Commedia Dell’Arté in modern media.

In the scheme of characters with the stock characters, there are ten who are focused on most.

1. Magnifico – the important head of the house hold who thinks with his brain and moves only a little (whenever he does move). Even though he is incredibly bright, he is still very dopey. A modern equivalent would be Professor Farnsworth from Futurama. 
2. Pantalone – The Pantalone is a stock character who is money obsessed and believes that everything has a price. He is driven by his desire to be the richest he can possibly be, the modern equivalent of this character is Mr Burns from The Simpsons. (1) As you can see from the video (the link is in the bibliography) Mr Burns is trying to avoid giving money until heavily being jeered into it, despite his incredibly wealthy state. Once he starts giving away money, he starts over reacting like the Pantalone would if he had to part with even a single penny.
3. Il Dottore – Plenty of power is possessed by Il Dottore, despite his stupidity. The character has a lot of status for someone who knows nothing and will often embarrass himself in the process of getting things wrong in important situations. An example of Il Dottore would be Doctor Zoidberg. He is renowned as a incredibly stupid character that doesn’t know a thing about anatomy, yet he is a doctor. (2) 
4. Il Capitano – The captain is a character that talks the talk but can never follow through. He is cowardly and very lady obsessed. A modern example of this is Zapp Brannigan from Futurama. He is constantly getting into positions where another character must bail him out. He usually gets into awkward moments with the Columbina of Futurama, Leela. 
5. Innamorati – The innamorati are a vain couple that sees themselves as perfect and beautiful. They care only about themselves and what they want, as well as being incredibly beautiful and having a huge social class. The modern rendition of this would be Kevin Thompson & Brittany Taylor from Daria. They are the Quatreback for the high school football team and the head cheerleader as well as being insanely popular and loved by everyone. (3) As you can see in the video (down in the bibliography) Kevin and Brittany are incredibly dumb and self centred. One of them accepting flowers and the other expecting a thank you after the other half has been chased by bees.
6. Columbina – The Columbina is a very smart female character. She is often a maid or a important female in a family. She can always work her brain and be able to assess and deduce a situation. She usually is looked down upon by some character but adored by many others. An example of her could be Hermione Granger from Harry Potter. Incredibly smart but looked down upon by the wizard ong community for me a mud blood (Harry Potter slang for someone not of wizard blood.) However despite this, she is adored by the likes of Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley.
7. Brighella – Brighella is known as the servant who likes to think he is the king of servents, like: Jessie in Pokémon; Slim in Of Mice & Men and Blackadder in the said show. Jessie and Blackadder are usually quite cruel to the associates within their group, while bossing them around. While Slim is more of a respectful farm hand with mutual respect with the rest of the serve to characters. Despite the fact these characters are at the same level as others, they do see themselves as superior or are perceived as more superior. 
8. Arlecchino – The Arlecchino is a cookey character. He is rather playful and kind hearted despite being very silly and usually getting in trouble for accidental mischief. A great example would be: Homer Simpson and Phillip J Fry. Both of these characters are protagonists of their television shows and while both being kind people they are incredibly stupid. 
9. Zanni – The zanni is at the bottom of the characters, he is a servent and not respected. He is known to fall over a lot and or be breaking objects. He is known for creating the frustration that the Brighella will be feeling. As well as making the Arlecchino rather scared of reprocussions as the: Brighella, Arlecchino and Zanni are all servants together. A great example of Zanni is Baldrick from Blackadder. He is not seen as equal by others servants and is bottom of the barrel (so to speak). He is very unintelligent and will often be reminded of that (4) 

Bibliography

(1) https://youtu.be/8VYaZGo18lI

(2) https://youtu.be/9QUgdjLIjss

(3) https://youtu.be/QCIn3OuhwTY

(4) https://youtu.be/AsXKS8Nyu8Q

Frantic Assembly.

‘Frantic Assembly are a UK based theatre group that came to be in 1994. The founders of the group were: Scott Graham; Steven Hoggart and Vicki Middleton. The trio had not previously studied the arts but they had a thorough interest in aspiring to create a company that focused on using realistic movements and physicality to achieve breathtaking performances. (1) The company has extensively toured around the world in over 30 countries.(2)

One famous production that frantic assembly had a giant impact upon was ‘The Curious incident of the dog in the night time.”  (3)

They impacted the movement and wanted to bend the world to fit Christopher’s mind. This was achieved with their use of music and movement, as well as using lighting!

” Nothing really exists unless Christopher wants it to, so the company will be chaos, they will be flitting around until Christopher focuses then they will snap into position. They represent his thoughts; they can be chaotic and they can be absolutely pure and linear and precise, whatever state of mind he is in.” – Scott Graham.

Bibliography.

(1) https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/135434988/posts/16

(2) https://prezi.com/a4vzcybmxi4u/frantic-assembly/

(3) http://www.curiousonstage.com/physical-theatre/

Given circumstances

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In this video you can see my one minute improvised piece. My stimulus was ‘I tidy the room.’ My given circumstance was, ‘I am expecting visitors.’ 

With this, I decided to make myself look a little panicked and moving at a more quicker rate but never the less, getting the room done.

I asked myself the five fundamental questions. 

Who is he?

Where is he?

Why is he doing it?

When is it?

What is he doing?

The fundamental five questions by Stanislavski were a device we learnt. These five questions must be asked in order for you to start creating a mind profile about your character. Once this profile is created you can then create the scenario more clearly and have your piece looking finely furnished.

Who is he? He is a boy who is having friends round. 

Where is he? He is at his home.

Why is he doing it? These are fairly new friends and he wants to leave a good impression on them.

When is it? Modern times (quite literally today or tomorrow etc).

What is he doing? He is tidying his room.
If I had to do anything differently with my piece, I wouldn’t of started with the phone call. I would of just gone straight into tidying my room so that the audience had less exposition and would be able to work out what I am doing for themselves. 

Another part would be, that since I knocked over a few items. I would of gone back to pick them up. As well as not ending the scene with me sat. It should of ended with me still cleaning. 

However I do believe it was believable. It showed someone rushing to clean and tidy their room for guests and maybe a few hand gestures were a bit too Aidan rather than this role that was purely tidying the room. Although I do believe it was natural and believable.

Constantin Stanislavski 13/09/17 & 14/09/17

Acting is truthfully living in given or imaginary given circumstances.

This week in lesson we started by learning the base of who Stanislavski was.

He was a pioneer within the world of acting. He was tired of actors being lazy and either just droning words out on stage or over acting them to the point of embarrassment. He was also sick of how theatres would employ celebrities as lead roles. Despite the celebrities lack of talent and relation to character roles.

He thought that acting didn’t have meaning behind it and that there was no real effect or take away from going to the theatre.

He wanted to change this. So he started teaching actors how to be realistic and make emotional connections with the audience.

(1)

Stanislavski taught these tips from the system to his students.

• Belief/Truth. He taught his actors that in order for acting to have ANY form of affect, the audience must believe everything you are doing. The truth must be portrayed by you, otherwise the portrayal will have no value.
• Speech versatility/control. As a actor, if you’re playing a very manly Texan man and you have a strong Greek accent, it’s not going to work at all. However it is not all about accents, you need to be able to make the audience hear the sadness in your voice or be able to relate to all the happiness in your voice.
• Relaxation/Lack of tension/Have fluidity. When performing, if you are unnaturally tense and unable to move accordingly to you role or you are too far within yourself, then you’re not going to be able to have the audience watch you with comfortability. Usually because they will be a little bit uncomfortable. Being unrelaxed won’t just affect movement but also your voice and your control of it. Someone calm has complete control of their voice while someone nervous will have trouble with the volume and the pitch will constantly be shaking.
• Imagination. Imagination is a big part of life, nothing can be achieved without imagination. Such as the Iphone, nuclear weapons or strong leadership and it’s the same when it comes to acting. When you are characterising your role without much backstory, you need to look at how they respond to other characters and any details they may have so you can backtrack and find out who they were and how it will affect them today. Without imagination you can’t start making all the past pieces.
• Physical Control. Similar to relaxation. You need to understand your body and be able to control it, otherwise your body won’t be in sync with your mind and a lot will start to go wrong.
• Communication. As an actor, you need to understand how to communicate. Communication is a huge part of life and when you are on stage it is not just about communicating with the audience, but with your fellow actors. If your communication skills are incredibly thought out and honed then you should have no trouble with making the believable connection with your fellow thespians.
• Subtext. (2) Subtext is what drives the meaning behind what the character will say such as: a character giggling hysterically and saying the word hello is incredibly different to a character keeping direct eye contact and saying hello. The subtext is the motive behind what you are saying.
• Tempo – rhythm/Speed – Intensity. The tempo and rhythym of how the character is saying something will bring a lot of attention to how they are feeling and how they relate with other characters. A character with a crush on someone will be speeding up the tempo while the rhythm will be drooping between high and low. Due to the uncertainty that the character will be feeling.

After looking at Stanislavski we then took part in 4 exercises to use some of these systems.

The first was the baby bird game. A piece of paper was being passed around the circle. The aim was to be natural and caring. Keep the story alive, the story being that it was an injured baby bird. This focused on belief/truth. I found it relatively easy by working with my naturally caring instincts and addressing the baby bird like I would do for any small animal.

The second activity had everyone recieve a letter for a different reason to another. This worked on our ability of working with given circumstances. Mine was about reviewing a billing letter for something I had not purchased. For this I went for a logical approach and I made a phone call to the bank. To me this seemed like the most realistic as the best way to deal with a payment like this is to ring the bank up and address the situation to work out how this happened.

The third exercise focussed around a piece of fabric on the floor. What we did that involved around this fabric was up to us. It was our imagination that let us make a scenario. My first scenario was wearing it as a scarf while my second was using it as a bull fighters cape. The first go was slightly planned as people were doing it in random orders, while the second time. We had a set order around the circle.

The final exercise was the knife game. We sat with our backs to people and were given a pen. This pen we slowly imagined turning into a knife to which we had to then remember the details. Mine was a very sharp (but short) silver flip knife. The exercise was another use of imagination. The key word for this was ‘drop in.’ We had our sub-conscious drop in and create this image for us.

Before looking at all these exercises we did an exercise that didn’t seem like much but it was a lot. We were all told to sit down and close our eyes. Once that happened we were all told that a penny was in reaching distance of all of us and once we openeod our eyes, we had to find the penny. After a while we were told to stop, it was then revealed that not everyone had a penny. We then had to put the penny’s back and recreate our search. This was a use of muscle memory as well as taking a look at naturalistic physicality. We had to recreate everything we did which would look very natural due to how we just did it with no stimuli other than to find it.

In my opinion, what Stanislavski did, was something that changed not just the world of theatre but the entire world. Through truth and connection we as people have been able to take inspiration from fictional characters or just develop our speech patterns and how we communicate from television and movies, thanks to Stanislavski.

Bibliography.

(1) https://youtu.be/JDDitfsZS1c

(2) https://youtu.be/_rJ8fUGVgX8

Limon.

Jose Limon (1908 – 1972) was a pioneer of contemporary dance. He wanted to break away from traditional ballet. To break away from traditional ballet, Limon focused his movement on being firmly planted on the ground. This was much different to ballet as in ballet it was all about pretty looking jumps and travelling, rather than telling a story with how you are moving.
Contemporary dance features a lot of free movement and connection between each body. Ballet focuses on keeping a straight spine. Through the more open range of choreographic movements, contemporary dance was much more able to do so much more, for instance: tell stories; address social issues and invoke emotions while incorporating people who wanted to dance but weren’t elegant or feminine enough for ballet. As Limon said “When you stop trying to be pretty, you will be beautiful.”

Limon migrated from Mexico to America and through his life he suffered the hardships of adjusting, segregation and struggle. As well as fighting in the Second World War. All this contributed to his influential ideas about his dance, he was able to transcend his hardships into beautiful pieces of dance. 

After the world war he started his own dance company with Doris Humphrey as his artistic director. Humphrey being one of the two people who trained Limon, the other being Charles Wideman. The dance company was created in 1946.

One reason why his style is so broad and flexible to stylising and genres, is due to his extensive knowledge and smarts in the art community. He excelled at art and music during school to which he then went on to do art before leaving art to get trained in New York by Wideman and Humphrey. 

(1)

José Limon had a bunch of techniques that were used during his dance pieces. They were the types of movement that would be done. 

The movement would have corresponding breathing patterns added to them to increase the rate of doing the technique. As well as being able to keep going. 

“Exploring the use of energy in relation to gravity and working with weight in terms of fall, rebound, recovery and suspension.”

Fall – How you go down to the ground. Whole body or parts give way to gravity. An example of this can be having your arms dangle by your side. 

Rebound – Energy bouncing back and going in a different direction. An example of this could be having your head bop up and down. It is using energy to go down but the rebound brings it back up. 

Recovery – Energy reaches furthest point and keeps on going. Going from a leap to then turning back and rolling is an example of this.

Succession – Succession through the spine. No tension, leading from neck to shoulders to back.

Bibliography.

(1) https://youtu.be/GpyWNh3X8q8

(2) https://youtu.be/rapPJb66D7Y

Jose Limon exercises. 14/09/17

Today in lesson the class and I took part in working on and improving the look of our Jose Limon exercises that we will be getting assessed on, on the 19th of October. There are 7 exercises in total.

The first exercise involves us dancers bopping our heads down and up, then our shoulders, then doing the same as with our chest which eventually turns into having our hands touching the floor. This exercise focuses on rebound more than anything due to our body parts kinetic energy bouncing back up then back down. The end of the exercise has us in a fall position (our head and arms dangling freely) to which we slowly (through succession) rise back up. High point at a time.

The second exercise was the “Alignment fall and rebound in the knees.” This exercise started in second position (with parallel  knees and out turned feet), we would squat down in the position as a form of fall and recovery as we are lowering to then get right back up. Once that was done multiple times, we then took the exercise into a suspension with us standing on our toes and arms in the air while inhaling air (the breath we took in refilled us with enough air to be let out once we went back down). During the suspension we were filled with potential energy that was released through our rebound once we got into our open arm squat position or when we were going down to the squat position or leaning to the left or right alignment.

 

Our first position is us falling into a squat position.

 

 

 

Here we are rebounding backup.

 

 

 

 

 

In this shot we are all seen in a form of suspension. We are filled with potential energy that will release once we rebound or fall etc.

 

Our kinetic energy being released through a rebound.

 

 

 

 

 

(1)

In lesson we were in partners and I was working with Lilla. We had to give each other feedback to help improve how we did this. My constructive criticism for this included.

• Keep my arms straighter.
• Have a more wide fall position.
• Focus much more to help with timing and rhythm.

 

The third exercise “preparation for fall and recovery” was incredibly challenging for me. The exercise required a lot of co-ordination for the movement. The movements featured were rebound and recovery. The rebound being: the scoop at the start; the sweep and the full turn. The recovery being the full turn that becomes a stand as we have reached the furthest point of this move however we do then use a fall like structure to rebound back to the starting position.

This first position is our rebound scoop. Where we go forward and bring our legs in as we bounce back.This second position was another rebound as it was just our body going one way and back another. Full turning in a certain sense could be considered succession as different high points are raising one by one to be put back down on the ground.This stance here is the recovery position for this exercise. We have reached the furthest point. After reaching this point it is then turned into a fall as we go down and land in a way that makes this action seem like a big rebound. 

(2)

Constructive feedback from Lilla.

• The scoop, my feet need to be down and the movement needs to be more fluid when taking my arms to my feet and up as they currently look crazy.
• The sweep doesn’t need to be high up, just sweep the leg across rather than lifting.
• General neatness when getting up.

“Lunge exercise for energy, fall and rebound.”  In this exercise we would lunge to the left, right, back and dive forward. The first two lunges were rebounding off each other. The next step had us take a step backwards and lean back in suspension to which we released  the potential energy making it kinetic energy by doing a fall and then rebounding back up into neutral.

(3)

My constructive advice from Lilla.

• Straighten my leg when lunging.

“Swing exercise for recovery and rebound.” This exercise was difficult for me due to the coordination needed with my arms.

This exercise had us using recovery to get to the left or right. The next part of the exercise had us rebounding down and then back up.

(4)

 Here we are using the recovery method to get to our furthest point in the lunge exercise to which we then use it again to get to the other side.This shows us during the rebound bouncing up from being down.

My constructive advice from Lilla.

• Don’t think too much when using your arms as you are over thinking it, leading to it being off or incorrect.

“Low lunge turns for energy rebound.” This (for me) was the easiest as it was simple turns and then rebounding back to a lunge.

These photos show the process of lunging, rebound turning and then lunging again.
(5)

“Suspension fall and recovery turns into leaps.” This exercise had us in a kneel position, the fall was how we rolled over our back leg. The exercise had us gradually getting higher with every turn we did making the exercise into a recovery. At the highest point of recovery we then leaped. (The video featured does not have me or my class in it, had to use the other classes video) . Here the class is simply rebounding with going on knees from rolling. The next photo has the leap involved. The leap was incredibly difficult for me due to the amount of body strength needed for it.

My constructive advice from Lilla.

• The execution was fine just keep on working towards being able to do leaps etc.

Bibliography.
(1) https://youtu.be/gDANG-TpuX0

(2) https://youtu.be/A25RcFAG1W0

(3) https://youtu.be/LqYwJDrXC4s

(4) https://youtu.be/ZUnG88_yajc

(5) https://youtu.be/jObFzJQZvmw

(6) https://youtu.be/WRYrpRVECds

Devised Theatre and workshop blog. 12/09/17

Devised Theatre is the practice of when multiple practitioners come together with very limited ideas, or none at all. They will start to work together and do things such as: research contextuality,do improv games and receive inspiration from stimuli etc. These activities will soon lead to a full performance.One of the most well known companies that use devised Theatre is Complicité. A London based touring company. They start their performance process with extensive research to aid the early stages of their creative production. This enable them to start developing their original performance piece.

(2)

The research involved with devised theatre will be looking at: time periods; social classes; the language; dress code etc. This is to help with accuracy within any portrait created for the devised piece.

However anything can be changed and edited within the devised piece. Devised is the group of writers own creation and the freedom within the piece is larger than life. There is so much opportunity on turning inspiration and the collectives making it their own. For example, during the induction week of college all of us performing artists were put into small groups with stimuli which were: a poem; a prop and a line from the poem. The line from the poem was “Thousands of words in your vocabulary and yet you rely on grunts.” Every group took this inspiration and created their own pieces of original devised theatre. – an extract from Wn2tlk by Kevan Fagen.

Relating back to the first paragraph. Devised theatre can start with a simple idea or relation to another project. An example within my group’s performance was how the opening party scene had elements taken from the opening scene from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Which entails just a very crazy party but this gave us a very strong opening to our three minute devised piece!

(1)

Here is an article that includes ten tips “for a truly creative collaboration.” (3)

These are the ten tips.

1. Be passionate about source material.

2. Do your research.

3. Get your material out there.

4. Unite the whole company around a common purpose.

5. Keep an open mind.

6. The story must be relevant.

7. Always look for counterparts.

8. Everyone works differently.

9. Don’t be precious.

10. Enjoy yourself.

Workshops from this week

The first set of workshops we did this week were on the first day. They acted as an introduction to the class. The first involved everyone walking around the room to which they would stop! Shake hands, introduce themselves and reveal a fact about themselves which corresponded with the question we were set to answer. For example: least favourite food; cats or dogs and favourite thing about ourselves. This helped break the ice between everyone, as a performer you need to be versatile and not have tension between fellow performers so that everything you do with them is incredibly fluid and natural. The naturality with fellow performers comes with being comfortable.The follow up game we played had the class in half. Our tutors would ask a question like “who smokes” then anyone who does would run to the middle and clap hands. This was a way for people to connect through common interests.

To help connect everyone further we as well as working on reaction timing, in a circle we had to gesture to the person on our right and go ‘zoom.’ However new rules got added in such as gesturing a baseball swing and shouting home run etc. This had everyone constantly being vigilante in order to see what instruction is being passed around. The last activity of this introductory workshop was a game where in four groups we had to create a tablou that fit these themes: Night watching; Sunbathing; having a good time and being at a dance party so that they would fit in time with the Michael Jackson song ‘blame it on the boogie.’

The next set was later on that day. These exercises were all about syncing both our bodies and voices together. We played a game which involved a rhythmic beat of stamping our feet and making a raking gesture. This was our beat, and one by one we would create a vocal exercise on the spot. Following onto that was the ‘down in the jungle song’ where we all sang a song just to warm our voices up and keep on working on timing and ensemble singing.

The next set of games were working on both voice and movements.The first was a rendition of ‘Granny’s footsteps’ but instead of just walking, we took on instructions. Such as: walking as a model; walking but you’re stepping on chewing gum and you are a toddler. The aim with this was all about posture control and stepping into the physicality of someone who isn’t us. In the next few games we were partnered up with a fellow performer. One game involved one of us and our partner walking to each other on a metaphorical tightrope and having to get past each other safely, this had us relying on our collaboration with our partner to make it safely across the tightrope. The next game had us only saying ‘1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.’ Normally speaking like that wouldn’t make sense but we used instructions explaining the context so we could give purpose within the lines. These warm up activities were incredibly effective in order for us to keep on improving our abilities to portray a character and speak as them.

As acting isn’t just saying your lines, it’s embodying them and being the character.

(1) – https://thetheatretimes.com/what-is-devised-theatre/

(2)http://www.complicite.org/company.php

(3) https://thetheatretimes.com/_amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/2014/dec/16/devised-theatre-ten-tips-collaboration