I was away from school last week and missed 3 hours of drama, which sucks. However, Maria and Richard have been filling me in on what I have missed and I have been able to read the blog. While I was away the Talent Show was discussed, tickets will be going on sale and posters are ready to be put up on Monday. The drama group also did some work on transforming Ibsens play 'A Dolls House' into a Brecht style play, I can;t wait to find out more about it!
Lately due to lots of bank holidays and exams we have had a few days off school and missed some more theatre lessons. But in the time we have been in we got our drama exam back (I was pleased with my mark and quite enjoyed thinking about the purpose of theatre), handed in our drama design work and started on Brecht. Over the April holiday we were given the Brecht play 'The Good Woman of Setzuan" (which has sometimes been translated as "The Good People of Setzuan" not sure how useful this piece of information is now but if there is one thing a debate in English lit taught me it is that the way texts and titles are translated is important) to read. As well as reading the play and learning about scenography we will also be learning a bit about Brechts ideas about acting.
Despite my limited knowlegde of politics etc. I find Brecht's ideas on acting and using theatre to convery a message really interesting. Through doing acting exercises I have learnt a lot about Brecht, although I imagine there is much more that I do not know. Obviously in his work he wants you to sympathize with the poor proletariat/peasant and dislike or even hate the nasty, horrible capitalist (who he will very often not name so that the audience has no chance to emphathize with the them) who makes there life such a misery. But he wants to do it in such a way that you do not leave the play just having watched a play/story and felt sorry for the poor little worker, he wants to make it so that the story is disprupted for the audience and instead of feeling sorry for the worker and as if they have just watched a story.
We did this task were we had to make stage pictures, tableau, freeze frames. While Stan the Man was all into putting on your character, and being your character, making sure you were showing your character as a person, Brech was much more concerned that at every single moment every single one of the actors on stage were showing the right picture and converying the right message. While his actors were rehearsing he would take pictures and afterward they would all sit and analsye the pictures, making sure the message was being shown. We practised this with our freeze frames, and learnt a lot. At one point we wanted Maria to be the most dominant character in our tableaum but because we had her turning around to face Spencer he looked to be the more commanding person, as if he was controlling her. It was crazy to see how small a detail could change the entire look fo something on stage.
Unfortunately, I missed Tuesdays lesson becuase I was sick, and my blog post from last week didn't save properly but I can edit it so this is like an extension. On Wednesday, I watched Maria, Spencer and Richard perfrom their first part of A Brecht House and then I took part in the second, in which I played Doctor Rank and Maria Nora. Because at the end of the first extract we performed we painted Nora as quite a manipulative character we kept her in this role for the second extract. However, this is not really the way I saw Nora when doing A Dolls House and I found it interesting how we changed out perception of her to keep it fitting with the first extract.
We have also been very busy preparing for IST's Got Talent, which has taught me many things, for example, children simply cannot be trusted, you need to be on them every second making sure they have understood what you have told them and that they have passed the information onto their parents. So far it has been quite tiring but finally I understand my mistakes and hopefully the night will be a blast. It has been great getting back to Bloody mIST again and I am going to have a search through my house in a bit to find exciting props/costume/make up for the piece again..
Georgia Stanley
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