Task 3a Current Netowrks

When looking at the current networks I use from day to day in my profession I realise that a lot of my networking is done through the use of web based technologies such as;

• Casting websites
• Email
• Theatre Websites
• Social Networks
• Personal professional website.

From discussing with others who also initially work in this way I realise it is simply because of ease of access and speed. It is much quicker to send someone an email or give someone a web address that leads them to a place where they can see all your details, CV and even a show reel or demo of you singing. This can sometimes even eliminate the need for audition, which as discussed previously during course lectures isn’t always a good thing as it takes away from the one to one contact in an audition situation so personality will not even come into consideration. However applying for work through such websites as catingcall.com and spotlight.co.uk allows you to see a more and apply to a lot more jobs than you possibly could through looking at magazines and writing letters and printing off countless letters and headshots to send to casting directors in the hope one might take an interest. It is not only quicker, it’s cheaper.

Social networks such as facebook which where initially created for social networking rather than for professional contacts are an excellent way of keeping up to date with others you have met through your profession. However I feel is very important to have two profiles on such websites; one for personal use and another for professional contacts. This not only makes it simpler to keep track of who is who in your daily life but you don’t run the risk of loosing contact with a potential employer because of someone for example putting a drunk picture of you up on your professional profile. I also and know many others who find it works to also have a personal and professional email account; simply because it makes it easier to organise your professional and personal life as two separate things.

I also find having a personal web space a great advantage when looking for work. It gives me the option of showing my web space to an employer if they are interested in seeing more of my work or more details. It is also something that is always there. A phone number on a piece of card somewhere can easily be lost but my website is always there at a click of a button which is not only less work for me but less work for the employer also.

Although I do mainly use web based technologies whilst networking in my professional life I also use hard copies such as the Contacts 2010 book or magazines such at The Stage and the Equity magazine. This opens up even more opportunities as some employers prefer and specify that actors send them hard copies of CV’s and headshots rather than an attachment in an email; and some in the Contacts 2010 book even say that is it is not sent in hardcopy but in email form they will not consider this candidate in the future.

I also find a lot of opportunities arise from the networks I build in my work or ones I have already formed from Drama School or even drama group in my teenage years. I have discovered companies that I had never heard of such as Chapter House who specialise in Shakespeare in the park and outdoor period drama through connections I have made in my current job. This is the type of work that really interests me and I may not have found out about the company if I hadn’t been successful in networking in my current job.  My first job after graduating was an internet commercial filmed with Hanover pictures who’s director taught me in Drama School.

When thinking about what my ideal network would be my initial response is to say to have everything in one place for ease of access much like web based networking works. However I realise that this is not the best way as you loose the option on finding work being partly based on whether a panel likes you personally or a decision being made partly through good word of mouth. An example of a director who uses very few actors but always the same ones because they work well together is Tim Burton’s relationship with Jonny Depp. I doubt that the same relationship could have been built through an email.  I realise that personally my ideal network is basically what I already do from day to day. Yes it is tiring and time consuming but I see no better way of working in such a fast moving profession as mine. The only way It can be made better is by self organisation and motivation. My ideal network is the way I already network but cleaner.

Ways in which I could realistically develop my network are;

·         Continuing to keep social and professional networks separate

·         Building networks with as many people as possible that I have met in jobs, auditions or during training.

·         Keeping in touch with professionals that I have already built a network and continuing to keep a strong professional relationship.

·         Research into the industry and how others network.

Please feel free to leave any comments on how you used networking in your profession. It will be interesting to see what similarities and differences we have.

Task 2d Inquiry

I have always been obsessed with the idea of beauty and how when you’re looking for it; it’s everywhere around you. It can be anything from the way sunlight falls on a tree in the autumn to a moment in play or a look in someone’s eye. I feel that art whether it be performance or a painting or photograph is a way of capturing these moments of beauty in little snippets. An example of where moments of beauty are expressed through performance is in contemporary dance. As I’ve expressed in previous blogs contemporary dance is something I have a real passion for as I feel it’s a form of performance that truly comes from the choreographer and dancers heart and is a fantastic way of showing moments of beauty without even saying a word. A piece of choreography that really captured me is a piece called “In Line” by Robert Skoro performed at Circe Phoenix. The dancers names are Sebastein Soldevila and Emilie Bonnavaud From Les 7 doigts de la main/The 7 Fingers Track Used : Robert Skoro - In Line http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboQZiAVAfk

“ I have no energy left after watching it and each time it's the same... it makes me cry and laugh and cry again ... This is simply incredible ... It's a wonderful world ...”

TheAndrutzzza 2 months ago, Youtube.com

“Wow! I'm  speechless. This is absolutely beautiful and amazing!”

flyergym 2 months ago, youtube.com

This is a piece I first found on a friends wall on facebook. She had posted it for the same reason I love the piece; purely because its beauty had really captured her. There are so many moments of pure emotion in this piece and the freedom the dancers bring to the piece is can only be described as beautiful. This is the type of work that inspires me to create my own and is part of why I love my profession. So many moments of beauty can be captured in such a piece and the way it touches an audience is incredible.

“Wow....the contrast of looseness, power, and sheer athleticism...not including the amazing choreography...

MIND BLOWING...HEARTWRENCHING...I'M DYING OVER HERE!!!”

duongbong 3 months ago, Youtube.com

This piece is just one example of many displaying how art is used to capture beauty and moments of pure magic.

Two people I really admire and inspire me to get whatever I can out of a script and find those magical moments in pieces are two of my former acting teachers from drama school; Chris Donelly and Dan Winter. They both trained at Bristol Old Vic and as well as teaching part time are working actors; mainly Chekov and Shakespeare on stage. I have seen them both perform on stage and the passion they bring to their teaching is completely reflected in their work on stage. They both have the ability to pull apart a script and really bring something magical to it which completely captures an audience.

“Chris Donnelly's Iago is the most restrained and unshowy I've encountered, and this makes the seeping of his poison into Othello's mind all the more compelling and credible.” The Guardian ****

“I have seen more wicked Iago’s but none so businesslike as Chris Donnelly’s passed-over NCO, whose crisp manner conceals a heart of bile. There’s a depth to his evil that is unknown even to him.”
The Independent ****

http://sattf.org.uk/index.php?id=107 

When working on pieces myself I often feel frustrated at not being able to find the missing piece to make something work. I find that looking at how other people have performed a piece very helpful. Often looking at something from a completely different perspective can help unearth something better than what you were initially trying to achieve. I always remember from working on monologues in drama school tutors always saying “there’s no right way only different ways of looking at it” which is completely true. There are so many moments you can get from a piece and only by taking different views on it you can find those little bits of beauty. This is something that is not easy to understand and maybe we shouldn’t understand a piece fully as there are so many interpretations and different pieces bring out different emotions in different people. There is a lot of beauty in the world and different ways of trying to capture a small part of its magic. All we need to do is open our eyes and take what we can from it.

Task 2c- Reflective reader

After reading the Reflective reader I began to think about Kolb's Learning Circle and where I fitted. I realised it wasn't that easy to define what type of a learner I am as I am a mixture of different types depending on what I'm trying to learn or achieve. When looking on how I first started my blog my initial style was to use what is referred to in the reader as active experimentation as I like to try and work things out by myself but then as the course progressed and I started commenting and reading other peoples blogs I've realised that I also use what is referred to as reflective observation as I saw how other people had set out their work and went on to adjust my blog from ideas I'd seen and liked. However maybe subconsciously at the time used my concrete experience from using such sites as Facebook. By reflecting on this and seeing how I use nearly all of these methods in the circle and not in any particular order I can see that I am not the kind of thinker that fits anywhere in the circle but looking at it and using it as a structure to my thoughts did help me to delve deeper into the way I think individually and see that it isn't as simple as one might think to define the way we think.

I then started to think about where other people I know fit within the circle, and If they too felt as though they could not precisely specify at what point they ‘learn something’ or if they too start to realise that it is mainly a subconscious occurrence rather than a conscious one; meaning they don’t actually realise what has been learnt until they take the time to reflect.

I spoke to my friend Alison Williams who is also a performer but where my field is Musical Theatre and acting her field is Dance performance and Dance Teaching. I was interested to find out if she learnt as I do or it was different.

“Being a dancer I find that I learn mainly from observing others and practicing what I’ve learnt. I also find when teaching children that they learn from actively doing something rather than from watching it being done. Adults however tend to have a more mixed method of learning and tend to learn from being shown rather than doing something for themselves in a dance class.” (Alison Williams FDI CGE, 2010).

Here I found that it not only depends on the individual to where they being to learn something within Kolb’s circle but also depends on the age of the individual as our way of learning differs as we grow up.

I found Howard Gardner’s theory on Multiple Intelligences extremely interesting and found I was able to relate to this theory as the idea of multiple intelligences is something I have discussed with various people quite intensely.  

The idea that intelligence can be measured by something like academic qualification is something I have never really agreed with. Of course this method can be used to measure intelligence in a very basic and boxed off fashion, but I have always believed that intelligence can be measured in many ways and saying that one person isn’t as intelligent as another based on their academic achievements is not as easy as society is lead to believe. Gardner’s theory supports this greatly and is something I can relate to well.

“People have a unique blend of intelligences. Howard Gardner argues that the big challenge facing the deployment of human resources 'is how to best take advantage of the uniqueness conferred on us as a species exhibiting several intelligences”

(Smith, Mark K. (2002, 2008) 'Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences', the encyclopaedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm.) (Gardner, Howard (1983; 1993) Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, New York: Basic Books.)

After reading the above article on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence I began to think how I use my own interpersonal intelligence in situations. When thinking about it it’s obvious that people use the reactions and body language of others to inform their intelligence of a situation, but of course this is all done subconsciously.

I support the idea that people don’t only use one type of intelligence and are also not only one type of learner be it; kinaesthetic, visual or listening. I feel that we all use a mixture of these as well as more subconsciously in everyday life. I feel personally however that I tend to use my kinaesthetic intelligence mainly. This may be as I’ve trained in dance and sports from a very young age so have grown up with this type of learning. I also feel I learn a lot by listening, this could be a result of having always been around music and being a trained singer as well as growing up playing musical instruments. I feel the one I use the least is my visual intelligence and will make an effort to use it more to see how this affects or doesn’t affect the way I learn.

After reading the reader I have come to realise I like the idea that people as not set to being one type on learner and it is not something that is necessarily easy to judge. The only conclusion I can offer is my opinion on the way I learn personally from what I have read. I think a lot of the way we learn depends on the type of upbringing we have had and what types of activities we enjoyed as children. I was a very physical child who danced and played sport from a very young age and feel this may be part of the reason my default intelligence is kinaesthetic. A person who grew up around a musical family may learn in a more musical way by listening much like a person who grew up enjoying literature may learn more visually. Overall I feel the measure of intelligence and the way a person learns is not something we can necessarily measure as such but is still a very interesting subject to pull apart as it has really made me reflect on the way I learn personally and ways in which I may be seen as intelligent or not. It is mostly down to personal opinion and opinion based on the theory of others.  

Task 2b- Reflective writing

This exericise helped me to reflect on my day and see how much I had achieved and how hard my job is from an outside point of view although whilst actually doing this I had never really realised how much stamina and orginisation I have to possess.  It made me think how my training at drama school had prepared me very well for the 'real world' and working as a performer in a very intence and demanding industry.

I used the table format shown in the module guide as it helped me to organise my thoughts.

First day of tour	I’ve decided to do my first piece of reflective writing on the first day of my tour with SG Productions playing Aladdin in Aladdin.
Initial Reflection	I was both anxious and excited to be starting my first day on tour. I was nervous about what types of audiences we would get and whether the show would go well or not. The first unexpected thing to happen was how the weather effected our first day. It had snowed very heavily in our area and we weren’t sure whether or not we would be able to get out or not and whether venues would cancel due to the extreme weather. Unfortunately our first performance of the day was cancelled but the matinee and evening performances were still going ahead.
List	Extreme weather. Would the show still go on? Nerves before the fist performance. Hard work carrying all the equipment to the venues in the deep snow. A sense of relief after the matinee and then also the evening performances went well.
Evaluation	If all the shows had been cancelled due to extreme weather the tour may have not started at the rite time or even if the weather continued or does get worse again the tour is at risk of being cancelled all together. In this production everything is done by the cast from the performance down to the technical side and even the get ins and get outs. My cast in particular work well as a team and are very good in organising and working around each other which is key in this type of touring production. We all have our own roles within the cast. My task is looking after the finances and expenses of the cast and liaising between the venue and the office. This role requires a lot of self organisation making sure everything is in order.
What if?	If the weather had got worse then as I stated above the tour would be at risk of complete cancelation. This would have not only put me out of work but not looked good on my CV even though is would be beyond my control. The venues may not have been entirely prepared for our arrival which would slow down the entire day and make us late for the next venue.
Another View	From an outside perspective I would say the whole process looked very organised but very very hard work that requires a lot of energy and stamina in order to do three good performances a day. The shows all went well and the audiences seemed to enjoy the experience and even made a point of telling the cast this after the performance. All in all the production looks slick and well rehearsed in all areas including both the performance and the technical side.