Dress Rehearsal evaluation

Our dress rehearsal was possibly one of the longest anyone has ever done! The play seemed to total at about four hours! the problem was that some people didn't know a quarter of their lines so about an hour per act was spent prompting people and ensuring that they knew there lines, which was quite worrying considering we was due to perform in just under 3 hours time. however the acting was good and people were becoming more and more confident as the play went on with improvising there way out of situations when they did not know their lines. The play itself however was a massive shock improvement people seemed extremely confident and pulled out all the stops, when a scene went wrong there was never a pause because people didn't know there lines people seemed very confident in improvising there ways in and out of situations and the play ended in a very good result!

character interaction 2

My favorite scene in the whole play is the scene with the man going back. Though this seem an unlikely choice considering I only have two lines in the whole scene. I feel that it was a scene that really gave me an opportunity to expand my acting as I had to portray all of the emotions and reaction to what 'The man going back was saying' without the use of speech therefore using only facial  expressions movement and silent character interaction. I was quite relaxed for the most of his speech until it started to reach it's climatic sections where I would interact with Tom, Pa or uncle John- the characters I am closest to in the play.
When  he started talking in details about his children's death I started to approach him my face intrigued, holding his gaze after everyone else had enough. This description was affecting me, scaring me. I was becoming worried that california would tear the Joad family apart; the family that had helped me, fed me, given me shelter. So I felt it was my duty to hold my concentration and re convey this to tom at a later date; this goes on to cause out eventual argument in the next scene.

Character interaction 1

one of my favorite scenes in 'Grapes of Wrath' is the scene when me and Tom walk into the Joad house I don't speak a lot in this scene and it is mostly led by Tom's concern about the whereabouts of his parents and his interaction with Muley however there is a very emotional part of the scene when we first walk into the scene and he tells me about how one of his mums escaped through the gat and went to the Jacobs house and ate there baby, I am then left to comfort tom but my new beliefs in the human spirit prevents me from blaming it all on god and comforting Tom so I am left not knowing what to say, I therefore feel that the reason I don't speak to tom after this line until Muley's explanation that the Joads are somewhere else is because I feel I would be doing Tom an injustice by giving him any old condolence as Casey see's no use in speaking when there is nothing of importance to say.

Jim Casey writing in role

Young tom joad don' seem to of changed much, always been the same aint never wanted to hurt no fellas has tom. yeah he killed a fella but im damn sure the fella deserved what he got. aint Tom never been a fight starter unless you fret him or his fambly the way a good should be. I figger young tom is taking over from his Pa aintOl' Tom never been such a hella as young tom is, I figger young Tom was always gonna be in charge 'fore his time.

Young tom seem to take after his Grampa. I remember when I was a boy listenin' to all of grampa Joads stories 'bout how he would go aroun' fighting the injins out west! Yeah i knowed the Joad fambly for a helluva time. Knowed Ol' Tom for years he's 'bout 12 years older than me, used to let me help out on the lan' when i was a boy. An' John would always be the fella who would give me a nice long sip of is whisky.

John Joad is a nice fella, always has been, we were good pals fur years. Like ol' Tom he was a while older than me i dunno probably ten years or so. Always a fine ol' fella. I recollect this one tim he gave me a twenty packa lucky strike to me fur baylin' a ton-a-hay. he sat an' tol me 'bout all the fine girls he'd lay with back in his younger days, 'fore he got married, whilst we got through a whole damn bottle-o-factry liquor, crazy sonofabitch probably the fella who got me into drinkin' so damn much!

Revolution Arts: Images of the Dust Bowl used for the projection in...

Revolution Arts: Images of the Dust Bowl used for the projection in...

06/11/2013- first hall rehearsal

We rehearsed in the hall today for the first time and finished off act two, I found being in the hall to be a much better place for rehearsal as it aloud us more space to act in and gave us a sense of how the performance is going to be!

I felt that rehearsals went very well and the greater space aloud for much more movement in the scene, allowing me and liam to show our characters reactions and emotions to seeing each other much more effectively.

The large space that the hall presents us with allows my death scene to be shown much more effectively than when we are in C5 as it allows the space for me to approach Jays character from a distance, showing my characters willingness for martyrdom much better than when I only have five foot of space allowed to me in order to show my characters motives, also it allows Liam the space to show Tom's rage at Casey's death and allows him to keep his attack on Jay in centre stage rather than it drifting to one side as it inevitably does in class due to the lack of space!

Diary log 5/11/2013

Today we did a run through of most of act two and i feel that all in all the rehearsal went well, people seem to now feel relatively confident with all their characters and every is getting used to acting when they have no dialogue rather than just standing silently, dead still on an empty part of the stage!

I feel that the first scene me and tom have together in act two, went well today, I feel me and Liam are beginning to really bounce off each other and understand how our characters bounce off and react to one another! I was also pleasantly surprised to realise I actually knew the majority of the script for this scene- which is always a pleasant surprise!

I think that the scene when i kick the deputy and take the blame for tom went well today because although we had to do a lot of retakes of the fightscene i feel that we now all have a clear idea of how its supposed to go and next time if all goes to plan, it should run smoothly. I think my conversations in this scene with both Tom and Al also went very well as we have rehearsed them quite a few times now and we seem to all bounce off each other quite nicely.

I now understand how best to play the scene where i get arrested which is in fact more calmly than angrily, so next time we rehearse this i believe that my performance in this scene should look better  than it did today now I understand this!

I think that the barn dance definitely needs some work, we all seem to know what we are doing its just that few of us seem to have a brilliant sense of rhythm, i feel that with a few more practices we should get it okay; however if we keep the basket we may need a few more than that!

All in all i believe that this lesson went really well and i believe that we managed to get through a lot of stuff and so long as lines get learnt we should be well on our way to having a really successful performance later this month!