My practical work was devised by the stimulus of `The Seven Ages of Man' I had to consider a specific age and work within two age groups.

My practical work was devised by the stimulus of `The Seven Ages of Man’ I had to consider a specific age and work within two age groups. One of these was my own age phase, the other a mixed age. I developed my work from previous work based on energy states.

My contribution to the performance was to play the character of a twenty something year old. I implemented my understanding of the role by method acting. Through characterisation exercises, an example of which was hot seating, is a method of taking on the character, working in-groups and answering questions in role, which were posed to me. This helped me to feel like the character. Other exercises we did included role on the wall which is where you write down the outside and inside views and feelings of your character.

To help me in my work I researched and read Shakespeare’s `Seven Ages of Man’. I also read a profile of characteristics called the generation game and we looked at a poem called `bags I’ by Alan Allberg. I found this additional support material from poem books and newspaper articles.

The most useful text material I looked at was `Bags I’ because it made me aware of how people move through the different stages of their lives in a modern day society. I adapted these ideas by taking them into my play as it was also set in modern times ...

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Our piece was set in modern day 2002. However the initial stimulus of `The Seven Ages of Man’ was set in the Elizabethan period in Shakespearean times. The newspaper article `the generation game’ was similar to our production because it was profiles of different ages of people in modern day. The biggest differences were the period that the `Seven Ages of Man’ was written in and the period of the other texts studied. You could tell that life was very different in the Elizabethan period, because men used to grow up to be soldiers and women used to stay at home. The stimulus work made us consider what traits were relevant to us today.

Emily Webb 10BS

The people in our performance are two 6 year old children, a typical teenager, a posh 20 something student and a 20 something homeless person. In contrast those outlined in our play were different to those in ‘the seven ages of man’ for one main reason that they were both set in different periods which shows how people have changed over time.

The manners and beliefs of my character the 20 something

Homeless person was that she didn’t believe in violence as she didn’t retaliate when she was attacked. She also believed in family, as she wanted to find her mother who put her in a foster home because she couldn’t cope. This is because she had come from an abusive family life and her father was and alcoholic. These are regular issues that occurs in today’s society.

We chose to perform in a realistic style. This was because the matters and issues we were dealing with were typical everyday realistic issues. Such as when children follow people round the supermarket and homeless people begging in the street.

This was similar to the ‘bags I poem’ by Alan Allberg because it had modern day issues like when children fight over their toys, which happened in our production.

In conclusion I would like to say that I learnt about the seven ages of man and how to portray people of different ages. this helped my contribution to the production as I was able to build on my character and emphasise the characteristics and changes of a 20 something person in modern and Shakespearean times using the ‘seven ages of man’ poem.