London - Sites visited and information I have gained



Inside the globe theatre.
It was interesting to view the
 estimated layout and
 style of  the globe



I went to London with college for 3 days; We visited some sites which I have found helpful for this unit. These included The Globe theatre, the new London theatre, the Royal Opera house and St Paul's (the actors church). It was interesting to discover how theatre has evolved from Shakespeare's time. Theatre was hated by the church, women were not allowed to act and the style of plays were different yet still effect theatre today. During the Restoration women were finally allowed to act, some church's were accepting theatre  as a good thing and  plays were becoming increasingly popular. Nowadays theatre and drama is a huge part of life, and comes in many different forms e;g theatre, ballet, comedy, pantomime, TV. It is completely accepted in society and is enjoyed by millions if not billions of people.

We also went to see the show War horse in the national theatre, this was a great example of how focused you need to be when performing, as it was clear that every performer was completely focused and giving the show everything they had.

The actors controlling the horses must be incredibly
focused to move the horses in co-ordination with each
other. They also have to make precise movements and sound
at the correct moments throughout the performance.
They did this brilliantly which made you see the puppets
as real horses during the show.

Frosines Monologue, ideas and rehearsal/ Molieres intentions

I have realised that when I perform my monologue I don't move or use gestures enough, this makes it look a bit wooden. Therefore I have been experimenting with gestures and movements which my character would use, I have come up with a  few ideas which i could in-corporate:

• When my character is calculating sums in her head, she could be counting on her fingers to make sure shes right
• I could add in a small pace or wander to make it look less awkward and wooden
• When there is an important line e.g. "why this girl will bring you twelve thousand a year" (as it is a persuasive line), i should put emphasis on the important words to make them stand out and make a point.

I am still experimenting with my monologue to see what suits my character in terms of movement but also with her intonation and volume. I have realised the importance of these skills, because you can know a monologue and read it out but this means nothing unless you can actually perform it, as in create a character and show its meaning.


I was also curious to see where Moliere took his inspiration from and why he wrote "The Miser".

I found out that he was in a way adapting a fable ("The miser and his gold") about a greedy man who buried his gold (Harpagon also buried his gold). The man checked on it every day, until one day his gold was stolen. The man realised that the gold hadn't helped or made him happy in any way, therefore a buried stone would have been just as useful, so he buried a stone in its place. The morale of this story is that money is not the most important aspect o life and can do more harm than good. This is of great importance because there are many similarity's between this and "The Miser", Harpagon harmed many people out of greed including his horses (half starved them), he turned his children against him who later stole his gold!, and basically for a useless substance as he never put his gold to any use. I believe  Moliere was trying to tell people to care about their family and Friends over money.

                                                                      

This is a video which explains the fable in simple terms, it may be helpful to view it :-)

Independant study

I have decided to do some independent research into Restoration theatre, I decided to research the audience as i have little knowledge of audience's during Restoration drama/comedy.  

William Hogarth: The Laughing Audience, 1733

• Restoration drama was essentially written by Charles's courtiers for his courtiers and it was vibrant, colourful, brutal, and bawdy. Restoration audiences were notoriously ill behaved, often more interested in the drama of their own lives than that on stage.
• During this time the theatre was a "playhouse for the upper crust of restoration society".
• there are accounts of audience members climbing onto the stage (even though this was unsuccessfully forbidden in Charles 11's reign). Not only this but quarrels often took to the stage, which did on occasions cause injury.
• Orange Wenches- groups of women who would force their way through the walkways to sell fruit, they were tolerated but not liked as their prices were often extravagant.

Different audience sectors:

1. The Pit- a seat here cost half a crown (12p), although you were expected to keep to your seat all the way through the performance. This was by far the noisiest and rowdiest area of the auditorium.
2. The Boxes- This was the most expensive area costing 4 shillings (20p).Boxes were used to host the higher class, mainly women and their protective husbands.
3. The Galleries-This area was for the lower class of society and is often not accounted for in contemporary accounts.

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rtheatre/Theatres/Area_Aud.html- this is the link used to gain this information, therefore if you'd like to know more click here.

Friday 20th january

Today gave us the opportunity to work on our presentations or do some research.
I began my presentation, my original idea was to simply have a picture presentation and read the information separately. In the end i have done some slides with just pictures with the odd comment, yet i have added text on slides which need an explanation to make them understandable. I am still planning to learn and understand the information further so i can explain the information without constantly looking at the PowerPoint. I researched information about the Restoration period, the history and influences behind theatre at that time. I learnt some really useful information about restoration comedy and its social and historical influences.

here are some of the websites i used:

• http://www.cyberpat.com/shirlsite/essays/restor2.htm
• http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Miser.html



An interpretation of Frosine and Mr Harpagon from "The Miser",
its helpful to look at different interpretations as it can help create ideas
and give you a greater understanding of how your character might dress

 This research gave me a greater understanding of Restoration comedy, this in turn helped me to understand "The Miser" and "The way of the world" as i understand some of the meanings behind them e.g "The Miser" outlines greed, love and serendipity (luck). I believe that it's crucial to understand your plays, characters and the ideas behind them, as it helps you to portray and explain your character more convincingly and in more detail.

I am going to do some research in my independent study time so i can improve my knowledge in this area. 

Thursday 19th January

Today we focused on our monologues and characterisation.
Firstly we arranged ourselves into small groups, together we read through our monologues and discussed characterisation or anything we believed to be productive.
notes i wrote about my monologue and character

• I have decided to perform my monologue standing up, i believe i can get more of my character (Frosine) across to the audience this way, by posture an gestures.
• I need to explore intonation more thoroughly, this means i can make important aspects of the speech stand out more. This will also help the audiences understanding of what she is trying to say.

To gain more feedback about our monologues we were asked to perform our monologues to the class. i managed to read out half of my monologue, but i had to stop due to nerves (something i will have to work on). I still gained some helpful feedback, i learnt that my enunciation, tone of voice and characterisation are all good, yet i need to be louder and perform with more confidence. We then had a short amount of time to think about our feedback and come up with some new improvement ideas.

During our last half hour we watched some classical theatre clips to give us a better idea of how it is performed and what it is all about. We watched David Tennants monologue ("to be or not to be") from Hamlet, Catherine Tate performing " a winters tale" and the modern version of Romeo and Juliet. It was interesting to see what facial expressions they used and how much the acting style can differ yet still be effective. I plan to research more about Classical theatre, especially from the restoration period, as my monologue and script are from that time era.

                                                                        

This is one of the videos which we watched, i found it interesting to watch the use of facial expression and intonation

Wednesday 18th January

In the morning we learnt about shakespeare and what theatre was like at the time (Renaissance era).
What did i learn about Shakespeare?

• There are thirty-eight plays written by shakespeare around today, two more plays were lost in the past.
• Not much is actually known about shakespeare, there are very few paintings of him (all believed to be inaccurate), and only few facts about him can be accounted for e.g he was married
• His plays are split up into Historys, Tragedies and comedies
• He used rythm, sonnets and many forms of writing in his plays
• he is probably the most famous and popular playwright to date

We then talked about his use of language, as he used old english (from the time era) to write his plays.
In actual fact after reading through some of his material, we realised that its not that difficult to make out what he means or is trying to say, once you know this you can then research any unknown words. To explore this we looked at a poem called "JABBERWOCKY"(by Lewis Carol) which is basically written in a completely made-up form, yet you can create meaning out of it because they are believable words!.  We then looked through our monologues and scene work to make sure we actually understood what we are saying and meaning!, this is crucial as you have to understand a piece to be able to portray it correctly to an audience. I believe i now understand what my character is trying to say and what emotions she is expressing .
The afternoon was also research based, as we explored the Renaissance era.

What did I learn?

• Renaissance is the name for a time era (1500-mid 1600) the word means new birth. during this period the tudors and stuarts were in power (at different times of course).
• many aspects of life changed greatly in this era as new discoverys, beliefs and laws came into society e.g new lands discovered. This influenced theatre greatly at the time e.g war influenced theatre strongly.
• William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, James Burbage, Christopher Marlowe and Richard Burbage were famous playwright/actors around during this era.
• Myths and Magic and the society highrank ,The chain of being (see picture below) had a great influence on theatre e.g women were seen as very low in society.
• classcial style was popular
• theatre was seen as quite un-civalised for a while, only being performed by lower members of society (outside of london) and frowned upon by many, including the church. Audience members could throw food at bad actors, talk as much and as loudly as they wished, and the atmosphere was crowded and roudy.
• In 1576 theatre became recognised slightly by higher classes, meaning the first theatre in london was built, and simply called "The theatre". The Swan and The Rose (both london theatres) followed soon after. Elizabeth the first fell in love with theatre and often held productions in her court.
• theatre companies were already around and toured outside of london. Shakespeare himself spent much of his career with a company called Chamberlaines
• Shakespeare's plays were performed in either "The Blackfriars" (higher class) or "The Globe" (lower class").                                                                













 I have found a video which will give you furthur information on William Shakespeare. I found it quite interesting, i hope you share the same experience :-)



THE CHAIN OF BEING
This helped me to understand the system so i hope it helps you to!



Thursday 12th January

In the morning i had a Tutorial to discuss my progress and parts of the unit which i didn't fully understand. In the afternoon we worked on our group scenes, we read the scene through in character and made sure we understood what the characters mean as language has changed greatly since the Play was written. We read through it a couple of times before getting up and running it through with the blocking and actions, this helps as it starts to build up an image of what the scene looks like and can bring ideas into mind. Within the group we all came up with independant ideas about our own characters, which we practised during the scene run-throughs.  We then moved on to monologues, in pairs or small groups we read out our monlogues to each other, everybody then got feedback and ideas back from each other.
this gave us practise on our monologues, helped us to learn our lines and gave us feedback (which can help you to improve).
Once we had finished we went down to the LRC to work on our presentation or gain further information for it. I came up with a few ideas for my presention, i would like to have an activity (possibly role-play), have a small quiz at the end, possibly in the style of mastermind, And have a picture powerpoint with the information read seperately.

Wednesday 11th January

In the morning we received our group scenes and characters for the unit, my group (Demi, Chelsea,Chloe and Chloe P) have been given a scene (act three,scene one) from "The way of the world", a popular restoration comedy written by William Congreve in 1700. My character is called "Peg", "Lady Wishforts" maid. She is rushed off her feet by the Lady.
In the afternoon we did an improvisation exercise, once again we were given handouts about ancient theatre, we had to make them more interesting to make the information sink in to listeners. To engage an audience we added actions and role-play to the information being read out, this means that it should hopefully be much more engaging to watch and listen to.
After this we learnt about mystery and morality plays -see link
http://m.crossref-it.info/articles/147/Mystery-and-morality-plays


We then devised a morality play in groups which involved the seven deadly sins, an average person, a good side, and death, as Morality plays were used to explain how to live a good or just life. Our plays moral was to resist temptation or modern day peer pressure. This was helpful as it encouraged us to be creative in the way we think and devise scenes, plays or anything performance wise!. It taught us that information can sink in better if it is shown in an interesting way, of course at the time these plays were first performed they were performed in this manner so that people could understand them (as the average person wasn't very well educated).
Finally we rehearsed our group scenes ("the way of the world") we managed to block the first page and practise it a few times before the day ended, yet we need to expand on these developments as the blocking we devised isn't set in stone and it could be much improved e.g. the entrance of "Mrs Marwood" needs to be changed as we all ended up blocking each other on the stage.

Friday 6th January

We were situated in the computer room, as we needed to research more about classical theatre, our monologues and what theatre was like in the past and at the time our plays (the miser) were written. I found out some interesting information about Greek classical theatre, as we watched a video about Greek theatre which explained about an amphitheatre and what theatre was like at the time.


   


I also discovered more about the restoration period (when theatre made a come back after it had been banned for 18 years) and The Miser. The link below has a lot of helpful information about the play which has given me a greater understanding of the plot and its history. 
http://ecademy.agnesscott.edu/~dthompson/MiserWeb/Miser_Production_Concept_Package.pdf

This also taught me that the writer Jean-Baptiste Moliere, took inspiration from life and politics during the time period to write the play. before the day finished Sonya talked to us about the presentations which we will be doing (about our monologue and what theatre was like at the time it was written). The research we have been doing will be incredibly helpful when creating our presentations. They must also be interesting (not just reading out blocks of information).

Thursday 5th january

In the morning we had a group tutorial and learnt more about classical theatre, how it started, evolved and the large quantity of styles it contains. e.g roman, medieval, shakespeare, restoration.
After lunch we went to the dance studio, as a few of us hadn't managed to find a suitable monologue yet (for our monologue work), we went to the LRC to search for one. My monologue is from the Miser (a restoration comedy play), the character is Frosine, she is a match-maker who thinks theres nobody on earth she can't pair off! in the monologue shes trying to convince Harpagon (a rich but greedy man) that she can match him up with Marianne (a young, poor yet pretty girl in his neighbourhood). Once everybody had a suitable monologue, we had a quick disscusion about them before heading back down to te LRC to do some independant research, this was about our monologues and the time period in which they were set. i found a couple of useful links which taught me about the play itself, the characters and restoration comedy (time-period).

http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/ajb/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Restoration_comedy.html
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Miser.html

I also found a video which is from a movie of the miser, seeing somebody elses interpretation of the part was helpful and inspired some ideas. the monologue is differently worded in it but means the same.

Wednesday 4th january

This was our first day of the classical theatre unit, therefore in the morning sonya (our tutor) explained what classical theatre was (theatre before 1850's) and involved, also what work we need to complete for the unit. in the morning we undertook a small activitity, this involved presenting handouts (The Greek Theatre) in an interesting and engaging form, rather than just reading them out plainly. my group chose to use role-play to do this, we acted out what the presenter was explaining in a humorous manner to engage an audience. we performed these to the second years in the afternoon.
In the afternoon we learnt much more about Greek theatre and amphitheatres, we created a human ampitheatre standing in a semi-circle and positioning ourselves to demonstrate correct places for everything and everybody in an amphitheatre. after this we got into groups and acted out a given scene, my group got Lysistrata (a greek scene), this gave us a greater understaning of the language and style of plays which the Greek would perform E.G they are obssessed with war, women with power and sexuality.  Below is an example of a Greek ampitheatre, which gives an idea of the size and design.