Samuel Becketts Endgame has several connections with Brechts meaning of alienation. Brecht alienation idea uses the audience to be a knowingly critical observer

Chelsea Conboy Professor Vazquez English Composition 2 20 February 2012 Beckett through Brecht Samuel Beckett's Endgame has several connections with Brecht's meaning of alienation. Brecht alienation idea uses the audience to be a knowingly critical observer, which Beckett uses. In Endgame, Beckett applies Brecht's proposal of alienation by making the audience take a viewpoint on finding their own connection to the play. Just as William Haney states, "Beckett writes leaving society with a sense of alienation and loss" (Haney, 2). This goes with the theme of absurdity that Brecht wanted to demonstrate in his work. Brecht then wanted the audience of his plays to explore the social, political, and economical aspects of life during his plays, so that they too can be captivated into the play and have their own agreement of life. Beckett uses the ideas of Brecht's alienation in Endgame by way of the characters, themes, and attitudes because he wanted to get the audience to retain new ideas and to avoid their normal comfort. Brecht style was to view the play for what is it and nothing else. According to Brecht, "Alienation used acting techniques and stage devices to encourage the audience's emotional distance from the play" (Daryl, 40). In Endgame, Beckett uses the emotional distance with analyzing the characters. The analysis of the play reflects the breakdown of the

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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How did the group plan for a range of audience responses?

How did the group plan for a range of audience responses? Through our performance we wanted to convey a series of responses from the audience based around the many different feelings you can experience if you were trapped. As the topic didn't really allow for the dynamics you can create with humour, we had to enable the audience to mentally separate their emotional response for each scene, in order for them to feel a new emotional experience. We did this by carefully planning the emotional journey we wanted to take them on, by first easing them into feeling scared - with the kidnapping scene, and eventually taking them to the paranoia featured in the final scene. We even monitored how the audience responded to the performance by asking them to fill in a questionnaire. In the first set of scenes which revolved around the kidnapping of a little girl, we wanted the audience to be shocked at the fact that this can happen in broad daylight. We therefore set the scene at the end of a school day, with the kidnapper stood in audiences view watching the little girl. This immediately creates suspense within the audience as they know something is going to happen. When the girl slowly follows her and reluctantly holds her hand we wanted the audience to feel shock and helplessness. The second part of this scene was a news report on the kidnapping. This scene was one that we planned to be

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Stage lighting - A guide.

Stage Lighting: A guide The fully updated, Definitive guide to all aspects of stage lighting for GCSE Drama Introduction The theatre is the oldest form of drama known. Dating back to the ancient Greeks, it still manages to enthral millions of people to this day with its distinctive dramatic style. Despite the advent of film and television, the theatre is still a unique place. Instead of watching endlessly rehearsed, digitally enhanced pictures flash past on a screen, the theatre offers a clear, unadulterated view of acting relying on the actor's skill and initiative rather than just a string of computer generated sequences. This is not to say that film is worse than theatre; rather that the two are different to one another, offering different things to an audience. However, The theatre has one very clear disadvantage over film. Where we can sit through films like the Lord of the Rings and marvel at the splendour of the Shire and tremble at the unforgiving, evil Sauron the same effect is much more difficult to achieve on stage. Of course the actors ability to portray the character correctly is important, and goes some way to transporting the audience from their seats into the story, but this is often not quite enough. Somehow you never forget you are sitting in a draughty church hall with large florescent lights glaring at you! The solution to this problem is to stimulate

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Spanish cinema

Spanish cinema Benicio del Toro When Benicio Del Toro first announced to his father and siblings that he intended to pursue a career in acting, they didn't take the news very well. As Del Toro told one interviewer, "My family freaked when I told them I wanted to be an actor. It was like telling them I wanted to be an astronaut. On top of that, it was like saying that in order to be an astronaut, I was going to have to drive a cab in New York for five years. " The family probably felt that its worst fears had been realized when Del Toro won his first movie role, playing "Duke the Dog-Faced Boy," in the ill-contrived sequel to Pee-WeeÆs Big Adventure, Big Top Pee-Wee. Undaunted by the execrable effort, Del Toro stuck it out, and over the course of the next several years, he paid the bills with a steady stream of supporting roles, both in films and on television, including several memorable portrayals of drug-dealing heavies. His career caught fire with the role of enunciation-challenged con man Fred Fenster in Bryan Singer's stunning ensemble crime drama The Usual Suspects (1995), a performance for which he won an Independent Spirit Best Supporting Actor award; he won the same award the following year for his work in the critically lauded biopic Basquiat. With a résumé comprised in equal measures of mainstream fare and independent projects, Del Toro is uniquely

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Comparing the physical setting of two scenes from 'Still life at the Penguin Cafe'.

Dance: - Comparing the physical setting of two scenes from 'Still life at the Penguin Cafe' The two scenes I have chosen are the first and last ones we looked at, as I thought that these were the two that were the most different in both scenery and lighting around the stage also they are the beginning and end of the set work. The two I have chosen are the Penguin cafe itself and the southern cape zebra. I am going to show the relationships and differences between these two scenes in 4 different areas: Set design, Lighting, props and dance content. Set Design: The set between all of the scenes is based partly on the colonial café and there is a projection of their usual habitat shown in an arch on the backdrop at the beginning. This is just an abstract focal point for the audience as the dancer begins in front of the image and so looks as though they are put of it but then the dancer or dancers begin to move out and this is when the backdrop begins to become less of a focal point as it is not always a specific part of the dance. This projection of the creatures habitat is very different between these two scenes as firstly, in the penguin café scene the habitat is of Antarctica and so the colours used are mainly blues and whites in the projection, to show the image of snow and ice and to give the general idea of the climate. As the arch moves away the backdrop becomes a

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Critical Review of ‘Splintered’.

Critical Review of 'Splintered'. Splintered is a play that shows fragments from three of Tennessee Williams best-known plays, "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "The Glass Menagerie". This production took place at the Fringe Club in Central on 9th April. Splintered was a school performance, the audience mainly consisted of other students and parents. The stage was a rectangular with the left corner elevated to symbolize a separate space or room. As I had never seen a performance from this school before I had no idea what the standard of acting would be. The name of the play "Splintered" derived from the fact that it was fragments of three plays, this aspect concerned me as I felt it would be difficult to make a cohesive play from bits of other plays. The quality of acting in this play was very variable; some actors could not act well and displayed emotions by changing the volume of their delivery; normal volume of speaking to shouting when they were angry or upset. Such an actor played Big Daddy from "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", he had no facial expressions and never made contact with the audiences, perhaps he was very nervous, he also spat violently when shouting. He had very rigid movements and his feet seemed planted to the ground, he only ever sat or stood. In one scene he was meant to be saying something very hurtful to another character but the way he

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring Analysis

A Brief Analysis of The Lord of the Rings the Fellowship of the Ring The Fellowship of the Ring, one of the first of three movies in the Lord of the Rings trilogy would not have been such a success if it did not employ techniques and exploit them well. Five that will be touched upon here are Color, Close up, Music, Birds Eye View and Lighting, all of them used fantastically Color Color can explain many aspects in a movie. It can illustrate the mood and atmosphere of a setting. These definitions comply with The Fellowship of the Ring. In this movie, there are numerous locations that the heroes move to and from. In the beginning, they travel away from the Shire and to the outskirts of the town. In this background, there are bright green and blue colors, which prove the innocence and purity of the shire and its hobbits. After that, the movie transitions into Isengard, specifically the tower of Sauron. In this surrounding, there are blacks, grays, and reds all portraying evil and immoral actions. Frodo and Co. then shift into another untainted ethical spot called Rivendell, where the elves reside. To show the wholesomeness of the elves the colors are mostly whites and yellows. As a final point, the viewers observe the Caves of Moria where the dwarves reside or else used to. In this setting all, the colors are dull and black showing how the place is lifeless except for an evil

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Theatre in the age of Shakespeare

Theatre in the age of Shakespeare Theatre was a very different business in the 16th and 17th century. London, the home of The Globe theatre was possibly the central hub of theatre in England at the time. The Lord Mayors hated plays because they took apprentices and workmen away from their jobs. Plays had to be performed in the daytime in the open-air theatres since there was no electrical lighting, or technical effects of any nature. Because of this they were labelled as "ungodly" and profane. Infact, the mayors of London tried to have plays banned! luckily for us, they were protected by the privy council on the grounds that the Queen enjoyed the entertainment at Christmas. The Lord chamberlain set up 2 new companies in 1594, one of which Shakespeare joined as an actor. In time this company became the richest of companies and ran continuously for forty eight years. A theatre would be host to three or more companies each afternoon as long as epidemics of the bubonic plague did not cause a ban on public assemblies in London,. The outbreak of civil war in 1642 caused all theatres to be closed. Alternatives to going to the theatre were few and far between, but animal baiting was of popular interest. Bulls and bears were baited in "gladiator" style arenas (not dissimilar to theatres), and crowds would pay to see this. Not surprisingly when the theatre did become a viable

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Joan Littlewood was a controversial and innovative director. What was the legacy of her contribution to theatre?

Joan Littlewood was a controversial and innovative director. What was the legacy of her contribution to theatre? Joan Littlewood was considered controversial from the moment she walked out of RADA after only three months of study there on the only London scholarship awarded. She had no time for conventional acting, cut glass accents or typecasting. Littlewood headed north and founded the Theatre of Action in 1934 which two years later became known as the Theatre Union. In 1945 it became the famed Theatre workshop; a group of actors heavily committed to a left wing ideology whose aim was to revive and preserve all they thought was best in the theatrical traditions of Britain and Europe. Theatre Workshop was an instance of group theatre which had not been seen since the 16th century Italian Commedia Del'Arte or the Community Plays of The Middle Ages. Under the direction of Littlewood they devised and commissioned plays by and about the working class of Great Britain, something that had never been done before to the extent that they were doing. The group was heavily influenced by Vsevolod Meyerhold as they experimented with physical approaches to characterisation. However, Littlewood drew on a variety of additional influences in order to create her own theatre and theory of actor training including Commedia Del'Arte, Stanislavski, Brecht and the expressionist Laban. Her unique

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Mitford: The Curtain is Pulled.

Steve Radabaugh ENGL 106.12 Essay #1 17 Feb 2003 Mitford: The Curtain is Pulled How would you like to be put on a cold metal tray and have your body invaded taking out your blood and filling you with fluids to preserve your organs, all while your family has no idea about it? This is the issue Jessica Mitford brings to the table in "Behind The Formaldehyde Curtain." She raises questions about the legality of embalming, and ends up going into gory detail expressing exactly what goes on in the back room of funeral parlors nationwide. She talks about how the family of the deceased does not know that they are being embalmed, how to make a body look life-like, and what goes on at the burial site. Jessica Mitford writes an excellent article and it is reinforced by her graphic words explaining the issue, and the information she has presented. However, there are some flaws in her article, including her tendency to over elaborate, her lack of credible sources, and her one sided view on embalming. In the essay, Mitford uses excellent words to explain the process of embalming. She is using words that help in her explanation of embalming, and they are so graphic, whether you want to or not, you can picture what is going on in the room. Using words like "sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed" practically lays

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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