Opening of 'Face' the play

Street Voices Performance Pictures: 

• What do you know about this play's setting of East London? How would you describe it? 

In our first lesson discussing 'face the play' we started off by watching videos of East London's culture, heritage, and languages. The video we watched portrayed two people talking in cockney (a widely spoken dialect of English in the East London). This video was shown to us to build a greater level of understanding about the city life in East London, and it is very important to understand what type of background, place, society the actor comes from. This helps us take the role of the character much more efficiently. After watching the video we spent quite some time in lesson discussing about East London, and some of us shared some interesting facts and ideas on East London. When we were first introduced to the play 'face', we were given the script and told to start the play using the knowledge we have gained through research and discussion in class. We were put into groups of 5 or 6, and were asked to practice the street voices (from page 1-2). We were asked to create a short performance within the group for the 'street voices'. My group decided to follow a realistic theme, and to do so, we assigned regular normal day to day life roles. The roles we had among our group were: 2 business men, a teenage girl, construction workers and an athlete. These diverse roles made our group more realistic and showed a level of risk taking, since our group had just been assigned to portray a city none of us had actually been to (no personal experience to help build correct emotions towards the city). My group decided to emphasize the fact that the street voices (common people on the streets), and to do so, we decided to keep 2 big blocks (this also gives the performance more than one level, portraying higher level of drama skills), and used them as park benches which the street voices would stand on to say their line. However, the rest of us continued in our roles, in a bustling city, to make our performance more realistic and logical towards the audience. Some of the lines of the street voices were said in unison, some in turns between 2 people, and some in 2 separate parts. However, in order to emphasize the last line we were given to do, all of the group members said their part one by one.  My group did so, but however continuing to play their role, and saying their line with character, to show our level of performance skills more effectively. To give our performance more depth we all had chosen to speak in a particular accent-which illustrated East London.  

The play is set in East London, to show the part of London where gangs are more likely to be found. At the beginning of the play, I had the idea that East London is a very dull, insecure city where people fear gangs, and there is hardly any freedom. Although, through research and moving on further into the play, I see that East London is shown to be a city with colors, because everyone has their own say in things, and people are welcome to do what they want and feel like. People are not judged by what they wear or how they dress.

• What does East London look like? 

East London is portrayed as a society where there are 'no rules', since people are free to do what they want, wear what they what. In East London the widely spoken language is cockney, which is an English dialect. Through what we have learnt so far I can say that East London is quite an up beat, busy city with different colors, accents, voices, choices, opinions, ideas, cultures. East London is a very open and diverse culture and place, where you surprisingly find many cultures from around the world. In our rehearsal for our street voices performance we had chosen to depict the East London culture, traditions, beliefs, attitude, through different mediums within our play. Everyone in my group had chosen to become/play a character which would be most likely seen in a bustling city, since that is one of the main impression we received about the city on the first day of performance rehearsal. We also got the idea that the city has many gangs, so this gave us different ideas of portraying our play. We had different perspectives such as: making it seem like we are a gang in an alleyway-dull with only one street light hovering over the street voices while flickering, businessmen at work. Although, we decided to show more than just one aspect, to truly portray more than one side of East London. The good, the bad, the happy and the sad. Also, to create a bigger impact of city life in our play we had used a background video throughout our play (noises of a bustling city, street lights flickering, traffic noises, car honks) this made our play much more realistic and understandable by the audience. 

• What do you think the purpose of the 'Street Voices' characters is? 

The term 'Street Voices' means basically the voices of those ordinary people that you come across on the streets. The purpose of the Street voices is to show the audience what the 'true' feeling of living in east London is, it is used to show the perspectives, opinions and ideas of those native to the city. This gives the audience a chance to see the reality through the eyes and voices of the people. To portray our act more realistically, we added language devices, accents. We also made sure that we assigned roles that are prominent or more often seen in East London. Since, East London is known as quite a bustling, quick paced city, we decided as a group to keep our movements and actions up beat and fast paced to match up with our theme appropriately. 

• What did your group try to communicate about city life and how? 

My group worked well and collaboratively together to create a part/section of the play realistic and interesting to the audience. In order to keep the audience engaged at all times throughout the performance, we made sure that at each point there is some kind of movement, action, or expression taking place. In our group we spent some time discussing different ideas that could be feasible and logical for our performance. We came up with several different ideas, and shortly decided to assign roles according to our preference and drama performance skills. After doing so, we recited our performance multiple times in order to perfect our performance, and rehearse well for our on stage performance. The voices are shown as people who give their point of view about city life and how they feel living in East London. And so it is important for us truly understand city life in East London, in order to play the role more accurately. As a group we effectively chose characters that fit our theme and a forward moving city with lots of taste, color, passion, freedom and desire. It was important for each of my group members to remember the importance and objective of the play in order to effectively portray a performance that depicts all aspects that we have evaluated about East London. My group worked effectively to push forward a strong idea and influence onto the audience, since everything we did in our play was well rehearsed and thought-out in order to come out with a good piece of performance. 

• What could your group have done better? 

Even though, my group performed many rehearsals to ensure we all remember our lines, act in character, speak in sync (if necessary), project our voice to the audience, keep in mind our character role and how they would be reacting to the situations, and working well as a team as it is extremely important that a group is able to work out differences between each other to find strengths and weaknesses to accordingly choose right roles within the group with ease. However, even after keeping these points in mind we all needed to improve our stage performance skills. I believe what really impacted our group was speaking in front of an audience, I felt that even after multiple rehearses of lines, we were still uncomfortable and less confident in front of a crowd. This really affected everyone in the group's behavior since we all seemed quite off and robotic in a sense. I felt that our voices were not projected loud enough, therefore making it difficult for the audience to understand us clearly. I also felt that because of some tension between the audience and my group members a few of us (including me) felt a bit frightened to perform in front of an audience on stage, making us lose focus and forget some of our lines. However, I felt that my group worked effectively through each others differences to come up with a unique and realistic theme and idea to follow our new topic on East London in the play 'face'. 

• Which other group inspired you with their interpretation and what did they do?

Looking at all the groups perform in class (on stage performance for the first time) I felt that we all felt quite short of time. Seeing their performance came as a bit of a shock since their performance was not up to a standard expected by Miss. However, I did love how all the groups had their own ideas of performing the street voices in their own unique style that portrayed a bustling city. I feel that with more time all of our groups could have produced a more developed and well rehearsed performance to the rest of the class. I believe that our performances were effected by the fact that we all had performed on stage for the first time with an audience. Although, there were a few people who were confident within their role and made sure to express the feelings of a normal person in a bustling city, East London. So far I have enjoyed the lessons, because we are all able to let our creative juices flow and become imaginative with our performance as a whole. I am looking forward to learning more things about East London, and performing more acts for 'Face'.