Michaela Spinks-SWED 2

Michaela Spinks-SWED 2

Our stimulus for our devised piece this year was a Shakespearean text. With this, we were to devise a play using Shakespeare.

Research:

Each person in my group had an area to research within the Elizabethan period. The topic I researched was “Punishments and Crime”. All crimes were met with violent, cruel punishments, resulting in being witnessed by hundreds of other people. Some of these executions were seen as exciting days out for the lower class.  The most common crimes ranged from High Treason, Sedition, Rebellion, Murder and also witchcraft. For those people who were in sheer desperation and abject poverty (otherwise known as commoners) were known to crimes such as Theft, Poaching, Forgers, Adultery and Fraud. Those who were the most hated prisoners who had usually been convicted of treason, was given the most barbaric and dreadful punishment of being Hung, Drawn and Quartered. This showed the fear amongst the society in Elizabethan England, as stepping one foot out of line would result in them being severely punished for something that may not even be their fault. To incorporate this into our group performance, depending on the play we choose, we can show this fear from the characters, as crime or rebellion is apparent throughout a lot of Shakespeare’s plays.

Another form of research was looking into various practitioners and seeing if their style of work would be appropriate for our play. We were put into pairs and given a practitioner to research between us. My pair and me were to look at Berkof, whom I found was a good choice for my group. Berkof is a British practitioner, who’s known for his productions in the west end to include Shakespearean slang to create a complexity nut pairing it with “low” cockney slang and swearing. Berkof depends on a lot of physical movement to highlight to the audience that they can focus on the actions to understand the plot. Berkoffian actors tend to use techniques such as background movement, repetitive action and mime to explore further the way in which Berkof approaches exchanges between two characters. I thought the use of repetitive actions or speech would be a good way to highlight certain words of certain movements, as the audience would realise they have been repeated and then question it, which allows them to begin a thought process. Another pair in the class looked at Artuad, and again his style of unnatural style of work was represented through the use of words replaced by sounds. This would be effective by allowing the audience to think deeper into what’s happening. When more than one actor plays the same character, it highlights that’s particular scene by emphasizing what the character is doing. When trying out the style of Artuad in my group, we thought it worked well with highlighting and showing the significance of certain characters e.g. The Witches.

Once my group had decided on the play Macbeth, we allocated each other with certain themes to look into that were apparent in the chosen play. I was given the theme “loyalty and guilt”, which I believe is apparent throughout the whole play. I found that loyalty linked to the friendship between Macbeth and Banquo and Macbeth and Duncan, and guilt comes in through Macbeth destroying that loyalty between them by killing them both to get him what he wants. To further my research, I looked into the theme of manipulation, and thought this clearly linked in with Lady Macbeth encouraging Macbeth to commit the famous murder of King Duncan. Using her authority as his wife, she persuades him to do the deed with her true intentions uncovered. I then started questioning whether Macbeth would have gone through with the murder without his wife’s encouragement, whether he had done it out if love to please her or even show he has his own mind and is in control of his own actions. The theme of power also linked in because I feel that without this vision of how having power would be, would Lady Macbeth be so willing to go ahead with this crime knowing what the punishments were. I also think it shows cowardice from her as if she thinks becoming king and queen would be so goof, why wouldn’t she just do it herself?