Citizenship

Citizenship (Unit 5,6 & 7)

Citizenship is a play written by Mark Ravenhill. It was developed and performed at the National Theatre Connections in 2005. Citizenship explores themes such as sexuality, friendship, tarot card reading, mental health and identity. The play was considered as "bittersweet" because of its harsh yet truthful message, but the payoff was the charming comical moments which were scattered throughout the play. Citizenship was appreciated by the audience. Many  people commented on how it oozed relatable nostalgia.

Mark Ravenhill

Mark Ravenhill is a journalist, playwright and actor. Mark was born in England on 7th June 1966. Mark Ravenhill grew up in West Sussex and had developed an interest in theatre at a very young age. Mark would often make short plays and act in them with his brother. They were about 7 years old when this took place. Mark then went on to study English and Drama at the Bristol University for 3 years (1984-1987). Then he went to working as a drama teacher, freelance director and workshop leader

Mark Ravenhill's debut piece was a 10 minute monologue called Fists, which was performed in 1995. Max Stafford Clark, the director for the "Out Of Joint Theatre Company" saw the monologue and immediately told Mark to take part in a full length play, which was called Shopping and Fucking. Shopping and Fucking was performed in 1996 and had received great responses from the audience. In fact, Shopping and Fucking is considered to be the play that made Mark Ravenhill a lead in the In-Yer-Face style of theatre . 

          Mark Ravenhill would usually make plays that would give out uncomfortable vibes to the audience. This was because Mark Ravenhill is part of the In-Yer-Face theatre. In-Yer-Face theatre is a type of theatre that would grab the audience's attention with grotesque, vulgar and shocking images and scenarios.

How did the research element help with my acting development?

As an actor, one of the key elements to getting under the skin of a character is by doing an immense research about everything that is linked to the play. This includes the plot, themes, playwriter's intentions, conclusive messages etc. By doing this, it gives you a better understanding of everything as a whole. This is exactly what helped me develop my acting skills for playing Tom. I had to research about Mark Ravenhill's previous plays in order to understand his intentions and what message he was trying to convey to the audience with his characters. Most of Mark Ravenhill's plays included themes such as sexuality, identity, youth and friendship. Mark Ravenhill added similar themes to Citizenship. Furthermore, I read the script for Citizenship instead of reading the selected scene that I play on its own. The reason for this is because it boosted my knowledge and understanding of Toms character even more as I understood what he was going through and what he wanted. I shifted my focus on to researching about DeClark, since that's the character I was performing opposite (which was played by Mark). Me and Mark would often give each advise during and after rehearsing the scene on how we could make the scene look better and natural. We would share what we researched about for both characters and try to apply it to our characters when performing.

During class, we would start off with exercises, games and warm ups to get us ready for the day and the rehearsal periods. This would include vocal warm ups such as the "pretend your chewing and humming exercise", think of a dance move and perform it while the others follow and doing various strectches. This was extremely beneficial because every morning, (specifically monday mornings), everyone would look like zombies. This meant that no one was in the mood or just didn't have the energy to participate. However, after the warm ups, we all would somehow wake up and feel energized, this didn't imply to everyone sadly, but later on the day they would be ready. Vocal warm ups like the "pretend to chew gum and hum" would help us vocally loosen up. The warm up included making high pitched sounds while humming and chewing while making different and weird sounds. There were times where the whole group (including me) felt embarrassed to do it. However, this didn't prevent me from doing it. The reason for this is because when this would occur, I kept questioning myself of my presence, and that if I was to be shy now, I wouldn't be able to progress later on. This is what motivated me to participate, and the way I see it, I think I speak for everyone. 

After all the warm ups, we would do activities that would include:

•  Devising
•  Improvisation
•  Group work

All of these skills played a big part during the rehearsal periods. This is because these set of skills would help us build:

• Confidence
• Interaction
• Eye contact
• Awareness of stage spacing
• Staying in character
• positive mindset

During the rehearsal periods, we started analysing the script and did a scene breakdown. We annotated the scene that we were going to do. I was working with Mark. Our scene was Scene 3. Me and Mark had a discussion on who wanted to play who, we came with a conclusion that Mark would play DeClark and I would play Tom. While rehearsing, we would often make mistakes on small details that were very important, for instance, when Tom's ears are bleeding, it would be the left ear that bled and when DeClark is on the phone, he would step out of the classroom to avoid Tom from eavesdropping. We kept practicing until we would perfect those small details, in which we did eventually. We would often practice with our scripts as we didn't memorise the lines to perfection. So that was our next objective, to memorize our lines. We would often repeat the same lines to each other until we got the hang of it. After a week or so, we ended up learning our lines off page. Later on, everyone had to show what they had been working on. The group that was observing us was Louis's group, which had Albiona, Alice, Hannah, Teja and of course Louis.

The positive feedback we had received were:

•  Performed with the fourth wall
•  Used facial expression well
•  Stayed in character
•  Articulation and voice projection was loud and clear.

What we needed to improve on:

• Less use of script
• Use more eye contact while performing
• Exaggeration - Use a bit more action
• Take time with lines

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cGtMXWhat we neededznkxo8

Me and Mark were observing Henok and Ashleigh.

Things they did good:

• Performed like no one was watching (fourth wall)
• Articulation was good
• Projection was loud and clear

Areas to improve on:

• Take time with dialogues
• Use more facial expressions

How do you feel the performance went on that day?

Before the performance, I felt a tint of nervousness hit me. But I think that was the same for everyone. Despite being a bit nervous, I still felt confident. The reason for this is because I kept telling myself that if I let my nervous side take over at that specific moment, all the hard the work that was put into the research and rehearsal periods would all go down the drain. On top of all that, I didn't want to disappoint my partner (Mark) because even he had worked really hard. After the performance, I felt that all the hard work that was put in to everything paid off at the end and that was really appeasing.