Scene Photos

These photo are from the gas chamber scene with Hero and Beatrice- Helpfully choreographed by Rose!

Notes from run

Notes:
         Give the audience identity cards?

James and Elsa – find more moments of noticing each other, look and hold for longer, especially in the finding violin scene.

ALL: don’t use the word OK!

Mandi - take time with the daughter, need to see the internal monologue.

James – when shooting the daughter angle it so that you don’t shoot mandi as well.

ALL: When exiting the foyer in the first scene, use rotation, look back at the audience.

Look at the health and safety requirements for the Gas Chamber Scene – torch into the gas chamber. Leave the audience in there longer.

Heighten/ stylise the coat-dancing.

Oral soundtrack needed between the end of coat-dancing and finding the violin – the silence was found awkward by the audience.

ALL: lose the make-up, jewellery and nail polish.

Keep singing longer whilst in the hub after exiting the foyer.

The scenes in the hub are too far away from the audience.

Work with the guns.

Sort out the dynamics and speed with lines in the hub scenes.

Enter scenes with more purpose.

ALL: speak up.

INTENT!

The movement scene is beautiful (lovey dovey scene)

James – shout louder in the balcony scene.

ALL: less panting.

James – line change: “That bitch that killed her”

Daisy and James – lift voices in the argument leading to daisy’s death.

James – get hysterical when reading the liberation letter.

Beatrice hold the gun to James and Hero takes the gun from her.

Mandi – don’t thank him.

Chairs and blocks in the hub so audience feel part of the scene.

Becs – share the violin and the face more, more joyous and nod of thanks to James.

Sort the blocking for James and Daisy’s death scene.

James – the more German the better.

Daisy – most evil bitch in existence, vicious, no heart.

During the Hub scenes: use downstage right/left, enter through the audience.

Tricking Scenes: Hide in the balcony, not of stage (breaks dynamics), speak up (life depends on it – more urgent).

Shoe Scene: Quicker, Shorter, perhaps smell a shoe.

ALL: Keep fear internal.

ALL: Shock element.

ALL:DON’T PANIC!

Rose’s Tea Note: Creation is ready to serve you, if you just be you.

Costume

FINALLY WE HAVE BOUGHT THE PYJAMAS!!!!

At the end of last weeks rehersal we decided to list the scenes we have done and the scenes we still need to cover along with our aims of the week: we discovered that we had achieved far more than we had set out to do at the beginning of the week... showing us that we only have a few more secen to plan out and organise until we have the whole production as a basic structure.





Here are the scenes that we still need to cover:

• Hero's Monologue
• the court room
• camp liberation
• camp life music scene (leading to Bec's death)

The Layout

This is the lay out of all our scenes around each room where we will perform them.

Aim for the Week

Our aim for this week is to outline each scene in order to understand the order, story and what we want to put across to the audience. The aim is to be able to go back to each scene and change it if need be, add more detail and flesh out the frame already put in place.
So far we have concentrated on the scenes which have the most prominent effect using the setting of Auschwitz concentration camp. These are:

• The Beginning, arrival at camp, audience interaction, death of child
• Camp life, (we have only started looking at the beginning of this scene, and intend to introduce the characters and their personalities- concentrating on Bec's character and her relationship to music and in turn its effect on the play.)
• The death of an inmate, the death of Bec's character will important- caused by a fight between her a Daisy's character. As a result of her death no music will be heard from that point onwards, reflecting the loss of her character. (her music represents her freedom and humanity- a symbol of hope within a terrible situation, when it is gone so is the hope.)
• the fight and death of an officer, as a consequence of killing Bec's character James' character confronts Daisy's which turns into a fight resulting in her death.

Our next step is to focus on introducing the text of much ado into the scenes which are connected to the play. We also have to focus on certain areas such as:

• Bec's and her music
• The relationship between the inmates
• the relationship between Franz and Helena  

Text and Story

We have started to look at pieces of text from the Much ado about nothing play as well as from other Shakespeare texts in conjunction with the story we want to present. we have started to work shop Ideas, create scenes and collect useful bits of text to create a comprehensible piece of work.

Timeline

Here is the timeline that we have created for our production:

Workshop Videos

Here are some links to you-tube of some of our rehearsal workshops where we started to devise ideas and see what we came up with by using different stimulus which I have mentioned before in my rehearsal notes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yBb337Ek38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfDltEd8pWQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpYOWf3FhWk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aaY6Sh7amY

Rehersal Agenda

Agenda

Rehearsals

Text

Presentation

Cast list / characters

Rehearsals: 

Tuesday Presentation 

Wednesday lesson text

Wednesday afternoon presentation

Thursday lesson text

Friday lesson characters and casting

Text - if not got, need to buy and then look at text, take something from it and create an exercise (but 3 books off amazon)

Presentation carry on with individual things and bring everything in on Wednesday

Characters

Benedick - Franz

Beatrice - Helena

Claudio - Claudia

Hero - Sister 

Don Pedro - Pedra

Don Jon - Sonderkommando 

Margaret - Margo

Cast list

Here is the cast list we decided on this lesson, we aim to make all parts as equal as possible with alot of ensemble aspects.

Rehearsal Notes 13/03/2014

Today we Aimed to build on our workshoped ideas; to add more into them, create new ideas and to talk collectively as a group to discuss context and the preferred Idea.


We worked on the previous idea of having the oppressed characters in the line following James' orders and then suddenly start singing the "poor bird" song in a weary way. I found that this became quite emotional- everyone relying on each other having no certainty of the future while singing a song with undertones of hope. We then discussed this further as the idea came to us about Jonathan's suggestion last week of starting the piece while cuddling and holding the audience, we could then get into the line on James' order, start walking and then singing...


Elle also had the Idea of partnering up and having to follow instructions in sync with the possibility of a forfeit, this became competitive and at the odd time groups became almost desperate to win or face one of James' mean forfeits. we had to Jump, sit, run etc. at the same time. After this we sat as a group and discussed the Ideas, a unanimous result on preferring James' Auschwitz story. We then discussed information and bits of context we could use, also referring to parts of Much ado about nothing's text that could be useful within scenes.


Mandi used an activity from Sussex Actors Studio about support, someone would fall down and another person would have to lay down next to them and roll them over themselves to help them get up, not only does this represent, help and trust but also implies a strenuous activity causing to the persons collapse...


Becs had the Idea of being confined like battery farmed chickens, trapped and unable to move, we aim to plan this idea out in tomorrows rehearsal.         

Rehearsal Notes 12/03/2014

During the lesson we had to starts to workshop our ideas for "much ado". However, before hand we did a group warm up of the game "IT" which got us ready to work and any unwanted energy out, ready to be active and creative. (I think was exciting activities like this one are better for our group as we become instantly focused and active.)


My Idea: I took inspiration from a previous session at Sussex Actors Studio, where we had engaged in various trust exercises with a partner. one of them was leading your partner with their eyes closed around the room while using your hand on the back of their neck to guide them. A key word I wanted to put forward in this workshop idea was "oppression" this appears as a key theme in both our major ideas (witches and the concentration camp). As time went on (with various angle thoughts from the group) the exercise became more forced, the leader becomes the oppressor forcing them into positions and pushing them around the room at different speeds. It became really effective, and as a victim you felt you had no control over yourself or where you were going, you totally relied on the leader who you did not trust due to their forceful nature, there was a major sense of uncertainty within this workshop idea which was exactly what I wanted to achieve.


Daisy's Idea: Based similarly on the other workshoped piece a group of us got into a line, eyes closed (except the person at the back) with our hands on each others shoulders. those at the front relied on the person at the back to lead them around the room using touch, again this added an uncertain atmosphere. We then added shuffling into the movement which symbolised the smallness of the characters, we then added orders spoken in German by James and weak marching. This crated a laboured, weary feel to the piece and again a sense of oppression.


Both ideas have been videoed so we can look back and re-reference our work.

Monday Production Meeting

In the meeting we had to organise any days we could stay and rehearse, everyone came to the conclusion that every wednesday 2 till 6 was a deffinate option. Incase of extra rehearsal times thursady after college is also a possibility. As a group we also have to rehearse one day in tje easter holiday, unfortunatly we can not get the full group together on either week and so have decided to do a day per week to include those that nay have missed it. We habe also chiseb the date and time of our tech run which i shall post later on....

National Theatre Production

Much ado about nothing was also performed at the National Theatre, they have released and education pack for students to use.

Here is the Link:

http://d1wf8hd6ovssje.cloudfront.net/documents/Much_Ado_FULLPack.pdf

There are also links to videos of clips and interviews about the production.

Here is another Link:

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/video/beatrice-and-benedick-in-much-ado-about-nothing