Punk Rock- The Play

Click here to watch an interview with Simon Stephens



Punk Rock is a play by the British playwright Simon Stephens which premiered at the Royal Exchange in 2009 and transferred to the Lyric Hammersmith directed by Sarah Frankcom. The play concerns a group of private school sixth formers during their A Level mocks exams.



The short pieces of loud distorted music are used to indicate scene changes, and it works, but Sonic Youth and The White Stripes aren’t punk.

About Simon Stephens:

-Originally from Stockport, Greater Manchester, Stephens studied and graduated from the University of York.

-He was a member of Scottish art punk band Country Teasers.

-He lives in London with his wife and three children.

3/10/13 : Warm up and Hot Seating

Physical Warm-up:

The whole class joined together to take part in a physical warm up to wake us up. It helps us to be ready for any activities or instructions we have to follow. Most of it involves stretching our body by rolling our spinal cord down on an out breath and coming back up on an intake. After doing it a few times you introduce breath and sound so that our breath can warm up for more vocal work.We used sounds like: 'sss' and 'mm'.

Voice Warm-up : Head, Heart, Guts and Groin

We started off by walking in neutral. Firstly it was important to think of a line , meet eye contact with someone and stop infront of them. The 'Head' part is saying your line without intention: there is little tone involved and the voice is calm. Saying your line from the 'Heart' is meaningful and comes from the soul. Whispering can help you find that listening voice- it's open and sensitive.
The 'Guts' voice is an intense, harsh sound that comes from the deeper part of your body. It's the voice you would use to get someones attention or the projection you would use to summon up many men to a battle. To get a lot of force out from your body we pressed into the wall with all strength coming from our arms to our hands, into the wall. I felt the pressure move down to anchor into the ground beneath my feet. Lastly, the 'Groin' is the inner flirtatious melody or the sexual tone you use when you wind and grind your hips into the wall. It's a seductive voice that might be used to get what you want from someone.

With Tanya..

From hot seating I've learnt that it's an easier way of getting into the mind of my character. By hearing what other characters have to say about Tanya and what she thinks of them helps me to understand her personal life instead of her in school. From the questions that I got given i've included it in my post. For example- what's most important to her and hopefully you'll be able to see from the diary entries etc..

This helped me think about Tanya herself but what helped me think about what she thought or the way she acted was this other exercise..

Improvising The Scene

For me: An actors work only begins from the moment they put their script down.
As a class we took time to sit down and analyse the thoughts behind the things we said in our scene. It's mainly made up of thought, feeling and action. A lot of us didn't yet know our lines so from the thought process of the script we tried our best to use it to prompt us in the recreation of our scene (but without our script). And to be honest it really helped me to find out how i was going to react to something or to say a line.

Acting skills 2

Use of chair:

 As actors performing we're always wanting to be ourselves when sitting comfortably on a chair. But how do you know that your character sits the same way? One person maybe used to sitting cross legged on a chair to show how relaxed and comfortable they are talking to someone. You might not want to use it as a chair or you might not even want to sit down. Think about : Are you leaning? Are your legs wide apart? Is one leg on the other? Are you sitting on the resting part of the chair? Have you flipped it over so that you can gaze better into someones eyes. As you can see, every prop can be used differently depending on how your character feels or what they might want in the scene.

For example: if you are an intimidating character you might not sit on the chair like everyone else but sit on the corner of the table starring at someone ; you could be leaning back with one leg on your thigh.
Use every bit of an object to explore your character in more depth.

Analysed Examples:
- 1st picture: Upright posture when sitting could identify your status as an important person like a nurse or doctor; it shows you're professional.
-Sitting on the corner of the chair angled (as shown on the first picture) gives of a sign you're not concentrating on what's around you, that you're in your own little world. And if you're hand are placed rubbing your forehead as well it shows frustration or anxiety. Different elements combined together( facial expression and position of body) makes what you're trying to portray clear.
- 3rd picture: Due to him sitting with his leg on the other makes me interpret that the person is confident. With him leaning back on the chair it makes him look superior. He could be a boss of his own company or just an intimidating man.

Status of character we looked at:

1.Extremely nervous, quiet and inhibited
2.Very nervous, quiet and inhibited
3.Nervous, quiet and inhibited
4.A little nervous, quiet and inhibited
5.Neither timid nor bold
6.Rather outgoing and confident
7.Bold and confident
8.Commanding and rather imposing
9.Very commanding, intimidating and bold
10.Extremely commanding, imperious and untouchable

On the scale of status I think that Tanya is a strong 6. This is mainly due to the fact she hangs out with Cissy a lot which means she has to have some confidence to hang around with 'the lead girl' of the group. She's the average teenage girl which likes to gossip and bitch about things and that has to come with poise. She manages to stand up to Bennett at one point which shows me she has the inner courage to speak out if she needs to- she won't do it unless she thinks it's needed.