Introduction to Final Major Project - February 27th

First of all, we had to all propose a play to the lecturers and they would decide out of all the suggestions which of those would go ahead filling the factors of success rate with the ones who are known to be able to lead a group of our class in a full out Final Major Project performance. Those who were finally chosen were four, one of which was going to be a one man show. This meant that the other actors in the class had to audition for a place in one of the three remaining performances. I was personally open to any role and I would commit to it to the fullest of my ability.


In result of there being three pieces to choose from, auditions took place to allow the directors to decide or have an idea of who was suitable for what character. However, it was said that there were many clashes of actor's wanted by more than one director. From Alex's piece I had auditioned to play Cole, which started with a workshop covering the different themes that occurred in the piece. For Jireh's piece, I had auditioned for Lincoln after we had gone through a workshop involving devising based on the various topics covered. For the audition of Jireh's piece I had to read out an extract of Lincoln 's monologue, similar to Alex's audition and Cole. And finally for Chris' piece, it was mainly based on exploring the different case scenarios on suicide and the different levels of anger, depression, happiness and so on and so forth. Then we had a brainstorm of what our thoughts were during a piece of music and finished the workshop with devising.


After the long casting session, I had been placed in Chris' piece which I was very pleased to have received. We then got straight to work with Marion, Stephanie and Sally by brainstorming potential ideas for our characters which would allow Chris to write the script during that weekend ready to do a read through on the following Monday. We had then got the news that Sally was no longer part of our group due to certain circumstances, so in result we had to adapt to the situation and either remove her scene or just relay it to Stephanie.


During the writing of the script, Chris constantly contacted the group so that the scenes would suit the actor's along with his interpretation of how he aimed the piece to be. The idea I had given in was based on the fact of being used by people and always blamed for situations were on was not involved in. My first thoughts of the script were that it was very naturalistic and allowed the actor's in each scene to have their time to express themselves with just them and the Pillow man. The script was very short but effective due to the fact that it showed the progression of how the Pillow man slowly breaks down the more he assisted in taking people's lives.


After the read through, we had set out date objectives where we needed to have memorized all of our lines and to get costumes/props by depending on what was suitable for the group. For one instance, all lines had to be memorized by the 13th of March to allow us to work on movement and use of space during the monologues.