Frantic Assembly Workshop

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...

The Haemon Scene

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...

Antigone and Nurse script analysis and staging 1 - 1st scene

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...

BTEC Perfoming Arts - Logs

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