Theatre and Society

In this lesson Pam carried on explaining the history of theatre and the society.

We briefly learnt about 'Commedia D'lartte' which when translated means 'Comedy of the art'. It first started off in Italy in the mid 16th century and characters were often masked. Performances were also improvised and were based on sketches and scenarios.

Afterwards, we were given information about Joan Littlewood's impact in the 1950's and how she helped the Theatre Royal in Stratford, east London gain fame by performing plays such as Bertolt Brech's 'Mother Courage and Her Children' which she starred in and also directed in 1955.

We were then taught about the 1960's and George Devine's 'English Stage Company' taking over 'The Royal Court Theatre'.

Contextualising Contemporary Theatre Module

This module is going to be taught by Pam. We first started off th module by learning the history of theatre, going all the way back to Greek Theatre and the Egyptian's influence.

Pam then went through different period and era's of time to explained how and what theatre was like back in those times. Some of the things she mentioned were:

• Egyptian influence
• Greek theatre - added dialogue
• Dark Ages/ Medevil tims - nobody knew what happened
• Bayeux Tapestry - France, Britain, Angelo Saxon
• Renaissance - return to classical values 
• Elizabethan Times - glory days of theatre
• Cromwell - banned theatre
• Antagonist and Protagonist - made clearer in 19th century melodrama

We then got on with the module itself and learn a lot of keywords such as status quo (the norm, accepted model e.g. wife stays at home, convention of society, precieved normality) and agitprop (agitation and propaganda).

We were also taught  about Joan Littlewood, Lord Chamberlain and feminist theatre. 

Community Focus Project - Early Days

Our next module was the Community Focus Project. This project was to help us as student's and a group prepare and create a piece for a target community (Community Focus Clients). It would also help us experience the reality of creating and performing material that has been commissioned by a particular target group within the community and the module would also enable us to develop our understanding of analysing and evaluating the process and performance, of an 'Arts in the Community' project.

So after learning about the module and what we had to achieve and what we were going to be experiencing, we met our clients. Andy, Bev, Keeven, and Philip. We then did warm up activities and name games to help get to know eachother more as a group.

We then proceeded to come up with idea's as a group. Keeven soon mentioned that the Community Focus group wanted to base the play on Valentines Day as our performance was on the 14th of February. Various idea's were established however we all liked the idea of various couple's being in a restaurant and allowing the audience to get an insight of their relationships with the arguments, or problems but ensure that it consisted on a lot of comedy and humour.

Brecht Workshop back in...... December! Eek.

Right, so after our naturalism performances, out next performance was a Brecht workshop that included various poems he's written about himself and his experiences. We also opened the workshop with a song called the 'Alabama Song' which was first published in Brecht's 'Hauspostille'. It was then made into music by Kurt Weill in 1927 and was then covered by The Doors in 1967. 

The poems used in our performance were:

• 'Sonnet to Emmigration'
• 'On Thinking About Hell'
• 'The Ballad of Marie Saunders - The Jew's Whore'.

In order to create a strong piece we learnt a lot a lot about the technique's we would be using such as Alienation, Breaking Though The Fourth Fall, and Gestus. We also learnt a bit about clowning and learnt how to use the Action/ Reaction technique to add humour to a performance. 

Another technique taught to use was learning how to work together as an ensemble piece (e.g. Wedding- Bride, groom, priest, bridesmaid's, bestman, parents etc etc). This enabled us to learn how to manipulate the audience into our performance, and it gave us an idea on how to add humour to common event such as a wedding day. 

The Performance 

I felt the performance went very well. We had to perform in front of other student in the ArtsDepot which I thought I'd be very nervous about but I wasn't as tense as I thought I would be. As a performer I'm more comfortable to natural pieces but I soon found myself having a lot of fun with Brecht's work. 

The performance opened with a group of us singing and  acting out the 'Alabama Song' which I found really fun. Whilst singing and acting the song we had to break through the fourth wall and look at the audience. I found this surprisingly enjoyable as it was clear that the audience felt slightly intimidated and manipulated.

The second piece was 'Sonnet of Emigration' which I was not a part of along with some people but had to sit on the side benches but still had to react to what was going on on stage.

The third piece was 'On Thinking About Hell'. This performance was very grotesque and dark and it included a lot of action' reaction, and synchronisation with the group. At the beginning me and Kate had to lead the others by picking up the fruit from the tree. However, Kate wasn't in therefore I had to do the beginning on my own which I thought I'd find daunting but once I got into the performance I soon got used to looking at the audience through action/ reaction. 

The last piece was 'Ballad of Mary Saunders - The Jew's Whore'. As a group we stood as a semi-circle and had Shakira in the middle rapping the lyrics to the audience. We had to recite the chorus with Shakira, but had to say it to the audience. The last chorus we say varies to the other as we would approach the audience in a dominant manner and say the chorus to them in close proximity. We would then end our piece by walking out of the room in neutral.

Overall I thinking the workshop went well and was happy with the audiences reactions. 

Eeeeek!

Right so I haven't done my blogger in a while but I'm write a number of posts explaining what we've been up to from December to now :)