Skip to main content

Blood Wedding Lesson - 14/09/16

We started this lesson by creating a short series of abstract movements with a partner that represented the feeling of falling deeply in love for the first time. Within these movements we had to keep contact with one another as we went from position to position, so as we went from back to back, to face to face (foreheads touching), down to one knee and back up again for the sequence to be repeated continuously. This was interesting because the intimacy between the pairs from the constant touch portrayed an instant idea of romance and intensity. Within my group we were then able to be creative with the facial expressions, pace and tone of the piece to create a more dynamic and interesting piece.

After this exercise we were asked to explore a stimulus: a white wedding dress upon a deep red cloth with a knife on top of it. From this we tried to infer the time, setting and brief plot of the play 'Blood Wedding' by Federico Garcia Lorca. Our initial thoughts were that the play was set around the 19th century in rural Spain and that there were strong themes of love, unrequited love, affairs and murder. After this discussion, we made a sequence of 3 images that displayed what we thought were the 3 main events of the play. These scenes consisted of an initial meeting of two characters and the instant deep love that formed between them, a wedding, and then a final destruction of the relationship with a murdered bride. This sequence was created in only 3 minutes but we were able to show the building of the relationship with levels and proxemics, the two characters becoming closer and more intimate between the first two images (using techniques from the previous exercise) and falling apart suddenly and dramatically between the 2nd and 3rd. 

Before given our final task we were told thoroughly of the plot of 'Blood Wedding' by Lorca and given the first scene to read through. Here we were able to grasp a greater understanding of the story and the way the previous tasks linked into the play. With our greater knowledge of the plot and context of the play we then made a series of 5 images that show the story of the play to fit a set lighting sequence which we were shown previously. The final product is shown in the video below. 


The first image shows the two young protagonists and the love between them, then the parents of both the characters standing behind them, showing their control and power over Leonardo and the Bride, the tension between the two sides of the family is also very evident in this initial scene. Then during the transition to the next image we see the love between Leonardo and the bride become deeper and more intense, this in-turn creating a greater tension between the two families. When the young love is at its strongest (and the two on the floor are kneeling upright), the bride's Father then forces an arranged marriage with another man upon the bride. At this point the lighting changes from the warm orange to a more intense, sharp red reflecting the sinister act of the parent, a cold blue light also appears on the left of the stage, signalling the change in tone in the story. After the Bride and Bridegroom have been married, my character steps back, at this point I am unseen by the audience, if i were to do this again I would move further right so that I was visible to the audience. At the same time we see Leonardo's mother become intimate and possessive over him whilst he keeps his eye contact with the bride. Leonardo then slowly moves toward the bride and takes her hand, at this point the Bridegroom, Bride's father and Leonardo's mother all fall suddenly to the floor, showing the impact this act had on them. Leonardo's mother then distances herself as she slowly rises, keeping intense eye contact with the Bride's father during the transition to the final image. The Bridegroom rises fully to his feet, showing his anger and eager to find the eloped couple. The couple, meanwhile, do a sequence of movements from the first exercise of the lesson which showed both their deep, undeniable love for one another yet also their frustration and anger with one another's actions. The piece ends with one line spoken by the bridegroom from the Moon's monologue at the end of the play  and the final image is shown, both parents on the floor (although the bride's father still active in the search for his daughter) and the two men with their knives drawn facing one another with a harsh red light foreshadowing the bloody end to the play.







Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stephen Berkoff Research

We have started studying the theatre style of Stephen Berkoff in our drama lessons.  Berkoff's style is non-naturalistic, he focuses much more on the movement of the actor rather than the voice, he states that the only use for the script is to 'minimalise and physicalise' the story;  it enables the story to be told in the simplest, most effective way. His Actor's use techniques such as background movement, repetitive actions and mime.  Berkoff said that it was important  'to see how I could bring mime together with the spoken word as its opposite partner, creating the form and structure of the piece'. This very interesting concept provides the core of his work, the mimelike, staccato movements accompanied by vivid, imaginative language. Berkoff studied at   L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Jacques Lecoq was originally a gymnast and athlete who later found physical theatre after becoming aware of the beauty and rhythm in athletic movemen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Performance review

On Wednesday it was my performance night. Overall, I was very pleased with the way it went, I have never had such a long rehearsal process so the lines and the staging for each section felt like muscle memory. I didn't have to think very hard about what my next line was and where I was supposed to be on the stage because each scene had been thoroughly rehearsed so I could really focus on embodying the character of Antigone and I had never felt so in character as I did on my performance night. Another element that we could only really engage until performance was the metatheatre element of it because when the chorus says 'she's going to have to play her part right through to the end.' I only really understood that line until that night when the audience was there. It blurred the line even further as to what was acted and what was real because I found that I didn't have to act that gut feeling of what I was about to do and each line the chorus said I slowly got more...
Post a Comment
Read more

Woman Alone - first impressions, disecting the script

Woman Alone is a short play written by Franca Rame and Dario Fo. It is the monologue of a woman who has been locked inside the house by her seemingly very abusive and controlling husband who is talking to her neighbour across the gardens. It is a very comedic script: full of sexual innuendos, hilarious anecdotes and clever one-liners. However, this comedic language juxtaposes some very serious and sinister themes: domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, self harm, suicide, mental health and murder. Upon first read, I found the extended monologue to be very confusing as the woman changes train of thought very quickly and jumps from subject to subject very often. The language itself is very simple and the anecdotes can be followed easily but her character as a whole is very hard to understand as her intentions seem to change every second and she is constantly contradicting herself. I immediately thought that it was going to be a very challenging script to work with, however for our perf...
Post a Comment
Read more