Monologues in the style of different practitioners - Mrs Williams

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These are three videos of the same monologue but performed in different styles from different practitioners.  We had to take inspiration from this and do a monologue that we had memorised in the style of a practitioner.

My monologue was Protecto (Kid Hero) by D. M. Larson.  When I first performed this monolgue, I did lots of direct audience address throughout the piece which could be related to Brecht.  When I changed it to do it in the style of a different practitioner, I chose Stanislavski.  I wanted my piece to be more naturalistic so i used my own experiences from being a child and gave myself units and objectives to follow.  Instead of direct audience address, I spoke to the teddy bear on the bed.  I found this exercise quite interesting because based on the practitioner, the play can be given a whole new meaning.

Practitioners - Mrs Williams

STANISLAVSKI

• Emotion memory - reliving experience (made actors go mad as it was too traumatic)
• Units and objectives - super-objectives (whole play), through-line (smaller objectives)
• Actioning - if there is a line of text that's not coming across as real, add an action to make it real

STRASBERG

• Changed emotion memory to sense memory - thinking about senses rather than actual experience so actors don't go mad

BRECHT

• 1896-1956
• Grew up in Nazi Germany
• Called out propaganda and got exiled
• Berliner Ensemble
• Three Penny Opera
• Caucasian Chalk Circle
• Good Woman
• Didactic theatre - teaching, to change society
• Epic theatre - alienation, V-effect - turn off audience's emotions but turn on their brain
• "What there is shall go to those that are good for it"
• Characters talk in 3rd person and use direct audience address

PUNCHDRUNK

• Theatre group in Britain
• Started in 2000
• Founded by Felix Barrett
• Promenade theatre - walking
• Site specific - the place is the stimulus - graveyard, school, forest

ARTAUD

• Theatre of cruelty
• 1896-1948
• Known work - The Theatre and It's Double
• Went to Paris in 20s and met the Surrealists
• Acted in a couple of films
• Surrealists rejected him
• 1926-1928 - co-ran Theatre Alfred Jarry - producing work by August Strindberg
• 'The Cenci' - incest heavy
• 1938 - The Theatre and It's Double - surrealism, symbolism
• Psychological and human stagnation - restore theatre to its original destiny - fused together dance, song, pantomime in a perspective of hallucination and fear
• Theatre of cruelty - "in which violent physical images crush and hypnotise the sensibility of the spectator seized by the theatre as a whirlwind of higher forces"

BOAL

• Brazilian
• Forum theatre, invisible theatre and image theatre
• Forum - bringing people from audience to fix scene and make it better
• Invisible - scene with actions protagonist would like to try in real life, potential real life situations
• Image - short scenes, 1-2 minutes, strong imagery

BERKOFF

• 1937 East London, Jewish
• Extreme physicality is used to make sense of the poetic language
• Uses iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets etc.
• Flowing poetic but horrible scenes
• Uses experiences

FRANTIC ASSEMBLY

• Founded 1994
• Work reflects contemporary culture
• Non-naturalistic
• Combines movement, design, music and text
• Frantic method - direction through movement and physical awareness can be implemented in moments of stillness - physical theatre

Theatre for children research - Ms Trono

RESEARCH INTO CHILDREN'S THEATRE

Show ideas for ages 3-5

Show ides for ages 5-12

PANTOMIMES

Pantomime includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing. It employs gender-crossing actors and combines topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale.  They often use direct audience address which children like as they feel involved.

Different pantomime ideas

MUSICALS

Musicals are also a big hit among children.  A lot of musicals are based off of films, some of which weren't originally musicals, like Mathilda the Musical.  However many were already musical films, such as, School of Rock, The Lion King and Aladdin.

QUESTIONS TO ASK CHILDREN

• What's your favourite film and why?
• Have you ever seen a show at a theatre?
• If so, what was it and did you like it?
• What is your favourite fairy tale and why?
• If we were to perform a play for children your age, what do you think we should include and why?
• Would you like it if the actors on stage would ask the audience questions to interact with them?

Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

WOODWIND QUINTET

• Flute
• Obo - double reed
• Clarinet - single reed
• Horn 
• Bassoon - double reed

SWOT

S-strengths

W-weaknesses

O-opportunities

T-threats

S

• Talented actors
• Artists to create costumes and set
• Similar amount of boys to girls
• Small group
• Close friends

W

• movements
• budget
• little time with musicians
• needing to make set and costume
• not many dancers
• time constraint

O

• primary school to help inspire
• international tour
• auditorium as performance space
• Luxembourg quintet professionals 
• big audience

T

• people coming because of Christmas holidays
• Christmas shows going on
• people living in different countries
• overtaken by bigger companies

CHARACTERS

• narrator
• hunters
• wolf
• Peter
• grandfather
• cat
• duck
• bird

Improvisation - Mr Lemon

3 RULES FOR IMPROVISATION

1. Never block
2. Must accept and build on that
3. If someone is stuck, you take control

QUESTIONS ONLY

I found this exercise difficult because my immediate reaction was to answer the question rather than replying with another question.  I found it easier once I created a character, to just ask questions.  I know I need a lot more practice on this exercise though.

THE EXPERT

This exercise was a lot easier for me.  I really enjoyed the hilarious questions asked and the answers replied.  It's difficult when you have an idea but you can't follow through with it because someone else says their idea.  To improve, I think we need to make our flow faster.

PRESS CONFERENCE

I found this game quite difficult to figure out who the characters were but I enjoyed thinking of questions to ask the characters.  It was quite difficult to not give it away but still ask appropriate questions.  I think that now we've done it once it will be a lot easier next time.

PARTY QUIRKS

This exercise could be very useful for helping the improvisation by figuring out ways to make it as useful as possible for the person guessing.  The characters were so unique that it was challenging to figure out who they were.

Pool (no water) by Mark Ravenhill - Mrs Williams

SCRIPT DETAILS

From what we read, I didn't understand much of the context, being that there is group of so-called 'friends' who go to one of their friends (Sallys) pool.  Sally gets in an accident which results in her getting in a coma.  There are no specific characters so this text is very abstract and could be performed in a vast variety of ways.

WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE TEXT

Our group took the first half of the first page and divided the lines between us to create characters that would make sense.  We had 5 characters, 1 of which we gave lines to to make them appear to be slightly crazy and also very attracted to money.  The character I played took more of a malicious role where they thought that Sally would be better dead so that they could make their fortune off of her. The other 3 characters were more sympathetic and were trying to make the other two understand why killing her would be an awful thing.

WHY DID YOU MAKE THOSE CHOICES

The lines, supported by body language, facial expression and tone of voice, made more sense by splitting the lines in this way in our opinion.  It was very challenging to do so but we persevered.

WHAT WAS THE IMPACT

We made the characters intentions clear to the audience but also still left that mystery and suspense, leaving them guessing what happens next yet giving them just enough context for that half of a page.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO NEXT WITH THIS PIECE OF WORK

Hot seating each character would be a good way to portray these roles more effectively.  I would like to expand it a bit more and experiment with choral speaking, setting and proxemics.

SETTING

We set our piece in and by and empty pool with our audience in the round.

The setting we agreed on for our piece

Constantin Stanislavski - Mrs Williams

Constantin Stanislavski

Born: 1863, Moscow, Russia (Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseyev)

Died: 1938, Moscow, Russia

Occupation: Actor, Theatre director, Theatre theorist

Literary Movement: Naturalism, Symbolism, Psychological realism, Socialist realism






EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Born 1863 into a wealthy clan who loved theatre.  His father constructed a stage on the family's estate and his grandmother was a French actress.  He started acting at 14 and developed his theatrical skills over time considerably.  He worked in his family's manufacturing business but performed with other acting groups at the same time.  He gave himself the name Stanislavski in 1885, which was the name of a fellow actor he had met.  In 1888, he married Maria Perevoshchikova, who was a teacher, but then joined Stanislavski in the study and pursuit of acting.

OPENING THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE

Stanislavski founded the Society of Art and Literature in 1888, where he performed and directed productions for almost 10 years.  In 1897, Stanislavski co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre with playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.  This would be an alternative to standard theatrical aesthetics of the day.

'STANISLAVSKI METHOD'

Stanislavski worked on providing a structure for actors, during the Moscow Art Theatre's early years, to consistently achieve deep, meaningful and disciplined performances.  He believed that actors needed to inhabit authentic emotions while on stage.  To do so, they could draw up feelings they'd experienced in their own lives.  He also made exercises to help actors find their character's motives to give a performance depth and an unassuming realism.  This is named the 'Stanislavski method' or 'the Method'