white side lights made it thus. Moreover, having the lights focused on Stage left allowed for almost a split stage between Evie and Kate on the risers at the beginning of the piece.

Scene 2 - lighting

Stage left side light 1: 7
Lighting desk: 5 (halfway); 6 (fully up)

With our scene 2 lighting, we wanted to have a much softer look as though Phil and Leah are looking at a sunset. The light shouldn't be as wide as the one in Scene 3 in order to make the scene appear cosier and inviting. We were initially going to have birds tweeting in te background but we feared that this would distract from the performance slightly - I still would've liked to have tried it.

Transition - lighting

Stage right side light 3: 10 (with red gel)
Lighting desk: 16 (fully up)

We decided to use a red gel in the side lights on stage right in order to portray a more sinister feel. Moreover, it created a nice column of light for Tom to walk down on as John-Tate during the transition. We initially wanted a cacophony of sound but Imogen didn't feel confident in working the lights and sound. I suggested the night before the performance that we could have had the characters shouting some of their lines to create a cacophony in this sequence, having Phil and John-Tate remain quiet, however, it was too late to make such a large change.

Scene 3 - lighting

Stage left side light 1: 7
Stage left side light 2: 5
Stage left side light: 5
Lighting desk: 14 (fully up)

With Scene 3 we wanted to have a larger light space in order to have all characters lit. The use of only one side light in this scene would be slightly detrimental as it may block Ollie. We also wanted to have a dappled effect through the use of a gobo, however, with the resources we have at school this was impossible - however, the shadows created from the leaves as shown in the video provide a similar effect. Initially, we were going to have the sound of wind.

Scene 4 - lighting

Scene 4 is very similar to Scene 2 in terms of lighting and sound. The only difference made is that when Leah begins to talk about how the group are in lots of trouble, Imogen dims her light first to suggest some darker elements creeping in. I slowly dim my light afterwards to enhance this effect.

We found that our cast was not taking the rehearsal process as seriously as we would want them to be as they kept talking over us or laughing when we were trying to work on Leah's bonobo monologue. It was imperative that they understood that we needed them to be completely invested and to stop talking over us thus we got Chipp involved and asked him to look over the piece and to intimidate the cast a little bit so that they would take it seriously. There were a couple of things that Chipp noticed in the piece, the majority of which we had picked up on before and told our cast members to do, but I think with Chipp's assistance the specifics were really ingrained into the memory of the cast and thus would be done in future. These included:

• Reacting to what Ollie and Megan are saying in their duologue - this was vitally important because it would lift the scene a bit more and stop the audience from becoming bored with the constant talking. Moreover, it would engage cast members a lot more. Thus, we decided to have certain moments be enhanced by the use of myself and Grace chiming in with certain points within Scene 3 to engage the audience a lot more than we had been doing previously.
• During Leah's monologues, her facial expressions were lost quite a few times because she kept turning round to look at Phil. I had originally directed Evie to turn to Phil completely at certain points but these were the points where what she was saying wasn't as important or where Leah was trailing off in her sentence. 
• Everyone needs to slow down in certain points to emphasise climatic moments. 
• Tom needed to vary his vocal tone a lot more than he had been doing and to show a higher level of anxiety and stress. We had been saying this to Tom for quite a while and especially worked on the variations within his vocal tone. Chipp suggested charting and pinpointing the moments of acute stress which would have been useful to do at the start of the rehearsal process with every character. 
• Ollie's monologue in Scene 3 should seem as though Mark is going on a journey. Moreover, he should put off being serious for as long as he can. I can't say much about this monologue because Imogen had worked on this with Ollie and especially with his vocal tone - I am in no place to talk about the process with Ollie here. 
• Evie needs to have much more clarity in her sentence shifts. This is something that I tried to do with her by marking out different sections within the monologues especially in the first one. Moreover, I did try and direct Evie to have varying shifts in her tone when saying certain lines as Leah does tend to move on from topic to topic quite fast.   

After this intervention from Chipp, I found it much easier to direct the cast and found that they did listen a lot more to both Imogen and myself. We ran through Scene 3; every time someone made a mistake we would start the scene again. Imogen led the run through whilst I sat, watched, and made notes on certain parts of the performance which I would like to see improved. These are as follows and are in the order that I wrote them down in which doesn't necessarily follow the time structure of Scene 3 due to the nature of how we ran the scene:

• When Ollie says "Rachel, maybe" the line should be louder so the audience can hear it despite Tom being loud in his line; despite this, the interjection and continuation of the sentence by Tom was great and exactly what we need to do on other aspects of the piece. 
• Tom's line "I mean, I'm not boasting but who made that happen?" needs to be much more boastful as though the answer to the question that John-Tate is asking is quite obvious. 
• Interruptions need to be quicker throughout. 
• Tom's change in tone needs to be quite different when bringing Rachel into the conversation. 
• Ollie needs to have his tone so that the sentence he's saying appears as though it's continuing despite the line actually ending in the script; again interruptions are key here. 
• Pause after "This is different" just before "Mark, are you scared of anyone in this school?"; here, John-Tate is asserting his dominance and is trying to regain the violent nature that he seems to have had before the play began. 
• Grace needs to slow down at her "You shouldn't threaten me" paragraph, especially at the start; she needs to build up the tension in her vocal tone in order for it to be effective and for Mark to be 'scared' of her as he admits previously. 
• There needs to be a pause before and after Ollie's "It's Adam" in order to have tension. This should be reflected in body language and facial expressions. Additionally, Ollie needs to really slow down what he's saying in order for the monologue to be effective. 
• We made a slight change in blocking at the line "And someone... pegs a stone at him". Here, Ollie turns towards Cathy (myself) during the ellipses in the aforementioned sentence. Cathy stands from her seat and glares. This implies to the audience that Cathy started throwing the stones; this relates to her later character development where she becomes the leader of the group and when Brian says "She loves violence now" later in the play. It emphasises Cathy's violent nature and thus wouldn't come as a surprise when she actually murders Adam with a plastic bag - foreshadowing at play here. 
• KATE NEEDS TO MOVE DOWNSTAGE! I tell her this every time we go through her monologue!! 
• Rachel needs to interrupt in between what Phil is saying; Grace needs to be quicker and have enlarged facial expressions to show her disgust towards Brian. 
• Kate needs to pause at the ellipses in the following sentence: "And he'll tell them ... a man showed him his willy in the woods". This needs to be here to show the audience that Phil is literally making up the plan to frame someone else as he goes along. 
• The lines about the Asda need to be much quicker - this is mostly directed at myself!
• The line "All go home..." needs to be said to everyone and needs to be much louder. Kate should leave a pause between the previous line and this one to make the distinction between who she is talking to, much easier to spot for an audience member. 

The video below shows the changes made as mentioned above:

The plan from here is to do various line runs after school on Monday and Tuesday in order to ensure that no lines are forgotten. Moreover, we will concentrate on Scene 3 and in particular Ollie's lines because these are what I'm most worried about.

Director's Challenge - Part 27 - Line Runs and enhancing vocal tone

For this rehearsal we set a line deadline where we expected everyone to be completely secure on their lines and thus we could run the piece and stop when we wanted in order to change and enhance certain aspects. As part of our original plan, we had expected to be stopping and enhancing certain aspects prior to this point, but due to difficulties in blocking in the first three weeks of rehearsal, our plan has had to change and as such I fear that we are running out of time. Thus, it was no surprise that by this rehearsal certain members of the cast were not able to recite their lines perfectly, more specifically, Ollie who doesn't take drama and whom we entrusted a large role onto. Nevertheless, we expect that by the Saturday rehearsal everyone will feel completely secure on their lines and blocking including any additional blocking we make on Saturday.




In this rehearsal, I worked with Tom and Grace. I attempted to focus in on certain lines and changed my approach to how I wanted the lines to be said. Previously I had been using a copy and repeat method where I would say the line how I would want it to be said and having my cast members repeat it, however, I have since realised that this doesn't allow for Stanislavski's method of internal monologue and as such actors were not understanding the feeling that their character was trying to portray. I changed my style of directing so that I would explain the emotion and description behind why and how a character would say a line and more often then not this worked more effectively than what I had been trying previously. I also wanted to enhance Grace's facial expressions between lines and tried to get Tom to use gesture more frequently, both of which would enhance the scene that the two are in together.




Imogen and I also worked collectively on Leah's second monologue wherein the focus is on bonobos. As seen previously, in this monologue Leah strangles herself. I had seen other DNA performances where the strangulation by Leah is funny and shows that she's merely trying to get Phil's attention in a humorous way. This would lift the scene and make it more in the style of Kelly's writing of Leah's other monologues. We made it so that Leah coughs much more dramatically and ensures that the audience understand she is only doing this to get Phil's attention. Evie found it easier to work on this premise and as such the scene became more humorous especially when coupled with the section on bonobos and the previous work with Leah trying to steal Phil's food.


On Saturday, we hope to do a full tech run and have our cast run through the piece a number of times so that we can change small things and enhance the piece. Moreover, we expect that they will have learnt lines and as such will be able to run through the piece without or at the very least very minimal prompting.

TIE - Part 12

Following on from our last lesson, we continued on working on Act 1, Scene 7, using the Mixing Desk idea that has been proposed by Chipp. We looked at how we will do it, the acting, briefly at the facilitation of the scene, and looking through certain sections/quotes to break the scene apart. We started off by having differing sliders for each character - Lady Macbeth having masculine and feminine; Macbeth having guilt and ambition - however, we need generalised sliders for both characters to use and so we will be using Ambition, Guilt, and Manipulation. The intention of this was to show character traits and how different interpretations can change this - this links with our TA's spec of having differing interpretations for each quote and scene.

The scene below was directed by Chipp and shows the extremities of potential character traits that are shown in the scene to see how they may come across to our TA. Here, Bruce and Kathryn are experimenting with this idea:

To start the piece, we had Lady Macbeth having high ambition and manipulation and thus she was portrayed as mocking Macbeth and preying on his weaknesses. Macbeth's starting point is him having low ambition, with high guilt making him extremely panicked. The juxtaposition of the two characters therefore makes for excellent viewing. 

We change their traits at a key point in the scene when Macbeth says "Prithee; peace" because there's a slight change in topic/rhythm here and thus it seemed appropriate. Macbeth has much lower guilt and a higher ambition which allows him to be a much stronger character than what he was previously - his over pronunciation emphasises that he will not take Lady Macbeth's insults; Lady Macbeth's manipulation remains high but her ambition is lowered slightly. At this point we changed one of our sliders to say Morals - I suggested the use of Pity because it can be used in a negative way and does somewhat show Lady Macbeth's opinion on Macbeth in the scene, however, this was not chosen.  Lady Macbeth is still very manipulative through her low morals. Despite creating a moment of shared sorrow and connection, Lady Macbeth allows for it to be used in an evil tone which shows clearly her lack of morals.

The major issue that we need to solve for this scene is having an extremity of each slider for every part of the scene because the control of the sliders is left up to our TA and thus the actors will have to be incredibly skilled to show this.  

TIE - Part 11

In Monday's lesson, we focused on further editing of the TIE piece following the edited Hero part I explained in my previous TIE blog.

Tagged onto the end of the hero scene, we have one of our fake students, Joel, pull the sword from Maya's hands and say:

"So, when he's talking about the 'brandished steel smoking with bloody execution' he's talking about the sword, right?" 

The question is directed towards the facilitators which technically include the whole cast except for our fake students - Joel, Bella, and Alex. The question would be something that higher ability students would most likely already know, but may be a question that lower ability students would want to answer but are too afraid to ask. Therefore, we are relating to our TA. We have a section following this which links into the Villain scene which includes our fake students talking about the murder of Macduff's family with a joke about the "pretty chickens" line.

The facilitators in the Villain scene are Bruce and I whilst the rest of the cast perform another physical movement sequence which is more like freeze frames. This time I am the one saying the Shakespearean lines whereas Bruce is the one who's translating them into modern day English. The reason why we are translating them is so that more of the TA will be able to access the lines and therefore the analysis and therefore higher grades which is the key aim set by our client. When we get to the part about Macduff, Joel asks who Macduff is and Bruce gives a quick character profile of Macduff. This is to remind our TA who Macduff is in a way that they may be enquiring.

Following this, we want to move onto the manipulation of Lady Macbeth and how this applies to Macbeth's and Lady Macbeth's character development. The two scenes that we have looked at so far for this purpose is Act 1, Scene 7 (which I will show below) and Act 2, Scene 2 which we performed in the exact Shakespearean language a couple of weeks ago. We want to use the idea of the Shakespearean Mixing Desk in this session to show the different interpretations of both their characters. This is an important skill for our TA to have in the exam as it awards them more marks, a higher level, and therefore a higher grade in their English Literature exam which is what our client wants overall.

We discussed Act 1, Scene 7 in class on Monday trying to get to grip with the language and what it means ourselves which is vitally important if we're going to be leading a workshop following the performance with our TA - we must be prepared for any questions that our TA have otherwise it would look quite bad! My analysis and comments made on Act 1, Scene 7 can be found in the images below:

Director's Challenge - Part 26 - 6th Rehearsal and subsequent cast meetings

This rehearsal was an eclectic mix of things that we wanted to cover. Imogen and I have made a rehearsal plan for the following rehearsals:

This rehearsal: line run, full run, talk about costume, focus on getting the right intonations in lines, work on learning line, and enhance certain scenes.

(In between ensuring that people are learning lines - I'll be working with Tom and Grace; Imogen will be working with Ollie and Kate - we know that Evie has learnt her lines and are confident that as a uni student, Megan will have the initiative to have learnt her lines).

Wednesday 20th: full run, make sure all lines are learnt, pause and tweak, dress run.

(In between ensuring that all props have been brought in, tech has been sorted, and costume has been arranged.)

Saturday 23rd: full run with tech, pause and tweak

(Potentially on the Monday do a full run and at lunch on Tuesday invite certain cast members in to run through weaker scenes - have various full runs and line runs before the performance to ingrain it into their heads - the issue that we have had is that we lost 3 rehearsals because the Y11s had to focus on their GCSE - if we had followed the schedule we would have finished blocking by February half term and would have done our dress rehearsal last week - as such I do feel now that we are quite behind in our rehearsals - however, extra rehearsals wouldn't have been possible due to Megan being a uni student and the differing schedules of everyone else which would have made it hard.)

As it transpired, in the rehearsal we had our line run however much of the cast was still on script for much of the play and as such, we thought that rehearsal would be better suited to the learning of lines and ensuring that certain sections were absolutely perfect. So, whilst Imogen worked with Megan and Ollie on lines, and Grace and Tom ran through their scene, I worked with Kate and Evie on their various parts of being Leah and Phil.

I attempted to add much more humour to the scenes and allow for the actors to have a much better connection to their character, especially in Kate's case. We worked on Leah's monologues first and gave Phil a much larger role in them allowing humour to come from his subtle actions. For example, in Leah's second monologue we played around with the idea of Leah trying to steal one of Phil's crisps after she strangles herself and makes her way back onto the riser. Moreover, I tried to enhance the chemistry between the characters and had the holding of their hands in Leah's first monologue to be much more intimate by having them stare each other in the eye.

In Phil's section in Scene 3, I tried to make Kate perform much more nonchalantly and have a coolness to her character. I suggested that maybe she could try being more condescending to all characters except Leah to enhance their character's relationship, however. this may need to be reevaluated at some point. I told Kate to make more use of the space and make sure that she's coming towards the front of the stage at certain points just to show everyone's complete reliance on Phil. I also suggested to Kate throughout the rehearsal that she should adopt an internal monologue for Phil in all scenes to allow for her reactions to be much more natural - it also stops her from getting bored when not speaking.

We managed to talk to the cast about costume, the messages of which can be found on my Production Meeting blog.

Director's Challenge - Part 24 - Leah's Second Monologue

On Tuesday after school, I blocked Leah's second monlogue with Evie. The video below shows how I would like Evie to use voice and facial expressions as Leah:

The video below shows the first attempt at blocking:

The video below is my analysis of the above video:

Director's Challenge - Part 25 - 5th Rehearsal

Over the past few weeks, there has been something abundantly clear in Imogen and mine's directing style. We have been unable to direct our separate parts as indicated in our first plan due to cast absences and so have directed many scenes together. We have had conversations about my role in directing previously but only within the past week has it been made known the extent to which Imogen believes I have been overly controlling over directing. I could see that I was doing this and although I felt I was giving Imogen space to direct it was clear that I wasn't - I felt like I did need Imogen's input but because she felt like she couldn't talk to me about it or interject, she didn't. This temporarily put a strain on our friendship and working relationship, however, once we had talked in person about it, we were able to be a much better co-directing team during this rehearsal. I gave her more space to work on scenes whilst I worked on different sections with the cast members that she didn't need at that moment.

In the rehearsal, we were missing Ollie and Megan - Megan had already told us she wouldn't be present, however, as we didn't know Ollie was coming we had to stop our initial plan of running the whole thing. This creates a bigger issue because we wanted the set in the Performance Space to have a full space to work out proper blocking, but we have probably lost that chance to do so again before our tech rehearsal. Ollie has since apologised but this example raises the issue of communications between the group and us. The following images detail all the communication between us as directors and our cast in our specially made group chat:

Whilst Imogen was working on Leah's monologues and Phil's section in Scene 3, Part 4, I worked with Tom and Grace on their 'fight' in Scene 3 Part 2. I tried to make John-Tate a lot more threatening, having him walk over to Jan a lot more than he did previously and also using his tone of voice sometimes raised in anger and other times having cool anger. Both would frighten other characters - I was trying to demonstrate to an audience that the only reason John-Tate has held onto his power is through violence which is something that he appears to be quite proud of throughout Scene 3, apart from when Phil enters where he himself begins to seem threatened by Phil.

We worked on our only transition within the piece which occurs between Scene 2 and Scene 3. We wanted to show the switch of power between Phil and John-Tate that occurs at the end of the scene. The transition demonstrates the tension and potential violence between Phil and John-Tate as well as suggesting that a change in status is going to occur from the two meeting. When we ran it through, we had Leah end up on the wrong side of the stage to where she enters in Scene 3, Part 3 and so we had to come up with a way of getting her to swap sides of the stage. I suggested that all other characters come on and see the interaction between Phil and John-Tate to show the acknowledgement of the transition of power. Moreover, it adds an abstract element that Imogen has wanted to include since we started directing! The video below shows the transition without Megan or Ollie:

We set a line deadline before the February half term. The line deadline falls next rehearsal and we expect all our cast to know most or all of their lines. We have noted the people whom we think will need most work - Ollie, Tom, Grace, and Kate - and have decided to take two each and help them learn lines should they need it - I will work with Tom and Grace if they need help learning their lines. 

A major issue that Imogen and I are having is the inability of some member's of our cast to listen to instructions and be quiet even when they aren't being directed. This causes issues of commmunication but I believe that by next rehearsal they should be okay because I had sent a message to the group chat in which this was an important feature. 

Director's Challenge - Part 23 - Production Meeting

In normal circumstances when producing a play, directors and other valuable members of the production team (such as lighting technicians, sound technicians and costume directors) gather together and have a production meeting. They discuss the main aspects of the piece regarding sound, lighting, and costume which all relate to the director's vision. The director will ask for a feeling to be portrayed and the relevant sectors will try and achieve this.

In a school environment, the availability to have a production meeting is fairly limited because we are not working in a professional environment. There are none of the specified sectors to hand and all sound/light has to be conducted ourselves and costume has to be gathered by us and our cast members. Moreover, our choices are limited. Nevertheless, Imogen and I had a chat about what we would want our sound, lighting, and costume design to look like.

The lighting that we want to show is as follows:

Urban scenes - stark and artificial, almost electrical; perhaps a white or light blue light would show this.
Field scenes - warm and comforting, like there's sunlight; something soft, almost hazy.
Forest scenes - a little darker some sunlight but its dappled (the potential use of a gobo to show this).
Transition - darker, almost black but with an extended spotlight on Phil.

However, it must be noted that our supplies are limited, the lights in the performance space may not be where we want them to be, and we are not lighting technicians so our knowledge on this is not to the standard of professionals.

The sound that we want to have is as follows:

Urban - potentially the low thrum of cars; however, as the scene is very short this may not work.
Field - birdsong.
Forest - wind.
Transition - birdsong and wind building to a crescendo, the sound is almost unbearable; it's accompanied by the sounds of a crow or raven, the omens of death, to signify the 'death' of Adam.

Again, it should be noted that our supplies are limited for sound.

The costume we want to have is as follows (the image is from a message I sent to the cast):

Director's Challenge - Part 22 - 4th Rehearsal

At N2C, we looked at Scene 3, Parts 3 and 4. The following videos show our first attempt at blocking:

The video below shows the analysis of the videos above:

TIE - Part 10

In our first two lessons, Starbuck wasn't in and so we were left to our own devices and asked to run through what we had done thus far for the performance and add any transitions that we could think of. This endeavour proved tricky because of the large group size, differing opinions, and the lack of participation by some members of the group.

The image below shows the order of the piece thus far with some additions made including the introduction of the Witches and of Lady Macbeth's manipulation and how they factor into Macbeth's development in character:

We then moved on to running the piece fully. There was some discussion concerning the Student part at the start of the piece as to what their voices should be saying. We said that the things said by the Voices should be done in rapid succession to replicate the state of most student's brains in an exam situation. Moreover, the Voices should be aware that they can't speak into the student's shoulders when talking to them because the sound becomes muffled. The video below shows our first attempt at running the scene:

We then moved onto the Hero sequence with a transition whereby the Voices had already walked off and Kathryn as the Facilitator would introduce the Hero interpretation of Macbeth. The transition from the Hero to the Villain included examples prior where Macbeth had shown himself as being evil such as killing Duncan and Banquo. The issue with these is that we didn't introduce who we are as a company nor did we factor in that the TA will already know this and so it will seem like we're being condescending.

The transition between the Villain scene and the Lady Macbeth scene was also very condescending because we told them through facilitation of the differing reasons for Macbeth's change in character - his ambition, the Witches' prophecies, and Lady Macbeth's manipulation - however, this is something the TA will probably already know, especially those at higher levels.

Overall, I think that these two hours were not well spent and thus resulted in a waste. It also caused myself, in particular, to become annoyed especially because I felt like I was coming up with the majority of ideas.

We spent the following hour with Chipp editing and refining the piece thus far. The Voices were made much more refined with set lines very similar or exactly the same as the lines said in the exact video. On the end of this, Chipp added a moment where the Voices pause after they have started panicking anew in panicked positions, very large and exaggerated at that. We then have some facilitation from the other cast members, explaining who N2C are, what we're going to help them with, and removing everyone but the Voices from the stage. Chipp added in a minion joke here, however, as a cast we believe that the TA won't find it amusing as it seems much too dumbed down - it would most likely get them to oppose us, rather than get them on our side as we hope for with the Voices sketch.

We also worked on improving the Hero Macbeth portion of the piece where we had Kathryn reading out the Shakespearean words and myself and Izzy translating them into modern day English whilst the rest of the cast run through the physical movement. The physical movement would pause for Kathryn the majority of the time, however, it would continue during the translation. As the physical movement develops it explains what the words are much more effectively than if they were merely translated and so the decision was made to only have 4 points of translation and have the physical movement portray the rest.

I think that with the presence of Chipp directing the piece that this hour went much better than the previous two hours because the work ethic of the group changed and thus we were able to have more meaningful conversations and input into the piece. I would want this ethic to continue even without a teacher's presence but I know that this would be impossible because of the sheer size of the group. Nevertheless, I hope that with Chipp's input we will be able to complete the task set by the client to her standard and be relatable to our TA.