The Homecoming

The homecoming was first performed in  in 1965 and was written by Harold Pinter, its premier is in London ( Aldwych) and New York.

 It is set in  a living room in north London and has a total  of six characters, five men which are: Max Sam, Lenny , Joey and Teddy and one lady called Ruth  who they all seem to have their eyes on later in the play. Teddy and Ruth decided to come to London after being in America for some years as he wanted his wife to meet his family but things do not turn out to go too well between the couple as she makes a move with all his brothers so he ends up going back to America by himself. The theme of the homecoming is about relationships which is mainly expressed with violence with the sounds being played and through silence in some scenes.

The product designer was Soutra Gilmour she designed the set of where the play was taken place at. She did not do such a bad job as the space was not too big but she managed to add a bit of furniture that matched the time and age of when the play was set which was nice plain and simple.

The light designer was Richard Howell and I thought he did a very good job with the lights because when ever a character had an angry thought in their head the lights would change dramatically to a different colour that matched their emotion and it was unexpected which made it better and gave us a hint on how they were feeling inside if they did not openly mention it out.

In terms of the costume design which was done by Christine cover ferro I think she did a good job as well because it was meant to be set years ago and from watching the play I did not know whether it was a modern one or old one but looking at the costumes it gave me the answer straight away because of what they were wearing.

Overall the play was not really my cup of tea but some scenes were interesting to watch especially the character that the old man was playing as he was getting rude to everyone and made the play have slight humour to it. However, I do not think that it was successful getting its message across because it is about people coming home but watching the play you would not think of it like that. The scene that was good was when they all sat down and drank  their whisky at the same time it was quite interesting how they all done it in sync without even looking at each other.

Rehearsals and performance day

We combined the sections into a whole piece of drama and went down to the theatre to work on the Medea play, we were going over our scenes adding any possible movement that we felt suited what we were doing.

We joined up with the dance students to join the Medea piece together as they are doing the first section and we are doing the second half but its for our assessment. Not only have we been practicing for Medea but we had to practice a dance routine with them as well to help them with their assessment coming up, it was a bit of a struggle for most people as they could not get the dance movements right but after how many retakes we got the moves together and some of us were reading our Greek letters and the dancers would dance around to what we were saying. It was stressful and tiring to be honest but when we got the hang of it it was not too bad.

For our country's good I learnt my script within a week which was good as it gave me more time to play around with it to know what type of tone i should have when talking to Harry and realized that my character is very frustrated at him so for most of the scenes I am angry and fed up with speaking to him so I had to act grumpy and angry.

                                                     The performance day!

The performance for our country's good and the dance piece were on the same day and i felt the dance piece for me did not go well because I messed up and was so embarrassed about it because i forgot a move and did a gesture when everyone else was doing something else so I did not like it at all and hope not to have to do a dance collaborative again as that is not one of my strong points. However i felt that the our country's good went brilliant for me i knew my cues very well and was in character from the very start.

Our county's good.

Our country's good is a British play written by  Timberlake Wertenbaker in 1988 which is about convicts and royal marines who found themselves required to act in a production which was set in wales around 1789. The character that I am playing in this play is called  duckling  and she so happens to be a young thief and prostitute who gets sentenced to death at only 18. She has a complicated relationship with her lover Harry ,she is a feisty person who loves her man  but he tries to control her most of the time and she doesn't like it so she releases her frustration at him. It is based on a true story of convicts rehearsing a play and it was adapted from a play called the 'play maker ' by Thomas Keneally which is based on a historically fact. Wertenbaker does not draw any themes from the action but is more interested in telling a play and uses a character  called captain Phillip in the novel to express one central theme in the play which is respect for everyone and uses the character Duckling as a theme of sexuality as she likes to go and see the other marines in the camp even though she has a man.  I like how he uses different characters to portray different themes because it gives the play a bit of life in a way and shows that not all them have similar roles.

I have been developing my vocal skills when performing because in our country's good I have a few scenes that i am shouting at harry and I struggle to yell and to be angry when needed to be but I have been practicing to do so and when i performed it, it went better then expected especially reading some of Stanislavski theories because he believes that when you act you should act as natural as possible and that is what i was aiming to do when on I am stage.

For our collaboration with the dancers I did not feel that it went too well for me , in rehearsals many people did not get the simple moves that we had to do correct  and we went over and over it several times and managed to get it right afterwards but on the day we had to perform it I messed up and was so embarrassed about the situation so hopefully that would never need to be done again but in general we all did well.

Over this term I believe my skills have developed gradually each time we have a lesson. At the very start I was not so familiar on how to position my self on stage and was not aware that my voice was not loud enough for the audience to hear but now i know you have to stand in a way that your body is face to the audience in order for them to see you and your voice should be projected to the back of the room. My goals for next term is to earn a distinction because I believe I have all the skills in me to be able to achieve it.