Evaluate Brian Clark's play "Whose Life Is It Anyway?"

The aim of this assignment is to evaluate Brian Clark's play "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" and to form an opinion on how the author keeps attention of the audience throughout the play. For this purpose, the research has been carried out through detailed analysis of the play, as well as through the study and evaluation of materials presented in books and websites, so as to determine the devices and structures used by the playwright to engage and sustain the interest of the audience. "Whose Life is it Anyway" by Brian Clark, is a play about Ken Harrison, a professional sculptor and teacher, whose spinal cord has been damaged by a car accident. Ken is paralysed by the neck down and is being kept alive only by the miracles of medical technology. However, Ken does not want to be kept alive and this provides the core of the play which is centred around the changed life of Ken Harrison, his determination to decide his own fate, and the determination of those who care for him to keep him alive. The play takes up six months after the accident, as Ken is starting to realise the full extent of his injuries. The problem is that he has not been told exactly what his life will be like. He has to ask the doctors, who scarcely tell him, that he will need to be in the care of a hospital for the rest of his life. Ken is determined to exercise a choice over his own life or death, but his decision

  • Word count: 3795
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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How does Peter Medak gain the viewers sympathy for Derek Bentley in the film "Let him have it"

How does Peter Medak gain the viewers sympathy for Derek Bentley in the film "Let him have it" This is a story that follows the life of an epileptic boy called Derek Bentley. The story shows how quickly a normal boy's life can turn upside down. Derek arrives home from an approved school and doesn't step out of his doorstep for a whole year. Derek is later led by Christopher Craig and his make-believe gangsters to go around and cause trouble. This later results in crime and Bentley is given the death penalty in court for 'apparently' being party to a murder but it was a huge injustice. After the trial Peter Medak, the producer tries to make the audience feel sympathetic towards Derek and his life in prison and his family waiting for his execution. Derek's sister Iris still battles on for justice and recently Bentley was pardoned. As the film is based on a true story, Medak might have been affected by the injustice and one day maybe thought to make this film in Derek's name. Derek's childhood is the most sympathetic part of the film, this is because it shows how he struggled with the trauma of having epilepsy throughout his life. In 1941 Derek's home is bombed and he is buried in the rubble from the the explosion he begins to throw a fit. Derek is not a leader he is led by others. Medak shows his lack of leadership skills in the part where Derek follows his friends to

  • Word count: 1304
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Our aim was to create a character driven piece of drama, lasting approximately 25 minutes, using realistic situations with moments of abstraction to create a situation controlled by temptation

Initial ideas The idea of temptation was the initial inspiration for this piece of devised drama. The group took this idea from various pieces of drama that we have encountered during our AS course. Going to see 'A Dealer's Choice' allowed me to see that temptation can often cause major disruption between a group of people. As our piece was going to be very much character based, we thought that by incorporating temptation as a major theme it would allow us to show tensions between characters. Temptation being the power to seduce a person to do something they would normally not do, and diverting from universal obedience. Over the AS course we have studied 'Yerma' by Garcia Lorca and this was also an inspiration for the initial theme of temptation. In this play the character of Yerma longs for a child and yet her husband does not want to have one. Victor, a strong and handsome male character represents the temptation in Yerma's life to get what she wants. Yerma is in love with Victor and dreams of him with her child, yet this temptation to be with him is never visited because of the boundaries created by the world that she lives in. In our piece however, we wanted to create the temptation and then show how each character would approach it. One of the members of the group came up with the idea of showing the temptation through the use of an unopened box. The rest of

  • Word count: 3542
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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In what ways was the stimulus material developed through the drama process?

In what ways was the stimulus material developed through the drama process? Our stimulus derived from a newspaper article brought in by a member of my peer group, the article was in relation to a young girl 'Ainlee Walker' being abused by both her parents 'Leanne Labonte' and 'Dennis Henry'. Due to the unremitting abuse the child died at the young age of six. The editorial was deplorable and touched us all deeply leading to us using it as a supporting stimulus. We engaged out thoughts on this article and brainstormed ways in which we could portray this through drama. We began with the idea of an estate agent showing a couple through the house in which the abuse took place, and each room the agent took the couple into, for example the bedroom, we would see the abuse that took place in that room re-occurring. We also thought of using the nursery rhyme "Hush little baby don't say a word" as a mode to convey the repulsion of the whole situation. We tried this suggestion out but found it extremely hard to perform due to the structure of the house being indistinguishable and we also found it hard to convey what part of the house we were in, due to the difficulty in portraying this idea to the audience we moved on to look at other prospects for our piece. In the midst of further research on the Internet, we came across various true-life anecdotes from the official

  • Word count: 1130
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Directing Act Three Scene 1 of Midsummer's Nights Dreams.

Act Three Scene 1 The plot of this scene has a lot of potential for creative directing. The surreal and chaotic world of the fairies when contrasted with the foolish world of the mechanicals appears almost orderly. The setting of this scene also displays this ironic gradient as the men physically step almost into the world of the fairies. The beginning of this scene is as the mechanicals all gather in the forest to rehearse. Titania, the fairy queen is sleeping close by. I would have a dark stage with low orange light on the area where the men gather. Titania lying at the side of the stage would be separated by darkness with a forest green light, perhaps with filters with a foliage effect cast over her. The orange would clash with the green. This would indicate trouble arising. The conversations between the mechanicals would be spoken over- dramatically. Such as: Bottom There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself, [here all the actors must be shocked and taken aback] which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that? [Mechanicals must appear to be puzzled - stupidly] Bottom takes over the role of director and struts about the stage slightly exasperated, as he bosses the other actors about. Humour and the foolishness of the characters is enhanced by the disorganised way in which they

  • Word count: 856
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Goldeneye: how does the pre-credit sequence keep us watching?

The film Golden Eye (1995) is a well known film. Martin Campbell, the director uses many techniques such as death defying stunts, villains, attractive Bond girls, exotic locations, and sarcastic humour to create an exciting action film. Even though the audience all know that MI6's finest agent James Bond will escape near death, save the day and bed the girl, we all return to watch the next mission. Goldeneye fulfils all of the audience's expectations by exploring all the music, camera angles and shots that Campbell uses I intend to show that Goldeneye is one of the most exciting Bond films available. At the start of the film, the audience sees a black screen with white spotlights coming from the left hand side. The spotlights are in the middle of the screen, then leaving the at the right hand side. Bond walks into the gun barrel and faces the camera and shoots his gun. It has a white and black back ground until he shoots his gun when it becomes red. This creates the illusion of blood falling down the screen. The barrel shakes from side to side before the whole image becomes one whole searchlight. The searchlight goes into the bottom left hand corner. This makes it look like the light is becoming the plane. You know this because it makes the sound of a plane. The plane then returns into the middle of the screen. Martin Campbell keeps the audience watching by inventing new

  • Word count: 1257
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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How research material was gathered and used within the process.

How research material was gathered and used within the process. At the very beginning of the production process we split into several pairs. Each pair was given a drug to complete some scenes on, part of the producing of the scenes required some research, so therefore each group attempted to research their given drug, and obviously anything they felt would benefit the whole group. The drug my pair was given was LSD, we conducted research using the internet and found several accounts of people's experience on drugs. We use their recollections of 'trips' to construct a 'trip' for the character Ellie. The research told us that when 'tripping' on LSD that things become very fluid. Lifeless objects seem to breath, or beat like a heart, and it's possible to taste and smell things like colours. Our research also taught us how LSD-induced 'trips' do not create things, only warp something normal that we might see. For example, a house with its light on may seem, on a 'trip', as a house on fire. I myself spoke to someone who has experienced a bad LSD trip, in which she believed she was being chased by giant 'Mars Bars', they were, as she found out later, just wheelie bins. We therefore realised that there must be a trigger. We created a 'bad trip' scene, in which the audience experiences through Ellie's eyes a 'bad trip'. We positioned Ellie in the centre of the stage and had James,

  • Word count: 919
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Hidden Exposure - Working Diary.

Hidden Exposure - Working Diary By Nicole Frith This is a written analysis and evaluation of the creative process leading up to, and applied during, the dance performance of 'Hidden Exposure', based on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Dreams. The piece, was choreographed by 'Dance Performance Experience' year 2, and performed on January 13, 1998. The aims of this 'Dance Performance' module were to apply newly learnt techniques, movement skills, and the research of existing practitioners, combine them with existing dance skills and knowledge to create an original innovative dance performance. Members of the class will choreograph sections, with the common theme, in pairs or individually that will be put together to create a collage style dance. Each individually choreographed section should make use of some recurring motifs and demonstrate contact improvisation where possible. Before we started any of our own choreography we had to decide on a stimuli. This is very important, as it will be the idea that all movements are representing. This is called Ideational Stimuli and is when "the movement is stimulated and formed with the intention to convey an idea or tell a story."1, as opposed to us taking a piece of music and dancing to it. As a group we had many ideas to choose from but after weighing out the options we opted for OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The idea of

  • Word count: 2858
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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With detailed textual references discuss, analyse and review the key but cinematic features displayed in

With detailed textual references discuss, analyse and review the key but cinematic features displayed in "Pleasantville" and "The Truman Show" The following essay, which I have composed, is based on two important films of the last decade. Their titles are "Pleasantville" and "The Truman Show". Starting with the "Pleasantville", the general overview of the film's plot gets more complicated the further you get into it. It brings up several issues all of which I have commented on in this essay. The film starts with two teenagers, David and Jennifer. David has an addiction to old reruns of a fifties sitcom also by the name of "Pleasantville". Jennifer is the complete opposite of her brother, leading a rather promiscuous lifestyle. During an argument, their TV remote is broken, meaning they are unable to watch their television. The argument is between David who wants to watch the Pleasantville marathon and Jennifer who wants to watch a film with her date who is coming round in a few minutes. Then a supernatural event occurs as a TV repairman rings the doorbell seconds after the breakage. The TV repairman has a common interest with David in Pleasantville. As he sees David is a die-hard fan, the repairman gives David a special remote which transports them into their television, into Pleasantville. Pleading with the repairman to transport them back, he gets upset and

  • Word count: 2356
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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Plot and sub plot of road

Plot & sub Plot Episodic Structure The structure used in this play is episodic. This structure was first created by Brecht he used this so the audience wouldn't get sucked into the play. This structure consists of lots of shorts scenes with a range of different characters and genres and conventions but they will have one theme or setting, which holds the play together and connects the scenes to each other. The audience are allowed to believe in the naturalism as it is made extremely naturalistic so they get the sense of real life but a monologue would be inserted in parts of the play to make it evident it was unreal as the characters would break the fourth wall and connect to the audience also Scullery affects the realism as he narrates the play. The audiences are wanted to think about unemployment depression and poverty. Different sections contain different themes and dysfunction but the main thing the all have in common is living on the road. Carwright also uses Brecht style because Brecht made plays extremely political and road becomes political mainly in joeys story. Cartwright used this style so he was allowed to use lots of different genres conventions and styles to make a bigger impact on the audience. Plot This play was in based in the 1980's and set in a depressed town on a random road. It is chaotic and uses a mixture of styles. The audiences go through a

  • Word count: 979
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Drama
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