BTEC Perfoming Arts - Logs

For this piece, costume and makeup has been something we have thought about in detail for a few weeks. Because of the very visual style of Berkoff's drama, it is very important to us that these elements perfectly compliment our piece: accentuating our facial expressions and physical movements as well as fitting the character of Susan and helping to define her sub-personalities.  Our initial idea was to have the faces of each personality the same and then have different costumes to differentiate the emotion they represent but we then thought that the face is such an expressive part of the body that it would make much more sense for us to do it the other way round. Therefore, the audience can see that we are the same person by our clothes and can clearly see our characteristics by the expressions painted onto our faces. The face paint will act as a mask that represents the emotion. Below are a few different examples of Berkoff style makeup: I think this way of accen...

At the beginning of this one hour lesson, our teacher gave us the aim to take a piece of the script we had already worked on and work on it so that it was obvious that each personality is part of the same character. We had a brief chat as a class before trying to physically do it, we spoke about the importance of this element, the way it is so unclear at first glance that all actors are voicing the same character so the way we pass on the voice, communicate, our body language has to make it clear that we are one unit. We also discussed how this could be done with costume and makeup, for example having the same outfit for each personality but adjust it according to what that person represents. Below is the video of this experimentation and improvement process, we spent about half an hour this  and tried to try out as many different ways of passing on the voice of spokesperson as possible. We found that things as simple as looking at the person who was speaking were really effec...

This was the first lesson that we began putting movements and actions to the words of the script. We wanted to have a mixture of ensemble images where we each do something to create a wider image and some unison actions that add to the idea of unity. It took a while for us to start moving through the script but the more we did it, the faster and easier the process became. It is likely that a lot of the content shown in this video will adapt and transform in the future but these are the initial ideas we have for the beginning of this scene - it isn't very fluid and in time at the moment and lacks the pace it will have when we are more comfortable with it and we are able to do it without scripts. 

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...

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...

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...

With the second nurse scene we had some problems with the physical touching of the piece, it was looking very staged and awkward because Antigone was sat down with a tray on her lap while Nurse stood over her trying to cuddle and comfort her. There is also lines in the section which wouldn't make sense if they were staged in a certain way such as: 'hold my hand' 'I'm holding the rough hand' ' rest your hand on my cheek like this', so we sorted this out. At this section of the scene Antigone is quite vulnerable, I feel as though she is trying to take in every memory of her Nurse, who she loves dearly and is scared by thought of her death. I think this scene is summed up by her line 'I'm just a bit small for it all', it is clear that the presence of her Nurse and her Nurses patronising words and behaviour (bringing her coffee and toast and calling her 'little dove,' and 'pigeon') has reminded Antigone of her childhood happiness....

Rehearsing in soil - Creon scene grab soil and stage combat being thrown to floor bc crash mats, chair bits, dynamic stick movement spacing Rehearsing props - water, Ismene pick up cup and chair, machete placement, paper bit when chorus, nurse tray keep it horizontal Dress runs - volume, energy On Saturday was the first time we had rehearsed on the set we will be performing on which is effectively a huge sand pit full of three tonnes of soil. We have been aware of this set for the majority of the rehearsal process therefore all the staging incorporates the soil, there are many moments in which we interact with the soil,Antigone rubs her feet in the soil and lays down in it in the nurse scene, rubs her clothes in it in defiance in the Ismene scene and then in the whole of the second act it is a huge part of the play as the Act begins with the audience able to visibly see Antigone burying the body of her brother and the rest of the play takes place with his uncovered body on the st...

no noise with noise

We worked on the Haemon scene in more frequent shorter sessions so I have condensed the process into one log.   We first worked on Haemon's entrance in which he interrupts a conversation between Antigone and Nan, because Nurse is a comical character she is hesitant to leave and makes the situation a bit awkward and uncomfortable for Antigone and Haemon. Antigone and Haemon have had an argument the night before and that is immediately obvious due to the distance between them and Antigone's first line 'forgive me'. We staged it so that Haemon would come close to her twice, following her to front stage left and attempting physical contact by touching her hand showing his reasonable human efforts to comfort his fiancé, then she throws him off annoyed at herself for ruining her chances at making love to him and moves hastily to front stage right, again Haemon follows her and hugs her from behind which she enjoys and encourages and I think she forgets for a moment that t...

In this rehearsal I worked with both the actors playing Ismene and the other Antigone actors to work on the first Ismene scene because we felt we needed to add emphasis to important bits of speech and also build on the sibling relationship between the two sisters. Because the first bit of dialogue has Ismene sat on a chair and Antigone sat at her feet, we wanted the chair to be nearer front centre stage so we had to stage a moving of the chair from the position it is in in the Nurse scene (back stage left) to the position it is in the nurse scene. So that we decided that after Nurse exits, Antigone would move the chair for Ismene to sit on and dust it over for her. We thought this would work as it would show the differences between the two sisters but also their close relationship and how well they know each other. Halfway through the scene, Ismene is trying to persuade Antigone not to bury her brother and 'understand' Creon's point of view. To which Antigone refuses t...

 On Wednesday's lesson, as well as going over the scene with Nurse, we began to stage the scene with Ismene that follows it. We played around with a few different ideas for the initial position of Antigone and Ismene, one to show both their closeness and their differences, as they are quite opposing from one another. Ismene is a beautiful, well dressed and ladylike woman compared to the younger Antigone who sits in the dirt and cares much less about what's 'lady-like'. So we had Ismene sat on the nurses chair at an angle and Antigone sat below her with her head on Ismene's knee. Almost immediately in the conversation Antigone brings up how pretty Ismene is and it is clear they have had many similar conversations in the past as Ismene goes to stand up whilst saying 'don't make fun', but Antigone places her hand on her leg to stop her and reassures her that it's a 'comfort to me this morning' - which could perhaps be reffering to the fact that ...

On Mondays lesson the actors playing the part of the nurse and I began to lolok over the first scene between Antigone and Nurse. The characters are very close to one another, the Nurse has raised Antigone from childhood so feels a very maternal need to make sure she stays safe and makes the right decision. However, it is also quite a friendly relationship, we decided to show this by starting the scene by making Antigone walk on stage to see the nurse asleep in her chair, pick up some grapes and see an opportunity: she drops one of the grapes into nurses mouth which wakes her up choking, we then go straight into the script. This is not an action Antigone would do to someone like Creon, it shows both the childishness of her character and her fondness for her Nurse.    As is evident in the script, Antigone has obviously just had an incredibly sensory experience with nature - because she knows this is one of her last moments to experience nature in all its beauty so she fully take...

 In this lesson we explored the second half of this huge scene with Creon and Antigone in which he tells her about the true nature of her brothers and explains the fact that neither was really worth the grand memorial but a decision was made and it's meaningless, from this angle, Antigone is almost fully persuaded that her vigorous attempts at justice are pointless and foolish and that maybe it would be better to carry on living. We staged this so that Antigone is sat neutrally upstage whilst Creon wanders around, persuading her to do the right thing, he is animated and passionate about what he believes because he is so desperate for Antigone to see what should be done, once persuaded, Antigone stands up obediently to go to bed quietly. This is until Creon mentions happiness which is a concept so infuriating and ridiculous to Antigone that all Creons best efforts are diminished instantly with the mention of this one word. As this shift in atmosphere occurs, Antigone stops heading t...

  In this lesson we worked in pairs using the script focusing on the characters of Haemon and Antigone and the relationship between them. So at first, we read the script as a class and discussed what we thought the subtext was, just gaining a general basic understanding of the scene  before going into pairs and working on it further.  We were then asked in our pairs to try and decipher what had happened the night before (an event that is referred to in the scene) and just create a really short semi-improvised piece that would explain the piece of script we were looking at.  So for this scene I was Antigone and my partner was Haemon and we just created this short moment of orientation where he would come in and realised that I was dressed like Ismene, smelt like Ismene, wearing all her clothes and her make up and we see his reaction to that and her reaction to him.  And we imagined Haemon to be quite shocked, confused by what Antigone was trying to do and kind ...