Classical Performance (Part 1)

In this extract of my four part blog assignment, I shall be looking at the social, historical and cultural background of the classical roles. I will be using my knowledge of my visit to the globe, and my thoughts and feelings on the play Julius Caesar, as well as research I have gathered on the characters.


Julius Caesar was a tragedy, that was thought to have been written in 1599, it looks the 44 BC conspiracy surrounding the Roman Dictator Julius Caesar's assassination, and then the fall of the conspirators at the Battle of Philippi, it also looks at the themes of honour, patriotism and friendship between the characters. The play is based on true events, but also sheds light on 16th century English Political views, for instance at this time Queen Elizabeth was 66-years-old, it was clear that she was never going to produce an air to the throne at this time, and so many of her subjects questioned what would happen upon her death. Many of them believed that chaos would hit the streets, once she died, so they were looking at who would take her place, and who would be fit to rule. If you look at the history and the play itself they intertwine with one another for instance, Julius Caesar had no children, just like Queen Elizabeth, also the play looks at Caesar "subjects" and how they are worried about how much chaos his death would bring to the people, which in turn does happen after Mark Antony's "Friends, Romans, Countrymen lend me your ears" speech, so it is as if Shakespeare was foreshadowing life events before they had happened. Also chronological errors within the language for instance Shakespeare has characters mention objects such as hat and doublets, that did not exist in ancient Rome, Caesar is written in to be wearing an Elizabethan doublet instead of the traditional Roman toga. 


However a lot of the play has true events of Ancient Rome written into it for instance:
The play begins with Caesar arriving from the Battle of Munda in 45 B.C, which summed up quickly is that the son's of Pompey wanted to avenge their father "Pompey the Great" who was assassinated trying to flee from Caesar after a battle over power, Caesar tracked down Pompey's sons to Spain where the battle took place.

Also the assassination of Julius Caesar was done so by Roman senators, who went by the name "Liberators", they were led by Gaius, Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, they committed this deed adjacent to the Theatre of Pompey on the 15th of march, also referred to by the Soothsayer when he warns Caesar "beware the Ides of March", at this time Caesar was declared a Dictator, and the senators feared that he would become too powerful and eventually overthrow the Senate who were in favor of tyranny, yet Caesar's assassination never led to the Roman Republic being restored, instead it caused a civil war between the "Liberators" and the Roman Empire, in which like the play the "Liberators" fall.

Our trip to the globe was a real eye opener, the experience of being stood in the pit was great, it really made you feel part of the atmosphere, and it added to the atmosphere being in such a large space with others shoving you about, as well as having the seated people see us in the pits made me feel more like a part of the play itself. The way the actors used the stage as well as the pits meant that there was no need for set, as they didn't have it back in Shakespeare's time, and this wasn't a problem as they took a completely different approach to it which was fantastic. We did a workshop during the trip and one thing that fascinated me was Shakespeare's approach to scripts, he didn't want to give people the script in full in case somebody stole his ideas so he gave them a script with their lines and line cue lines on it and just thought it was a fantastic way to not only protect his plays but also to learn cue lines, and I will in the future use this technique.

Blog 1 (Second Year)

The beginning of this year we have started to look at many things such as Shakespeare and classical texts and we are currently studying the play Julius Caesar, we are looking at a more contemporary play called punk rock by Simon Stephens which we will preform in college, and also we have been looking a lot at higher education, and have started to prepare monologues and are starting to learn how to come across in our auditions and interviews.

The first topic I shall be talking to you about is classical texts, and specifically Shakespeare, in our first lesson we watched a film called Julius Caesar that was staged and filmed by The Royal Shakespeare Company and whilst we were watching we had to look at the relationships between each character and connect them and explain why. We then in the next lesson looked at Iambic Pentameter which is kind of like the rhythm in which the sentences are said, for instance every other syllable should be stressed when you say it and there are mainly ten syllables in one sentence, and a lot of people think that Shakespeare plays only have a full stop at the end of the play because there is always something ti be said each sentence flows into another, another way of putting stress on certain words is to look for things such as Alliteration, Assonance, Rhyming, Paradoxes etc. in my opinion i think that it is much easier to understand what the character is feeling by listening to the stressed words for instance in Mark Antony's famous "Friends, Romans, Country men, lend me your ears" speech you can hear that he is trying to win them by his side and trying to make the people do what he wants just by listening to the words he stresses.

We later visited the globe theater to watch Julius Caesar from the pits, I personally didn't like watching the play, but listening to it was an experience in its self, and I know many people would have preferred to be able to sit whilst watching it, but being in the pits gave more of an experience with cast members walking through the crowd and people yelling in the pits, it felt like I was appart of the crowd.

For Higher education we have been looking at UCAS, I do have 5 universities/Drama Schools that I would like to go but i will only share three, one is The Napier Universities in Edinburgh, they have a course there for acting for stage and screen, one of the reasons i would like to go there is because they have put both types of acting into one course, which makes it easier for me to learn it all at one time rather than spending many a years moving through higher education, also Edinburgh has the Fringe festival on and so it would be an amazing experience to try and perform in that, and I also i'm rubbish when it comes to accents I find it easier to pick up on them when i'm surrounded by the accent and so I do wish to travel a lot to learn more accents.

The next one is Regents university to study Acting and Global theater, the reason for which I want to go is because the course is so weird and wonderful that i could pick up new techniques in order to experiment with my different styles of acting, this course is part of the Kevin spacey foundation and he does 2 masterclasses with you, and I find it easier to learn something from someone who is in the industries now and so can talk to you about the demands etc.

The third one is St Johns in Liverpool, their course looks a lot at screen acting, but throughout the course their they send you on work experience and set you up with the BBC, and so they teach you whilst trying to get you into the career at the same time.

We have been looking a lot at auditions and interviewing tactics, and currently I am learning a monologue from Motor-town and it looks at a guy called Paul, he seems to be very racist but I think that that is purely down to his upbringing and how annoyed he is when he looks around him. When I first preformed this speech I played it too angry because I only had the words in front of me and didn't know the actual play, I was told that i should be more laid back talking about it as if it was normal to say these things, and i think this would shock an audience more.


Currently we are looking at a play called Punk Rock, it is set in the present day and looks at 9 characters who all attend a six form college, it looks at the struggles of each very different character and in my opinion is relate-able to our young society today, which if you get to the end is very frightening. When we did the read through I liked the part of Bennett and also William, i think this was because they were unlike any characters I had played previously. After the read through we were given parts, I am playing the part of William, which at first I was a little worried about, but now im more curious as to what I can bring to the role.

On the first week of looking and performing the script we looked at objectives, there are 5 parts to objectives one is short term, which is what you character is thinking in that exact moment of time, whether it be I need some water or I am hungry, then you have your scene objective, so what your character would like to get out of at the end of the scene, which is normally something to do with another character, then you have long objectives which is where your character see's themselves in 10 or so years, for instance my character would be looking at what university he would be going to, then super objectives, this is your end life goal, which for most normal people is to be happy, the thing that changes how you get to the super-objectives is the through line, these are events that change you path through your characters life.

An example of these are Scene one Williams short term objective is to put his headphones away as he has seen Lilly, his scene objective is to try to make Lilly like him, then his long term objective is to attend Oxford or Cambridge, his super objective is to be an architect, to have children, to buy a small house and to be normal, but this is changed by the through line which get changed during the events of the ending.

I liked looking at objectives because it made the scene more playful and gave you something to think about at all times, it made it easier to get into character just by thinking what would he do in this situation, or what is he thinking about at this exact time.