Thursday, 25 December 2014

Brecht

Brecht blog
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Bertolt-Brecht.jpgFor our first week rehearsal all we did was go through the script fully and tried to understand the story. We then looked into each characters lines to get an overview of what kind of character they are and what their role was in the play. We looked up the play to learn about what exactly the play was about so it could make our play much more understandable. The play was The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, by Bertolt Brecht. After we found out who the play was by we searched up the narrator to find out more about his plays.
From our research we found out that Bertolt Brecht is the creator of Epic Theatre and he was doing the opposite of Naturalist Theatre, so he wanted to get people to think about the play and not get too into the play. He was a German writer and he wrote plays and poems about communists and going against them, but he wanted to do it in a way that he wouldn’t get his audience to forget about their lives and concentrate about other people’s lives. He wanted to get the audience involved.
The play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is also a part of Brecht’s Epic Theatre. The characters gave us a better idea about the play because the character Givola the florist goes against the gang. So then we realised that this play is about the Nazis.
We gave each other their characters and we asked them to look more into the play.

For the second week rehearsal’s each of us started to learn our lines. We saw that on one speech there was “XXXXXXX” one of our group mate decided to use this effectively and to make it our own wording. We all agreed to use this as a technique form Brecht for the audience to stop and think about what we have said. This would have then caused distraction and confusion so we came up with using the nursery rhyme ‘ABCDEFGH’ so we used these eight letters instead of a number plate. Our teacher then said that this will not be suitable for the play. So we thought of using ‘LI3R’ as the number plate, this was actually ‘LIAR’ and so the other person will reply with ‘yes’ to prove that they are lying.
For our third week we did not rehearse a much as we needed to due to the lack of people absent. But we still learned our lines and went through the play.

The fourth week we had out final rehearsal’s, but we had the idea of using poison as a drink when one of the character Fish asked for water. This would have achieved to let the audience know who was actually lying and who the bad person was. We had costume rehearsal’s and went through the play fully without scrip’s and with costume.  

Wednesday, 12 November 2014

Drama blog- murder

For our drama lessons we have been doing a variety of different activities. One activity we did was a game when we sit in a circle in the group, we shut our eyes and our teacher walks around us and taps one person’s head either once or twice. If the teacher taps that persons head once they are the murderer, if they get tapped on the head twice they are the detective and they have the identify by suspecting the murderer while everyone’s eyes are shut. After the murderer and detective are chosen we all open our eyes, both murderer and detective must not make it obvious that they are either the murderer or detective. We take a good look at each other’s actions and their posture, if they are fidgeting or even shaking. One way we can identify who the murderer is if the murderer is lying to everyone to make it look like they are not the murderer, you can identify this by the way that person is in a defensive posture, this could be when their arms are cross and their legs are close to their body, this will give the impression that they have something to hide and they are trying to make their selves more comfortable like that like they are protected. On the other hand the murderer can be really related to make it look like they are not the murderer and they don’t have anything to hide so they act casual. Another way could be if they don't make eye contact and they look to their right, it has been researched that when someone lies they tend to look away a lot to not make eye contact and they always look down to their right. Many other examples will indicate when a person is lying.

As well as know how a person can lie you stop a person from noticing that you are lying, one example is like I stated before by acting casual and not making it look obvious that you are the murderer. Also another way is if the person is fidgeting, this also shows that they are hiding something, you can stop a person from realising is by not moving a lot and keeping calm.


From this game I have learnt that I could really confuse people by making them think I am the murderer when I am not, I do this by acting like I have something to hide, I do not talk a lot and I am mostly in the defence position. By doing this the people in the group suspects that it is me when it is not me, this also gives me a chance to really confuse peoples mind so when I am the murder they will think it is not me because I would be acting the same and they will think that this is normal.