Furthering this, the group worked in shifting the focus to the ‘pickpocket’ in a crowd scene by contrasting our pace and energy to the ‘pickpockets’ and responding to her staging by balancing our action upstage.
Time management appeared to be a skill the group lacked but Daisy, with authority, conviction and sensibility prompted the group into meeting deadlines, using time effectively and in being focused. This skill was effective in keeping the group managed and in ensuring the development of the piece was on track.
Encouragement from certain group members such as Sam and Naomi also proved beneficial in lifting the groups’ morale and keeping the developing process focused.
I offered Naomi encouragement as an actor as she struggled with her character development. To help her overcome this, I offered her books on method acting that I had found helpful and films with similar characters to gain ideas from. This support and resourcefulness helped Naomi in building her character and her confidence.
The skill of working individually also contributed to the piece’s development and helped the time management of our schedule. Being disciplined and focused enough to work alone on one’s own projects and tasks ment that when the group came back together, work had been achieved or improved. Sam and Debbie both took a great deal of time to focus on building the relationship of their characters, the pace, and also its naturalism, which resulted in a stronger connection and fuller characters.
Myself and Naomi, both being very organised and committed, took it upon ourselves to arrange props and costume. As the piece; lacking scenery, relied heavily on its aesthetics, we found that lists, bulletins and organisation skills helped this element of the piece come together. We both also felt it a wise decision to use costume and props early to become familiar with them. Naomi and myself ensured the costumes were accessible and well looked after and that a props table was installed.
Structured Record – Section 4: ‘In what ways were acting techniques or design elements and drama forms used to achieve the intended effect?’
As a group, our main objective was to devise a piece concerning the comparisons of modern day to Tudor period, genuine, educational content and interesting, believable characters. As a piece touring schools, we were aware of our limitations of scenery and lighting and we therefore decided to focus on props, sound and costume to present a piece rich in period and entertaining.
Using Bertolt Brecht’s ideas of breaking stage illusions, we adopted his use of simplistic design elements; basic staging, lack of wings, scenery and lighting and the exposure of costume change. We used very little props, rejecting objects such as glasses, boxes, crates, beds, so that emphasis would lie on the props we did use. However, our intended effect was not to distance our audience as Brecht’s techniques intended, as this would have taken too much realism from our theme.
Knowing we were to perform in an ‘end stage’ performance space, we quickly decided to concentrate on stage design. Keeping Brecht’s design ideas in mind, the use of a large, simple rostrum placed centre stage for the entirety of the piece; adapting to each scene, supported our ideas of minimal staging. The rostrum was used for ‘Queen Elizabeth’ to stand on; creating status, power and control, as a focus point for Shakespeare to sit and be noticed from, as a comic obstacle in the fight scene between ‘Sam’ and ‘Burbage’ and for ‘Sam’ to clamber upon as symbolism for being hanged. It also served to give local prominence to centre stage.
Having a great deal of our piece on the same level; due to lack of platforms, our ‘Prison Condition’ soliloquy’s were staged with actors sat, scattered, downstage to create intimacy and empathy with the audience. The opening and closing scene, set in a classroom was also staged with actors sat, this time huddled centre stage to mirror the audience of children, allowing them to relate to us.
We used key pieces of Elizabethan costume such as rich jackets, cloaks and skirts to help create a genuine atmosphere of the Tudor period and more so supported the hardship of the period against those with importance and nobility. To portray ‘Queen Elizabeth’s’ grandness, her costume included a rich, long red skirt with a strong farthingale underneath, white ruffles, stern collars, a deep ivory corset to give the desired shape of the period, gold necklaces, pearls, rubies, a lace feather fan and a high, stuff wig – this costume was the most elaborate for emphasis.
Her servants costumes were dull and black, formal and unexciting to prove heavily that they were not of the same status as ‘Queen Elizabeth’. ‘The crowds people’, ‘Wise Woman’ and even ‘Elizabethan actors’ costumes were not as rich and elaborate, instead were colours of dull, earthy browns and greys representing their poorness. Using costume in this manner proved helpful in differentiating class, power and Tudor period. In the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ scene shared with ‘Sir Walter Rarley’, we used colour in costume to link the two. ‘Queen Elizabeth’, with red hair, wore a red skirt and as ‘Sir Walter Rarley’ enters wearing a red velvet hat thus symbolically linking the two with class, relationship and status.
In the ‘Prison Conditions’ scene, some actors were required to double up as other characters. Costume aided this and with the use of a simple cloak, headscarf or coat, the characters had identifiable changed. Using costume such as this also helped portray an atmosphere of cold, terror and empathy as the characters would cling to their costume; a religious woman in a white coat for innocence, a child hiding being an old headscarf in fear and a wise woman holding on to her cloak.
As well as costume, we also relied heavily on sound to help display a piece genuine to its period and in creating atmosphere. Eerie, computerised music helped portray the transition into the time travel. A piercing, authoritative fanfare presented power and regalness for ‘Queen Elizabeth’s’ entrance and a sharp, low drum roll created anticipation for the execution. The use of such sound techniques helped in delivering atmosphere and acted as a soundscape to create a fuller sense of Tudor period.
The fight sequence between ‘Sam’ and ‘Burbage’ in encouraged by ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ action music, which helped in evoking comparisons and links between modern day and the Tudor period. The music, being such a cliché to our modern audience, created satire, pace and a strange sense of comfortability – as if the audience were aware of what was taking place.
In creating a busy atmosphere for crowd scenes, the cast worked together in building a sound collage. Overlapping the ten voices in a cacophony of busyness and building the sound to a crescendo proved effective in presenting an authentic crowd. Furthering this, as the crescendo was followed by a sharp silence while the crowd watched waste fall on an unsuspecting victim, it created not only a climax, but also, comedy.
Using ideas of naturalism, we strove to create characters that were contemporary to the time of the piece. Naturalism calls for characters to reflect their environment and Stanislavski’s methods were helpful to us in presenting this. With characters set in Tudor period and modern characters time travelling to Tudor period, we used Stanislavski’s ideas on empathy to achieve natural characterisation.
He states that: ‘The emotions of a reader differ in quality from those of an onlooker… suppose you were a witness… it would be easier to reproduce those feelings and share sympathetic feelings… feel the situation of the person so keenly you actually put yourself in their place.’ (An Actor Prepares) The characters of ‘Sam’ and ‘Debbie’ were developed with this technique in creating natural reactions after having time travelled. Stanislavski’s ‘Magic If’ technique was used in the creation of my character ‘Isobelle’. Stanislavski’s method shows that if actors ask themselves: ‘If this were real, how would I react? What would I do?’ the imagination is stimulated, lending a sense of purpose to the role.
We also used Stanislavski’s social and factual ideas of ‘Given Circumstances’ (…’Expression of story, facts, events, epoch, time and place of action, conditions of life…’) to help sincere characters and emotions grow by being familiar with the given circumstances of the role.
Stanislavski states that: ‘Tension is an actors greatest enemy, it pinches the voice, stiffens the muscles, shortens the breath and blocks the mind’. (An Actor Prepares) To ensure the group were relaxed before performances we used slow, deep breathing techniques, which allowed us to focus on our own bodies and concentrate.
In the ‘Prison Conditions’ scene, our aim was to create chilling recollections of each characters emotion with the use of just the voice. As the key to good voice work is relaxation, we relaxed the whole body; the neck, throat and tongue to ensure all resonators of the body were used correctly. Humming a comfortable middle range note, placing one hand on the head, the other on the chest as the note would rise in a smooth transition, from the stomach, through the chest and neck, to the head. This technique helped clear nervousness and helped free natural voices that were stuck in the throat or nasal area, presenting a strong quality of voice to perform with.
A personal aim of mine was to adopt Morven Christie’s (Romeo and Juliet - RSC) diction in her performance as Juliet, which allowed the audience to understand her clearly, and thus communicate with her. Knowing that it is easy for the voice to be lost on stage through mumbling, swallowing the words or talking fast, I would concentrate on clarity of diction with teeth and tongue exercises, working the jaw, cheeks, tongue, lips and teeth. This technique helped in portraying a clear sense of terror, innocence and anger for the character of ‘Isobelle’ in the ‘Prison Conditions’ scene.
This scene called for each actor to present their own characters’ individual expression and emotion; my characters’ being pathos, helplessness and anger.
In my soliloquy, I used physicality to offer a sense of helplessness. My body huddled, clinging to a headscarf, face peering out, and my shoulders hunched, almost animalistically, gave the impression of a timid, desperate character. I kept my focus very internal as if too terrified to look out; momentarily looking dreamily out as if picturing the horror again and only confronting the audience with key lines such as: ‘When my Mother died, he turned to me and said: ‘Isabelle, it’s just you and me now’. Singling out this line to lift my head and focus out on emphasized its vulgarity and allowed the audience to connect with the character.
Knowing that superficial, over theatrical gestures would not convey the naturalism of the character, I chose to only use movement as the character became angry. For the desperate sections of the soliloquy, I would use wide eyes and distressed facial expressions to communicate an idea of sadness and in anger, would clench my mouth; partly to create diction, but also to show a sense of disgust, lean my body forwards in frustration and throw my hands out in fury.
Dynamics of the voice were also used to differentiate the helpless fear against the shrill anger. Starting the soliloquy quiet and softly, building the volume as the character recalled pain and climaxing with desperate shouting served to emphasize the characters torture and fear. By also returning back to the quiet dynamic, proved to show the character to be even more desperate and innocent. These acting techniques proved helpful in distinguishing my characters helplessness and fury without being unnatural and superficial.
Structured Record – Section 5: ‘How did the group plan for a range of responses from the audience?’
Having initially met with our audience, the group planned to obtain a range of responses by thinking about what would appeal to them; our audience. Brainstorming their requests helped us in selecting key ideas to present a different element of Tudor period, such as humour, gore, sadness and awe.
To establish a range of responses and also keep the piece educational, we felt it important to offer new situations, highlighting interesting and crucial points of the period and creating emotions, situations and characters our audience would find entertaining and relatable.
We used modern references for the audience to recognise and compare the two periods with, from ‘Sam’s’ ‘Harry Potter’ quotes and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ music, to ‘Queen Elizabeth’s’ ‘Harry Enfield and Lulu’ lines; these modern references thrown in amongst Elizabethan time, helped in grabbing our audiences’ attention and in creating humour.
Having the characters of ‘Sam’ and ‘Debbie’ supported this as, acting as mediators between periods, they establish a connection with our audience and are free to behave in a modern, recognizable manner.
The visual image of ‘Sam’ being forced into being a ‘boy player’, inundated with wigs, belladonna, perfume, skirts and corsets allow the audience to mock the idea of a modern boy; now a passive victim losing his male status – dressed as a girl. The build up of ‘Debbie’s’ expectation to be chosen as Juliet by ‘Shakespeare’ and his sudden picking of ‘Sam’ instead, gives the scene further humour and bathos while ‘Debbie’s’ uncontrollable laughter at Sam, mirrors a modern reaction.
‘Burbage’s’ cliché fight quotes and lack of wit create another chance for the audience to join modern character ‘Sam’ in mocking an Elizabethan character. Dramatic Irony, as ‘Sam’ fools ‘Burbage’ with classic ‘look behind you’ lines, allows ‘Sam’ and the audience to gain power over the dim actor and a connection is made as they cheer our hero into winning the fight.
Upon meeting our audience, many admitted disliking Queen Elizabeth and we formed the idea of having this noble character being made to look foolish to create humour. With her grand, elaborate entrance setting up the character to have power and following this with the sudden embarrassment of attempting to wear a potato and eat tobacco proved helpful in mocking a figure of such status.
Not only did presenting situations of boy players, Elizabethan Theatre and gifts from the ‘New World’ create humour, but also presented entertaining educational facts that were new to our audience.
The ‘Wise Woman’s’ dark concoctions, chilling mannerisms and over-the-top clownery accent against modern character ‘Debbie’s’ girlish screams and faints helped in portraying another reaction to the Tudor period that differed from ‘Sam’s’ toughness. Many of the children states that they would not have liked to live in the 1500’s and so, having ‘Debbie’ react to sewers, leeches and skulls in this way created a different sense of humour. ‘Sam’ and ‘Debbie’s’ childish giggling at ‘the smell of poo’ helped in using ‘toilet humour’ for silly laughs. Lines such as this proved useful in lightening the mood and allowing the audiences childlike reaction to be witness.
Putting ourselves in the mind of children and considering their reaction to having travelled back to Tudor period, we felt it more truthful to present a sense of fear, uncertainty and bemusement. Despite some children proclaiming the experience would be ‘cool…unscary and fun’, many admitted that the hardship was something they feared. With each other as their only true companion, we developed this sense of dread with an argument breaking the two modern characters. Starting as a petty quarrel, then building with both actors face to face, invading one another’s space and shouting, ‘Debbie’ is left alone centre stage to cry as ‘Sam’ marches off with fury. The audience, able to empathise with ‘Debbie’ as a modern character and the fears she now faces alone, respond with sympathy and compassion.
The ‘Prison Conditions’ scene, with its presentation of harsh, cruel conditions and personal, sensitive soliloquy’s revealed the unpleasant truth and created poignancy, gore, emotion, and dark, evocative terror. As the only scene in complete stillness and with just the voices of prisoners and hysterical cries and whimpers, this scene presents a clear sense of terror and sadness, differing hugely from the entire atmosphere of the scenes before it.
One of our main ideas in presenting historical figures as entertainment was to look at them and present them in a different light. In order to mock and break down the character of ‘Queen Elizabeth’, it was important that her first entrance be powerful and poignant to contrast with how inane she would be about to look. Entering with a fanfare, a long, big, rich skirt, an ivory corset, a high stiff wig, elaborate jewellery and towering above her servants on a rostrum to which she would stand powerfully, with status and dignity, the audience would witness her with awe. Staring straight ahead, with a strong back and head held high, she would dart out sharp, strict, harsh sounding language without looking at her servants. Standing poised, arrogant and powerful, ‘Queen Elizabeth’ would control the focus of the audience, to whom some would view her as arrogant and rude, others as serene and powerful.
Structured Record – Section 6: ‘How did rehearsals and the production process contribute to the final performance?’
Throughout the creation of our piece, we made it an aim to spend more time on the rehearsal process than the improvisation and devising process. This decision was made to allow greater emphasis on the moulding of characterisation, movement, adjustments and a sense of flow.
Early on, with scenes and script already in place, actors were naturally improvising their positions, movement and pathways on stage and we were therefore able to develop a visual sense of the piece, ensuring movement made sense in terms of character, given circumstances and objective whilst creating a good stage picture. This was helpful for the final performance, as audience commented that movement and characterisation was performed naturally and comfortably.
Feedback from each other and note taking avoided over extraneous action, lack of depth with flat, symmetrical lines and shapes and the ability to find the focus of the scene.
In our opening classroom scene, the teacher needed to be the focus, with control and authority, despite the acting of nine other characters beside her. We produced a tableau of the scene, making the focus of the teacher clear with higher levels and stern posture, which, in the final performance portrayed a clear relationship between the pupils and the teacher.
A busy crowd scene was shown messily, chaotic and unclear without the use of staggered entrances and the layering of action and dialogue to create focus and clear direction.
Despite the sporadic crowd scene not being scripted and relying heavily on structured improvisation and group blocking, cues and visual patterns were rehearsed in order to portray clarity and order. Production rehearsals allowed us to plan entrances and exits, as, without wings, entrances feared being clumsy and unclear. Upstage was used for all entrances and exits, keeping space free and planning exits accordingly for each character. This enabled a smooth running of ons and offs.
The group created a sound collage of voices, building and crescendoing dialogue, noises and bustle, and rehearsed timings and cues for sound effects. With a lack of lighting and scenery, we found very early on that we were relying on music to carry atmosphere and therefore, a cue sheet was created in the rehearsal process to allow a correct and continuous use of sound.
This proved helpful to the final performance as the sound effects and music correlated and took cues from the actors dialogue and movement, supporting the play’s super objective.
The group worked in presenting one another with feedback, which, in the ‘Shakespeare’ scene, proved enormously helpful. The adjustment of more energy in the fight scene created a climax, ‘Shakespeare’s’ adjustment to staccato language made him appear stern and dramatic and ‘Debbie’s’ adjustment for a sharp reaction created humour. All three of these adjustments enabled a clearer understanding of the characterisation and plot for the final performance.
‘Debbie’s’ punch to ‘Burbage’s’ face lacked clarity, focus and humour but by altering the actors positions so they were at the correct angle for the audience to be in clear view of the action, and by juxtaposing a flurrying run with a still, sharp punch created emphasis and focus for the final performance.
With a script intact early on, rehearsals were spent working on the voice and the delivery of lines. Mumbling, swallowing words, talking fast and lack of clarity were all problems that were to be addressed in the rehearsal process by the concentration of diction. Teeth and tongue exercises; working the jaw, cheeks, tongue, lips and teeth were helpful in allowing the actors to relax their voices, be clear and precise with dialogue and to deliver lines at a correct pace, understandable to the audience. We also rehearsed using placement imagery, imagining the nose is growing like Pinocchio and projecting the sound out straight in front. This enabled strong, clear sounding dialogue that the audience could hear and understand.
Working on the clarity of voice enabled the actors to communicate fully with the audience, ensuring they could hear the dialogue and therefore understand the script and enjoy its humour, gore or sensitivity.
Structured Record – Section 7: ‘Explain how research material was gathered and used within the process’.
The class’s first starting point in gathering research was meeting our audience. Our play; based on Tudor times; also part of the key stage two curriculum, was set for young children of 9-11 years. We worked with them in small groups to brainstorm and explore the children’s current knowledge of Tudors, any topics they were particularly intrigued or bored with and issues they would be interested in learning about. This helped us is selecting suitable material to begin working with and developing. We also asked them what plays, books, music, and films they enjoyed so when devising the play, we would be aware of our target audience’s interests.
A vast amount of the children spoke to us about the comparisons between today’s lifestyle and the Tudor lifestyle, with many of them questioning whether they would like to have lived in the 1500’s. This proved helpful as it allowed us to compare the lives as children would, and therefore researched clothes, food, education, entertainment and language from the book: ‘Tudor England’ by John Guy. Ultimately, researching the comparative sides of the two lifestyles presented the idea of a child time travelling from a classroom to the Tudor times to which we used as a starting point.
As the school children knew little about the Elizabethan theatre, I watched a documentary called ‘The World At His Feet’ which assisted me to take notes about the type of playhouse, audiences, plays, playwrights and scenery the Elizabethan theatre would have included.
With this came the research into boy actors and the costumes, make up and characteristics these young actors would have had to acquire. Our findings of photographs, make up rituals and recipes was used in developing a scene based around a boy actors preparation for the stage, and we were able to use terms such as: ‘belladonna’, ‘farthingale’ and ‘bodice’ to accentuate the sense of true Tudor period. These photographs also helped in the progress of Sam’s character as he stumbles across being made to become a boy actor playing a young girl. The photographs showed the boys with poise, strong posture and delicate, feminine gestures – to make Sam’s character appear anxious and out of place, he would abandon the usual characteristics of the typical boy actor.
Furthering this, I decided to see the performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford to witness the language, change in dialect and body language of the Tudor period. Morven Christie’s performance as Juliet showed strong diction and grit yet innocence and hope and therefore helped me in creating the character of a young, expressive girl.
My father works in the lighting department of the Royal Shakespeare Company and helped me in understanding the minimal scenery and lighting in Elizabethan theatre and offered me information from previous Royal Shakespeare Company pieces where the adoption of this minimal effect was also used. This helped in planning how we would perform without major props, scenery or lighting yet still presenting a piece rich in period and character.
I also decided to watch both ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘The Taming of The Shrew’ on film to research the poorer characters costume. I focused on Bottom and the Mechanicals (‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’) dark, earthy, torn and dull costume in the earlier scenes and Curtis and Grumio’s (‘The Taming of The Shrew’) layered, tailored, plain servants clothes. This proved useful in presenting the poverty stricken, poor people and the low status servants truthfully and in differentiating between high and low status with colour, fabric and decoration.
To further establish the insight into the Tudor period, I researched Tudor music and composers such as: Morley, Dowland and Bryd which portrayed a royal, elaborate and eloquent atmosphere. I suggested this atmosphere when improvising a scene with Queen Elizabeth I, which helped us, as actors; develop a sense of grandness and nobility through language, body language and proxemics. Having researched Tudor music also helped us in understanding and defining what sound effects would support the theme of this scene.
Structured Record – Section 8) ‘Evaluate ways in which ideas were communicated to the audience.’
Our young audience seemed keen for us to communicate ideas of gore and humour whilst also playing with period costume and relating, educationally, to the theme of Tudors.
It became apparent that while we must make the play educational, we would also need to be aware of not ‘talking down’ to the children and assuring we related history to them. The group planned to highlight crucial and interesting points of Tudor period, rather than repeating dreary information from their school work. Three main ideas that were unfamiliar were: wise woman remedies, boy players and prison conditions. All three of these issues allowed educational values whilst also carrying elements of gore, humour, and sometimes both.
In one of our opening scenes: ‘The Wise Woman and her Remedies’, the character of ‘Debbie’ was used as the mediator; she would ask candid questions to which the Wise Woman would answer bluntly about her disgusting recipes. This abrupt manner of accentuating the disgusting points allowed the audience to be shocked by its garishness and benefit fully from its educational values.
The same idea was used on the scene: ‘The Boy Player’. We felt it tedious to simply mention that young boys would perform as female characters, instead, the visual image of ‘Sam’ being forced into this 1500’s bravado, without any control and being inundated hastily by wigs, belladonna, perfume, skirts and corsets would communicate a clearer, comical message. ‘Sam’s’ shrills and boyish behaviour as he refused to dress as a girl added a huge amount of humour, primarily since he acted as the protagonist to which the audience can relate by being the modern child.
One of our final scenes, set in prison, was a key scene for distributing an atmosphere of cruel, harsh, prison conditions. We planned for a confrontational look into the hardships of prison and felt that personal, sensitive monologues would communicate a sense of empathy whilst keeping the mood blunt, with a clear message. Each character, using just their monologue and not their bodies or surroundings to distract, would reveal the truth behind their prison sentences – many being dark, emotional and poignant, but some also being evocative, cruel, gory and cheeky. This allowed the audience to witness both gore and humour simultaneously, whilst still being exposed to the educational ideas.
Humour seemed a huge technique to engage our audience – but we were very aware that it should not be the only way, and made it necessary to balance humour with sensitive, serious moments. Fortunately, this encouraged our humorous sections to be well appreciated, despite using comedy very rarely, only really in comparing, mimicking and accentuating the periods.
‘Blackadder’ style slapstick and comedic characters such as an eccentric Shakespeare, a tactless, blunt Wise Woman, a dim, witless actor and two modern children let loose in Tudor period helped us in keeping the play both humorous and relatable. These characters’ over-the-top mannerisms and characteristics can be seen in modern day entertainment and life and this helped in creating an amusing link between our Tudor characters and the modern day. Our modern characters ‘Debbie’ and ‘Sam’ would also use modern references in portraying a clear comparison in the periods. In a fight with foolish actor ‘Burbage’, ‘Sam’ is handed a sword to which he responds with the Harry Potter line: ‘Expelliarmus’ and the fight sequence is encouraged by ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ action music. This also encouraged dramatic irony and portrayed ‘Sam’ to have more power over ‘Burbage’. We were surprised to see that both boy and girl audience members enjoyed this scene and felt the modern references accentuated its appeal.
The breaking up of a serious scene concerning Queen Elizabeth I and her memories of her father King Henry VIII with the character of traveller Walter Rarly returning from the new world with gifts for the Queen proved helpful in assisting our ideas of humour. By building up the suspenseful question of ‘rubies, emeralds, furs and diamonds’, the blunt arrival of ‘a potato’ – delivered with sharp comic timing and a seriousness which contrasted to its actual funniness – proved hugely humorous. The Queen’s outrage and her attempt to wear it added to its silliness, as the audience, really knowing what a potato is, mocks the Queen.
With humour, came the appeal for gore. Knowing that a link joins what is funny and revolting together, we looked at presenting gore that would appear impressive and shocking rather than sick and scary. In our ‘Wise Woman and her Remedies’ scene, the suggestion of ‘scraping moss from a dead mans skull onto the tip of your tongue’ and a concoction of ‘thyme, basil and ground up mice droppings’ proved far gorier than presenting any oddly shaped, oddly coloured prop. Although, the creation of harsh black ‘leeches’ which were placed on ‘Debbie’s’ arm proved successful in that, despite not looking a great deal like an authentic leech, the live presentation of an object which will ‘suck your blood’, proved revolting. For the prison conditions scene, the two baby snatchers used suggestive, evocative imagery to present a sense of gore. Acting smugly and creating ideas of ‘a coat full of pockets big enough for a baby’ and ‘…cutting the ugly babies into little pieces for a stew’ allowed the audience to imagine the repulsiveness for themselves rather than seeing live action.
In our first look at life in Tudor times, modern character ‘Debbie’ in unlucky enough to have human waste thrown over her from above, while the surrounding Tudor people look in disgust and her fellow classmate ‘Sam’ laughs uncontrollably. The isolation of ‘Debbie’ centre stage, standing still, covered in waste and then to screech frantically and faint, acts as an explosive reaction to the gore. The combination of both gore and humour with this idea proved that we could link the repulsive and the humorous in harmony.
The final appeal from our audience was that we deliver costume that is both impressive and authentic to the period. The cast’s initial reaction was that their wish was impossible and we would appear foolish in poor costume, thus affecting the overall play and our performances. However, we resolved this turmoil by using key pieces of Elizabethan costume, with characters wearing rich jackets or cloaks, and others in long skirts or short trousers. We were more concerned with creating costume that supported the hardship of Tudor period rather than costume that was genuine to its period.
With full cast in dowdy, dull costume, we felt it crucial that a noble character such as ‘Queen Elizabeth I’ should be in evident contrast to portray her elaborateness and grandness. It also seemed imperative that the actor playing her must mask herself so much as an illusion that the audience are stunned by her costume.
Structured Record – Section 9) ‘Explore the impact of social, cultural and/or historical conditions on the work.’
The groups’ initial and utmost social condition lay in performing for young children and therefore allowing the content of our work to be both educational and suitable. It became apparent that our main aim was to apply fun and interesting ideas that would bring the Tudor period to life.
The Key Stage Two Curriculum called for work that stood not only as entertaining but that also followed in presenting an authentic look at Elizabethan times, characters and culture. The impact of this social condition advised us to relate Tudor period to our modern audience with the invention of an opening and concluding scene set in a classroom; ultimately mirroring the young audience. These classroom, stereotypical characters supported the social conditions of performing for children as we produced characters that were eager to learn, thus presenting good, moral values. The archetype character of a school bully; disruptive and impassive to learning, was punished for their behaviour, again, presenting ethical morals.
The social surroundings in performing for children affected the suitability of our piece and we were forced to consider its content. With a starting point that involved executions, gory remedies and a controlling Queen, we were very selective in ensuring material was not over vulgar, chilling or offensive. These constraints restricted the amount of actual gore and suffering we could present and we relied on monologues, humorous frights and straightforward unsettling atmosphere as apposed to violence.
Cutting salacious and suggestive dialogue relating to child abuse was a suggestion made from a previewing audience. Its dark content was unsuitable for children especially when culture and upbringing of a child distinguishes what they find suitable and unsuitable.
The school being a Church of England school meant we felt it important that we not disrespect the children and staff with sacrilegious or immoral content. This also affected the amount of blasphemous colloquialisms (Ie: ‘Oh My God’) and evidently, profanities were unacceptable and would not be included.
Elizabethan characters such as Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I are extremely recognizable by school children and while this assisted in identifying each character, actors did not wish to imitate predecessory presentations of these characters.
Modern parallels between Tudor characters and the modern world distinguished a helpful historical condition in that our audience could relate to these characters without being subjected to a stereotype. Using Meryl Streeps authoritative, demanding character in film ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ as the Queens dominating power, and Noel Coward and Mel Brook’s eccentric, flamboyant characters as the ostentatious Shakespeare, our young audience were conscious of these big personalities, albeit they were now in the Elizabethan period, they would relate them to their own modern lives.
Structured Record – Section 10) ‘Indicate how the influence and ideas of other playwrights, and/or directors, designers and performers (Ie practitioners) have been used.’
Stanislavski was a great influence for the process of devising and exploring the psychological and emotional preparation needed for the creation and development of a character. His method acting techniques appeared to give strength to actors to perform successfully, powerfully and most important, truthfully. He states that: ‘Truth on the stage must be real, but poetic through creative imagination’ (An Actor Prepares).
We used his system to ensure that we as actors would be completely absorbed in the events, subtext and issues of the play and in developing characters.
‘If you speak any lines or do anything, mechanically without fully realising who you are, where you came from, why, what you want, where you are going…you will be acting without imagination.’ (An Actor Prepares) This technique enabled us to construct a true perception of our characters. In creating a monologue for my character ‘Isobelle’, I used Stanislavski’s idea of ‘what if’ to create a sense of purpose and to use my imagination in creating a whole picture. The magic ‘if’ transforms the characters aim into the actors and ‘acts as a lever to lift the actor out for the world of actuality and into the realm of creativity.’
The ideas behind the technique of ‘what if’ are that: ‘it does not use fear or force or make the artist into anything. On the contrary, it reassures him through its honesty and encourages him…’ (An Actor Prepares)
With ‘magic if’ came ‘emotion memory’ which requires an actor to apply personal experiences to their role; remember an event and re-live the emotion. This proved helpful in presenting a fearful, desperate child.
Seeing actress Morven Christie perform as ‘Juliet’ in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford) helped me in developing the character of a young, anxious, expressive girl. I adopted her strong diction, grit yet innocence and hope and her feminine, timid body language through the first act.
Whilst looking for ideas for staging, I went to see a production of ‘Julius Caesar’ (Royal Shakespeare Company), which was performed in a Brechtian style. I found that the simplicity of the staging, the alienation technique, breaking stage illusions, exposing its mechanics and having very limited, essential props, was something we could interpret into our play. However, this would make for an unnaturalistic piece and it became apparent that it would take focus from the acting, issues and expressionism within the play. Bertolt Brecht believes that: ‘One should not allow the audience to connect with them, instead they should be internally aware that it is a play they are watching…they are distanced from the performance but aware of the theme’. This seemed to contradict with Stanislavski’s ideas of realism– we therefore decided to just take the idea of using simple staging, with limited props.
Theatre company ‘Complicite’s’ production of ‘A Minute Too Late’ featured a technique of using actors as body props (Ie: chairs and tables) which we experimented with in the ‘Elizabeth I’ scene to present an idea of status and levels. This idea proved difficult due to taking away levels of naturalism and we therefore decided to employ ‘Complicite’s’ idea of basic props and used a single rostrum.
Elizabethan playwrights such and Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton became influential in their ideas to concentrate on mocking the rich and corrupt in their plays with comedy being dealt specifically with the London City and its society. We used these ideas in presenting city crowd scenes and differentiating between the poor, the working class and the rich.
Playwright Henrik Ibsen was also of some influence to me. His play, ‘Ghosts’, addresses topics of incest, destructiveness and venereal disease. Despite this now seeming rather tame; being very much accustomed to far worse in modern entertainment, in the 1880’s it appeared shocking. The presentation of such vulgar issues, its evocative nature and its effect in its time was beneficial to the creation of my ‘Prison Conditions’ monologue, which featured the same concerns.
