Today we worked in groups on the question "What makes a good piece of theatre?" and discussed our points as a whole class. In my group we said that theatre is about staying true to your character; therefore doing research into your role, your personality traits, the characters objectives for each scene. This creates a character which is believable to the audience and other actors in the play. We also noted that it is important to appeal to the audience you are targeting, for example taking into consideration the age, gender and interests of a particular audience. We did this when we performed 'Blackout' to the college audience which was about a teenage boy who experienced anger issues and was convicted of a crime after being bullied in high school. This is a story for the age of the audience we performed it to which is why they were engrossed and gripped into the story line, as the language used was current and relatable. Moreover, I believe that the believability of the character is portrayed by acting truthfully under imaginary circumstances which I have learnt through the Stanislavsky technique. In addition, the simplicity of the piece is very powerful, as when we performed 'Blackout' we used minimal props and a lot of the performance was down to us as actors being emotionally engaged as an ensemble and using a lot of physicality to express emotions such as circling characters around victims and stomping the ground to emphasise the tension in certain scenes. Engaging with the audience is also a powerful tool as in the play 'Girl from the North Country' the actors were performing and singing from their inner heart and playing in the moment and as an audience this showed in the warm and committed atmosphere.
We then moved on to the question: "What would you make a piece of theatre about? For who?" and we all agreed we would target a teenage audience around the ages of 14-18 years old and we would all use theatre to educate our audience about issues going on in the world. I believe that theatre can be a powerful tool to raise awareness in a light-hearted manner such as global warming, bullying and racism. This can influence a younger audience to make changes to prevent the world from becoming more destructed, rather than watching theatre about love and romance which is masking environmental and political issues developing in the world. I would demonstrate these types of serious pieces as contrasting scenes showing the 'destructed world' with a lot of dark lighting and contrast this with how the world can be a more peaceful friendly place. This will leave the audience thinking about their actions and will be remembered more visually rather than just verbally.
10/10/2017
Today we worked in our groups from last week about the piece of theatre we would devise to an audience. Our task was to create a short trailer about our chosen piece to attract viewers and give a synopsis of the play. We chose to focus on 'Cyber-bullying and Internet safety', by creating a short scene to begin the trailer with upbeat music. The scene started with Mimi playing a young girl on her phone messaging a man, which I portrayed, whom was pretending to be 20 years old but in reality was 40 years old. Mimi spoke her inner dialogue by saying: "I am so happy I've met someone who likes me, he's only 20 years old... I have to meet him" and it transitioned into me speaking my thoughts by typing on my phone: "She's so silly, I've tricked another one, now I need to meet her!!" Yasmin then walked in between us and says: "And that's how it begun." We then transitioned into the final part of the trailer, where we both meet and hold hands and Mimi speaks her inner thoughts again: "Yes I am so happy I have finally met him. He doesn't look 20 but he's probably had a tough life!" I then respond with my inner thoughts saying "She can't even tell I'm lying about my age. So gullible!" The trailer ends with Yasmin stepping forward again and saying: "These types of scenarios happen everyday, what can we do to stop them?" We chose to end on a rhetorical question, as this is a Brechtian technique to get the audience thinking and build tension as the cliff-hanger makes the audience want to continue watching and find out what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment