Shakespeare - Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar is a play written by William Shakespeare and tells the story of the conspiracy to kill Julius Caesar, it also tells the repercussions of what happens when such an act is committed. The play was first performed in 1599 and is thought to be the first production to be performed at the Globe since it's opening in the same year. The theatre didn't last too long as during a production of Henry VIII on the 29th of June 1613, the cannon that went off to announce the start of the show set fire to the thatched roof causing the building to be burnt to the ground.

The production of Julius Caesar gives a lot of ideas for staging as it has various parts throughout the play where levels and audience interaction can be used(The picture to the left is of how the stage was set up for the current production). Not too much is known about the original staging or the production because of the lack of documentation in that era, luckily a passing tourist and diarist made an entry about seeing the production and remarking upon it. From the trip with my class to the globe to go and see the production there I know that in a more modern representation they used Mark Anthony's podium as a very court like box, they included the audience at the beginning by bringing large boxes and yelling about Caesar in support of him. Before the show we were given a small talk about the Globe and how the original production might have been staged, there is the thought that for the speeches to the people of Rome that are spoken by both Mark Anthony and Caesar might have been performed from the balcony on the stage being a very ideal place to address not only the actors playing the people of Rome but also the audience and the way the stage is set out it would also allow their voice to be carried throughout the theatre. The play is based upon the original Julius Caesar and how he ran Rome and his assassination after his friends and advisors felt he as one man held too much power, Shakespeare found his information initially about Caesar, Brutus and Anthony from Plutarch's Lives in North's English translation. Shakespeare also used books like the bible for inspiration and using his own experiences from having been on stage himself as well as writing created a play that was not only visually pleasing for the audience but gave the actors so many strong emotions to play on and use to enhance the play.

The play was important because what had happened with Julius Caesar was still very prevalent to the Elizabethan public it was a common tale and to have that brought to them and shown as a production would have been talked about. The fact that there wouldn't have been any set for the play was quite interesting considering a lot of the public would have had preconceived ideas about how it would have looked, the point of no set meant that it would be a lot easier for the average person to interpret it how they liked and make the show what they wanted to. Props such as swords and letters would have been used to bring the violent element of the play to light when Caesar gets assassinated and using the Mark Anthony speech when he is talking about the will to draw the audience to a focus point. Costumes would have been used to show the different levels of status in the play between the characters and illustrate the personality of a character too giving the audience a clear idea of where each character sat within the hierarchy of the play. The political themes of the play lie in that it was better for Rome when they had a monarch, it was a way for Shakespeare to suck up to Queen Elizabeth and gain her approval for his work. It also meant that the audience would be thinking that it was a good thing that they had a monarch, and weren't letting history repeat itself. The politics involved in this play were purely to get a lot of favour from the people who held the power of it's day, it would also ensure that William Shakespeare had free clearance to keep putting his plays out there.

The theatre in Elizabethan times was a real social thing it was available to all levels of society, the levels were stills shown within the theatre not only as to where people sat but also in the prices of the tickets. The different levels of seating were divided as such, the yard is for the standing public who would come on the day, the lower upper and middle galleries and the Lord's rooms. The yard would have had the everyday men and women, the galleries would have housed those who could afford the seating and were higher up in the class system, the Lord's rooms were for the Lord's of the courts to be seen in their extravagant outfits, they were situated to the sides of the stage to allow the public to see their finery and show off their status. Shakespeare was alive and working during the reign of two monarch's, Elizabeth I and James VI and I. The religious differences between these two times changed dramatically, the country went from Elizabeth I's time where most nobles were still Catholic and so in turn were a lot of the commoners, even though the protestant's were beginning to gain more support and so the Queen showed her dislike for them. When James VI and I took the throne in 1603 the puritans began show their want for reform in the country's religion, in 1604 James VI and I called a conference at Hampton Court to allow the Court to hear what Puritan leaders had to say about their religion and so began their climb in the world of religion.

Theatre has changed in many ways since the days of Shakespeare, it has evolved to allow almost anything to be performed without having the writer beheaded for a treasonus theme in the play. In the Elizebethan era only men were allowed on stage because it was not respectable for a woman to be on the stage, now we have not only women on the stage but women playing the male roles, I recently saw a production of Henry IV that was an all female cast and set in a prison of modern times. The price of a seat in a theatre now costs a lot more than it used to and most wanted seats have gone from being behind the stage to be seen and admired in all your finery, to the front row of the upper circle to gain the full view of the stage. Ticket prices used to range from 1d to 5d which would now translate to roughly £0.52 to £2.61 which really wasn't much whereas now we would pay between £30 and £100 for a good west end theatre ticket. Plays in the late 1500's and early 1600's would only play for at most a few days and then a new one was expected of the public, now we have plays that will run for several months at a time and even musicals that have been running for decades. There are more things for the public to do now rather than just going to the pub and the theatre, the theatres now also are indoors whereas the shakesperian theatres were outdoors and because of lighting were only performed during the day (candles were dangerous with thatched rooves and wooden structures) and sometimes due to weather conditions they would postpone shows as with no roof a lot of their audience would have been uninterested in being drenched at what is supposed to be a fun event.

This is a link to a Youtube video that explains the outline of the play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgyAPrv30eg

The link to the RSC website

http://www.rsc.org.uk/

Punk Rock and Shakespeare - Week 1

These first few weeks back have been interesting to say the least, it has been a period of transition for all of us, going from the first year to the second and final year of this course. We began the term by finding out what our new time table was and which subjects we would and will be studying. In this first week finding out what we were going to learn about and perform set a certain feeling that this really was our chance to work hard and shine, the subjects we are studying and learning about in this first term are contemporary theatre and Shakespeare.

Contemporary

In Contemporary theatre we are studying, producing and performing the play Punk Rock by Simon Stephens, the play is about a group of teenagers in the library of their fee paying school and are in the process of studying for their final A Level exams and applying for university. This of course means that tensions are running high and everyone is at their wits end but is unwilling to show it. We began our study on this by doing a read through as a group of the play, allowing us to get a feel of the script and knowing what goes on within the play as well. After going through the script we had a group discussion of the play, finding out how each of us perceived each character and our thoughts on their backgrounds and what is really going on behind the scenes. Reading this play for myself was quite hard because having gone through a similar secondary education as the characters, I found I was comparing my own real life situations to the characters, and although this was in some ways quite painful because I could relate to the characters and their position in the world, It also gave me the advantage of knowing what was going on in the characters minds and how they were feeling about the whole situation. They in my mind were almost scared and do a lot of what they do out of fear, they study out of fear of bad grades and bully out of fear of loosing their place within their delicate hierarchy of student politics.

The play itself I found to be brilliant because of how true each sentence that is said is and i do honestly believe in what Earnest Hemingway said "all you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know." and there is a specific speech that Lilly says in the play that to me almost justify's the whole play, in this speech lilly is talking about good people and how William isn't any different or any more special than anybody else, this to me was an important part of the play because she stated quite clearly what a lot of people that age don't realise, that we are all the same, that we are no different or no more special than anybody else in the world. This play also touches on the fact that in a lot of fee paying schools bullying isn't necessarily done with physical fights but with the most sinister and thought provoking words that stick with you and eat at you until you snap, and this is exactly what happens to William, at the end he is so sick of the verbal abuse that not only he gets, but also everyone else that he takes matters into his own hands, not in the most ideal way but he does, it also shows that the way he and other children might react, still although about to be an adult not quite knowing how to handle the situation.

Shakespeare

In Shakespeare we are studying Julius Caesar which was written in 1599 and follows the story of Julius Caesar's reign over rome and his assassination. I was quite glad to hear we were going to be studying and performing excerpts of this specific Shakespearian play because it was one of the Shakespeare plays I have not studied as much in my own time, it gives me the opportunity to really explore and develop my own personal knowledge of Julius Caesar. I loved the fact that we were studying one of the Historical plays instead of one of the Tragedy's or Comedies, I like that it is a real life event and that these events did occur.

On Wednesday of last week we took as a group a trip to The Globe Theatre in London to see the production of Julius Caesar in the original text and costume. Also whilst there we participated in a workshop with one of the educator's there who also took us into the theatre and showed us around and let us know about how the theatre was used and what to possibly expect from the show.

 After Showing us the theatre we went into the studios along the street and did a workshop on the play itself and together worked on a scene from the play and tried the rehearsal technique that the actors in shakespeare's day would have used and that was to have only rehearsed it about three times and the end result was really good, it wasn't perfect which you wouldn't expect after having only worked on it for about half an hour but it was good and I liked what was produced. We also looked at another scene between Cassius and Brutus and looked at actioning and how that affected the scene and how it changed the meaning of it, applying certain moves to certain objectives changed the atmosphere of the scene completely and made it more intense without overworking it. After the workshop we went to the museum attached to the Globe Theatre and found many amazing things, they had a whole display on costumes and the sort of clothes that would have been worn in the productions in Shakespeare's time. There were also lots of other types of displays such as a section on drawings of the characters out of the plays and concept art for costumes and set 

design ideas, on the ceiling was art that depicted the stars and the constellations of the time when the stars were considered to bring you luck and tell the future, there are also constellations on the ceiling of the stage of The Globe. Having had a look at the museum and gaining more ideas and learning new things about The Globe's history, we went for lunch and a break before going to see Julius Caesar. Coming back to go and see the play was quite surreal in a way walking into the theatre with everyone else and finding a place to stand and also have a good view of the stage, being only 5'1 my view of the stage was limited having much taller people in front of me, this also gave me an idea of what it would have been like in Shakespeare's day being in an overcrowded space trying to get a good view of the stage. During the performance I had to move to the back because the crowd of onlookers was quite overbearing but also a learning curve as to what it really was like, being at the back I had a better view of the stage and the actors because there were less people surrounding me. I found it fascinating from the back of the theatre to watch how the crowd reacted to what the actors did and how the play unfolded in front of us, some knowing what would happen and others not knowing what would happen, and yet by the end we all came out of the theatre having had the same experience of feeling the same things the actors were and going through their stories with them and taking that home with us. 

Commedia - Parts 1,2 and 3

Part 1: 
In the beginning of Commedia I found the stock characters to be more overly exaggerated than I had even dared to imagine and in a way it put me off wanting to learn and perform Commedia. My initial responses were that it wasn't for me as I don't think of my self as very comedic or possibly being good at any of that type of theatre and Commedia isn't just a comedic play it is Commedia and it's the beginnings of all theatre which also makes it even more daunting. Beginning to improvise Commedia made things seem even more confusing as I found it so easy to watch some of the others performing their little snippets of Commedia that they had come up with in less than ten minuets, and then it was my turn to come up with some piece of theatre in a foreign area to me. Things became a bit clearer to me when Kaz our team leader gave us a sheet with dialogue on it and asked us in pairs to make it into a form of Commedia, most of the group had already sussed out what it took to perform and create their own types of Commedia and I hadn't, this made me even more reluctant to even try, but I did. With Paige we did this piece of dialogue together about Perkins and Sir and trying out Commedia with a set script seemed to set things into action for me and I figured out somewhat, what I needed to do even though Kaz said there was more I needed to it was like lightening had struck my brain and even though I knew it wasn't a brilliant piece of theatre I had just performed it was a start and that was all I needed. Then we moved onto looking thoroughly at trying out the traditional stock characters and that was when I became apprehensive again as I was worried I was going to fall flat on my face, instead of falling on my face I began to find ways of performing the characters and having researched more of Commedia I found out why some of the characters are how they are and that made things easier to understand it was liking suddenly being given the back story to your character and I had my backbone. The characters I liked the most and connected best with were the following three: Harlequin, Columbina and Punch, these characters were all like my own personality in a way except for punch and it was only when I found out Punch's back story that I began to see some resemblance's and those were that Punch is weighed down by society and that's sometimes how I can feel and I can understand why Punch is so mean and condescending because it can sometimes be the only way to keep yourself going even if it isn't the best way.

Part 2:
In the beginning we had so many ideas about what our Commedia setting would be that we had filled the entire white board and we had to whittle it all down to one and that seemed like the biggest challenge we had faced so far. In the end we had the two groups one was doing Buckingham Palace and the other my group was between choosing a Beauty Salon and a Dating Agency and other than interviews for the Dating Agency we couldn't come up with any other ideas and that really held us back and really put our hopes for a good show down. Being a group of sixteen we thought why couldn't the two groups of eight just join together and all work together on one show of the Buckingham Palace idea. We then as one big group used the ideas that the others had come up with when it was just them doing the Buckingham Palace idea and then brainstormed ideas that we had come up with using and idea of kaz's doing almost speed dating but more speed idea making. We all came up with ideas for each character working on a scene with ours which meant we ended up with so many ideas and that gave the group a lot of breadth. In different groups we tried out different ideas my group consisted of the servants and that meant it was Charlotte, Paige and myself and we did a scene where we found out information about the Royals that they wouldn't want to be shared and that made things rather interesting, the strengths of this scene were that we managed to create some sophisticated comedy and made our classmates laugh which to us was a success the con was that we had no way to add to it and we ended up changing the entire scene the next day. The next day the outcome of the scene was that we all ended up jumping for the evidence of the Royal's indiscretion and then Bradly a Royal walks in and takes the evidence stating "I've been looking for that" and then we all look at the audience in horror.

Part 3:
We got to our final decision of Buckingham Palace by working through all the ideas that everyone had accumulated and shared between the group it was finalised when as a group we all decided to merge as one big group and became the cast of Commedia's Buckingham Palace. The characters are based on the members of the Royal family and typical house servants that the Royal family would have, we then assigned the stock characters to who we felt were similar to the actual real life people and worked on it from there, it was also a choice of which characters it was that we ourselves wanted to play and adhering them to the character and developing it further to make the two connect. We finalised the plot by as a group sitting around the whiteboard and writing the scenes down in numerical order and working on it from there, we then came up with other ideas and optioned them by using the base ideas we had come up with such as that Charles is missing or that the Queen's jewels are missing, each of these ideas gave us a lot of space to create sub plots underneath what was there. Problems were that we had so many ideas and bringing them down to our total of around twenty four but still finding new ideas. We found breakthroughs when we were experimenting with the scenes we had and were able to change and mould the scenes to what we found on our journey to the final cut of those scenes and it was even more amazing when people came up with these little ideas and those little ideas made the scene what it is. Overall the creative purpose has been challenging but also worth it and has brought us as a group closer together and also allowed us to share ideas and inklings in a much more relaxed way.

The Wardrobe - Post Performance 3

This week we came back and got stuck straight in, over the easter holidays I had been watching the film version of Henry the fourth part one by william shakespeare and from this I remembered how Prince Hal was publicly humilliated by his father for his actions and was then slapped by his father and this drew my attention back to the script in a new way I saw genevieve in a new light and maybe she was upset coming into the scene because the same turn of events that had happened between prince hal and henry the fourth had happened between genevieve and her father and that he had slapped her for disobeying his orders to accept a marriage proposal that would aid him in his social standing. I then thought in the fight scene that genevieve would go to slap whinnie because she was influenced byt her fathers actions.

The Wardrobe - Post Performance 2

This week began with looking at other schools versions of The Wardrobe and how our production differed from theirs, through looking we found that our version of the production was a lot more grounded than the others. The other productions useds a lot of modern ideas within the realms of theatre, using ideas such as clear lighting or just lighting to represent the main parts of the wardrobe itself. There was also a consistency of people wearing solid colours such as simply just white or black, there were a distinct lack of costumes in many of the plays which helped to determine which eras they were from and gave them character. I prefered our production because I felt it had a sense of realism to it and that to me makes it more of a beliviable performance and show.

Today began with receving our grades for our overall sections, I wasn't pleased with the grade I got because I wanted the top grade and I felt a little down about it untill Karen our team leader said we had a chance to raise our grades if we did the work this week and the week after easter when we are performing at the capitol theatre in Horsham, this in a way hit me quite hard and I felt that I had to work harder because i'm determined to get the top grades even if that  means gving up my free time. In  working through the list of five things karen wanted us to try I found that I wasn't giving enough emotion to Genevieve and that I needed to tap into how she would be feeling and convey that more clearly to the audience. I used personal experience and a dash of stanislavsky to acheive this objective and I could feel the difference as the character and I was almost in tears with the amount of emotion this was evoking from me, it made the scene feel more real and made Genevive expose her vulnerable side and how she is acttually feeling about Arthur and how much he means to her.

The Wardrobe - Post Performance 1

This week began the discussions as to what we were going to with the show when we tour it to Horsham on the 25th of April. Theses discussions included which scenes we would cut to save time as we are only allowed  to perform for 45 minitues there, the first thoughts I had were to cut the Dido scene because it wouldnt effect any of the other scenes but not many people agreed with this because it was such a good scene, I could understand this because it was such a powerful scene. We then looked at getting rid of scenes three or nine and I felt they couldn't take either of these brilliaant scenes because they were so tense and yet so poignant and gave you a lot to think about. I then suggested scene two to be cut because I felt that it made the beginning of the play sometimes drag with scene on before it there wasn't any tense moments to it and it wasn't as directly effective as the others, the scene also wouldn't  effect any of the other scenes with continuity. We are now on our final decisions about what we are going to do with our play. As a group we went through the play taking off senes two and three to see how the play look without those scenes and how we felt about the play without them. Karen our team leader chose to cut scene three because it wasn't suitable for the staging because when caryl is  struggling there is too much space for it to be beliviably small enough for her to panic in. I was dissapointed that we would loose scene three because I felt that it was such a serious and tense scene and I love a tense and dramatic scene, I also felt that it was brilliant to have right before scene four because it goes from tense and dramatic and being unable to breathe to a happy and laughing scene and I felt it threw off the audience but in a good way, in that it didn't give them a chance to really evaluate and keeps them immersed in the play and slightly shocked.

The Wardrobe - Week 7

This week we came back from half term and were all quite tired and relaxed, this had a negative effect on the entire group as a whole, we began the day by all sitting in a group circle and having to take some paper and pens from the centre (pens and paper were a multitude of colours) we had to draw five images that represented what we found most stood out to us personaly in the play. I chose the wardrobe itself because to me it represents a stillness to the play and that although it moves around through time and the country, all the stories still take place in the wardrobe and I find that amazing, to me it's as if walls could talk this is how it would be. I then chose the dagger in scene one because Cecily wants to kill her sister because she gets to have what she could never have and in a way with a sibling I can relate to the reason that she nearly did this because there are times when we do want to dispose of our siblings, but in the end when it comes down to it at the end of the day we would never hurt them. Thirdly I chose the candles in scene nine because in a way I felt that they represented hope and saftey, this scene is completley lit by the boys candles and they seem to radiate the hope of their fears and saftey from the way they hold them close and find their way to the saftey of the wardrobe with the candles, they are beacons and guiders. The fourth thing I chose was the Bannana in scene two because I found that it represented the exploration of young people and that we have to explore a lot of things in our lives before we do anything big and in this case the wardrobe helps them to acheieve this objective. Lastly I chose the snow because snow is so pure and white and innocent and it's also very magical just like Narnia, it is a place for people to escape to just like the Wardrobe is for the children.

Looking more into our charcters I enjoyed using the stances technique because it allows you to take three solid states of your character, and find how it feels to be in that state as the character, I enjoyed it as a new way to help me find my character. We also began to look into Ennegram's as a way to look into your character, it gives the nine states of who we could be and certain numbers link to others in both good ways and bad ways, to me this was a bit like horoscopes just without the specific dates added to it. These methods helped me to finally find my character and to find her innermost feelings, and how to show those hidden feelings through subtle but also showable emotions, such as her status. Genevieve is a higher status not only because she is higher born but because she has had a hard life, she has never really felt freedom and this is why she seeks out Arthur Scott, because she needs that outlet and having that outlet jeopardised really challenges her to keep her status and she uses her hard mannerisms that she has accumulated through her life to do this.