Overview of the week - 27th - 30th

Monday - Lecture - Politics:

• Why do we stay in groups? Status?
• Political Theatre: Lion King – Power - Status, Wicked – colour of hey skin (green), witches are evil – princesses are nice.
• French artist Orlan – 5 franks for a kiss, plastic surgery
• Theatre of protest
• Dennis Kelly – Political Theatre, war – terrorism, Islamic – monster, 2005, new ways of thinking
• No art without ideology – all theatre is political if we read it that way – The American Dream – Keep Calm And Carry On, (don’t complain) – (Natural) better fit to rule than others, survival of the fittest, keeping us in our places
• Lion King – who has the power? Does the casting revel an ideology? What does the costume say about class? The music? The accents? Does the work critique capitalism? – Food chain, power, status, selfish
• Money – tickets, sets
• Sound of Music (favourite things) – don’t worry about the Narzi’s think about the sliver white winters… - Selfish. Don’t think about what you don’t have and think about what you do have…

Feminist – Beyonce “***Flawless”

[Verse 2: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie]

We teach girls to shrink themselves

To make themselves smaller

We say to girls

"You can have ambition

But not too much

You should aim to be successful

But not too successful

Otherwise you will threaten the man"

Because I am female

I am expected to aspire to marriage

I am expected to make my life choices

Always keeping in mind that

Marriage is the most important

Now marriage can be a source of

Joy and love and mutual support

But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage

And we don't teach boys the same?

We raise girls to each other as competitors

Not for jobs or for accomplishments

Which I think can be a good thing

But for the attention of men

We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings

In the way that boys are

Feminist: the person who believes in the social

Political, and economic equality of the sexes

Tuesday - Body & Breath:

• Keep stretching
• Paired Consonants Exercise - ppp & bbb, ttt & ddd, fff & vvv, lll & www

Wednesday:

Tim Crouch came and taught us about himself and how he sees theatre and storytelling. He kept it vey basic with us picking up a cup on the floor using one action/movement - which was hard to get a grip off but I completely get it now. The point he wanted to get across that there is no point making something so normal/simple so fancy. Using his technique we put this into practise during the afternoon, it took us a while to get into the swing of it as some of us didn't understand what we had to do or some people didn't listen to one another which made it very difficult, but once we got it, it worked really well. 

• Improvising - Beowulf as an object rather than a person

Later that night I was watching a movie that was on Film4 called "The Eagle" which gave me some great inspiration for our show which includes makeup, set, costume and combining the old english text into the performance.

• Hair
• Makeup
• Incorporating script with original text/language - songs
• Dance
• Fire
• Masks
• Weapons
• Burial
• War
• Death

Thursday:

The day was used to experiment with movement for the war scene and to talk to the production team about lighting.

• Zizuki Dance
• Sitting/Standing Sats
• Rowing
• Actors creating a boat
• Combat
• Training
• Voodoo Doll - which controls us (Dan)
• Picked out for the army/Requirement to fight - could combine comedy - war (Victor)
• Fish plaits

I don't know if anyone saw this on the Northbrook Blackboard - but how cool is this!