Unit 11 - Storytelling lesson

Lesson Objectives:
To understand the importance or storytelling
To develop storytelling skills
Ti deliver and expand on a story for performance to a class
To relate our skills to children's theatre

What is Storytelling?
I described it as explaining a plot/series of events in an exiting and engaging way, through use of voice and gesture

Forms of Storytelling:
Music, lyrics, music videos
TV/ Film
Books
Radio
Plays
Disney shorts
Poetry
People Watching
Advertisement/ newspaper
Social networking (Facebook, snapchat stories etc)

Activity 1
We started the lesson by stating our most recent activities. Then from that, we asked as many questions, to discover a story within their weekend. For example. my story was to do with work, and the drama happening between colleagues. We were then put into groups, and each told our weekends in more depth. We then chose one part of a specific person's weekend and had 5 minutes to come up with a story as a performance. We chose Vicki's story, who had gone to 3 music clubs on the same day. To represent the three clubs without 6 stage exits and entrances, we decided to do a combined class. with different skills. Our scene started with myself as a conductor, asking that Andy played his solo  that he had been working on all week, on his flute. This was comically bad, but my character saw it as improvement from last week, and so he was highly praised. Victoria then performed her solo. which was blatantly better than Andy's, but she was pushed aside onto the next activity (representing the next class) which was a rap group. This part of our scene was entirely improvised, as we all wrapped and scatted, passing the beat between the group. The fact that the rhymes had to be off the top of our heads aded a comical feature which we couldn't have planned.

What went well: I enjoyed the rap part of the scene, as the audience were involved, clapping on the beet and laughing at our improvised, unconventional rhymes. This was the most enjoyable part to act, and seemed the most enjoyable to watch as well- we had a good group 'vibe' and we worked well together

What we could do to improve: I felt that whilst we did have a comical piece, our performance was relatively short, and if we had have expanded it further, we could have developed more ideas and stories from our weekend into the plot, to keep the audience interested.

Activity 2:
We then regrouped, and told a family story that we have which is entertaining or memorable. After that, we started to plan one of these stories into a performance. We chose my story, which was about my brother's last day of college; we went to buy 2 chickens, and labelled them one and three. We then filled his college with chicken feed and released the chickens into the classrooms and corridors. For a long time, the teaching staff were looking for chicken number two. Despite there only being three of us in the group. we made huge progress with changing roles and adapting to different characters. This was done through a sudden change of body language, voice pitch and personality, to clearly show the audience we had changed character, without having to break the fourth wall and tell them that we had changed character.

What we struggled with:
Whilst we were able to show a clear change of character in our multi roles, it made things harder to block.For example I go from being a chicken standing downstage right, to being a teacher in the same position; I didn't have the luxury of changing character from moving from one part of the stage to another, I had to stay where I was, making it unclear as to what moment I changed This is something that with more time/use of props, we could develop further. An idea I considered was having sound effects, or 'character motifs' so that the character being played was clearly identified with the riff.

How we worked well as a group:
In terms of practically, time management was something we were very good at. We were able to identify the story with the most potential and chose characters without any distraction. Creatively we gelled well; an example of this is our improvisation of the second half of our weekend performance, whereby we were rapping off the top of our heads, but managed to share rhymes and perform a clean finish without planning.

What did I contribute individually?
I was pleased with my progress during the lesson, and feel I offered a lot in direction and performance. An example of my good leadership and directional skills is during the first practice for the 'weekend' scene, I came up with a coherent way of combining Andy's club, rap, gig filled weekend, with Vicky's orchestral schedule. Specifically, I had the idea of Andrew playing an awful solo, but being much applauded, remarks being made on his progress, and then Victoria playing something grade 8, and me (the conductor) brushing it off as if she was not as good as andrew. The idea of rapping and passing it along the circle was something I had the idea of, but wasn't able to develop enough into an ending, resulting in improvisation (which turned out to be very comical).