Monday 13th April 2015

Multimedia lesson

This lesson we started off the lesson by doing our usual warm ups (which included voice warm ups as well as physical warm ups; such as walking around the room and speaking as a group) to get us ready for the active lesson we had set in front of us. It's always good to warm up before we start theatre because it helps us to become focused, calmed, disciplined, young actors.

Later in this lesson we focused on the Chorus work of our play. Later on in the lesson we joined all together in room 413 and Mr Crowthe introduced us to a chorus piece we will all be performing together. Mr Crowthe had already prepared our actions for the Chorus text and he taught us what to do. We worked as a whole class which helped us to develop communication skills and helped us to become disciplined and connected as a class. This was interesting to work as a whole company as we had to move at the same time which was quite hard but I learnt that you have to make sure you are aware of the whole classes movements not just your own or one other persons. In groups we had to create our own repetitive piece which was relevant to our line we were given. My group's line had the words "wild animals" in and so we decided to create a piece around animals. This was a good chance to let out our creativity and create a section of our own. It helped us develop communication, listening and group skills.

We kept the actions subtle to the text so the we are not likely to forget our movements and so that there is not too much going on for the audience to take in. We were informed that we would be having the recording of the script coming from the speakers outside as our chorus piece will be performed outside. We wouldn't have to talk as a whole whilst doing our group actions, instead we took a voice recording  of the text and Ms Goodall will edit it on garage band so it can be played loudly outside.

Later on- after the break- we were given another section of chorus work from our script. Ms Ballam helped us with setting this. We were spilt into three groups in the class. I was group two. However we were mixed together so a part of every group was scattered around the room. We were given lines to say in our group and as a whole and actions as well. This further improved our group work and visual/social awareness. In one section of the chorus work, we have to connect by any body part to another person in the class. This helped us to become more comfortable with different members of the class.

We practised this chorus parts for a while to try and perfect them however, we are not quite there yet. Next lesson, we will be looking at how to improve working and moving as a group.

Women in Greek Theatre

Notes I took on the video of Women in Greek Theatre:

• Women were seen but not heard. They didn't have their own voice to speak with. hey had to stay quiet and obey what they were told to do.
• Women were not involved in Greek theatre it was written by men, performed by men and watched by men who were in a higher class of society who viewed and treated women poorly.
• There were powerful women characters in plays but they would always be played b a man.
• Women were viewed as annoying and weak however they were important o society as they would produce children and organised the religious city events

Thursday 26th March 2015

Thursday 26th March 2015

In this lesson we were put into groups of 7 and we were given a scene between Creon and Antigone to develop. My group was Connor, Logan, Eric, Harmony, Will and Max. our scene was where Antigone is confessing to Creon that she was the one who buried her brother and is willing to take her punishment for it. We made the scene more modern to make it more understandable for our target audience. The accent we used was more of an East End accent.

We done this to help us to get an understanding on how we can interpret a modern version of a scene from Antigone. This was useful since we will be doing this for our show of Antigone. This exercise was a way of communicating with others in the other class which helped us to bond and connect which will help us to feel more comfortable with working with new people.

When we read the script together we learnt that the style of writing was quite different to how we speak today. There was no slang or words that were shortened. Reading the play and looking at the text helped us to think about how our characters talked and what era and community they were in.

The language we decided however, was to make it as modern as possible and this made the characters more humorous, because they said words such as; "mint", "blud", "man", "bloodclart" and "fuck". It made the audience laugh because there was bad language included in the piece. Although it made the scene more understandable and easier for the audience to understand, it kind of took away the purpose of the play. It made the characters less formal and more informal and made them seem modern.

Our scene was different from the other peoples. We decided not to incorporate multimedia however some groups decided to which was a lovely idea. This was Antonia's group. The group had some amazing ideas that were put together. They incorporated the idea of social media in it to make the scene even more modern. This was a good idea because they thought outside the box and challenged themselves to experiment the type of work we will be doing shortly.


Notes I made on other groups:
Group 1: Jamie, Susana, Connor, Jedd, Taffie and Oriana: - It started with some teenage girls gossiping about what they had heard. This was good because it made the piece more modern by incorporating girls at a sleepover gossiping.
-It was quite comedic which didn't make the piece too sad or depressing.
- They portrayed Antigone as rude and sarcastic which showed us hat Antigone was confident but could also come across rude in her speaking.
-It was set in a school which was interesting because they incorporated youths in the piece.

Group 2: Benji, Nina, Antonia, Rory, Michelle, Daniel: -It was very, very good, definitely my favourite performance.
- They excellently include technology within their piece by using mobile phones. They included social media as well. And they were talking about how Antigone buried Polynieces and what they thought about her over a social media chat. This was great as it was made modern so that the audience could relate a lot more to the scene.

Group 3: Matteo, Sarah, Ellis Sherene, Pheobe: - It was very modern but to improve maybe they could have not over-used the swearing in their piece an it did become a bit too much of bad mouthing each other. Although it was very funny, all of he swearing took away the importance of the scene and made everyone laugh because of the amount of swearing in the piece.

Group 4: Anya, Nansi, Louie, Cameron, Alex, Poppy: - It had a big brother theme
- To improve I think that they could have made the piece shorter as it did drag on for quite a bit.

Group 5: Jake, Frankie, Roseby, Thiago, Gloria, Zac: - They projected their voices very well
- It was interesting and a good use of technology as well as it being converted into modern life.

Group 6: Tim, Amaia, Matilda, Daniella, Llyod :- It was very funny
- They used multimedia well in their scene
- They made the piece modern so it was easy for he audience to understand. They had changed the language so it was easier to interpret.

Group 7: Clement, Natasha, Stacey, Alabama, Oliver, Chris: - It was set in a pub and this made it realistic for the audience as most things are set in a pub as pubs are a popular place to go for over 18's in England.

This lesson was good because we got to try out how to make our scene as modern as we could. We changed the language and got to experiment with the play.

Thursday 16th April 2015

Today we recorded the moment of the choral speaking and some breathing. This will be used to play for the people who will be watching scenes outside. We will be using garage band to edit our recording. This idea was really great because it will give the audience a chance of listening to not only the actors but to a recording which was previously recorded.

We discussed as a whole how each scene was relevant to a modern audience. Our scene (Roseby, Jake, Benji and I) is relevant and interesting to a modern audience because it shows them that people still commit crime and it will make them look at how life is today and compare it to how it was back in the time of Sophocles. Also it is interesting how we have co-operated the idea of a news report in our scene. We are using a t.v screen in our piece and this will be good for the audience because it will show them what happened previously in the play. It will give them an interesting option to either look at the acting or to look at the t.v screen. Recording part of our scene was good because it can help us to show two sides of the story. In the recording we show the side of Antigone burying Polynieces however on the day we will be acting and showing Creon's bad temper tantrum.

Before we recorded the scene, we had to plan what we were going to act in the clip. So this lesson, we prepared and got ready to record our video so we didn't have to repeat the recording loads of times on the day we recorded it.We decided on costumes. Antigone's wore a red item of clothing and Polynieces wore all black and he had red lipstick smudged on himself to make it look like he was bleeding and had been lying there for a long time. We also smothered dirt on Roseby's skin to make it look like Polynieces had been there for a while. We decided to record it near the posts at the smoking area this was because it had good levels. The camera man (Benji) would stand on a post and record the scene looking down on Polynieces (Roseby) who was laying down on the grass below. Jake was the props man and I was Antigone. We used a white sheet as something to cover Polynieces with and some stones plotted around the grass.

Later on in the lesson we performed our scenes. We performed our part of our scene that we will show live to the audience on the performance night. This was a scene between Creon and his guard. Our scene was successful because we included a new report into our scene and it captivated the audience because there was two places on the stage. Roseby and I were news reporters however Jake and Benji were inside Creon's palace. To develop our scene we need to learn our lines. We need to learn it before the rehresal so that we can run it through smoothly.

Exploring The Text

In class we looked at two scenes from Antigone. A scene between Antigone and Ismeme and a scene between Antigone and Creon.

Antigone and Ismene:
We focused on finding out the relationship between Antigone and Ismene and the different characteristics they have and how they disagree.
We explored the characters practically by getting into pairs and exploring how Antigone and Ismene differ and we thought about the characters emotions as well as how that scene would be set and what it would lead to.
We discovered that the two sisters had a lot of trust before this talk happened. Because Antigone went to Ismene for help it shows she trusts Ismene with important things which shows that the are close. However we also fid out that they both have different view on Creon's rules'. Antigone ants to go against them, but Ismene doesn't want to disobey him. Therefore this lead to the to sisters in arguments.
This linked to the Historical context because it had shown that women were lower class and didn't have a voice therefore Ismene is a perfect example in this.

Antigone and Creon:
We focused on finding the relationship between these two characters. We discovered that Antigone had the lower status and Creon had a lot more power than Antigone. We learnt that Antigone was strong minded and was true to her heart.
We explored the characters practically be acting out a scene between them two when Antigone asked Creon if she could bery her brother. My partner was Eric.
We discovered hat Antigone and Creon didn't have a great relationship (even though Creon was Antigone's uncle). This helped us to understand how the character felt to one another so we could stretch our acting even further. Creon had the higher status over Antigone, however Antigone wanted to prove her point to Creon and stood up to him. This portrayed Antigone as stubborn.
This linked to historical context because it proves that women had the lower status even Creon says "I will not have no sort of woman telling me what to do".
 

Current Events

Question 1:
What was happening when Antigone was created? - Very bad things were happening and people were having wars fights, arguments, family affairs and dictating others' lives.

Question 2:
Was is creation influenced by any specific historical events?-

Social Context of Antigone

Question 1: What do we mean by the social context?- Social context means using social media. For example: mobile phones, facebook, snapchat, whatsapp, instagram

Question 2: How did people live at the time of Antigone?-They lived very religious, rules had to be obeyed and people had to be respectful and loyal to their religion. Men were higher class and women were looked as lower class citizens who were not allowed to vote and were seen as weak.

Question 3: Who was the target audience for the piece?- This is a mature and serious piece of theatre and was made for the community of Greece. It was religious for Greeks to go to the theatre.

Question 4: What were the needs values and beliefs of the target audience?- People believed it was okay for women to be treated incorrectly. People were told that you had to obey the king and his rules. It was a very religious place and people had to respect the rules in Greece. There was a lot of fighting that went on as well.

Question 5: How did this influence the themes and characters of Antigone?- This gave Sophocles an idea of including gender into the play (women were seen lower than men- men were more important) also the idea of war was included into the play.

Question 6; What have you found out about the social context of Antigone? Think about what was going on at the time that Sophocles wrote the play. I have found out that the play was very heartbreaking and wasn't just a silly comedic theatre show that was put together it was a serious story that has actually been based on things that had happened in Greece in the time of Sophocles.

Question 7: Who went to the theatre?- Everybody who wanted to to, it was seen as religious.

Question 8; What was the relationship between theatre, politics and religion? Theatre was seen as religious. Theatre was a way of showing people how the community was and also a way to show them what was serious in Greece at that time.

This is useful information for our class as it has taught us how people acted in Greece and therefore we could develop it into our acting so we can relate and understand the place and community our character came from.

Thursday19th March 2015

Thursday 19^th March 2015

Today in class, we focused on the historical context of Greek theatre. We watched three videos in class and two of them were about performances of Greek tragedy from long ago in history. I took many notes in during the video, which helped me to understand even more about Greek theatre, and the way it was performed and also the effect it had on the audience. This was useful videos to watch as it helped us to understand the concept of Greek theatre and what it meant to Greek people.

Here are the notes I made during the first video:

• ·         The plot of the performance was realistic and was very emotional and quite traumatic for the audience. However they were excellent plays and can relate to people and are very effective.
• ·         It had universal themes which meat that it was suitable for anywhere in the world and that people could relate to the story. For example, fighting is something that occurs everywhere.
• ·         Often the good heroes in Greek theatre do not always do the right thing, this shows that nobody is perfect and everyone can make mistakes even good people, which can also reflect on life today.
• ·         Most likely, in all Greek tragedies, someone dies during the play. When they were going to die they would usually say something to do with the sun because to the Greeks the sun was an important thing when you were about to die.
• ·         The chorus is a group of people that start the play and would often come onto the stage to interrupt the acting to explain briefly to the audience what is happening or what is going to happen next.
• ·         The story told through Greek theatre is always set in the life of one day.
• ·         The Greek tragedies were mostly about loss, love, war death, fighting, sadness, affairs, inappropriate sex between relatives.

Notes I made on the second video:- The Greatest show on Earth BBC

•      Although the performances were very tragic violent and sad for the audience to watch, there was also comedy involved in the show. This was used to break up the sadness of the play and make the audience feel less sad and traumatised. They would do this by usually having a half human half goat man come onto stage and act out comedy which would make the audience laugh.
• ·         The Greek performances were created by taking real life scenarios from things that had happened in Athens, Greece.
• ·         Athens invented drama and invented the idea of actors and performance.
• ·         There were usually 3-4 actors and a chorus which included roughly 5 people. The chorus people would dance sing and act to explain to the audience what is happening in the play, they were similar to a narrator.
• ·         The plays opposed serious questions to the audience.
• ·         Theatre was seen as religious and people would go to the theatre not only to watch performances but to socialise and discuss important matters for democracy and democratic action.
• ·         Actors always wore masks; they said this would make them a total different person.

Watching these videos really helped me to understand Greek performances more and it made it easier to understand why the tragedies were made so horrific and violent. It was definitely useful for the class and will definitely help us to make our performance a lot better as we k=now know a lot more about Greek tragedy and Greek theatre and what it meant to the Greek community. These videos were very important to watch as they helped us widen our minds and opinions and we certainly got to think outside the box.

Cultural Context

Question 1:

• What were the performance conventions in Sophocles’ time? Having three actors, describing the scenery and immediate locale and announcing entrances and exits. And the deus ex machina.

         Question 2:

• What were the trends or fashions within the performing arts? It was common for actors to wear masks to cover up their faces to create a new character instead of the actor. Therefore performers always wore masks. It was fashionable to wear costumes and have minor scenery within the show.