UNIT 12

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 Task 1

A) 

Name	George Smedley
Pathway	Performing and Production Arts – Acting for Stage & Screen.
Project title	THE LOVELY BONES
Section 1: Rationale (approx. 100 words)
Over the last 11 unit, I have learnt so much and have achieve so much over my two years here at APTA, when I first joined the course, I had a basic understanding about practises and was used to playing character with massive stage presents. That is whys I start this course by going down the pathway of playing character with big Stage presents like William T Stead and Captain Hook. After this point i look to play character who had moments in the show even if they did not have massive stage presents like Sam from Shout and Chief Bromden. In the first year I learnt skill about different practitioner and how I can use their works and ways into my work. Starting the second year, I decide I needed to play a character who is more lovely and caring in our Christmas show so I played the role of Geppetto, and this help me work how I can control a space and my character without being a villain. Moving onto the ending of year two. I thought the best way I can move forward is to finish the year by playing a villain at the end of year show without him being a big character so that wise I have gone for Phil and Mr Harvey. I learnt a lot more about directing and leading in group work in the second year and how to self asses myself.
Section 2: Project concept (approx. 200 words)
My targets and goals are very high because I have such complicated characters, my two characters that I have in the Lovely Bones are Detective Federman and Mr Harvey. For my first goal I want to achieve the most realistic portrays of these characters as possible. To complete this goal, I have planned and started to do extensive research into Detectives fields of works, how to cope with loss of a loved one and understand the backstory and twisted minds of Mr Harvey and serial killers. To start with Detective Federman, I plan to look at what would police do in missing people case’s and Murder Investigations back in the 70’s. I am planning to read the book to see how Len deals with Grief and having a look into different type of grief’s. Mr Harvey is a different to Len, I am planning to read the book and look at Mr Harvey back story and start to understand what made him the way he is during the show. I am also planning to look at different serial killer as see if there is anything that match with Harvey. The timescale I am giving myself this is 3 weeks. For my production role I am going for Assistant Director, My role would be organising so what that means I make sure if anybody would need to runs scene or if they want to go onto the next scene I could be there to do that. The timescale I will need for this would be 4 Weeks ( rehearsal time)
Section 3: Evaluation (approx. 50 words)
The way I am going to reflect and improve myself during and after this project is in a few ways. I will first of all be taking notes by Kelly and improving on them notes. I will also be doing some scene and record them to I can work on them at home. For after the project I will reflect and see if I did achieve these goals and what I could of done better.
Proposed research sources and bibliography (Harvard format)
- The Lovely Bones. ( Book) By Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones. ( Film ) This section provides an opportunity to record the initial research sources, both primary and secondary, that you intend to use. Your sources of research should be as wide as possible, including libraries, museums and galleries, books, theatre/ film/video, magazines, TV/radio programmes, web sites etc. Where appropriate you should use the Harvard system of referencing. The bibliography should be continuously updated as the project progresses.

B)

Task 2

A) For my audition for the lovely bones, I decided that I was going to use a monologue that I had learnt for drama school. The monologue I chose was from  the play Alligator but because Kelly had seen this monologue before I decided to do it in an American accent. I also added the ending lines from the 1960's Psycho film just to show something new. My goal for this audition was to show the two different sides of the character that I want to play. The character I am going for is Mr Harvey. He is the villain of the story but during the shows he is very much a two faced character because he acts differently when he is alone to when he is talking to other people. The way I was going to show this during the audition was the first part of the audition using the text from alligator, I would try to make it as he is trying to justify his actions but then in the second half of the audition using the Psycho text I will show how dark he really is and how manipulate he can be.

I think the audition went really well. I surprised Kelly and Abby with the piece and they liked it a lot. Looking back I don't think I would change too much about it, maybe a little more work with spacing but other than that I really like it and I got the role.

Task 2.1

The research I have done over the last 4 weeks of rehearsals has been a lot. The two roles I am very fortunate to play are Mr Harvey and Len Federman and because of this opportunity I have done a lot of research for both of these leading roles. Before getting these roles the first thing I did in preparation for the show and the auditions was to read the book. The book helped me because it told me everything I needed to know about my characters' backstories. To start with Len, it is said in the book and is mentioned in the show that after he got married to his wife she killed herself because she was unhappy but he never found out why she was unhappy. This is very important as this is the reason why Len and Abigail have an affair in the show. The final moment in the book that really helps me build Len's character. This is when he is sitting in his office and he comes to the realization that if he did not meet up and make love to Abigail he would have caught Harvey. This moment in the book really helped me get into character as it can help me understand how much guilt he was going through and I can play this in the subtext. The book went into  A LOT of disturbing things about Mr Harvey. However it has helped me understand the way that he thinks and his routines' like setting clocks around his house and when they go off he needs to turn on or off a light or close the curtains. It also told us about his backstory and the way he is today. His mother used to love robbing from dead bodies and getting in trouble with the police but she never got caught because she was good at it. His father was an architect but was abusive and an alcoholic who abandoned his wife ( Harvey mother) on the side of the road one day and was never seen again. The book also goes into all of Harvey's Victims like his first victim being when he found his school crush and killed her, he hides her be hides some bins but he can just block it out and do self reassurance to stop his guiltiness falling though. Moving on from the book, I have also been reading these books that have 100 murder mysteries in them and they are quite hard to do but it helps me understand how Len could be thinking when there are no leads and it's just there thinking. I have also had a look into police protocol  and what they would do at a crime scene so it helps and builds the realism of the performance. The final area of research I have looked into for Len is grief, it is a known fact that Len lost his wife before the show started but is still carrying his grief. It affects his work life and probably social one. This led to Federman to miss clues and flaws in Harvey 's letting him away when he could have caught him. For Harvey I have looked into two different things, The first one being shows and killers. The show I looked into was Dexter and I looked into the character Dexter. Now I am aware that it is a fictional character but how he balances his life as being an officer and being a serial killer. It helped me build a character and helped me to show the double face and two different sides of Harvey. I have also been researching real serial killers and noticed that they always have a pattern and I noticed that Mr Harvey pattern has always been that with each death there is always some sort of structure or will abandon their body underground or hidden. This is referenced in the book by the character Lana Johnson is killed under a highway in a house made of doors or from the show Flora Hernandez who was killed and dumped in a basement when she screamed. I personally think the reason that Harvey kills is because he is jealous of his victims having a lovely family and because of his bad childhood with his father. I think it could be a motive and helps me as an actor understand him more.

Task 2.2

For this production of the lovely bones,  I decided that because I still wanted to do some work on this skill I would be a part of the assistant directing team. This team was split into little parts. We would all help direct a scene but it is also our job to help out the class in different ways. My specific job was scheduling rehearsals, I would make sure everyone had cover scene’s that they might have missed either been not in or working with the other company and their production. Let's start with the scene that I directed, I helped to cover 2 of the ensemble scenes in the show which are both really big moments. The first scene was the very start of the show, we wanted to create a very powerful message with having some of the ensemble from each cast be one of Mr Harvey Victims in heaven. Kelly gave us the music for that scene and handed the rest to me. So I started by asking everyone to create a character with a name, age and a fact about them. After everyone had done that i organised them into an order by their main roles, what i mean by this is so the order does not get confusing over the three Cast and the Three nights I made the Order of people who speak in order of their characters. For example the Order goes Ruth's, Lyn's, Franny, Jack, Buckley and Abigail's. Once I sorted them, I then directed them to say the character information in order twice. The first time they say it the next person will start on the end of their sentences then the second time they do it they will start after the person before them says "Hi my name is" to create a cannon effect before they all will turn around to look up at the projector saying the lovely bones before they will all glide of stage like going to heaven to revel Susie.

(  The video is of Cast 1 )

The second scene that I help to direct was the Susie memorial scene. This scene takes place in Act 2 and it is a year since Susie went missing, so the whole time are coming together in the cornfield to remember her. I started off by organising everyone who is apart of the ensemble for each cast into 3 groups. I did this too stagger everyone when they where coming onto stage so group 1 would be first and group 3 would be last instead of everyone walking in at the same time. Then I work with another assistant director Erin Goodwin as she is a very good singer and came with the idea of having a song in this scene that everyone could sing. Lola suggest " Bridge over trouble water"  and it was the perfect song for this scene. So after Erin taught everyone the song we had to spend some time working out how loud they would be because there is still a scene happening in the salmon house and that did take a little bit of time but we got there in the end. To finish the scene, I directed Linsey and Abigail to have their moment on the bench as it is a very important moment that the audience needs to see. What happens in the moment is Abigail promise Linsey that she will never run away but she does later on in the show which has an Hugh effect on the family and to finish this moment off we made the crowd leave ones Abigail said her last line to revile Jack and Susie as she has her head on his shoulder / arm. Then he will walk away and it creates such a heart breaking moment which made the cast cry a lot.

I am very proud of the two scenes that I directed but I did help out in other scenes. When Jack has a heart attack near the end of the play I suggest that Susie should get up and start walking away like she is letting go of him. It helps play the subtext that Susie is finally letting go of all her connection on earth and finally going up to heaven. I mentioned before that we as assistant director had more individual tasks to create our little team. Mine is keeping up a schedule. I would make sure that if there were scenes that people missed or would like to go over again then I would put that into the schedule and if Kelly was busy doing something me and the other directors would have a look at it and make sure everyone is confident with it. For example on Wednesday 21st of may we spent the whole day working on a scene that the cast felt like they needed to work on. We worked on scenes like Ruth and Susie, The mat tent and the scene after that, The singing and many more little scenes that people just needed to cover. It really helps the cast to spend the day doing this because it has benefited the cast as a whole by having a day like this.

Task 2.3

Too demonstrate what I have done for these task, Firstly with the acting with all the research I have found i put it into my performance. I had it all in my mind mentally because some of the stuff he does in the book i could not do on stage. However it still gave me the bases of what type of person Harvey is when he's at come compared too his public image. I also made of note that he had strange pattern that he does in his house and i took inspiration from that. In the book he would have alarm clocks around his house to tell him when to turn off light or close curtains to make himself look normal. I decide that i would have everything in my house straight so i make sure that the doll house or my books are all straight like my house is too perfect. this play well with the end of act 1 because linsey moves something putting it out of place and when i enter the house i notices it been moved to help create tentation. Playing on his creepy nature I made him really nervous because I think what he likes is power and having control over his victims. For Len, I have portrayed him as still suffering from his late wife's death. It has affected his social life and his work effort. It creates more of a frustration with the audience at the beginning of the show until they find out about his wife. I also really worked with Lily day who my Abigail to then show on stage how much he wants to be with her but he cant because he is so torn by everything in his life. Finally I think at the end of the show Len moves on from his wife death and that how he can crack the case and find out that it was Harvey who killed Susie. 

Task 3.1 and 3.2

Task 4.1

Unit 12 was all about collaboration, so me and my friend Ben Spruce decided for our Fringe Festival we were going to do Bouncers. I was the director of our piece and I worked with another director called Scarlet Walker who was directing Shakers. We decided to be a part of one big massive group because it was based in the same time frame and was written by the same guy. Our idea was that we split our piece into 2 and we would do 4 scenes each. The most challenging thing about doing this piece was finding the comedy between the 3 different characters we all played. In our first scene we play Bouncers so we are much older men but we are also a little pervy as well. During the scene we are having banter with each other but mainly taking the micky out off Big Eric who thinks he is the "Hardest" out of the group but is the smallest and most angriest instead.  Our next character is both our second and fourth scene and that is the Lads. So for these scenes the lads are on a night out and they are being "Lads" by flirting with girls in a disgusting way however it is still funny because they think they're being really cool but they're not. The best example of this is when all the lads are lined up in the bar and they give out rude compliments to the shakers and in scene four we are all very drunk by this point because we are heading home after our night out. We had to spend a little time working on how to act drunk and the most realistic way to play it is act like trying to hide that you are drunk and it played off really well in the scene and we made the ending as funny as possible. But by far the finest character and our funniest scene was scene three when we all played the girls. So scene 2 goes straight into scene 3 and you see us Hard lades strip off our clothing to reveal the dresses we were wearing underneath our lads costume. we would act like the girl and we even did a little dance to make the audiences laugh as much as possible. Coming down to the set we had it all set in a bar and we would move the tables if we needed to show a different environment. 

Task 6.1

My journey through the Lovely bones has been a big one. To play two very different and contrasting characters has been difficult, From Len Ferederman who is a character that is full of guilt with his wife’s death and then having an affair with Abigail to Mr Harvey who is a complete monster with very complicated feelings. Starting with Len, I did work a lot with my peers and other cast members being Kieran and Lily. Kieran played my Jack salmon in Cast 1 Lovely bones. We did a lot of work together working on how Len and Jack fall out and the pressure of Len trying to find out who done it but can not because he has to deal with jack actions. However we did not want to just shout at each other for the whole show so we built up this tension between Jack and Len until the breaking point right after the cornfield scene when Jack and Len had their biggest argument. To finish off our little journey in our final scene together, I made the choice that I would feel more bad than anything because I feel the guilt of letting Harvey get away and also had just slept with his wife. Moving onto Lily who was my Abigail and it is a very complicated relationships. How they fall in love with each other is by knowing they are going through the same pain, Len lost his wife and Abigail lost Susie. Like Kieran relationships, we did not want to just start all of a sudden being lovers we needed to give it some depth. So with the scenes we would build up the flirting until Abigail breaks it off in our final scene together. We also had the help of our director/teacher Kelly with our romantic scene as she guided us thought her image of what she wanted. There were 5 scenes to build off. First one in the house when we find out about their shared trauma and when they both start liking each other. The next scene in the memorial scene when both of them share a moment and Len help Abigail when Linsey faints. Next we have our first kissing scene where we both (subtext) admit we like each other and will be there for each other. Then it's the Mall scene where we meet up to go and make love ( this is implied in our show by going into the wings ) this being the peaking point of their relationship until she realises that it does not chance anything so in their final scene together she just does not care really and its a sad moment for Len as now he not only lost Abigail's but feel guilty about Susie and his Wife. Me and Lily work very hard on the way we looked at each other to the way we would kiss to show how close we were then finally work on the way she does not care anymore. Moving onto Harvey, There were quite a few people who I worked with during this project. The first one being Jasmine who is my Susie Salmon. Jasmine and I spent a lot of time working on our dynamic between the two characters when she is alive and dead. Our most important scene that we both worked on together was I would say the hardest scene in the show and that would be the Bunker. In this scene Mr Harvey has got Susie right where he wants him and has to-do some horrific things. Now to be very clear we did NOT DO ANY of them Horrific things onstage it was only implied however it's about getting it right and not overstepping the line as we still need to perform the moments before. Me and Jasmine work very close with each other and very close with Kelly in that scene to ensure that Me and Jasmine know each other’s boundaries and also Kelly making sure that I don't overstep that line however the scene is beautiful and me and Jasmine are both happy with it. The next person I work with is Kieran again. He stills plays Jack Salmon but we have a completely different interaction. The scene that we had together was the Mat tent scene which is I think the turning point in the show. Until this point it looks like Harvey will get away with the murder however he needs to prove an alibi so he creates the mat tent that he learnt from reading these books. Jack sees this and comes out to his garden to check it out however as he helps him build the tent they all connect hands. This is the point in the show when Jack has his suspicions about Harvey. Me and Kieran work a lot on how we build up the scene and to make sure that the aftermath of the touch was very intense. We also had a lot of fun playing and experimenting with the scene and seeing what we could do with it. The final person I worked with during this show was Scarlet who played Linsey. Our scene that we worked together on was the ending of Act 1 when she breaks into my house. We both came up with the idea for her to move something in the house for me to notice and we agreed it was the milk jug. which created more tension. There is also a certain part at the end of the scene where Linsey starts ripping the paper out of the book and we made it for as long as we could before it was too long but after that I would take a moment to look at the stair before going for her. I think it just created even more tension which was just perfect for that scene.

Task 6.2

Now moving onto my performances, I will split this section into 4 different sections review all of my Roles during this Project...

Detective Len Fenerman

(Pro's)

Looking back on that performance, I would say that my accent was quite good considering it was an area of concern for me. My accent during rehearsal would sometime get lost and would sound like the wrong accent completely but I am very happy that i had a good strong accent for the performances. I also like the way I would interact with my space as I made sure I was not pulling focus away from the main scene happening, however every time they look back into my space something would have changed if that was the evidence bored or how messy my desk was. I also loved the way i interacted with my props my favour was my ring and photo of my wife. After the first kissing scene i take the ring off and put the photo in the draw of my desk then come back to it later after losing Abigail. I think it help me play the subtext that he was so distracted with Abigail and Jack that he let Mr Harvey get away which makes him feel worse. I also think my interaction with other Cast members.

(Cons) 

I think I need to spend more time in some moments like straight after the house scene. I would just walk away. I wish I spent more time in rehearsal and see if I could maybe have done something without again pulling focus.  I also think I could have worked a little more on my diction, as in scenes where I am angry I would sometimes lose words to how fast I was speaking. It was not too bad but I slipped up one or two words in that scene. The last thing I will point out is that I wish I had more emotion in some parts.

(Overall) 

I am very happy with my performances of Len, there are places where I wished I spent more time on, however everyone that came and saw the show loved my performances of it and I am very proud of what I had accomplished with Len. I would say I tick off every goal I had for this role.

Mr George Harvey

(Pro's) 

I know that my biggest positive from playing this role was how creepy I was. How much I would make the audiences feel uneasy every time I walk onto stage. I also thought that my posture and body language was very good during these scenes. I am also very proud that I did not pull focus when doing my actions around the house and speaking about the action. I am very happy with them as they were creepy and still nothing over the top. I am so happy with my accents as for this show they have been a challenge for me however I liked how i had my house voice where it is a lot more soft and my outside/ talking to other people voice was more vibrant. I like the Character choice that everything had to be perfect in my house and how everything had to be straight to give it an uneasy feeling when the audiences. To finish things off I loved my interaction with the other cast members and the way I acted around them. I played so many red flags signs that the character did not notice, I did this because I wanted the audiences to see how frustrating it is for Susie.

(Con's) 

I know that the biggest con I have from that performance was playing creepy at the wrong time. This happened during the memorial scene where Linsey faints after seeing me. Now during rehearsal I would give a little wave to her to be creepy, however Kelly mentioned to me in the interval that I should not have done as it was just too much and that he would not do that as he could have got caught realistically. The second note she gave was about one action I did in my house. It was not too creepy but again i was just being to big, What happened was during the scene where Linsey and her friend are taking about solve a murder they mention about a killer making a mistake and Kelly wanted us to make a mistake on stage however she wanted it to be more sullen because i could of pulled focused. I am very happy she told me this during the Intervale because I was a lot more careful during the second act of the show.  

(Overall) 

I am happy with my performance of Harvey. I think again I did a very good job playing the creepy side of him but if I was going to do the show again I would bring it in a little during the scene where it is not just only me. I got a very positive review after the show which I am happy about, however I am hoping I did a good job.

Cop/Ensemble

(Pros)

I am very happy with performances as a cop, I think I did all my scene very well and i did a good job of not pulling focus. I am very happy with my sing during the one year later scene in the cornfield.

(Cons) 

During the dress run Kelly mention about the cops being to Loud. we work on this note by planning who goes on when and only mouthing when we where not speaking.

Production Role Review 

I think that I did a very good job with being an assistant director during this show. I think I have helped Kelly with some jobs so she could focus more on the scene and it has been really fun directing and organising the next few scenes. One of my goals this year was to do more directing and I could happily say that I smashed that role. I have also learnt a lot from it. From thinking about the scene down to helping the other cast needs. I am very thankful to be given the opportunity to do something like this in our Production of the Lovely Bones.