Theatre on film

So this process was very intertwined with a lot of the other training that we did during January and February so as I was documenting the process and writing my thoughts, I thought that the best format for me to do this in would be to create a day by day mini review about everything I’ve been doing to see my development. So here it all is…

The 3rd of January

The 3rd of January was our first day back at college after the Christmas Holiday and despite it being a little early I was excited to get back into a good routine and be productive again. In the morning we spoke about some of the different directors we liked and I kind of realised I don't pay enough attention to the styles of directing that I enjoy the most.

I thought about some of my favourite films and why I liked them and who directed them and one that immediately came to mind was Greta Gerwig’s film Little Women. What I love about Little Women is the intertwining stories that were all vastly different that surrounded the four sisters Jo, Amy, Meg and Beth, as they grew up. In my opinion, seeing the different relationships they form and how they interact with each other was more interesting than the overall story, I find that I prefer shows and films that hash out their characters nicely rather than just relying on a good story and a random group of bland characters as I find that seeing the dynamics between characters is my favourite way to connect to and experience a story.

Another director whose style I love is Chris Columbus and I actually had no idea that he directed many of my favourite films until recently. I loved the Harry Potter series when I was growing up and the comfort of watching the hero beat the villain over and over was something that drew me to his films. But what also drew me in was his way of pouring his whole heart into directing seen in some of his other projects such as The Help which is one of my all-time favourite films, I loved how It functions as a historical fiction that aids in the discussion of significant social concerns and the many societal variables that are still relevant today.

We then watched Shane Meadows’ A Room for Romeo Brass.

Shane Meadows directed A Room for Romeo Brass, a 1999 British adolescent comedy-drama film, which he co-wrote with Paul Fraser. Starring Andrew Shim as Romeo Brass, Ben Marshall as Gavin Woolley, and Paddy Considine as Morell, the film follows Romeo and Gavin, a pair of 12-year-old friends, as they navigate the challenges of puberty in an English town. When Morell, a striking older man, enters their life, their friendship is put to the test. Romeo and Morell develop an unusual bond that strains the boys' friendship and leads to conflict. But in the end, they put aside their disagreements and resume their relationship while picking up important life lessons in the process. The story masterfully captures the spirit of childhood friendships and the hard reality of growing up with a combination of humour, drama, and a hint of heartache.

I love films about people rather than an overly complicated plot so seeing the well-developed relationships between the characters in this film was lovely. It is so clear that the actors understood the motivations behind each of their characters' actions so watching them felt more like being a fly on the wall in your neighbour's house than watching actors in a film. I also loved the film's use of shots to help highlight the dynamic relationships between the characters, there are so many moments where the boys are framed very differently to morell to show their vulnerability and we get to visually see their friendship dynamic change as Romeo and Morell become close.

Paddy Considine’s performance was so great at displaying Morell as a very dynamic character, his twitchy and eccentric behaviours merge all of his different personality types that we see throughout the film. Morell is initially portrayed as a mixture between a desperate oner looking for love and a juvenile playful person who shares a lot of banter with Romeo and Gavin. Initially, Morell mirrors the friendship dynamic between the boys to get close to them but once he gains their trust, he begins to create a rift between Gavin and Romeo which can be seen through the arrangement of the three when in the car on the way to the beach, whilst Romeo and Morell sit in the front, Gavin sits in the back almost foreshadowing him getting left behind. Considine does a great job of keeping Morell just on the line until Romeo leaves to get the three of them ice cream and Morell threatens Gavin and his family which exposes his truly unhinged, physically and emotionally violent personality. After this moment, we become aware of how much of a wildcard Morell is, we never know what version of him will be on screen next, and thus he becomes a highly unnerving character to watch.

One of my favourite aspects of this film was the authentic portrayal of the friendship between Romeo and Gavin, the chemistry between Ben Marshall and Andrew Shim is truly so enthralling to watch and the way they tease, play and pester each other seems so genuine and convince us of their closeness and their dynamic as two childhood friends growing up together. I think that this is why it is so impactful when we witness the growth in distance between the boys when Romeo stops being there for Gavin. A moment that really highlighted this distance for me was in the scene when Gavin wakes up from his surgery and asks his mother why she did not bring Romeo to see him, this scene is such a contrast to the beginning of the film where Romeo is shown as being very present for Gavin in his medical journey and even goes to physiotherapy with him. I think this was very powerful in showing the effect that Romeo has on Gavin’s life as it is clear how much Gavin struggles with not having his best friend there for him during his recovery. These few scenes also contain some of my favourite shots in the film, both of which make him look small and thus display Gavin’s vulnerability. In the first one, it is clear Gavin feels as though he has people (his mother and Romeo) supporting him as they are positioned behind him whereas the second shot highlights his feelings of loneliness post-surgery by showing him alone in his bed.

Whilst watching this film I don't think I ever at any point thought to myself that I knew where it was going, because Morell’s character is so unpredictable and threatening, as the audience we are somewhat unsure of how the film will end and if the boys will reunite. This is further supported by the power dynamic between Morell and Romeo which shows us how influenced Romeo has become and led me to question what would happen in the end. It is clear that Romeo’s priorities are not in the right place because he really looks up to Morell, he somewhat treats him as a new father figure after his estranged father tries to reenter his life and is so driven by his hatred of his father that he is overly trusting of Morell and is thus open to his manipulation. Again the cinematography in this film did an amazing job of showing us this dynamic, many wide and high shots were used to make Romeo look vulnerable in comparison to Morell, especially in the scene captured from above the staircase in Morell’s house where he attacks Romeo and Romeo realises the danger he is in.

When Morell is eventually removed from the picture and Gavin and Romeo reconnect, Gavin's compassion and Romeo's recognition of the fact that he mistreated Gavin, is a great moment of growth that further convinces us of their friendship. When these two reconcile, it honestly feels so real and natural that it only makes us relate with them more because who hasn’t had to apologise to someone after a disagreement? The way they overcome their difficulties so realistically and grow from the situation makes the portrayal of their friendship so satisfying to watch.

Overall I think the film was a very relatable and realistic portrayal of flawed friendships and the realities of taking off the rose-tinted glasses as you grow up. The actors did such a wonderful job of creating really distinctive and layered characters and managed to set the perfect tone of the film by mixing comedy and drama.

The 4th of January

On the 4th the rest of Miskin were all back from the holidays and we all got together for some activities. Before this, we walked around the studio and did some icebreaker exercises, speaking about our morning in synch with each other, balancing our weight leaning with each other so we don't fall etc. I can’t lie it was very overwhelming being with everyone, especially since I had never worked with most of them before but I was not nearly as nervous as I was when I first started at Miskin and had to introduce myself to everyone. I think that since joining I have become so much more self-assured and excited to work with new people, I used to get so caught up in what other people thought of me before I even spoke to them but since getting to work with new people I’ve realised how limiting that can be when working with people and so I’ve learnt to open up more. I think that's also why I’ve been so excited to start this new term and get to know more people outside of our five-person company.

Then we were put in groups of about 8 people at random and were given a page from the story The Two Gentlemen of Verona by Shakespeare, I actually quite enjoy working with Shakespeare as I love the process of breaking down the meaning behind the poetry and learning how best I can convey that. In this story though it was mostly easy to understand the meaning and so we were able to work out what was going on quite quickly which made it a lot easier for us to work with. We started by working out how we were going to present the story as a requirement of the exercise was that we had to use all of the words in the section given and could not leave anything out, it was really nice to be in a group with people I had not worked with much before as we came up with a lot of new ideas that I doubt we would've gone within a different group and it was nice to get to know how other people approach a task like this.

We did not want to go down the route of having one person narrate and everyone else acts out the lines because we wanted to think outside of the box a bit and have fun with creating something a bit different. We ended up deciding to act out the story silently and have multiple narrators throughout who spoke the story off the page including the speech, we thought this would be a good idea as one of the other rules was that once we got on stage we couldn’t leave until the end of our performance so this way we could add more people to it as the story progressed instead of having everyone on stage from the beginning and overcomplicating the scenes. It also made things easier for us as we only had one copy of the story and this way we could just pass the script to the next narrator instead of each of us having to learn our lines or have our own copy of the words in front of us.

One thing I’m glad we did was we got it on its feet quite quickly, instead of spending ages theorising about how we could perform it, we assigned roles and started playing around with our choices of physicality and proxemics. I think that we easily could've gotten stuck sitting around talking about how it should look but we managed to agree to not overthink and just try ideas out to keep things moving because even if you don't have much time it doesn't mean you can't come up with a good idea, it may not be perfect but it doesn't have to be. I do wish that we had embraced the comedy in the story, it's so easy to get caught up in trying to get the job done and forgetting to have fun with the work. When we watched everyone else perform what they had been working on, most of them made their part of the story very theatrical and they had leaned into the comical nature of the piece more by being very expressive so I think that if I were to do this again I would have gone for a less naturalistic viewpoint of the story to make it funnier.

The 9th of January

We were given feedback on our last process and it was nice to see how much I improved in the process of devising The Bamboo Tree. I've gotten a lot better at making my ideas known, I think that contributing my ideas has been something I’ve struggled with a lot as in our company there are so many loud voices in the room yet so few of us overall so I’ve found it difficult to let my ideas be heard at times, recently I have gotten better at putting my voice in the room but I hope to get better at involving myself in problem-solving discussions, contributing my opinions more and taking more opportunities to show my leadership skills. I also need to work on organising my research so I can better incorporate it when writing about our processes.

We also spoke a bit about this process and the new company that we worked with for this project. Us Level 4’s were combined with Level 3 Acting for camera first years and second years to create a Theatre-on-film project together. On this day the second years weren't in so we worked with the first years. We were put in groups and given a script to act out on film, it was great to have the chance to play around with being on camera as I’ve never acted on camera before even though I took on a smaller part. But having a smaller part in the piece meant I got the chance to help direct which was fun as I haven’t directed since Gwen and I got to direct the level 2s. This was a great learning experience for me to see how acting on film differs from live performance, being able to have multiple takes and choose the best one made rehearsing it a lot quicker as we did not have to worry about getting it done perfectly first time as would be the case for performing live. I quickly learnt it's best to break up the shots a bit more so there's less time wasted when doing multiple takes and you get a chance to use a mix of wider shots and close-ups to direct the audience’s attention.

The 11th of January

In the morning we began warming up and when our directors came in we discussed why we are expected to warm ourselves up and what the purpose of a warm-up is. We spoke about the Importance of properly using warm-ups to prepare you to take in information, take on direction, and be your best self to make sure that your body, mind and voice are all ready to work and won't get damaged for example so you don't pull a muscle or lose your voice or get burnt out. We also discussed how it is up to each of us to make sure we are effectively preparing ourselves for work and how our directors leave us to our own devices to do our warm-ups so we are prepared for when we enter the industry because no one will give us a warm-up to do or tell us to warm up, it's just expected as you are responsible for making sure that you are correctly prepared. Additionally, it's important to know that there is not necessarily a right or wrong way to warm up because every actor has different needs and thus they may focus more on a specific area, I need to work on preparing my body by myself before we even begin to warm up as a company because I find myself struggling during the warm-ups due to my mobility and pain issues and so doing my exercises and stretches to build up my strength before warming up with everyone else would benefit me in the long run as it might make it easier for me to participate in the warm-ups.

Once we were all warmed up, we began an exercise in which we got in a circle and had to throw the ball to someone and connect with them as you do it. This exercise helped highlight the importance of creating moments of giving and receiving when in a scene with someone else and making sure that you are not just taking. To show this further Tommy and Carleigh showed us a scenario in which they pretended to be filming a scene where Tommy confronts Carleigh and the camera is on him then partway through the scene Carleigh left, which caused Tommy to be unable to continue because even though she didn't have to be visually in the scene, her absence made the scene much more difficult as Tommy was not being given anything to bounce off of. It's so important to be aware of this and to know that being an actor is about much more than just hitting your marks, you're not just waiting for your cue, saying your line, and then waiting for your next cue, anyone can do that. You have to listen, react, and respond so that everyone in the scene is being shown in the right way otherwise the audience can become confused as to the dynamic being created. For example, if your character is supposed to be a terrible villain but the other characters don't act threatened by you, your status is diminished and thus you cannot look good without the support of the other actors.

Then we began another exercise in which one person would walk up to another, high-five them and then they would swap places and it would be the other person’s turn to high-five someone and we did this until everyone had a turn. And then we combined these two exercises and had to do them at the same time whilst multiple balls went around at once which was quite overwhelming at first so I felt myself panic a bit and try and step back. When I get overwhelmed I tend to shut down and just try to avoid the thing that is stressing me out as much as possible but this time I took a moment to re-centre myself and just focus on the things that mattered which were the person throwing the ball to me, the person I had to throw the ball to and the person I was meant to high-five. Once I did that, the game became so much easier as I knew that I did not have to worry about anything other than those few things. Just as I thought that I had the hang of it though, another element was added where we had to catch another ball from a different person and name a country before throwing it to someone else, again I felt myself panic a little with how much was going on but I reminded myself that I only had to focus on two more people. And then once I thought I was starting to get the hang of that, we had to catch another ball from someone else and name a colour before passing it on to another person.

Once we got to this point in the game everything got very chaotic very quickly and people just stopped listening to each other, all of the balls got mixed up at one point or another and at times there were two balls of the same category going around at once, the clapping stopped a good few times and everything just fell out of sync the longer the game went wrong. I think that because our company is a mix of three different groups who haven't worked together yet, we struggled a bit at the beginning because we were still learning about each other but even though chaos ensued when the colour ball was added, towards the end we started falling into a bit of a rhythm and started synching with each other which was exciting to see.

After lunch, we started speaking about the differences between film and theatre so that we could understand the genre of theatre-on-film which was what we were going to be creating during this process.

Most people’s immediate reactions were to argue that the main difference between theatre and film is that theatre is much bigger however I feel like this is a very surface-level comparison, I feel the outward expression of theatre on stage is likely to include more elements of non-naturalism as the general perception of theatre is it being performed to a large audience who are watching from afar and thus for everyone to see the action on stage the physicality of the performers must be slightly exaggerated or bigger. However, theatre comes in a variety of forms and thus this description of theatre having to be massive doesn't necessarily apply to all of its forms, for example in promenade theatre the actors and audience are generally very close to one another so using big facial expressions and massive movements is not standard. Additionally, the idea that theatre is bigger also argues that film is smaller which I think is definitely not the case. Yes, generally filmed projects are more naturalistic and contained but the massive emotional impact on the audience is still there, it's just that because cameras can pick up so much, the emotion is portrayed differently so that the camera captures what it’s supposed to. So I completely disagree with the idea that theatre is bigger than film or vice versa because that is a comparison of style which differs greatly between directors and performers, some theatre is smaller like in immersive promenade theatre, whilst some theatre is bigger like when performed on a small stage in a massive auditorium and likewise some film is smaller like in the drama subgenre that embraces realism and some film is big like in musicals that contain massive dance sequences.

I think one of the main differences between theatre and film is their accessibility, going to watch a theatre performance is a lot less accessible to most people than just getting out your phone and watching something on Netflix. Going to the theatre is much more expensive and time-consuming than a Netflix subscription, you have to account for the time and money spent on things like working out how to travel there and back, food and drink you might need, the time you need to get there and back, the cost of tickets themselves etc, whereas at any time you can just pick up a device and stream any film or tv show you want.

Once we began to understand the differences between film and theatre we spoke about what constitutes filmed theatre and theatre-on-film. Filmed theatre follows the guidelines of a performance made for stage that has then later been filmed for people to watch as though they were in the audience when it was performed, whilst theatre-on-film utilises the camera so it practically becomes another character in the story that shows the audience what is happening in a way that could be recreated in person. So for example, in a filmed theatre performance they might do multiple takes of the show and then splice them up to show the best takes of each moment. In contrast, theatre-on-film must be filmed in one continuous shot and require no editing in post-production to tell the story so that if someone were to stand in for the camera, they would have the same experience live as they would watching the film back. It can be a very fine line to walk, so it is quite a difficult concept to wrap your head around but I think the more we play around with it, the more I will understand it, which I’m excited for.

We were then put into random groups of about 10 and told to brainstorm some ideas for a theatre-on-film piece that we could make by asking each other questions and just going with our gut instincts. An idea that I had was having the camera film the perspective of a person’s favourite objects as they grow up, for example, it would start with a dummy or a teddybear being given to the child and then it may get lost behind the sofa and then the perspective could switch to a toy car and then to a mirror and then to a plate of food or a wedding ring etc. However, as much as we liked this idea, we did not think that it would work as a theatre-on-film project as it would most likely look better if there were cuts between the objects to better explain the concept and thus it would break the rules of theatre-on-film and as fun as it is to break the rules, you have to learn how to stick to them first.

The idea that we chose was to have the story set in a waiting room with a lot of different kinds of doctors and patients that “accidentally” get locked in and realise that time stops passing and that the receptionist in the waiting room seems to know something about it and then one by one each of the characters begin to feel sick and faint.

But there was a catch, once all of the groups had written out a rough plan for our ideas, they were swapped with another group’s plan so we now had a different idea to work on. Our new concept was still set in a hospital except it follows the life of someone in each of their visits to the hospital beginning with his birth and ending with his death. I was pretty interested to see how we were going to approach this because obviously, this was not our original idea so I was intrigued to see how we would develop this concept and make it our own in the next week.

The 12th of January

This week we started focusing on our monologues for auditions so we were told to prepare for a mock audition on Friday, I was nervous at first because I get so in my head about auditions but afterwards I realised there was no need as I was well prepared and so was able to relax and just be myself, which granted was easier as it was only a mock audition but it was reassuring all the same. It was so helpful to have a practice audition and receive personal feedback on my monologues as it helped put into perspective how auditions don't need to be all scary as they're just as much an opportunity for you as they are for the panel to see if the place/job is right for you.

The 16th of January

In the morning we spoke about not being afraid to go with your gut when we were answering some questions, I think that this is especially important as trusting your gut is something that can impact you as an actor, knowing how to react to certain things that can arise on stage requires the ability to listen to your instincts and knowing that even if you don't do what’s expected of you or don’t answer a question in the way that was anticipated, you’re not necessarily wrong for it. I also think that being asked questions about your work is vital for actors to learn how to articulate their knowledge for things like auditions in which you only have a short period to demonstrate your skills and passion for your craft.

After our warm-up Carleigh got us to begin an exercise where we pretended to paint the room with our bodies and then she put on music and told us to let it influence our movements which in just a few hours, led us to devise a short theatre-on-film piece before lunch. Honestly, I was nervous about my physicality when the music went on as it's never been my strong suit and I tend to get in my head but as the exercise went on I loosened up a bit. I sometimes have trouble with letting myself just feel things as they are and stopping myself from overanalysing things too much. I want to look at exploring my physicality a lot more, Carleigh said that living is a full-body experience and so is acting and it got me thinking about how little use my physicality to my advantage and thus this is something that I want to explore down the line.

When the song was switched to I Put a Spell on You by Annie Lennox I found it a lot easier to let myself move with the song, I think I found it easier because it was a little more dynamic and so I got more into it and just did what I felt was right for the moment.

Then as a whole company, we showed each other what we had done and we put it all together to create a short theatre-on-film piece which was such a fun process. Picking out what different people were doing and working out the emotions it provoked to create a story about a couple who go against the grain and then seeing where it led us was such a fun experience, some of us dropped in our own stories and created entire scenes just based on something we found funny or a holiday that we had that ended up being added into the piece as well and it all came together really well. I enjoyed this process so much as it helped me see how creative we could be, in just a few hours we got to see how we could come up with an entire story and explore so many different ideas in such a short space of time. It was also really interesting to see how we were able to bounce from one idea to another and not only come up with so many ideas from just listening to a few lines of a song but we also managed to incorporate those ideas into a cohesive performance.

The workshop in the morning definitely changed our group perspective in the afternoon when we devised and filmed the project that we had been given the week before, it led us in a much more theatrical and unnaturalistic direction and we found ourselves drawn to using physical theatre a lot more than we had originally considered. I also that the fact that the original concept was not our own helped us tremendously when devising as we were a lot less married to the ideas than we were originally. This meant we felt a lot more able to play around with the original concept and work out what it was that we wanted to show through the film rather than sticking to what the other group had in mind for it. I had so much fun coming up with ideas on how to give the original idea our own twist and overall it was really rewarding to see how fun it can be to break the rules and refind the love and excitement in the process of crafting a piece so that in the future, I can do it myself and create my own work that I’m passionate about.

The 18th of January

We were asked to research an unsolved mystery we were interested in so we could talk about it with everyone, I found it hard to choose which one to present as I love learning about mysteries, specifically true crime mysteries so I revisited the cases I found interesting and I rediscovered the JonBenet Ramsey case and fell down a rabbit hole. This case was one of the first cases that got me interested in looking at true crime and so revisiting it after a while was really interesting as I got to look at it from a completely new perspective. It was also really cool to find out information that had been discovered since I had initially looked at the case and I found learning about new suspects and leads that had since been discovered really interesting. I watched lots of videos and read some articles about the case to create my own report of the case that included everything I found which I’ll include below.

JonBenét Ramsey

JonBenet was born on the 6th of August 1990 and lived with her father John, mother Patsy, and brother Burke in Colorado. From an early age, she competed in many child beauty pageants and won many, her last being on the 17th of December in 1996 where she was crowned “Little Miss Christmas” and won a medal for talent.

Not long after Christmas time rolled around, the holiday season had always been a huge event in the Ramsey home, with Xmas trees in every room and this year John and Patsy bought Jonbenet a new bike which she excitingly rode around on in an alleyway behind their house until the family had to hurry back inside to get ready for Christmas dinner at a friend’s. The family returned late Christmas night and John carried his daughter from the car to bed before Patsy changed her into her PJs. The family woke up early the next day as they were going to celebrate the holidays with Johns' other children from his first marriage on a Disney cruise however when Patsy woke up around 5:30 am, she found that Jonbente was missing and a two-and-a-half-page ransom note on the staircase demanding $118,000 in exchange for her safe return. The abductor identified themself as part of “a small foreign faction” that respects the business of John Ramsey but not the country he serves and they stated, “I will call between 8 and 10 am tomorrow to instruct you on delivery”.

At 5:52 am the police received a phone call from the obviously distressed Patsy reporting that John Benet was missing. It's been said that there were many officers, family members and friends at the scene, so the crime scene itself was heavily compromised but most left after a few hours after searching the house and finding no trace. It was suggested that John conduct a second search of the house as he would better be able to notice if anything seemed out of place. During this search, John went down to the basement where he found the body of JonBenet, she was found lying on a blanket that was wrapped around her, with duck tape over her mouth, her hands tied above her head and a cord around her neck. The autopsy ruled her cause of death as “asphyxia by strangulation with associated craniocerebral trauma”. A paintbrush of Patsy’s had been used to tighten the cord that had strangled her and DNA was found on her clothes and underwear from an unknown male who was not found among 1.5 million samples. But despite there being 2 sets of unidentified footprints on the scene, the snow outside the house had been left undisturbed.

A few interesting things to note about the ransom letter the Ramseys received was that it was unusually lengthy and specific, the number of $118,000 as a payment was close to the amount that John Ramsey had recently received as a bonus at work that year. Additionally, the stationary that had been used to write the note had come from inside the house which brought a lot of suspicion around the integrity of this note as it would indicate that the killer entered the house, wrote the note inside and then killed JonBenet whilst the rest of the family were still in the house. Analysis of the notepad also found part of a practice letter.

Suspects

John and Patsy quickly became large suspects in this case. A detective, Linda Arnt waited with the parents and reportedly found it peculiar that neither of them reacted when 10 am rolled around and the hijackers had not contacted them. And Patsy and John were quick to gather legal representation so the theory emerged that one of her parents had accidentally killed JonBenet and so the family staged a crime scene to appear as though she was murdered by someone else. Lou Smit was a retired detective, who was called out of retirement to help with the case largely suspected the family, but handwriting analysis ruled out John and Patsy as inconclusive and as investigations continued detectives also examined alternative possibilities. From the evidence of unknown shoe imprints and a potential stun gun wound on JonBenet’s body, he believed that she had been murdered by an unknown individual, however, he later dropped out of the case as many detectives were still focused on John and Patsy.

Another theory is that JonBenet’s 9-year-old brother Burke was the cause of her death, this theory stemmed from the reveal that JonBenet’s intestines contained undigested pineapple and whilst some was found in the kitchen, Patsy denied preparing this for JonBenet. Thus the theory goes, Burke was hungry and got some pineapple as a midnight snack but JonBenet took a piece causing Burke to allegedly strike her with a torch, then believing her to be dead, Patsy and John covered up the murder scene.

A local man, Bill Mcreynolds visited the house just 2 days prior to the murder and he himself had had his own daughter kidnapped 22 years before. He had apparently been very close with JonBenet, so much so that he even brought a vial of glitter she had gifted him into heart surgery and he asked his wife to mix his ashes with said glitter if he died. His wife had also written a play about a child getting molested and murdered in a basement. However, there is no actual evidence to suggest he could be the murderer.

Gary Oliva was a neighbour of the Ramseys at the time who was arrested multiple times. In 200o he was arrested on unrelated drug charges and was found carrying a photo of JonBenet in his backpack and his reason behind this was “I felt she was an exceptional girl whose death was an exceptional loss, I felt the need to build a monument, a shrine, to remember this little girl” he was also later arrested in 2016 for child pornography. A friend from school revealed in an interview that a day after the murder Gary Oliva called him saying “I hurt a little girl. I hurt a little girl.” in Colorado. Not only is this crazy in itself but records show that no other girl was harmed in that area that night. Additionally, Gary Oliva had also used a similar method of asphyxiation then that in this case when he attempted to strangle his own mother with a phone cord. However, Gary Oliva was not a match to the DNA evidence found on JonBenet.

John Mark Karr is also part of the list of suspects in this case but was not considered until 2006. Karr was a divorced father and schoolteacher who confessed to the murder of JonBenet via a series of emails to a Journalism professor, Micheal Tracey, Tracey had messaged back for 4 years to gain Karr's trust. Karr's emails bore heavy similarity to the ransom note and he somehow knew things about the family such as Patsy’s mother’s nickname. He revealed that he was in love with JonBenet and later confessed to hitting JonBenet in the head with a torch. He also maintained that he had not acted alone which could be supported by the notion of two sets of unidentified footprintsAuthorities in Britain, Thailand and the US were able to track Karr down in Bangkok Thailand on the 16th of August 2008 where he had fled to escape child pornography charges. But Karr’s DNA did not match that found at the scene and according to Mark Beckner the lead investigator on the JonBenet Ramsey case for a time, his confession did not match the evidence at the scene, they knew in “18 hours he was not the guy” and they were able to confirm he was not in Colorado at the time but was pictured in Georgia.

Recently a DNA expert Dr. Henry Lee, studied the DNA from the JonBenet scene and found that the DNA might have been transferred from the manufacturing process which he proved by testing an unopened bag of underwear that also had unknown DNA on it. Thus they concluded that their belief that the DNA evidence found at the scene had to belong to the killer was untrue so theoretically any suspect could have been the killer.

We all did an exercise in which we mimed spinning plates on a pole which I found surprisingly fun, I never really considered playing around with mime before but I enjoyed trying out different levels and thinking outside the box whilst interacting with others and seeing their perspectives on the instructions. I had the idea of “pushing the plate through the pole and spinning it in the middle of the pole” Then when we began using levels I envisioned the spinning plate as the wheel of a car driving me over hills and country roads so I played around with this and adding the noises of cars, planes and rollercoasters. I found that when watching everyone perform their take on the spinning plates, they were most engaging when you could tell that they were visualising their props and genuinely believing they were there so before I did it myself, I took a moment to think about where my props were, what they looked like and how I wanted to use them. I really liked Brandon’s idea of how he balanced multiple poles and plates on top of each other, his visualisation was so good that I could envision how the plates were arranged and how he was balancing them.

When doing the exercise with other people in front of everyone we missed the opportunity for a joke between Lexi, Ade and me, as me and Lexi were not fully aware of our surroundings and Ade wasn’t obvious in his actions. This sparked a conversation about our actor monitor vs our character monitor and the necessity that they have the right balance when appropriate, as an actor we have to be aware of what is happening in the scene so that we can complete our objectives but we must also be aware of our characterisation and what is going on for the character so we give an engaging and believable performance. If these are not balanced correctly, your audience may see any potential mistakes if your actor monitor isn’t high enough and if your character monitor isn't high enough you’ll become an actor who just hits their marks rather than a creative. Me and Lexi could have fixed this by turning our actor monitors up and being more aware of our surroundings whilst Ade could have done the same and made his action bigger so that we all could have noticed it.

After this, we watched back the theatre-on-film projects we created in our groups and talked about what we had learnt from them. Many of us, including our group, overused the camera at times and upon playing our short clips back we realised how crucial it is to not overuse the camera and to let it be still at times so that our audience gets the opportunity to sit and process what’s happening in the shot. Something else that was really important for our group in understanding our style before playing around with the piece so we could make our performance as cohesive as possible. We had wanted our piece to include elements of physical theatre to show things that we couldn’t in a naturalistic style like how we showed the conception of a baby by dancing and how we showed time passing by creating a clock sequence however, our use of naturalistic acting between these moments made them feel out of place as we hadn’t stuck to one style/created our own consistent style.

In theatre/acting, the style refers to how theatrical ideas are presented on stage. I found a revision page on the BBC Bitesize site which I will link here that explains how to understand different styles so that we can choose/create one that will work for our chosen audience. When creating a performance, different genres or styles can provide a structure for the work. In the beginning, it's crucial to explore various contrasting approaches. Some popular genres include theatre in education (TiE), physical theatre, Epic theatre, political theatre, and commedia dell'arte. It's important to consider the target audience and ensure that the content of the devised piece is suitable and appealing to them. By learning about these different styles, trying them out yourself, and figuring out what works for you and your target audience you can find your own individual style. The site also taught me a bit about some different styles of theatre that I noted down.

Theatre in education (TiE) is usually aimed at young people and has a strong moral or social message. TiE often involves a small group of actors playing multiple roles, directly addressing the audience, using narration, and encouraging audience participation to make it educational and engaging.

Physical theatre focuses on using physical movement to express emotions. It incorporates precise gestures, ensemble work, body language, mime, and the portrayal of emotional states through physicality. This stylized approach allows for captivating theatricality and movement in performances.

Brecht is closely associated with Epic theatre. It often has a non-linear plot and episodic moments, creating a montage effect to highlight important issues in the story and allow for a focus on small details. For audiences to make unbiased, logical decisions on social or political issues, they should avoid getting emotionally invested in the performance and instead stay objective. This approach makes use of a number of dramatic devices, including songs, placards, direct addresses, and narration, to let the audience step back from the intensity of what is happening and consider the situation in front of them logically.

Political theatre can be used to expose an injustice or convey a campaign to an audience to alter society. It may be helpful to spread awareness about a certain topic, but at the beginning of the creative process, it's crucial to conduct research on various topics and decide what message you want to get over to the audience. A subgenre of theatre called political satire parodies specific political subjects, sometimes to bring about change by publicly humiliating certain people or even whole governments.

Commedia dell'arte originated in Italy around the sixteenth century. It features extremely obvious, basic, and amusing plot lines, which are frequently around love, money, or food and carried out by stock characters of the time, such as naive elderly men and naughty servants. Character identification was achieved by the employment of distinct clothes and masks, which should be included in each performance in this genre. Pantomime, wrestling, acrobatics, improvisation, juggling, and lazzi are all common elements of commedia dell'arte. Lazzi are standard comic routines used in Commedia. Performers had many examples of this as part of their repertoire, and they would use improvisatory skills to integrate them into the dozens of different commedia scenarios, which consisted of largely physical sequences that can be improvised or organised to engage the audience when the action was dragging, to hide a dropped line or cue, or simply to entertain the audience. Some notable plays inspired by this style of performance include One Man, Two Guvnors - an English adaptation of Servant of Two Masters (1743 Commedia dell'arte comedy play by Carlo Goldoni) written by Richard Bean - and Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970) by Italian playwright Dario Fo performed in a farcical style connected back to the Italian theatrical traditions of commedia dell'arte and the art of mime.

After watching back our mini theatre-on-film projects we played out a detective scenario in which each of us got up and presented our research on our chosen mysteries but we only had 2 minutes to do it in. Something I noticed when listening to other’s cases was that I was so focused on noting down the details of everyone’s cases that I did not give myself the chance to play around with being in the detective scenario as much as I may have liked to, I think I need to work on letting go a bit more in situations like this so I can fully enjoy all of the exercises we do like this.

That aside, I think I did a good job of condensing down the important aspects of the case into a short timeframe because I had done lots of research into the case and thus I knew what key elements I wanted to highlight. I did panic slightly and talked quite quickly so did not get to answer any questions but I managed to say most of what I wanted apart from a few little things and even though I did not get to say everything I wanted to, I found this exercise helpful. It showed me that I can articulate my thoughts well and prove my knowledge of a subject in a short time frame, which will be helpful in my audition preparation so I can better learn how to talk about myself and demonstrate my knowledge and excitement about my work in a short timeframe.

The 23rd of January

In the morning, we spoke about how as a company we are all quite sleepy and low energy, I think I've improved quite a bit in terms of waking myself up when I get into college and leaving everything at the door so I can remain focused and energetic throughout the day, I think this is probably because I have started adjusting to my ADHD meds a lot better which makes it a lot easier for me to pull myself out of my inattention a bit.

We also talked about the importance of understanding how the sleep-wake cycle and the stages of sleep work. During my A Levels, I studied biological rhythms including these cycles and so I went over my notes to refresh my memory.

The sleep-wake cycle is a circadian rhythm, circa meaning it lasts a day or 24 hours, other examples of circadian rhythms include the male hormone cycle, body temperature and blood pressure. Biological rhythms are controlled by endogenous pacemakers (internal influences, in the case of the sleep-wake cycle this is the internal body clock also known as the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus) and exogenous zeitgebers which are external cues that alter the function of endogenous pacemakers such as the amount of light in the room. Your Suprachiasmatic Nucleus is a bilateral structure located in the anterior part of the hypothalamus that fulfils the role of the central pacemaker of the circadian timing system and regulates most circadian rhythms in the body by detecting light in the optic chiasm. To explain how this can impact your sleep cycle, I’ll use the example of jet lag. When you are in a different time zone, your Suprachiasmatic Nucleus is not used to the day cycle of the new time zone and thus it signals to the Pineal gland to stop/start the production of melatonin (the sleep hormone) at the wrong times until it can sync with the new external cues (light). Making sure that there is enough light around you thus can help wake you up when you’re feeling tired as it signals your body to stop feeling sleepy. It's also useful to know the stages of sleep when making sure that you’re getting enough sleep for the day, most people need 7 to 9 hours of sleep, although some people may need as few as 6 or as many as 10 so it’s dependent for person to person but it's important to consider that sleep occurs in multiple cycles lasting 90 minutes and waking up in the deep sleep stages of a cycle can be disorienting and make you feel less rested so if possible scheduling your sleep schedule so that you get to wake up in light sleep may help feelings of restlessness.

Nutrition also plays a big part in how energy levels vary throughout the day and making sure that your breakfast is substantial to support you throughout the morning is vital so I did some research into why breakfast is so important and how to make sure that your breakfast is going to do its job of sustaining you. I found a website which I will link here that explains this in a concise and digestible way (pun intended). I also find that when I have a better breakfast that provides a good amount of fibre, protein and slow-release carbs it is a lot easier for me to keep going until lunch and my energy is more consistent throughout the morning instead of when I eat a less filling breakfast that only peaks my energy for a small while before I begin to feel drained.

We then watched a video of the theatre adaptation of DV8 Physical Theatre’s Enter Achilles (here) and a clip from the original film (here). I feel like it worked better on film than it did on stage because when captured by a camera the dynamics between the characters were much clearer which meant that I found the plot easier to understand. Yes, the first video was filmed as a teaser trailer that showed a variety of different clips from the show whilst the other was a continuous shot from a scene in the film so, of course, in the second one the story was easier to follow story. However, I feel like even if the first video had showcased an entire scene it would've still been more difficult to follow because the concept of the piece is easier to understand when we are given a closer perspective. When watching a staged production, you are made to zoom out so you can take in everything going on from afar, whereas film tends to be more intimate and picks up on those physically smaller exchanges and makes them bigger. As I said previously in my comments on A Room for Romeo Brass, I am also really drawn to media that highlights dynamic relationships, character growth and development, and personal journeys rather than a story/action-driven plot, so I do think that because I saw that expressed more on film, I felt more connected to the original version of Enter Achilles.

We also watched a theatre-on-film piece made by Naked Frank Theatre which was useful in showing a more recent example of how theatre-on-film was used during the Covid pandemic as a way for actors to still create when only allowed to film outside. I liked that the setting helped set the tone of the piece and gave it the atmosphere of a forest in a fantasy world. I do feel like it would’ve worked better on stage though as there was so much action happening at once at a really fast pace so it was somewhat overwhelming and confusing because there was so much to process, I think that if it was performed on stage instead, it would’ve been easier to follow the story as we would've gotten a clearer view of the bigger picture. But I liked how the camera zoomed in on the key moments of the story and how it was used to direct our attention.

After that, we watched East 15’s advert for physical theatre as the beginning of it bore some similarities to theatre on film. Again I felt like the video was really overwhelming because it was very clearly trying to show absolutely every skill that they teach on the course in such a short timeframe. I think I prefer theatre-on-film when it has one main focal point and is very purposeful in what they're trying to show because it makes it much easier to follow.

We got the chance to watch a dress run of the dance show which was absolutely amazing. I have so much respect for the dancers who are able to do such insane things with their bodies and the show made it so clear how much talent and hard work goes into dance at Miskin which was really great to see. It was also really fun to see the dancers act through their dances and tell stories by matching their facial expressions and body language to the emotions in the choreography and the music.

When we got back after the dance show we were given the challenge of coming up with a way we would tell the story of our mystery through theatre-on-film and then pitch it to the company so we could all vote on which ones we liked and narrow down which one to use for this process.

When coming up with my idea, I began to think about a play I read last year called Monsters written by Niklas Rådström about the killing of James Bulger and how it used an episodic structure and included quotes from police interviews conducted during the case. It got me thinking about incorporating verbatim theatre into the telling of this case by using extracts from reports, interviews, YouTube videos, news articles etc from the case to tell the story of the case through a media perspective. I thought this would be a really good way to highlight the media’s strong involvement in the case and show how the media spun the story in a million different ways and contributed to a lot of the mob mentality that harmed the investigation. I pictured having the camera physically weave through all of this commentary to display how so many people got involved and commented on the case and I think by presenting this case through the lens of someone deep diving into the case and learning about it from the internet and the media it will really help illustrate the role of the media in this case and how I personally and the rest of the public experienced learning about this case.

The 25th of January

Unfortunately, I was not in college on the 25th of January as I was ill however the company went live on Facebook and practised an exercise with Tommy to ground, relax and focus them. Watching this was very helpful in understanding how grounding yourself before an audition, going on stage, or just at the beginning of the day can change your outlook so drastically. Even using the fetal position in this exercise, many people sleep in this position as it protects your vital organs and thus naturally soothes the body. Also doing this in pairs allowed me to see connections between them which I found was interesting, doing grounding exercises with someone else can not only make you as an individual relax but it can also help people open up to trusting each other. Another thing I found interesting about this exercise was that I was really aware of everyone’s breathing and even my own even though I was not participating. I have a very heightened level of awareness and because of this I find silence quite unnerving, but I think grounding myself and being aware of my mind and body would help me feel more comfortable with silence. I think that doing exercises like this would benefit me in terms of keeping me on task and not getting so overwhelmed. I find that when I’m given a lot of information at once I tend to panic over the small details instead of focusing on the bigger picture so by grounding myself during the day I might be able to remain focused a bit easier. I use a lot of grounding exercises as I have always been a very anxious person so I’ve had many recommended to me. One of which is the 5 senses method or the 54321 method in which I name in my head 5 things I can see, 4 things I can touch, 3 things I can hear, 2 things I can smell, and 1 thing I can taste. This is an effective tool when I am feeling overwhelmed as it helps to redirect my attention and focus on my sensory experience. The reason this is so effective is that it disrupts your fight or flight response thus calming the nervous system and reducing symptoms of anxiety. Another exercise that works similarly to this is the 333 exercise in which you name three things you can see, name three things you can hear, and move three different body parts. Both of these exercises can be very helpful for some people when disrupting anxiety attacks however, I prefer to use them in everyday scenarios as they do not help me much when I have an anxiety attack as I am often too dysregulated.

On this day, our company also decided upon the mystery to centre our Theatre-on-Film Project around, together they decided on the case of the Axeman of New Orleans. I had looked into this case a long time ago beforehand so much like when I got to research JonBenet’s case again when I found out we were going to be looking at this case, I was excited to revisit it and go over the facts that I may have missed before.

The 26th of January

This day was a mix of a bunch of different things, in the morning we got some time to work on our monologues which was great to be able to do. I feel like just taking an hour to focus on improving my monologues and stuff is not something that I do a lot of just because life gets in the way but it's so helpful to designate a small amount of time even if it's just 20 minutes to working on monologues even if you don't have any imminent auditions.

Some of us also got the opportunity to do a voiceover for an online course which was so fun, (the only voiceover I’ve ever done before was for a video I helped my dad make when I was 11 haha) so it was cool to be in the voiceover studio and get that experience. I was actually still feeling quite ill at the time and because of my cold, I had somewhat lost my voice so it was great that I was able to do the voiceover despite not sounding anywhere close to my best. I think I’d love to do more voiceover work in the future, I’ve always found doing accents, listening to radio and podcasts fun and so it’d be great to play around with voiceover in the future.

In the afternoon we watched the film Birdman directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and released in January 2015 because there were still some people going in and out to record their part of the voiceover and the style of the film was similar to theatre-on-film in the way that it was shot to appear as if it was all in one take.

The 30th of January

Now I was back from being ill, I got to do the relaxation/focus exercise which was helpful, Tommy first showed me how to do it and then I had it done. I carry a lot of tension in my shoulders especially and in doing this exercise I got to relax my shoulders and focus my mind a lot more and so overall I found the exercise really helpful in letting go of the tension we naturally carry and directing our attention to the project in front of us.

After the relaxation exercise, we began devising a scene that included everyone in which we wanted the camera to follow the feet of people interacting on the street. We started by getting into small groups of 2 or 3 and coming up with a scenario of characters interacting and showing that through our whole bodies in 2 ways, one way was natural and the other was stylized. Me, Kaitlyn and Ella were grouped and we came up with a short sequence of two people tripping up another person and then stylised it by incorporating some footwork dance moves. We found that the stylized version of it looked a lot better and felt more natural despite being stylized and when we incorporated it into the entire sequence, we decided to have all 3 of us do the same choreography in time with each other for it to look cohesive. When putting everything together into one sequence, I realised how important it is to not be overly stubborn about keeping your ideas the same because change is how things grow and so clinging onto a specific way to do things or a specific idea doesn't allow your piece to grow or for you to grow as an artist.

After this, we looked at a couple of scripts and began playing around with them, one of which was a scene in which the police question two witnesses from the case involving 6 characters but when we were put in groups there weren't enough people so I, Rachel and Luchia were put in a group of 3. As there were twice the amount of roles as there were actors, we each took on 2, we played around with Rachel acting as the witnesses being questioned and me and Luchia split the roles of the police so that we would both get a chance to be an interviewing officer and another character in the police. Having the roles split this way gave it a really good pace and so we went along with that and elevated the urgency and intensity of the scene. We liked how it was coming together so started to make clear choices and try out different things to improve it until we liked it and then we began drilling it so that we knew exactly what we were doing and saying. When we watched back the others I felt that being in a smaller group helped us keep up the tempo of the scene and make it really engaging and overall I enjoyed how this scene turned out.

The other script we looked at was set in a church and had a preacher talking about the fate of the axeman and then included a congregation reciting The Lord’s Prayer together. A few people were picked to preach whilst everyone else acted as the congregation but when we first practised it, things got very loud very quickly, I think that a lot of people mistake passion for exaggeration and so when people were reciting The Lord’s Prayer lots of people over emphasised instead of taking a moment to think about the context and how that would impact their delivery. Whilst reading it I thought about how I would've been feeling if I had lived in New Orleans during this period, I think I would've felt helpless at this point and so when I read the prayer, I read it from the perspective of someone trying to take comfort in their religion and hoping that they will be kept safe.

The 6th of February

I did some more research into the Axeman while I was off sick so I was super excited to get to show off more aspects of the story through this project. We began the day by reading the Axeman's letter and auditioning to be a voiceover for him throughout, I had so much fun changing my voice, tone and accent to get an idea of what the Axeman’s personality looked like to me. I think that playing into the enjoyment of murder was interesting to do and ended up being effective when people made the Axeman sound like he was very amused by the idea that people were afraid of him.

We tried out creating a sequence where we use Christian actions to display the passion and need for religion at the time of the Axeman’s murders, I liked how we began with a slower pace and then gradually made it increasingly panicked to show the worry growing in the community. We added this to the preacher script we worked on prior and had everyone in the congregation do this as Ade performed the preacher’s monologue and then everyone joined hands to recite The Lord’s Prayer.

We then worked out where in the piece the different dances and sequences would work best, we decided to have the feet sequence begin after the church bit and then include the dance at the end. We also added the detective scene that Luchia, Rachel and I, worked on and made it fit into the piece, While running it we did change it a bit as we wanted to slow the pace down so that the camera could keep up but keep the tempo of the piece raised. We also worked on increasing the energy of the scene and making it slightly more theatrical to help the audience understand the urgency of the scene.

Now we knew what we wanted the piece to look like, we prepared for filming on the 8th and spoke about wearing formal, front-of-house esc costumes that would suit all of the scenes but did not necessarily have to fit the period. When I got home I considered my options and decided to go with a black skater skirt and a stripy blouse that were both formal but also moved well and would look good with the dance sequence at the end of the film that was choreographed on a day that I wasn't in and we were added to during the day.

The 8th of February

On the day of filming I was quite nervous in the morning about the dance especially because I’m usually quite slow to pick things up and I’m not the best dancer so I looked over the videos before to get the hang of it a bit before going in. But other than that I was really excited to just go for it and do my best.

As we already knew the structure, most of the day was really about making sure that everything looked good on camera and that it was drilled into our minds so we revisited a lot of scenes and changed them around a bit more to fit the camera and make sure we were happy with how it all looked.

We went over the detective scene and tweaked it because we felt like it needed a lot more energy and after a few tries we managed to bring it up and make it a lot more animated which really aided in showing the urgency of the scene, I found it so fun to get to work on this scene further and incorporate it into the piece and see it fit so nicely into it as I really enjoyed the outcome of the challenge of only having three people for a six-person scene.

Overall it was really fun to see how much work we could actually accomplish in such a short amount of time just by trying out a load of different things and seeing how we could piece them together, there were obviously ways we could’ve taken it a lot further and I think I would’ve had a lot of fun if we had been able to make it longer and talk about other aspects of the case such as the survivors and the potential suspects but considering we put a large amount of it together over the space of two days and then managed to film it in three takes, I think we got a lot out of the process.