Explore the impact of social, cultural and or/historical conditions on the work and indicate how the influences and ideas of other playwrights and/or directors, designers and performers (i.e. practitioners) have been used.

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Helen Fletcher 13A Structured Record

 Explore the impact of social, cultural and or/historical conditions on the work and indicate how the influences and ideas of other playwrights and/or directors, designers and performers (i.e. practitioners) have been used.

It was important that our production appealed to a wide range of ages and styles as we performed to students within the school as well as teachers, friends and parents. If we had only used Shakespearian language, it would have lost the attention of younger students, and conversely, the use of only modern texts would have meant little to older audience members. By researching back as early as the 16th century, it showed that blind love affects everyone, and has always been part of love and relationships. If we had only portrayed blind love from one historical context, it could have seemed like a purely outdated or a purely recent thing. We wanted the audience to recognise this in from their own experiences.

The interaction between Helena and Demetrius in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ would seem unacceptably rude in today’s society “I am sick when I do look on thee”, yet was not so in Shakespeare’s day. Similarly, when we explored Taming of the Shrew shows the submission of women, something we would abhor today. John Fletcher’s ‘The Tamer Tamed’ shows a contrasting scenario where Petruchio becomes dominated by his new wife, Maria. This is evidence of the changing attitudes within Jacobean society, written twenty years after Shakespeare’s play. We originally used ideas from both within our piece, yet decided to cut Fletcher’s play because we felt it concentrated more on women’s rights than on ‘open eyes’. Although relevant, including this would have slightly detracted from our intended impact, and communicated different ideas to the audience.

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We felt that by using ideas from ‘A Doll’s House’ by Ibsen, we would show one of the first real moments in theatre of a victim of blind love opening their eyes and taking controversial action. Productions of the play were banned when it was written in 1879 because the concept of a woman walking out on her husband seemed absurd. Many tried to persuade Ibsen to change his ending – changing the entire concept of the play, and more importantly for our piece, eliminating any vision Nora had. Here, Nora completely opens her eyes to the reality of her ...

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