WEEK 1 

Day 1:

On the first day of most classes a certain amount of shyness and modesty is expected. Well not in theatre studies! Within the first few seconds I, as well as 3 other poor souls, were bombarded with a hammer of noise. Yes, noise - the sound of people yelling over one another to create one large bit of sound. AND I LOVED IT! Theatre studies class, as it would appear to me, is like a dark dirty bar with an old daggy music selection. A place where you can go to let your hair down and not be recognised by anyone from the outside world. Everything said within that P2 classroom is confidential and saved from the world. On a more serious note, by the elimination of several of our selected plays, ‘100′ seems to be the choice. I look forward to beginning production.

 Day 2

The best lesson of theatre studies I have ever experienced took place today. We read through our recently elected senior play, ‘100′. the read through is always a good indication of what the affect on the audience will be like. If we are shocked then they will be shocked, or if we are inspire they too will be inspired. For me, the read through was quite difficult but very fun. It is always hard doing the read through with no prior knowledge of the circumstance or history of the time and character, so, as I read through I started to change my character and guess the direction of each line. I think that the roles given to people as a trial were perfectly suited and in some, perhaps even similar to their actual personality. The character i read for, Sophie, is HARD!!! But also challenging and I am always willing to take up a challenge and have no doubt that it will all ‘come good’. She is an emotionally deep character who is isolated from the rest of the characters and is very hidden, which is something very difficult to portray on stage. The use of only bamboo sticks and an orange for props is a very interesting concept at the moment but i am very eager to find out more. And finally, I am interested in the physicality of the play. With the changes in setting and times, the creation of the different scene with merely bamboo sticks and an orange will be interesting.

Day 3

Today we discovered the wonderful world of Vine Blogs! I am not very knowledgable in the ways of the internet so today was a pretty hard lesson for me, however, i am very eager to learn. I am glad that vine blogs is used for this class because it gives us a forum to discuss the our progress and unlike myspace, it is exclusive and private. It is also great having the ability to discuss and confer with fellow victorian theatre studies students, and all available in the one place.

 Day 4

Today’s lesson was one of the more tame. It wasn’t what is so far considered a ‘typical’ theatre studies class but more a necessary class. We, as a group went through times and dates for the production as well as lesson plans leading up. We also briefly talked about budget and managing money which is an interest for me. I really enjoy working with numbers, particularly money, so i am excited to get stuck into the budgeting, working out how much money can go into what areas and how much will be needed to make back in ticket sales, etc.

 Day 5

Our class routine is now beginning to take form with the warm up games being established. ‘The mole’ is the first game on our list. It is always very interesting watching people lie and decieve and seeing who does it well/not well. The class is filled with so many different characters and therefore there are so many different tactics used in the game. I think as we play this game more often we will tend to see a pattern emerge in the order of which people ‘go out’. The people who tend to swarm to the ball tend to be trusted perhaps because they seem to not be hiding anything, where as the more quiet and mysterious people are un-trustworthy. The budget for the production was also semi-established this afternoon. We are really going to have to gain a lot of support from the people in the school if we are going to be able to make back the expense of the entire process. Key to gaining this support, in my opinion, is going to be promotion through the musical. The musical gets a very high attendance each year and perhaps more this year because of the popularity of the selected musical, attracting that same support to our play will be crucial.

Gemma.

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