unit 8

Proposal (unit 8)

Rationale 

Throughout the past seven units, I feel as a performer I’ve attained and developed more layers of skills and knowledge of acting and the industry  in which I had already possessed from my own experience  before starting the course. The research I’ve conducted on practioners such as  Anton Chekov and Stanislavski has made my skill set knowledge grow significantly   despite already being familiar with the two from previous education. Reflecting on the year I feel that each performance has allowed me to present my skills to different audiences giving me more stage experience .

Skills such as magic if and emotional memory has guided me to become more authentic 

This course has enhanced and given me a further understanding within the various areas of performing arts.

Furthermore, working with various companies such as the Shakespeare school festival and Donmar has been very influential on my work as well as enlightening me on the art of performing.

 Project concept 

Our unit eight production will be of the play ‘Fugee’ by Abi Morgan- the award winning writer. The play is about child refugees who have come to the United Kingdom for various reasons. The play follows the character Kojo a 14 year old boy from the ivory coast whose family was killed and he was kidnapped and forced to become a child soldier at age 11. He moves to the UK illegally as a refugee; he has troubles in the UK when the child refuge centre age disputes  him (doesn’t think he’s under 18) and denies him from staying there. There are also other child refugees in the centre that Kojo meets and befriends from around the world such as Ara and Cheung. We also see where they have come from and what they’ve been through. The project will require us to use the skills we’ve gathered over the year to produce  the best end of year performance possible with a combination of Stanislavski for our character work and portrayals, and Brecht for our staging and style of the piece. Due to the fact that our style is going to be Brecht centric our resources are going to be minimal, kept to a few chairs and crates for some scenes and music and sfx to help fill the piece and set many of the scenes. 

                                      [Example of the chairs used in the scene between Kojo and Cheung ]

Evaluation

My long term goal as an actor or performer in genearal is to  attain a natural skill in being able to entertain the masses. In evaluation  I Intend to be very analytical in how I  accomplish this by ; analysing audience characteristics ;  listening out to the reactions of my audience when I perform ; ask for feedback on my performance as well as the whole performance in general. This will be how I document my work as the project progresses. Furthermore It would be important to note that collaborating with other performers does not have any impact on my progression towards my goal, This is because my goal only concerns my performance and not the group. 

Timeline

Week 1

Read through the play- Script required 

Cast the roles of the play-Actors and auditions required 

Read through the play in casted Characters- Castings need to be completed. 

Week 2

Start going through scenes of the play lightly in character- Cast needed

Lines learned- Script needed

Runthrough off script- Off book Cast needed (potentially sound additionally)

Week 3

Full runthrough- Cast and Sound needed- potentially costumes 

Final runthrough- Cast, sound, and props all finalised needed.

Final Performance. 

Research 

 The research I will conduct for Unit eight will be gathering information on child soldiers. In particular child soldiers in Africa due to the role they carry in the play as Kojo the main protagonist of Fugee was from Africa where his parents were killed by the “Kids with Guns”.

To understand the seriousness of the problem in Africa I will be watching  documentaries on youtube and reading stories, blogs and  articles on the subject. I will  not be using wikipedia as their sources can be unreliable , only other websites on  Google and videos on Youtube.

 https://www.hrw.org/news/1999/04/18/more-120000-child-soldiers-fighting-africa