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