Political Performance Evaluation

I absolutely loved this performance.  I think it went amazing and all of the scenes flowed seamlessly, due it being well rehearsed and the transitions were all well directed and clear.  

My character ended up being really interesting and twisted.  I had to characterise my clown as bashful, which considering how confident we were supposed to be was quite difficult.  In my eyes my character started out as slightly disturbed but not broken.  However throughout the play he slowly got more and more broken, until the end where he accepted his fate as one of these clowns and did his duty to snow white, by beating the prisoner as he had been beaten so many times before.  This was extremely fun to do as it I felt it fit with the message of the performance and showed that torture is wrong and it can destroy morales and personalities.  

I think there were a few things I could have done better, for example I could have been more erratic and confident towards the audience at the start, as I found the interacting with the audience quite difficult to do because I had some friends in the crowd, I realised afterwards that that is a terrible reason to not play your character to their full potential and am slightly disappointed with myself for doing that.  Another thing I did wrong was in the final scene I missed my cue to swing but I don't feel as if the audience really noticed so I don't think it mattered that much.

I also think I did quite a few things well.  I really tried to engage with the character and make myself look bashful, which I think I did a few times, like when I brought the drinks out for the rest of the clowns. While they were all looking at me I tried to act as sheepish as I could.  Another thing I think went well was my screaming. I really tried to make it feel like I was actually screaming in guttural agony, I think I pulled this off as when I was being dragged off stage screaming I did hear some gasps coming from the audience. I also think my facial expressions throughout the performance were good, But I think they were best at the end when I was hitting Chloe.  I made clear grimaces and showed how much I hated doing what I was doing.

Overall I think the performance went amazing, I really enjoyed doing it and loved how nobody really did anything noticeably wrong, which doesn't usually happen in theatre performances.  I am really proud of myself and the rest of the cast as I think we pulled it off wonderfully.

Political Protest

I was ill for the political protest so this won't be an evaluation, more a description of our protest and how we planned it to go.
So our protest was built around web safety, mainly around social media.  We gathered information on people that go to, or work at BRIT and made them profiles that we printed out.  The idea was that we had people stealing then selling the information to those peoples friends or even selling people their own profiles.
I was told by my group that it went really well and I know that they all got distinctions, which I am really pleased with and was happy to help with that.
I was also told that we freaked people out and made them think about how much information they had on social media, which was of course the aim of the entire protest.

Bertolt Brecht, Spass and Gestus

Brecht
The playwright Bertolt Brecht was born in 1898 in the German town of Augsburg. After serving as a medical orderly in the First World War and appalled by the effects of the war, he went first to Munich and then to Berlin in pursuit of a career in the theatre. That period of his life came to an end in 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany. Brecht fled and during this period the Nazis formally removed his citizenship, so he was a stateless citizen.

In 1941 Brecht became resident in the USA but returned to Europe in 1947 after appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ostensibly against communism, this committee also targeted intellectuals. By the time of his death in 1956, Brecht had established the Berliner Ensemble and was regarded as one of the greatest theatrical practitioners

As an artist, Brecht was influenced by a diverse range of writers and practitioners including Chinese theatre and Karl Marx. The turmoil of the times through which Brecht lived gave him a strong political voice. The opposition he faced is testament to the fact that he had the courage to express his personal voice in the world of the theatre. He also had an original and inspired talent to bring out a dynamic theatrical style to express his views.

His most acclaimed work is Mother Courage and Her Children. Although it’s set in the 1600s, the play is relevant to contemporary society and is often regarded as one of the finest anti-war plays. Fear and Misery of the Third Reich is Brecht’s most overtly anti-fascist play. This work analyses the insidious way the Nazis came to power.

Spass

Spass literally translates as ‘fun’. Brecht wanted to make his audience think. He realised that while we are laughing we are also thinking. So much so that the playwright Eugène Ionesco called him a ‘postman’ because he was always delivering messages! However, Brechtian work isn’t boring and it’s definitely not always serious either. Even if the message itself is serious Brecht realised that comedy could be an excellent way of engaging the audience and forcing them to think about issues.

Spass was also an excellent way to break the tension. Brecht needed to break rising tension to stop the audience from following characters on their emotional journey. It might be used in the form of a comic song, slapstick or physical comedy or even a stand-up routine. It’s ‘silliness’ in effect but often makes strong social comment in the way it’s used in the treatment of a serious subject.

Gestus

Gestus, another Brechtian technique, is a clear character gesture or movement used by the actor that captures a moment or attitude rather than delving into emotion. So every gesture was important. Brecht and his actors studied photographs of the plays in rehearsal to ensure each moment worked effectively. Could the audience tell by the actor’s gestures alone what was happening in the scene?

Brecht didn’t want the actors to be the character onstage, only to show them as a type of person. For example, the boss who is corrupt and smoking a fat cigar as his workers starve is representative of every boss who profits through the exploitation of others. For this reason Brecht will often refer to his characters by archetypal names, such as ‘The Soldier’ or ‘The Girl’.

The interpretation will be built on the character’s social role and why they need to behave as they do, rather than looking inwardly at emotional motivation. So we judge the character and their situation, rather than just empathising with them.

Political performance role.

I was cast into the devising group. This means that rather than learning lines and doing it off of a scene, my group gets to devise the open ending scene, all the inbetween scenes and the final scene. We have a general plan: 

We are the 7 dwarfs, everyone has a different character, with signs round neck saying who you are

SCENES

-Barney music playing, hand drugs out as if popcorn stand. iris as snow white, everyone dressed in white. After it finishes go to far ends of room

-tinder scene, pink lemonade , alfie as bar men, in bar deciding who to torture

-charades, torture method

- torture alfie with petty torture methods

AT THE END, singing in rain

ORDER 

Give out drugs

Torture charades

Get me out of here

Tinder/bar scene

Alfie torture

Singing in rain

DWARFS

Snow white - Iris

Doc - Lauren

Dopey - Reece

Happy - Samara

Sneezy - Fifi

Grumpy - Hannah

Sleepy - Chloe

Bashful - Alfie