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Meta theatre Lesson - 25/09/16

In this lesson, we explored the ways an audience can be affected by the acknowledgment of the fact that the characters they are watching are just actors performing on a stage. Discussing whether it detracted from the effect of the drama or added another complex layer to it, as it forces the audience to not only invest themselves into the fictional character in the show but the real life person behind that.

We started the lesson by simply creating a 15 second scene with a small group of 3/4 in which we were actors entering a rehearsal spaced preparing for rehearsals, with stretches and light conversation. Each character created was very similar and had similar actions to correspond with that. We were then asked, in our groups, to add another layer to our characters. To think of the actor's emotions , to think of what had happened previously that day, their journey to the space and how that would affect their body language  and general mood as they entered the performance space.

With this short scene to use as reflection, we discussed as a class how effective it would be to watch that scene before a performance so that the audience could see the lives of the actors playing the parts. Some people thought this would add confusion to the plot of the play, others thought it would lesson the impact on the audience as the acknowledgement of the play being false is so obvious. However, I think that this technique is really interesting, it adds depth to each character, it could force each member of the audience to have somewhat existential thoughts as to what is real and what is performed. It creates a blurred line between reality and fiction which is present in all aspects of life especially in social media at the moment therefore it makes the audience question what to believe which adds a really interesting element to the performance.


Antigone performance over vlog

After the discussion we were given the opening scene of the play Antigone to read. A tragedy inspired by the work of Sophocles and greek mythology written by Jean Anouihl in 1947. It begins with a group of actors preparing for the performance and a narrator walking around describing the fact that these actors were all individual people with individual lives and problems yet for the next
hour and a half these people were to take on the roles of different people with different lives and different problems. We took this and created a piece of short drama from it, showing a group of actors preparing for the performance of Antigone.

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