28th November 2015

In today's lesson we went over our Suffragette scene which we created last lesson. During the physical part of our scene a lift went slightly wrong and a member of our group was injured. This led to the rest of our lesson talking about health and safety and what we could've done to prevent this. This happened due to mis-communication between two members of our group. The problem this has caused is that now the person being lifted has lost trust in other members of the group, this could have a big impact on our piece as we lift this person a lot and we now have to try our hardest to re build trust with this person and to continue to get a lot done in our lessons.
I plan on hopefully continuing with our Suffragette scene next lesson and re gaining trust with the group and put behind and problems that this caused. In the future when we do lifts or any physical theatre pieces which include lifting someone we'll put crash mats on the floor because this will reduce the chance of injury. I'll also make sure that we have one person calling the counts of our lifts so that there's no communication problems and nothing like this happens again.

24th November 2015

In today's lesson we started thinking about how we're going to show the Suffragette that ran in front of the horse in this scene. Firstly we watched War Horse online to see how they created a horse. Once doing this we decided to have 2 horses as it seems more realistic as Emily Davison was hit by the kings horse as well as others competing and there was a problem of having too many legs to create just one. Once we'd created the start of this we then add some physical theatre by using lifts on Ellie who plays Emily. We first done this quite well but what we were doing was quite dangerous so the group and I went over it a few times so that we had trust in each other.
My ideas that I contributed this lesson was that we should recreate the audio of the race that Emily Davison died during and play that over the top of this scene. This idea wasn't used because the audio back then wasn't clear enough for us to hear, as we wasn't going to use this I came up with another idea to get sound effects of a horse race and then screams to play over the top of our scene so it seems more realistic.
To make today's lesson better we could've added music over the top of the physical piece instead of the sound effects. Next lesson I plan on finishing off this scene and getting more research done for other scenes.

23rd November 2015

In today's lesson the group and I added Tom to the opening to our performance as he wasn't in. Once we had done this we started to perfect this, to do this we showed our teacher the movement peice and got given detailed feedback. After spending all lesson perfecting this we then showed it to the other group and got given more feedback. Now we've perfected the opening I plan on filming it next lesson to show the progress we've made since last time we done it.
Along with filming next lesson I plan on starting the Suffragette scene and getting a lot done on that. To make today's lesson better we could've worked quicker to get through the opening or used more techniques in the opening instead of just doing the movement piece as it could make the piece look more effective and mean more to the audience. I'll be doing some extra research into movement pieces to help us with our next Suffragette scene as I think we'll be using some movement again during this scene. 

19th November 2015

In today's lesson the group and I worked on an opening scene. In this scene we wanted to use movement but not make it too similar to our Human Trafficking scene. After all pitching ideas together last lesson we finally started to create and workshop different ideas together in the opening. The first thing we done once the movement piece was made was try it to each song. At first we tried it to The Sound Of Silence- Simon & Garfunkel and we really liked this but I thought it'd be a good idea to try out the 2 songs I had suggested in the earlier lessons. These songs were Take Me To Church-Hozier and I Need- Maverick Sabre. The group and I listened to these two songs and decided that we liked the instrumental to Take Me To Church and we liked the lyrics to I Need. This led to us work shopping the opening with both songs and we finally decided to use I Need by Maverick Sabre which was one of the songs I suggested. Here is how the opening currently looks:

To make things better in this lesson I believe we could've tried something else to open up the piece such as projection or quality dialogue which we could've gradually worked on. This could've left more of an impact on the audience because then they'd know the full meaning of our show before we've started to perform. The reason why this may have not worked though is because as a group we decided to not give anything away to the audience until the end where they'll realise the performance is all about Womens Rights but they'll see that the main character of every scene is a man which shows that men still have more rights than women.

Next lesson I plan on showing Tom his role in the opening as he wasn't in todays lesson and then polishing the opening with him in it.

17th November 2015

In this lesson we managed to get quite a lot done. I contributed many ideas and helped out quite a lot within the group. Firstly in this lesson we discussed how we're going to open the peice, what we should wear and how people will be recognised as the main character. My first idea was to use a watch as the symbolic object which the main character of each scene will wear, the reason I think it should be a watch is because during our peice we show things from different time periods. My other idea that links with this is that before each scene we have the main character turn the time on the watch and then have a projection of a clock going round on a screen. I also thought that in our Suffragette scene we should show the video of the woman getting hit by the horse. During the lesson we also created the monologue for our Suffragette scene, this will be a work in proggress as we want to crete quality dialogue. Later on in the lesson when we decided to start thinking of a movement peice for the opening, I contributed the songs 'Take me to church' and 'I need'. The first song we used for the opening was 'The sound of silence' then we tried it with 'I Need' by Maverick Sabre which worked out better so my idea was used.
Next lesson I plan on making the Suffragette scene and finishing it. The idea I'll give for that is to make our own flyers and posters. To make today's lesson better we could have started blocking the Suffragette scene and got further into making the movement for the opening scene as today we only got slightly into it.

Suffragette Research

Since I know next lesson will be based on Suffragettes I done some research into some of the things that the they'd do when protesting. The reason I done this is because the group and I originally had the ideas that the Suffragette scene would start with a protest and the women would be handing out badges and leaflets to the audience and putting up posters. I found these two pictures of a badge that the Suffragettes would've worn and given out and a magazine that the Suffragettes and feminists would've read around them times.
I've also looked online to find an influential film for this scene and use a trailer or TV program in which I could use ideas from for this scene.

10th November 2015

During this lesson I watched the group perform their 'forced marriage' scene as I wasn't in when this piece was constructed. Then we ran through our Human Trafficking scene and had photographs taken. We also spent some time talking about costume and decided that we're all going to wear blacks and then have a small item of clothing we can change into to show that we are a different character to who we were before. The ideas I gave this lesson was that we should use different colour lighting depending on what scene we're doing. Another idea I gave this lesson which I think could be very powerful and useful would be when I am guiding Ellie to each man that each of them slowly take off her clothes until I catch her and she's all in black. The reason I think this is poweful and would have a big impact on the audience is because it shows that throughout her life as a slave she'll be treated badly by men until she comes back to me and is left with nothing (shown by her wearing all black and no costume left).
 Next lesson I plan on making the projection for our performance, this will help as the audience won't get confused between our scene changes. This lesson we could have improved things by choosing what colours we're going to use for each scene and/or start working on our next scene which is the suffragette scene.

5th November 2015

In today's lesson we started to work on our 'forced marriage' scene. For this we had to decide characters and think about how we can base it around the male and how he can be our main character which after a long debate was sorted. Next it was onto how we could start this scene, I had the idea that the scene could start with 2 men talking on the phone about arranging a marriage for their children. Then the group and I faced a problem, as we only have two females in our group we had to find a way of having two mothers and a wife. The way this was solved was by me coming up with the idea that the main male characters mother has recently died and therefore calls his friend living in England and tells him to get his daughter to marry his son; of course the Englishman accepts as it means he will gain wealth and high status in the foreign country.
The Englishman tells his daughter they're going on holiday and then throughout the holiday manipulates and mentally abuses her into getting married to this boy. That is so far the storyline I have come up with, In the beginning I had the idea that the phone call between the friends could be about the loss of the boys mother and then the two friends get onto the topic of needing a new 'family'.
Today I believe to improve what we could've done was speed up with contributing ideas so that we could actually start blocking the scene. An alternative to today's lesson could've included making the transition from the Human Trafficking scene to the Suffragettes scene and/or start blocking the Suffragette scene. Next lesson I plan on making a start on blocking the Forced Marriage scene and to hopefully get a strong outline of how it'll look.

3rd November 2015

After being indecisive last lesson about what scene to work on today I went home and done some research into our topic that night and found a film trailer which is all about human trafficking. The reason this could be helpful to my group is because we could use some of the ideas and techniques given off in the film and transform them so they our suitable for our own piece. The trailer I found is for the film 'Trade' which was released in 2007 about a family in New Mexico. Today's lesson was all about everyone showing research and topics that we'd all found in order to put our next scene together. Here is the trailer I found.

2nd November 2015

In todays lesson the group and I went over our movement piece as we had forgot quite a lot of it over half term. In the lesson we changed a few parts to make the scene more touching to the audience. This was done by being more aggressive towards our victims and changing some timings on each part of movement so that it fit in better with the music (Radioactive- Imagine Dragons). During the second half of the lesson we decided to try and think what scene we were going to move onto next. We came to an agreement of doing the Suffragettes scene after this one. 
Today I developed my character by making him seem more sinister by breaking up Ellie and Freya and saying 'Use a slave to catch a slave' without looking at them. Not only does this make me seem like an evil character and make the audience dislike me but it shows the disrespect I show the women that work for me.
Other things we could've done today was maybe add some more dialogue into our movement piece or make it a bit longer, doing this could give a bigger impact on the audience as they would be able to witness the abuse that women get from men once they're trafficked in a more naturalistic way. This would've been done by stage combat or using a strobe light to slightly sensor what was going on.
Next lesson I plan on working on either the Suffragette scene or come up with a brainstorm for other scenes.

20th October 2015

In this lesson we developed and finished our movement peice for Human Trafficing. This took a long time as we wanted to make sure that everything was pefected. Once we had the peice blocked we showed it to our teaher and got some feedback. We had to firstly incorporate Kai with our peice as he wasn't in on mondays lesson. An alternative to using a movement peice for the Human Trafficing scene would be to make it naturalistic, the problem with this would be that we're trying to show how female slaves are treated in the UK and this is quite a serious subject, therefore showing rape/abuse towards women could be very hard to show to an audience without it looking too tacky or unprofessional. Another technique to counter it looking wrong and tacky could be to use a soundscape of what's going on whilst turning off all the lights so that the audience are just given a mental picture of what's going on. We could also use strobe lighting so that the audience do see what's going on but only manage to get short glimpses, therefore the scenes won't be too inappropriate for certain audiences and it won't look unbeliveable.

19th October 2015

In todays lesson we started the Human Trafficing idea and came up with a few ideas. We've decided to keep the traverse staging and to use movement to signify how women are forced into having sex when they're trafficed. The movement peice shows the person that runs the trafficing programme (me) on the phone to a girl from another country and telling her that he can get her a job in the UK and buy her a house. The movement peice also shows the audience what her life is like in the UK and how she's made into a slave for the rest of her life. We then showed this working progress to our teacher and she told us to make it more aggresive as it's meant to be a hard hitting peice and not performed 'nicely'. In tomorrows lesson I hope to finish off this movement peice nd hopefully get onto the next part of our performance. 

15th October 2015

This lesson Tom and I had voiced to the group that we didn't want to base the performance on just one story. So the idea I gave to counter this was that we should keep our topic based on womens rights but change each scene so that we show a different story each scene. The structure I wanted to put together was that our scenes could be based on the vote, arranged marriages, refugees, human trafficking and keeping our original idea of women on the front line.
Another idea I gave was that the movement peice we used a few lessons ago to show the difference between the woman and the wife could be used to show the transition between a refugee and the Judith (the army major). For the rest of this lesson we researched each subject we have thought about and to look online for more ideas to do with women rights.
Next lesson I plan on trying out some of the ideas we've come up with, talking about staging, props etc.

13th October 2015

In todays lesson we changed our idea slightly so we workshop and try new things out. So today we used the idea about refugees and immigrants. We looked online to find some stories that we could base them on. The reason we chose this idea to work on and move away from our Womens Rights idea was because we wanted something more hard hitting and emotional to the audience. The idea I gave towards the thought of this piece was that we could link the two ideas together and have our final performance on how women refugees are accepted over males and that during the performance we should show why/how this is done.
The plan for next lesson is that each member of the group will come in with a true story found online and we'll share them with each other and then decide on which final idea (women rights or refugees) we like the most. We've worked so much on the womens rights idea it may not be worth leaving everything we've done to start a new idea which in a few lessons may not work out to have been the best choice for our final performance.

6th October 2015

In last weeks lesson (1st October) the group and I sat down and came up with ideas in which we could build up our idea. My contribution to this lesson were mostly to do with staging. The ideas of staging I came up with was to have the performance in traverse, a round, or on 3 sides. So in this lesson we work shopped the performance in a round. The problem we faced with this was that when we tried to incorporate our movement/stage combat into the scene an audience member would always be able to see that it wasn't real and then they wouldn't feel immersed in the show. The idea would've worked if we weren't going to use my idea of the split stage to show the differences between how a man and a woman would act in a situation.

So, the next lesson (5th October) was spent work shopping the show in traverse. One comment I made on having the staging like this was that we could have the stage so that they're sat behind Michael and Judith. The reason this would've worked is because it would've then seemed like the audience behind each character was backing up the characters opinions and how they wanted men and women to fight on the front line.

Finally, todays lesson was spent with the group and I trying to find a good piece of music to undergo the monologue by Judith. The lesson was also spent trying to block the monologue scene, this was done well and we filmed it and showed it to the other group.

Devising

Our devising all started with the stimulus "Humanity in crisis" from this my group and I had many ideas, consisting of things such as mental asylums, human trafficking, slavery and children being sent to war. 
In the previous few lessons we decided to look at dialogue and how the detail of it can effect performance. The piece of dialogue we created was from an online source, our favourite idea was women's rights. The online source we found for this was "should women be allowed to fight on the front line", ironically the female who's a major in the army was saying that women shouldn't fight on the front line because they're not physically ready for it whereas the man from the source "Michael" was up for having women join him on the front line. During creating the piece for this we made a script and decided to make this the base of our over all devised final performance. 
There are 2 main characters a woman and a man called Michael. The first idea I gave was that these two could be in an office throughout our performance and that their discussion is made up from our own knowledge and from the quotes that they've actually said in interviews. Another idea I gave was to use projection and every time a quote is said, we should project the newspaper source we found and highlight the quote which was said and then at the end of the performance flick through every quote quickly using the projections.

The main ideas I gave today was that throughout the script we've currently wrote was to break up each section and once a big part of dialogue is said we have a scene that shows what the 2 people have spoken about. Also there's a certain quote that the lady from the source uses which shows a massive divide between women and man being on the frontline, I said that whilst she's saying this we should link ideas with the true story based film "The Lone Survivor" and show a cross cut of a woman being captured and raped on one side and a man being captured and tortured on the other and how there's a contrast between the physical attributes of men and women as the man will break free and get away and the woman will not be able to get away.

Initial ideas

In today's lesson we found out out stimulus for our devising piece was 'Humanity in crisis'. We were shown 2 pictures and put into our groups. In my group I have Dan Smith, Ellie, Freya, Dom, Kai and Tom. From these pictures and the title 'Humanity in crisis' we came up with these ideas (shown on a spider diagram below). The hard part of this devising topic is that so many people want to try different things. This lesson we started to develop 2 ideas which were creating quality dialogue for one of these ideas and to create a 'horror' piece which was set on a Mental Asylum. We showed this to the other group at the end of the lesson and they really enjoyed it. At the time we really liked this idea but didn't develop it any further after a few lessons.

Thursday 16th July

In the past few lessons we've been doing full rehearsals including one dress rehearsal, set design and finishing off some things in our teams such as ticket sales, putting up posters and making a Facebook event.
Since watching the Little Shop Of Horrors film I've realised that I'm going to change my characters costume as Patrick Martin wears a coloured suit with a skinny tie and a hat. My original idea was to wear a white shirt, black trousers and a tie with a weird logo on. 

Above is a picture of Patrick Martin with Seymour. Now that I know my lines, this is how I intend my character to look. I want to also replicate the behaviour of him. I'll doing this by acting very 'in your face' and over the top. I'll be forceful towards Seymour and not give him time to speak. 

With show night on Monday and Tuesday I used today's rehearsal to get used to operating Audrey Two, a problem I faced doing this was that because Audrey Two was only finished a few days ago Danny and I don't have much time to get used to how Audrey Two moves and when to move in position to move her mouth so that we can 'talk' for her.

Practising each song and dance without the backing track and with live music is also going quite well, even though it is a lot different, the company are finally starting to get used to it.

Tuesday 30th June

In today's lesson we chose different groups for everyone to be in in order to prepare for the show. The groups all work separately to provide a good final service for the show. These were decided before we went off in our groups to work on our area. I was put in the marketing team and this included making programs, cast lists and posters to put around the school. Next lesson I plan to learn my lines so that when we run act to I can act more as my character rather than constantly looking down at my script.

Monday 29th June

During today's lesson we substituted the backing tracks of each song for a piano played version. This is how we plan to sing the songs on the night, we went through in order of each song using the piano and practised some of the songs we were still not sure on because they are so different to the backing tracks. The main songs that we struggled with were 'Closed for renovation' and 'Mushnik and son'. During this lesson we also decided we have changed the dates of the performance to the 20th and 21st of July. There will be 2 evening performances and one during the school day.

Monday 22nd June

In today's lesson we ran through all of act 2. Once we had done this we ran through the few scenes in that act that we didn't knoe very well. These were 'Meek shall inherit' and 'The finale'. I hope next lesson I can improve on my American accent and to warm up my vocals before I sing. I'll concentrate on sorting out my accent when I fully learn all of my lines.

Tuesday 16th June

In today's lesson we ran through all of act 2. After doing this we started to choreograph a dance for the dentist song 'Gas'. This should hopefully become polished in the next few lessons and I'll then be able to upload a video of it on here. One problem I faced today was singing the songs in act 2 without doing a vocal warm up. Next lesson I hope that we can start doing full rehearsals without any stops and go through the 'Gas' song a few more times. 

We have decided to perform the show on two or three nights, these will be the 16th, 17th and possibly the 18th of July.

'The Meek Shall Inherit' -Rehearsal video

'Don't Feed The Plants' - Finale rehearsal

'Dentist' - Rehearsal video

This was the first rehearsal video of the song 'Dentist'. We hope to improve this as we polish over each Act 1.

Tuesday 9th June

In today's lesson we started off by warming up our vocals. After this we sang through every song with and without the backing track. We went through each song twice whilst Meg and Kyle (Audrey and Seymour) went and practised on their songs together.
Once the company were reunited together we ran through act 2. One thing I'd like to improve on in my own time is my American accent as there are a few words that I cannot say using it. I remain unable to participate in a few of the faster dances but as I progress with physiotherapy I can hopefully re join into these dances soon. 

The Meek Shall Inherit

I relly enjoy this song and it's possibly one of my favourites of the show. The dance to this is very easy as we all get in a clump and do hand movements and then go back to our original positions. This is repeated 3 times but on the third time its done in a more choiresque style. By this I mean we stand in lines instead of a clump and then sway our arms slowly. Once we have done this the final 'by and by' we raise each arms on the first two words and the the final 'by' we raise both hands. As the song fades out we drop our arms and keep our haid raised.

Closed for renovation and Dentist

For 'Closed for renovation' everyone off stage is lined up in two lines on each wing. At a certain point in the song we all walk on stage and Liam calls us in. We walk in and clean up around the shop. To add to the cheeseyness of the performance Liam kicks us round the shop and does comedic things so that it stays the same all the way through.

For Orin's first song 'Dentist' we devised a dance for it. It starts off by him scaring me off stage and then we start claps at a certain time in the music.We then come back on stage and walk round Toby who's placed in the dentist chair, as Orin comes over I put on his rubber gloves for him and Kai gives him his gas. When Orin says 'Success' and there's a break in the music we all stand straight. We've then added a part where we're all going to turn round to face the audience and have a picture of a mouldy tooth. I'll add the video to this dance above. 

Little Shop Of Horrors- Finale

During rehearsals of the finale we decided that everyone will come on stage holding small plant, this is because our piece is quite cheesey. This adds to the cheeseyness as times such as when we sing 'And this theatre' we all do a big jump with our hands and legs in the air. Also the movements we do add to this such as pointing in different directions when we say each place such as 'Peoria' and 'New York'. I face no probelms with the movement/dance in this song as its minimal and easier to do than most of the others. One thing I'd like to improve on is my vocals as I find high notes hard to do.

Da Doo Song

For this song the company were split into small groups and told to make up a small shop. Each of these shops were then added together in a row to simulate the line of shops where Seymour found Audrey Two. Once we had shown the rest of the company each of our 'shops' we encorporated these together to the music of Da Doo. We had rehearsed this many times but it still wasn't perfected. To perfect this we added a few changes. So each time there was a change in the music we'd freeze. Also every does a hand movement at the 'total eclipse of the sun' and then change direction we're facing to look at the sun.

Thursday 14th May- Weekly Blog

This week we concentrated on the Skidrow song. We chose that instead of starting on stage in positions we'll stay in our original stage positions in the character we chose to be. The character I chose to be was a 16 year old school boy who always ran away from school and has no friends and lives with his mum. My character will be wearing a shot thats unbuttoned at the top and black trousers, when I become Patrick Martin I'll do up by top button and wear a tie so I look like a business man. A main reason why my character goes to Skidrow is because he knows no one will look for him down there.

I don't have many problems with the Skidrow dance, I believe there are no more reheasals needed for this dance unless we do a full rehearsal. One thing I do find challenging is trying to keep in character whilst I'm singing and dancing, this is because my character doesn't enjoy doing much and is always bored around Skidrow. 

5th and 7th May 2015

On Monday the 5th we ran through the Skidrow dance on the stage, we then had Dan choreograph us the new dance for the opening song 'little shop of horrors'. I started off fine but due to my leg I wasn't able to participate for long. Next lesson I plan to develop on our dances and start to put the first few scenes together. 

On the 7th May we ran through all three dance scenes in order. Once we had done this we decided to change parts of the flashback scene when Seymour explain how he found the plant. We slowed things down and froze on some points as we had to make our performance look less naturalistic. Next lesson I plan on trying to add my own moves into the Little shop of horrors dance as I am not able to do many/keep up with the others because of my leg.

28 and 30th April 2015

In Tuesdays lesson we ran through Skidrow on the stage and were told the next part we’d be rehearsing. The next part we were going to start on was when Seymour tells us about how he found the plant. We worked on this in Thursdays lesson as we were split into groups and told to make up our own part of a shop and then to put them together and this would make up the scene.

Also on Tuesday we filmed our Skidrow piece on the stage. This is useful because we can look back at this and see where we need to improve or what needs to change, this was done on Thursdays lesson as we made a few slight changes to the Skidrow dance.
Next lesson I hope to finish off and polish the flashback scene and then move onto the next scene/song.

Monday 27th April 2015

In today’s lesson we went through skid row many times and made sure each person and group knew what they had to sing. As the lesson progressed Dan started to choreograph the dance for this song. We added parts as we went along and also came up with characters that we needed to act as during the skidrow song as they’re just general people that live in that area not any particular character. Next lesson we plan to go into the hall and try out the dance and song on the stage as this is where we’ll perform the final performance.

As well as this we found out who we’d play in the show, I got the part of Patrick Martin and to operate the plant. A problem I faced during this lesson was that as my leg has not fully recovered yet I found it hard to do some of the dance moves.

Acting styles-Shakespeare

1576-James Burbage (father of an actor, Richard) bought a lease and permission to build ‘The Theatre’ in Shoreditch. However he did not own the land, he only rented it. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men a company led by Richard were the company residence from 1594 to 1596. Basically, rich father James built a theatre for his spoilt son Richard.

Shakespeare Style: Writers gave their ideas for a plot. Actors and managers then chose whether or not they liked it or not and offer a payment for its completion. Shakespeare’s main job was to write plays, this was the only income he had.

Writers make a play for the characters instead of making a play and then casting people for it. Richard Burbage was always the leading man and therefore Shakespeare made his plays for him. As Richard got older Shakespeare started making plays with older characters and this is why his later plays were for a more mature and older audience.

Actors were known as ‘players’ and each player got a scroll with their lines on. They weren’t given a full script or stage directions. Each player would learn their lines before you perform at the rehearsal, you’re expected to learn them before you get there so they could focus on stages. The players had to come up with a lot of stage directions themselves as they didn’t have any apart from when they enter and when they exit. The players had work out between them when they were on and off stage together.

1593-London theatres closed due to the outbreak of Bubonic Plague.

The Theatre was on the same side as houses of parliament etc. In 1597 the council banned performances of plays within the city limits of London. Dispute over the lease of ‘The Theatre’. The Puritan owner, Giles Allen disapproved of theatres and was against all types of entertainment. He decided that the land he owned (that James built the theatre on) was to be stripped of all the things he didn’t like. This caused the lord chamberlains men to move to a different theatre for 6 months.

After about 6 months rumour has it that The Theatre had its parts moved overnight on carts and horses. Around a year later in 1599 the theatre opened on the other side of the river. It was renamed the globe.

1603 the bubonic plague returns, killing over 33,000 people. 1608 the theatre closes.

1613-A fire occurred during the performance of Henry V111 (8th)

Till 1609 indoor theatres were used by ‘boy companies’ these were theatre companies/school choirs only with boys. They performed once a week and always indoors. They were watched by families and other local people. This audience were seen as a more educated and richer than an outdoor one. These were more expensive than outdoor theatre such as the Globe.

Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 without children, King James took the throne. This was known as the Jacobean period and ran until 1625. Jacobean theatre was dark and disturbing, he wanted more action and violent plays. This lead Shakespeare to writing plays such as Macbeth and including insanity, death, sword fights in his performance. The economy went down, so did theatre. As things got hard theatre became more watching violence and wasn’t as entertaining.

Theatres then moved indoors as plays could be performed at any time as there’d be more light.



Two types of theatre:

Revenge Plays- Very obscene and violent. The main character was called a revenger a hero avenging an unfair or cruel death.

Tragicomedies- Dark humour and very sexual in nature.

1642 English civil war started between Parliamentarians (Puritans) and the royalists. Parliament pulled down the globe and made council houses.

1648 they destroyed every theatre and actors were arrested. If you tried to watch a play you were fined. There was then another 12 years until theatres were re opened.

1649 Civil war causes execution of King Charles 1 by Puritans.

1653 Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England.



Theatre stops, 7 years until the restoration begins. For this period you went to work and church, there was no entertainment allowed.

Acting styles-Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was born in Germany during the year 1898. He was a medic during the first world war but was appalled by the horrific scenes he faced this lead to him to Berlin where he pursued a career in theatre. Brecht fled Germany in 1933 as the Nazis came to power and he lost his citizenship due to him being a communist.
In 1941 Brecht became a resident of the USA but was called before the Un-American Activities Committee. Although this hardly worked out for Brecht as the committee was very anti-communist so he returned to Europe in 1947 and formed the Berliner Ensemble. The fact that Brecht had lived through two world wars meant that he had a strong political voice. His voice was used mostly in the theatre where some of his ideas changed theatre forever.


When naturalistic theatre was at its great height and performances reflected on what was going on in the world around everyone Brecht made the famous statement "hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom" showing how he wanted to engage the audience.
Brecht was against cathartic theatre which meant if the audience were believing the action on stage and became emotionally engaged they'd lose the ability to think and judge, this point I strongly agree and disagree with as it makes sense that if you are emotionally attached to a character you wouldn't judge them if they done something wrong or think about a different side to them.
The way his performances were done were quite weird to a modern day audience member, he wanted the audience to know they were watching a performance of real life not from real life itself. He done this mostly by using many techniques and making sure the audience didn't get emotionally attached. He called this Epic Theatre.


Verfremdungseffekt also known as the alienation effect,is what Brecht used a lot in his performances. It's where you're feeling engaged and excited but distant from the characters. This technique always involves breaking the fourth wall, other techniques he'd use to do this are:
-Narration
-Coming out of role
-Speaking stage directions
-Placards
-Directly addressing the audience
-Minimal props/set/costume
-Symbolic props and lighting

'Chasing Pavements' Evaluation

Our devised piece was based on a 1930s gang in New York. Our original stimuli was the song Chasing Pavements by Adele. From this song I got the idea of someone chasing a better life and having a dream of a great life. This is how we came up with the idea of the gang looking for a better life; especially one character, Finn, who has to make a choice between a calm and relaxed life with his new girlfriend or a violent, dangerous yet rewarding life with the gang.

Although starting off very slow by brainstorming many ideas and not coming up with much from the stimulus we eventually came up with 3 ideas, one including a relation, one to do with soldiers in a helicopter crash and one to do with olden time gang. After discussing about each idea we realised the soldier idea would be too ‘film like’ and the relationship idea wouldn’t be interesting for our audience. This left us with the 1930s gang idea, originally we had a pretty dull and boring piece but using everyone’s ideas together we managed to add in many techniques and extra scenes which made our performance look good. A main things that went well for my group and I was that we worked really well together during rehearsals and this was also shown during the performance as it ran smoothly.

I think what also went well was the techniques we used. This was a main part of our performance as we used a long list of techniques but we made sure that we weren’t just using them for the sake of it. For example in the ‘second ending’ where Finn comes back to the warehouse to get revenge on Stan (me) and Frank we used a stylistic piece of movement for a fight as we had already used too much stage combat. To go hand-in-hand with our slow motion when it was used we done two things to also symbolise to the audience time was slowing down this was; using strobe lighting and using an effect on the music called isolater. After our performance many people said this worked well and was nice rather than just doing the slow motion. We also used cross cutting and in our performance to frustrate the audience as it showed how close Tess and Finn were to seeing each other but then are quickly pulled away by the boss and I.

Another reason why our performance was clear to the audience and performed well was because of the costume. We researched deeply into seeing what sort of clothes people in 1930s America would wear, this was key to our performance as the time period wouldn’t be clear and the audience may not understand if we were wearing modern day clothes. To top it off we all managed to retain our American accents all the way through, this was probably the most important thing to the entire performance as we were all meant to be American, this helped as every rehearsal we would talk using these accents.

There were a few things about our performance and rehearsal process that could have gone better. The main thing was to get the performance blocked quicker so that we would have had longer to polish and do more tech runs and check things such as how long it would take to change costume back stage. Costume changes were partly a problem during the final performance as t got to a part where Tom, Dan and I were improvising as we had to wait for Kyle to do a costume change as it was set a year later. If we blocked quicker we would have been able to add in extra dialogue to this scene and it wouldn’t have been a problem during the performance.

I also think that if we blocked the performance quicker we could have practised doing the fake blood on Ellie because although we tested it we never tested it in the 10 second time frame we had during the performance.

Another problem was that the audience didn’t really get to know Stan (myself) and Frank (Dan) well enough. I think this could have been changed if we added more to our monologues or if there was a scene together where we could’ve explained our back story a bit more. Also I got feedback from the audience saying that they didn’t like when the boss split Frank and I up during the third ending because it seemed wrong to separate characters that were so close throughout the performance.

Finally I think that if we had more time then we could have gone into more detail on other ideas and work shopped things till we all chose something we liked and agree on as not everyone liked the idea we had at first. Over the rehearsals this changed and the idea grew on us and we were very confident in performing it.

Overall this unit went very well and was enjoyable to do and I think our final devised performance was very good and ran smoothly throughout.

Thursday 5th February 2015

During today's lesson we were aware that we only had one week before we perform out devised piece. Knowing this we done a dress rehearsal without the use of the drums but we did use other music. We also sorted out the costume changes we'd have to do when we go forward in time.

Today we used more props than in previous rehearsals and it makes our piece look at lot more believable. Next lesson we plan on getting all out props together so we're able to a full rehearsal. We also plan on putting all of our music onto a CD.
The pictures below show my main costume that I'll wear during the performance. Back in 1930s America braces were often wore by a lot of gangsters and they'd role up their sleeves to complete jobs and if they were not wearing a blazer. After researching a bit about costume ideas this is what I've decided to wear.

Monday 2nd & Tuesday 3rd February 2015

During Mondays lesson the group and I decided to do a full run through of the performance. Doing this made us realise we still had some little things to add. Also we forgot some small details we had added before so we wrote a list of the little things that we need to remember. The full run was done with lighting, some sound and no props. This was good because now we all have a good idea of how the performance will go, next lesson we plan to polish up on our scenes.

In Tuesdays lesson we were missing Kyle (Finn) and therefore we couldn't do much. This lesson we went to the music department and went through the attack scene with Dan drumming in the background, this looked really good and we are going to use it in our final performance. Once we had rehearsed the scene with the drums over the top we made a prop list. Next lesson we plan on doing a dress rehearsal as we're coming very close to the performance day.

Later on in this lesson we were thinking of how to make fake blood look realistic and who was going to put it onto Ellie during the attack scene. As Dan isn't in this scene we chose him to put the blood on Ellie as the audience will not be able to see behind the blocks. We made the fake blood ourselves by using liquid glucose and red acrylic paint. One problem we faced doing this was that the blood didn't look dark enough at first and then when we added more point it looked shinier. Next lesson we plan on trying to get a perfect mix of liquid glucose/paint/water.

Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th January 2015

During Monday's lesson we ran through our scenes that we knew. We then realised we had blocked all of our performance and the only thing we needed to do was transitions between each scene and polish the longer scenes such as the second ending and the argument/fight scene.

Ideas I gave during this lesson was that when we're split screening Tess and Finn both go to the door that seperates each scene and then it goes into a split screen where The Boss and I both pull away the two of them. This adds another technique to our performance and the audience will hopefully feel how close yet how far apart the couple are.

During the Tuesday lesson we ran through our devised piece and added in the transition scenes. We also added music to our argument/fight scene. The music in this scene is a very happy and upbeat song, this shows irony and therefore is another technique. 

The second part of the second ending where Kyle kills Stan and Frank was added to by using the same technique we used for the start of it. Next lesson I plan to video this scene and upload it to here and to also do a full run and discuss costume ideas for our performance in a few weeks time.

Thursday 22nd January 2015

Today was a very productive lesson. The group and I managed to finish blocking the rest of the 2nd ending. Now we have finished all of our scenes in the coming lessons we'll try to link each scene together.

This lesson started off by us running through the split stage scene. An idea I gave whilst rehearsing this was that we should use shorter but more splits between each room. Also that Tess and Finn are both going to go up to the door where they should meet but 'The boss' stops Tess and I stop Finn from opening it. Following on from this Kyle and Ellie then meet at the speakeazy where they find out that the gang had been lying to them about not wanting to see each other. Kyle(Finn) get's really annoyed with this and decides he can't handle any more from us and comes back to our warehouse where he kills Frank and Stan.

When Finn kills Frank and Stan we wasn't sure on how to show it as we didn't want to use stage combat again. As a group we decided to use movement and physical theatre to show the murder of Stan and Frank, I'll upload a video of this here when it's on YouTube. After trying to get a song that we could move in time to we chose to use the song 'Lolita by Lana Del Ray'. Next lesson we plan to add in the links between each scene and polish the argument scene.

19th & 20th January 2015

During Mondays lesson (19th) Tom and I sat down and discussed the monologue scene which will be used after the torture/introduction scene of our devised piece. To do this we used the research we done over the Christmas half term so we could find out what each member of the gang could talk about. Once we had collected all the information and research together we made monologues for each gang member and the author.

For the second half of the lesson I went to the music department with Dan and recorded his drumming piece which will be used over the attack scene. We went back and showed the rest of the group and they liked it. An idea I had when Dan was choosing lighting was that we should use strobe lighting effects over parts of the fight/argument scene. We then watched through the scene Kyle and Ellie had made which was them meeting properly for the first time, we decided to use pink/light purple lighting for this as it is a convention of love.

In Tuesdays lesson (20th) we performed our monologue scene roughly and Dan lighting to it. We then decided to block the break up scene which is now our second ending, this is done using the technique split screen. On one side of the split screen we have Tom and Ellie talking about Kyle and Tom's trying to persuade Ellie that Kyle doesn't want to speak to her any more whereas on the other side of the split screen it is me, Dan and Kyle playing cards. The ideas I had during blocking this scene was that Dan and I should stand on the opposite side of the block to Kyle as we're still at the awkward stage where we don't know if we're friends or not after the argument scene. Another idea I had was that Kyle mentions that we should play KINGS because he feels like he is above us and has a higher authority, another way I said we could show authority would be me and Dan leaning on the block we'll use as a table whilst Kyle stands tall above us. The main idea I contributed was that throughout the card game each character makes sly&witty comments that are relevant to the situation doing things such as using the cards (king, queen,joker) to portray what has gone on with the gang.

Attack Scene - First Block

Tuesday 13th January 2015

Today's lesson we finished off blocking and staging the attack scene. Dan added lighting to our piece and we used certain colours such as red to set the mood of the scene. Every time we go to the warehouse we use a bright light which will set that scene and the audience will know where we are. Ideas I gave this lesson were that Dan should drum over the attack scene instead of music being played.

We then filmed our attack scene and I will post it on here when it has been uploaded to YouTube. Next lesson I plan to go through monologues with Tom and help Dan decide on what to do throughout the attack scene.

Monday 12th January 2015

In today's lesson we finished off blocking the argument/fight scene and perfected it. We also chose and came up with what style our performance would be. Also if our performance was a person what they'd be like and what traits of personality etc.

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We then performed our argument/fight scene to the other group, we added lighting and got a lot of positive feedback. Our group then sat down and thought more into our performance and we made the decision to change one of the endings as we thought the 'rape scene' would be very hard to show and could upset audience members. We changed this ending so instead of 'The Boss' raping Tess he beats her and she bleeds to her death, an idea I gave to this scene was that Ellie (Tess) could use fake blood capsules and pop them when she's being hit. This will not be seen by the audience as we're going to have flickering lights during this scene.