Evaluation of the performances

So we have finally completed both shows. It was a long hard process but it all payed off in the end as they both couldn't have gone any better, although there were a few minor incidents, we don't think the audience picked up on them once we recovered ourselves, and I am so proud of my group.

Once the show began, it just exploded, everyone was so much more enthusiastic with their characters, and their gestures. All the props and costume were all in the exact same place and everybody knew where everything was which really helped us all a lot. Although in our second performance I did have to play the guard without a moustache in the matinee performance, which oddly felt weird, as I had rehearsed so many times in a moustache, but it had fallen on the floor backstage and I was unable to find it.

I loved the fact we all stuck together in the play and their was a lot of teamwork:

- We all helped each other backstage by helping each other get our costumes on, and there was always someone prompting backstage just in case. At one point Beth forgot her line "put out your hand Miss Green" and kind of froze, but recovered and said he line just in time. The stage combat that followed Beth's line was excellent, the timing was perfect, the drop was perfect and it was went really well. Come to think of it, all the stage combat went really well as it was the timing that we were worried about but it all went brilliant.

We were all also very light on our feet, whether it was a stage entrance, a dance routine, there was no heavy stomping about. It is especially important to be light footed when walking back stage because the audience can hear you, and also when you have to be on stage somewhere else but you're not supposed to be seen yet it's important to remain quiet, and we all did well at that.

And of course we used Brecht's placards idea, and extended the idea to use projection on to the cards, using images that are pertinent to the piece. And because I was behind the card all the time, I had never seen the full effect of the cards until I saw photographs later posted, and I thought they looked excellent.



Also, although the routine kept changing because different people were struggling with certain moves, the dance routine worked out really well and gladly there were no mistakes made. There were a couple of minor technical errors in the first performance such as the music playing late and repeating itself, along with a few lighting issues, but it had no impact on the performance so it was okay.

In previous rehearsals, there some issues with some of our voice projection and diction, as people were letting their accent slip, but as soon as we got to the show, the accents were there, the diction was there, the pronunciation was there, and everyone did really well.

Although I loved the play itself, I did have my favourite parts:

- The fire - In the scene where Miss Slighcarp and Mr Grimshaw burn the letter, we had Zoe, Dan and Chloe keeling down clicking and clapping their fingers. I loved this idea. It was unique and something I had never seen before, I loved the way it looked, it sounded and I got a lot of good feedback from some audience about this specific part.

- Costume - I thought everyone did really well with the responsibility of picking/buying their costumes to suit their character/s, and having all sat down and discussed who we think should wear what and what type of clothing we think characters should wear. I especially loved Beth's costume (left), because we imagined her as such a theatrical, evil dark character, the costume and make-up Beth had suited her character perfectly. I also loved Sian's hair  (right) as it was evident she had done her research on orphans in the 19th century and the hair was spot on.

 



- I also loved the gun that Ryan used to play Mr Grimshaw. It was a fake gun but sounded just like a real gun. In rehearsals, we had a lot of trouble and it didn't seem to be working, until we found out that Daniel had been loading the gun the wrong way around! So on the day of the show it went perfectly and the gun fired three times, and got such a huge gasp from the audience which we were thrilled about!

- I loved the chorus. At first it was hard to read the chorus and act it out, so it took a lot of time to sit together and discuss what we wanted to do. We wanted to act the chorus out, and not just read it aloud. We wanted a narrational style - not like Greek theatre where you stand still and read, and as an actor we want to make it sound interesting, and on the night of the show it was just so much more exaggerated and here was so much energy which made it look and sound a lot better.

- Physicality I think was a huge element of the play. You have to think about physicality when playing a character, a wolves, even the chorus. For example, the wolves showed gestus which is a technique by Bertolt Brecht.

Wikipedia describes gestus "Gestus is an acting technique developed by the German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht. It carries the sense of a combination of physical gestures and "gist" or attitude. It is a means by which "an attitude or single aspect of an attitude" is revealed, insofar as it is "expressible in words or actions."

They used gestus by doing the intense wolf stares and the slow panting of the wolves, which adds a huge effect and layer to what is being said. The physicality of all the characters is very expressionistic and brechtian, resembling the verfrendums effect.

There weren't necessarily parts that I didn't like, but I think there is always room for improvement. I think if I were to suggest/make any improvements I think we should have most definitely incorporated more sound effects and music, as in the parts we had music I think It created such a spooky and dark ambience and worked really well, and I think if we added more in the wolf scenes it would have made the scenes a lot more creepy. Although, I think if we had more music some of the characters would have had to speak a lot clearer and louder for the audience to understand them.

I thought the audience reacted really well, but I do think the audience in the second show reacted a lot more to the comedy parts of the play, but I think it's because most of them were drama students themselves and they got the pay more than others. But I cannot complain about the audience from both shows what so ever, we were all thrilled with our efforts and the reaction and excellent feedback from the audience and our tutors.

Rehearsal process

Our first run through with Jill was a disaster, there were some of us who had not yet learnt all of their lines and not even brought in their costume, and I think when you're not dressed as your character or when you don't know what they say it affects how you act.

In this rehearsal, there were props forgotten, many lines and it fell apart. We sat with Jill and she spoke to us and explained everything through and through about how it matters to learn your lines and make the effort to go out and buy costumes etc. And I don't think we shouldn't have been given that talk as its our responsibility to get our own props and costume and we all should have known that.

Although the next day when we did another run through it was a lot better. There was still a few minor mishaps but it was a lot lot better than the previous rehearsal we had. We sat and made notes to make sure we put all props in the right place, all our costumes were in and in the right place.

We then had a tech run, which should normally last around 3 hours, and only took us an hour and a half and was the best run through we have done yet, but was then followed by a dress run which went even better! We were thrilled as there were no visible mistakes made and it went really well.

Rehearsal process - stage combat

Today we sat in a group and decided what scenes we thought needed work and improvements we could make as a group to make the play better.

So those who were in a specific scene would get on stage and show us their scene whilst the others would sit, watch and make notes. Before each show we do we always try our best to watch others and make notes to give them advice on how they could improve certain elements of the scene.

As I wasn't a main character in the play, I spent a lot of the time watching others go over their scenes and suggesting ideas to them because I think in the rehearsal process its so important to experiment with different types of staging and dialougue and trying scenes in different ways and getting feedback on all of those things. For example, the scene at the beginning on the train carriage with Sylvia (Sian) and Mr Grimshaw (Ryan Loftus) and they were sat on the train and although the dialogue itself was good, nothing was really happening as they were supposed to be just sat on a train. We all first made the first point that they should be bopping up and down slightly as the trains were very bumpy and not as smooth as the trains we have nowadays, we also suggested that as trains were very loud that we have some form of sound effect to play in the background, and even these two things a lone made the scene a lot better, including the likes of props like cheese, suitcases etc. There is also a part in this scene where Mr Grimshaw is knocked out whilst trying to get his suitcase off of the shelf. This scene was all about stage combat, timing and getting the hit just right. In the scene, when they arrive at their destination, Mr Grimshaw stands to and get his suitcase. At first he used to just grab the suitcase and just let it drop to the floor, along with himself! Although we all found it funny it didn't look naturalistic, although we know it's not a naturalistic or real play at all, certain elements that are performed need to look real in order to get a better reaction from the audience. After a good few lessons going over this specific scene, it was perfected in the end, he struggled to get the case off the shelf, and when he eventually did he was knocked out by the case, and it did look real and natural and worked really well.

There are many other scenes including stage combat:

- Mrs Briskett in the school scene - I think it was only best to give Chloe who plays Mrs Brikset the opportunity to include plenty of stage combat moments in her scenes as I think is suits her personality and the point of her character, just like Miss Slighcarp, they are both very melodramatic characters who back then punished children for the littlest things. For example, in the school scene, the girls are admitted to detention for 'speaking too loud' 'speaking to quiet' and 'working too slow', these are just simple little things yet children were brutally beaten back then for doing such things, so in this scene we definitely thought we should include a few hits and punches. As Bonnie was in detention for speaking to loud, Mrs Briskett pulls her by the ear in a line and one by one hits one of the children, like Jess who plays Emma gets a shove into the line, and myself who plays one of the servants gets a punch to the face. This scene took a lot of work to perfect and get the timing accurate. But once finished looked so real and got a few gasps from the others watching. Also, in the school scene, we incorporated another element of stage combat by getting Mrs Briskett to knock one of the servants in the face with a rotating whiteboard. We worked on this with Daniel and thought this would be a really good gag if we get this to work to perfection. What we actually did was get Chloe to turn the whiteboard around and whilst doing so Zoe place out her hands, the whiteboard hit her hand and she then held her hands to her face, and because of the angles and the places they were positioned it looked so real. And a few days later when showing Jill the scene with the gag she hadn't actually scene yet, she gasped and was in complete shock as she thought this was real, which really was the reaction we wanted to encourage from the audience.

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I think an important part of the rehearsal process was vocal technique. We knew when reading the play that most of us would have to master a posh accent, baring in mind class, status of characters. For example, there is Miss Slighcarp who is played by Beth, and the first time Beth played Miss Slighcarp, I thought she was brilliant; she had the posh accent, the posture, the diction, the emphasis, and especially inflection. I think inflection is so important in such a play as this with so many exaggerative characters like Miss Slighcarp and Miss Briskett. I think accent is significantly important when devleloping your character. Take Mr Wilderness, in the play, his dialogue is written in a Northern accent:

"childer come afore wheels. Eh, a pretty little fair lass she be. What's amiss with her?"

"Nay, where lass? I've only the forge, and the kitchen where I sleep mysen"

Although Ryan, who plays Mr Wilderness struggled to read the dialogue never mind perform it, I think in the end he did really well maintaining his character and his characters personality and accent all the way through and I think he did exceptionally well.

My Characters/characterisation

In the wolves of Willoughby Chase, I play the Guard. I need to ask myself:

- What did they dress like?
- How would they speak?
- What mannerisms would my character have?
- What do they look like
-How would other people react to me? (imperialism)
- What was their physicality like?

After some research, I found an image of what I imagined my character of the guard to look like:



This was one of many pictures I found of guards and policeman in the 1800s. I especially used this one because this is how I imagined my character was like: big, tall, assertive and also a sense of authority, I also think he looked quite scary.

The first time I played the guard, I tried different tones of voice and different accents. In the end, I decided to have a very low tone of voice like a man and had a deep southern accent, as I couldn't imagine the guard sounding posh like everyone else in the play. I also bought big steel toe boots to wear with pants, a white shirt with a long jacket. I also purchased a moustache like the one in the picture. When playing the guard, I kept clearing my throat and adapted an assertive tone when speaking to Sylvia as she was an orphan. Baring my physicality in mind, I walked on with my hands behind my back shouting "Tickets please!" I also had a stapler which I used as a ticket stamp to stamp the tickets I was given. I acted manly and assertive because that's the personality I wanted to have as I think its important to give a character a personality as it allows you to embrace who/what you're playing. Also, before my character enters the stage, Mr Grimshaw walks on stage, but he walks on with his stick and sits opposite to Sylvia and the way he walked on and sat down, you could tell he was of a higher status than Sylvia, who acted very sheepish and shy. Then when I walk on, the status levels change again, Mr Grimshaw rummages through his pockets to find the ticket, and Sylvia rushes to look through her bag apologising. I felt my character was of a higher status at this point, as also the 1800s was the time of imperialism.


Wolves:
I found a video on YouTube that shows how wolves move and behave. Their slow hesitant prowling, sudden halts where they look left to right, or raise their noses in the air to smell, this really gave me a good insight on how I want to move as a wolf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI7fxQHuw5s

As I was part of the chorus, we adapted the roles of wolves also. So most of the time we were on stage as the chorus, we maintained a creepy, slow, scary persona as we wanted the audience to be intrigued and get the hint that bad things were happening in the play. Then towards the end of the play, when Miss Slighcarp is found out, we completely change our personality to happy, excited and giggly.

Servants

A domestic servant had only two choices depending on their situation. They had to become a live-in servant or live outside of the home they are servicing; and in most cases, men and women who entered into this type of workforce had no choice but to live within the confines of the home chosen for them. These men and women who entered into this kind of labour were more than likely very poor (in some cases lonely); some were young children and teenagers whose parents needed the extra income to make ends meet for the family and had no other choice but to send their young one's off to a workhouse to learn to become a domestic servant, like the ones in the play. The youngest a domestic servant started out if they were children was 7 years old; but if you were a young man or woman, you started at the age of 14.  Depending on what kind of labour you'd be doing as a servant, these young men and women lived within the confines of a workhouse -- which was kind of like a boot camp for domestic servants -- and you were literally taught how to do all the jobs expectant of you as a servant of some kind.

Servants couldn't afford to wear clean tidy clothes much like anyone else. They wore torn, ragged clothes during all seasons.

As I'm playing a servant in the play, I wanted to purchase a plain apron which I would dirty myself. I will have my hair up looking scruffy.

As I was unable to purchase a plain apron after looking everywhere, I bought an original apron with font on or whatever and turned it inside out to look plain. I also play a chef in the same scene, so a purchased some plastic knives, things to chop in the scene, and Danielle also brought in a chopping board for us to use.

I play a servant twice in the play, in one scene I have no lines, but there are about 6 of us stood in a line, and we are being dismissed by Miss Slighcarp and Mr Grimshaw, we listen to their lecture they're giving us, saying we are not needed anymore, and we are ridiculous. We then fight over our wages she throws at us, courtesy and then walk off. Then we play servants in another scene where Miss Brisket enters, where we are cleaning, and get hit and have to act like everything is okay when the school inspector arrives.

Set Design

When rehearsing the play, we decided we wanted a set to work with. We incorporated different levels into the background, added in some stairs and explained as we went along what we would use each section for.


We had 3 sections of staging, stage right we had a tall build as we used this side to represent a house, stairs, and was used for many entrances such as Simon, and Miss Slighcarp and we other built in an archway for other entrances. Stage left we had the same size as stage right, but we used this side for the likes of the wolves and chorus, as we use pieces of cards where we project images onto card pieces for exaggerated effect. Then centre stage we had a row of staging which we used for the wolves, the train, a horse carriage and a secret passage in a couple of scenes.

We had the staging in many ways before we decided what was best, we had four lots at one point, but it made the stage looks a bit full and messy. We also decorated the set with drapes and sheet for some shadowing effect of the wolves. And we also added chests on stage for props and costume for some of us to get changed on stage. We also used the chests to sit on in some scenes also.

Bertolt Brecht Workshop 04/03/14

Unit 13: Contemporary Theatre Performance - Brecht
Unit 1: Performance Workshop

When having a group discussion about the key rehearsal tasks that we all need to do, we discussed the following:

• Learning lines - Learning your lines, i would say is one of the most important things you need to do first when starting your play. As soon as you receive your script and are aware of what character you are playing, you should begin learning your lines as soon as possible; the sooner you know your lines, the sooner you can start blocking the play and begin exploring different ways of saying your lines e.g different tones of voice, accents, characterisation. If you are rehearsing 2 weeks before the performance with your script still in hand, it will show that you are unorganised and not fully committed and you will be letting everybody else down.
• Blocking - Blocking is all about planning your entrances and exits, where you're standing when you say your lines, the space where you perform, and most importantly, proxemics.
• Props/Costumes - Costumes and props are normally something you consider thinking about when you begin learning your lines, you need to make sure you have the correct costume and props that would suit your character, their personality, their posture, their attitude, and also the time they lived in. It is also important to have your costume and props prepared early in the process to ensure they fit correctly and are used correctly.
• Characterisation - A script can only give you so much information about your character, and how they move, speak, think, and their relationships. So it's important you take this into account when playing your character. You need to think about what life would be like, what other characters they seem to like, characters they seem to hate, certain dislikes of theirs etc.
• Research - Research is also key when baring all the above in mind. In order to know the play itself, you need to be aware of the author/play writer, maybe different actors that have played the characters in the play and how they played them, whether different actors played the characters differently. It's also important to know how characters can convey the themes and knowing where your characters come from. Looking for reviews of the play is also helpful as it is good to know what people think of it.

Responsibilities:

Although my character is only in the beginning of the play, I also participate in the chorus and I play a wolf and servants. I have also adapted a directors role, giving my classmates advice with their lines, different ways of saying them, where they could stand and also I have found great pieces of music for certain scenes, in once scene I have combined two pieces of music and played them at the same time to give a howling effect, representing wolves. The pieces I have combines are called:

- Running wolf 

- Wolves in the wind (25 minute version, which in rehearsals I keep replaying as the howling of wolves creates such an eerie ambiance. 


WOTW - Didactic

intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive.

This afternoon, we talked about Bertolt Brecht and his techniques and talent. We mostly talked about Verfremdungseffekt ( the V effect). Brecht used this to direct the audience's attention to something new.

"From his late twenties Brecht remained a lifelong committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his “epic theatre”, synthesized and extended the experiments of Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas." www.actorhub.co.uk

Epic Theatre came about when Melodrama, realism, and naturalism were very popular forms of theatre. The point was for the audience to believe the characters were real and the story was real, letting the audience forget about everything and enjoy a performance. Brecht hated that type of theatre; he believed that performances were something that the audience should question and think about, so he then created Epic Theatre. He used his techniques to break the illusion of drama. Brecht believed that the actors job was to solely show what is happening, he did not want the actors to play the role realistically, which was the opposite of Stanislavki's purpose in theatre.



FACT 
"Dialectical theatre is a label that the German modernist theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht came to prefer near the end of his career over epic theatre to describe the style of theatre he pioneered . From his later perspective, the term "Epic Theatre" had become too formal a concept to be of use anymore; one of Brecht's most-important aesthetic innovations prioritized function over the sterile opposition between form and content. According to Manfred Wekwerth, one of Brecht's directors at the Berliner Ensemble at the time, the term refers to the "'dialecticizing' of events" that his theatre produces" www.wikepedia.com

 

Brecht always used to try and get the audience involved by speaking to them during the performance. We did use this in Wolves; in the school scene where the inspector comes to inspect the work house, we thought it would be a really good idea for the Megan who plays the inspector to walk around the theatre, inspecting the audience, which I think would instigate a good reaction from the audience. Also, when we play wolves, we repeatedly look at the audience, and when in the chorus, we speak to the audience as if we are keeping them involved, telling them the story and things that are to come.


PLACARDS

We had the iPads and did a few small exercises using a placards app, and had a mess around with them using them for different stories, ideas etc. Which then gave us the idea to use plain white card to project images onto for our performances. When putting this into practice, we also found a piece of music which we used to run around the stage with our cards moving to different places ready to project a different image onto the card, I thought this worked really well and added an ambience and huge affect to the scenes.

Friday - Casting

Casting

Today, we found out what characters we would be playing the cast list is as follows:

Bonnie - Danielle

Sylvia - Sian

James - Adam

Simon - Jay

Mr Gripe - Andrew

Miss Slighcarp - Beth

Mrs Briskett - Chloe

Mr Grimshaw - Lofty

Guard - Me 

Mr Willoughby - Danny

Lady Willougyby - Me

Doctor - Zoe

School Children - All

School Inspector - Megan

Chorus - All (Amy main narrator)

Emma - Jess

Mr Wilderness - Ryan 

When doing our fist run through playing our characters, we discovered that my characters Lady Willoughby and the train guards scenes are too close together, so we decided that Lady Willoughby would not be played my anyone and we would use a prop to represent Lady Willoughby, such as a blanket as she doesn't have any lines and is always in bed because she is very sick. We also came up with the idea of projection - using a white cloth hanging from the ceiling then projecting images onto the cloth giving out a huge effect. 

A few weeks later, we decided to add Lady Willoughby back into the beginning of the play and for me to not feature in the beginning routine. So Me and Dan were at the top of the staging blocks where I lay and he sat next to me whilst everyone did the opening sequence.