My first bit of indivual research was looking into society within the Elizabethan period. I looked into how bad the punishments were back then (hanging was most common), and also looked into the two main religions which were around at that time (Catholic and Protestant).
As a class, we were put into pairs and given a practitioner to evaluate. I looked into Burkof, whom is known for his use of relying on actions and movement to tell the story. If accents were used, or difficult or intense scenes were apparent, Burkoff would limit the speech, but increase the moves to allow the body to explain the story, or show a certain characters emotions. Another practitioner I was interested in was Arto. His use of no words, just sounds was very interesting, as it was quite unnatural and difficult to show. However I did like how he made more than one person play a character at the same time. This specifically emphasised a particular scene, which helped highlight certain parts of the play. When doing a task on Arto, we were given a piece of paper which had an action, an impossible action, to had to complete this action as if it was completely normal and was accomplishable. I found this very difficult as my action was to crawl into the floor. I found this not only physically challenging but also mentally challenging, as it didn't feel natural, and because I knew it was impossible, I had already got this idea in my head that I couldn't do it so there wasn't much point in trying. I feel I let my thoughts get the better of me and I didn't take it seriously when it could have been more helpful than I thought at the time.
My group decided on the play "Macbeth", as we thought this covered many different themes which we could show amongst our performances, and also thought the characters had a lot of depth to them. I looked at the website "BBC Bitesize" and they explained all the themes in Macbeth and showed how each character links in with these themes. I particularly looked into the theme of "loyalty and guilt" and found that this triggered in with the main plot on the play (Macbeth killing Duncan along with his wife's encouragement). I then got onto the theme of manipulation, which is apparent through Lady Macbeth to Macbeth, showing her persuasion and her status as his wife to get into his head and influence an idea. This could then continue on to how some men are mentally quite feminine, and some women mentally quite masculine. Another theme I looked into was power, but I wanted to dig deeper into the real power of the play as i felt the power of becoming King or Queen wasn't the only power apparent. One form of power that I think is important is this power of love, the way it can be used as an excuse for some people's actions, but also shows how some people use it to their advantage, as a way to get what they want.
We also came up with the overall scenario of the play, and we settled on the idea of a court room, with it being the trail of Duncan's murder. We thought this would be a great way to show Macbeth's side of the story, allowing us to do flash backs to show the influence from the witches and the encouragement and manipulation from his wife. This would then result to the audience becoming the jury, and using plaque cards deciding whether they think it's Macbeth or Lady Macbeth to declare guilty for the murder. This would then include forum theatre and allow the audience to become part of the play. However when talking to our teachers about this idea, they mentioned that seeing as our ruling idea is illusion, will the court take away this theme and allow the play play to be remembered for the trial. I understand what they are saying as when people think back to the play, the main memory will be the trail and the end result. Therefore we would have to find a way to highlight the illusion a lot more than the trial, maybe changing the set, still having it remain as a courtroom however not having it set out like one.
One lesson in which we had both teachers input into our group work, became very practical resulting in us getting a lot more ideas and an outside view of the audiences opinion. I feel this helped because it allowed us to strategically think about our staging and how it was going to come across to others. As our ideas got shared, we started bouncing off each others energy, and this aloud our ideas to flow and come together more than they have done previously. Also, the teachers weren't afraid to tell us if our ideas wouldn't work, or if they think they could be changed in some way, and this was good because when our groups or our own, I personally fell mean saying no to someones idea if I don't think it'll work or if i don't think it's necessary, as they may have a different view on how it would work. As a result of this, I had mentioned to my group, that if someone has an idea we should just act it out, try it and see if it could work, whether we have an idea of speech or characters, still just go along with it because sometimes the spontaneous work turns out to be the best.
We also spent one lesson going through the script together highlighting all the words and lines we think were appropriate and would work well in our piece. I do think this took up a lot of time, however it did allow us to come up with more ideas along the way e.g. certain phrases or words that were not so important in their original scene, however could be used more efficiently in another.
My group decided on the play "Macbeth", as we thought this covered many different themes which we could show amongst our performances, and also thought the characters had a lot of depth to them. I looked at the website "BBC Bitesize" and they explained all the themes in Macbeth and showed how each character links in with these themes. I particularly looked into the theme of "loyalty and guilt" and found that this triggered in with the main plot on the play (Macbeth killing Duncan along with his wife's encouragement). I then got onto the theme of manipulation, which is apparent through Lady Macbeth to Macbeth, showing her persuasion and her status as his wife to get into his head and influence an idea. This could then continue on to how some men are mentally quite feminine, and some women mentally quite masculine. Another theme I looked into was power, but I wanted to dig deeper into the real power of the play as i felt the power of becoming King or Queen wasn't the only power apparent. One form of power that I think is important is this power of love, the way it can be used as an excuse for some people's actions, but also shows how some people use it to their advantage, as a way to get what they want.
We also came up with the overall scenario of the play, and we settled on the idea of a court room, with it being the trail of Duncan's murder. We thought this would be a great way to show Macbeth's side of the story, allowing us to do flash backs to show the influence from the witches and the encouragement and manipulation from his wife. This would then result to the audience becoming the jury, and using plaque cards deciding whether they think it's Macbeth or Lady Macbeth to declare guilty for the murder. This would then include forum theatre and allow the audience to become part of the play. However when talking to our teachers about this idea, they mentioned that seeing as our ruling idea is illusion, will the court take away this theme and allow the play play to be remembered for the trial. I understand what they are saying as when people think back to the play, the main memory will be the trail and the end result. Therefore we would have to find a way to highlight the illusion a lot more than the trial, maybe changing the set, still having it remain as a courtroom however not having it set out like one.
One lesson in which we had both teachers input into our group work, became very practical resulting in us getting a lot more ideas and an outside view of the audiences opinion. I feel this helped because it allowed us to strategically think about our staging and how it was going to come across to others. As our ideas got shared, we started bouncing off each others energy, and this aloud our ideas to flow and come together more than they have done previously. Also, the teachers weren't afraid to tell us if our ideas wouldn't work, or if they think they could be changed in some way, and this was good because when our groups or our own, I personally fell mean saying no to someones idea if I don't think it'll work or if i don't think it's necessary, as they may have a different view on how it would work. As a result of this, I had mentioned to my group, that if someone has an idea we should just act it out, try it and see if it could work, whether we have an idea of speech or characters, still just go along with it because sometimes the spontaneous work turns out to be the best.
We also spent one lesson going through the script together highlighting all the words and lines we think were appropriate and would work well in our piece. I do think this took up a lot of time, however it did allow us to come up with more ideas along the way e.g. certain phrases or words that were not so important in their original scene, however could be used more efficiently in another.
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