Contextual Studies 1 ( The Double Dealer )

Restoration was a time of parties and lots of them, after King Charles the second came into power, but before him King Charles the First who had be known to have conflict with his own parliament about how he thought he had the right to govern according to his own conscience. Know his political and Religious believes where the main cause of reformed groups such as the puritans and Calvinists and these groups thought his views were too Catholic. Charles the First forged an alliance with Scotland, however by the end of 1648 Oliver Cromwell had taken control of England with his New Model Army, The Roundheads, this was the result of a civil war as the parliament didn’t agree with Charles’s views, but there were men who stood by Charles that were known as the Cavaliers an army of royalists, eventually Charles the First was tried, convicted and executed for high treason, which took an executioner two hacks with his sword to complete the execution.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4b0G_auKCI (1)

Oliver Cromwell after then continued to dominate the Common Wealth, which was short lived in all fairness, and was also a member of the Rump Parliament at one point, however Cromwell was forced to leave Ireland in 1650 in order to invade the scots as a result of them proclaiming Charles the Second, Charles the First’s Son, as their King, however in 1651 Charles II was defeated and was forced to fled to Europe, and Oliver Cromwell then became Virtual Dictator of England, Scotland and Ireland, whilst Charles II lived in the next 9 years in exile in France, The Dutch Republic and The Spanish Netherlands. In 1658 Oliver Cromwell’s death which then followed a Political Crisis, and eventually the restoration of a Monarchy, and so Charles the second was invited back to Britain, And so the restoration period began.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5abHKvUBQ (2)

 

(1) + (2) - Both videos shown to us in class by Laura, and can be found on YouTube. 

Rehearsal Blog 1 (The Double Dealer)

So far throughout rehearsal we have completed a read through of the script and made cuts to it as well, as it is a very long play, the cuts we made we had to think whether they made sense to the story before we cut the language.

We then got our parts, I will be playing the part of Lord Froth, he is a very straight faced character, that when played with complete serious whilst delivering the lines can be a very funny character at times. His wife Lady Froth is having an affair with Mr Brisk the Fop of the play, the relationship between Lord and Lady Froth is one of difference to your average, when they are alone together they seem distant and argue, however when they are in public they come across as madly in love.

When looking for characters that would help me develop Lord Froth I looked into various characters such as Sam the Eagle, and also Professor Snape:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB-wmOYelnM (1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5qloszXpJw (1)

Both these characters have allowed me to create a voice, it is a deep straight tone with a slight grumble to the throat, I deliver my lines slowly for effect. As for my stance I always have one hand behind my back my chest pumped out and when I look at other characters I sneer down my nose. Many of his lines he laughs at others, to add to the straight cut style of this character I never laugh with my mouth.

We later worked through act one and two, a lot of my notes that I have written in my script are little pieces that I had experimented with during rehearsals and have worked for humour. Every time we block a scene we have always double checked that we understand not only what is happening in the scene but also the language, this has proved helpful to say the least as it gives you a more in depth insight into your character and the role they are playing in the scene.

In other lessons we have been looking at the contextual side of Restoration i.e. the social political and historical background to the time, this week we played a few exercises so that we could work out how much we knew about the time period, and after we looked at a brief Skelton in chronological order of what had happened through 1660 to the 1800s.

(1) + (2) Found on You Tube by me when researching.

Recording Group and Solo Performances

Artistic Interpretation:

The solo pieces I have chosen are as follows David Attenborough's "The Blue Butterfly", Dr Zeus's "Cat In The Hat" and a 7-11 advert. The reason I grouped these pieces together was because vocally they were significantly different from one another, for instance "The Blue Butterfly" I had to perform with a soft tone, with good diction because this extract was meant to calm audiences as well as have an intellectual edge to it, however "The Cat In The Hat" had several characters, and is also a children's book, so my tone and pitch had a lot of variation and the pace to the extract has quick with a bouncy rhythm because I had to excite my target audience. And finally the 7-11 advert was meant to be relate able to the listeners, and so I read through the piece and decided who the piece was aimed at, so I came to the conclusion I had to be laid back in the way I performed it. All of my pieces had to be adapted to suit radio, as none of them were a radio genre when I picked them, with my David Attenborough I had to focus on helping the listeners to visualise what I was talking about, and so I performed it in a descriptive manner. On the other hand "The Cat In The Hat" I had to bring to life, and I adapted it to suit a mixture of both an audio book and a radio drama type of genre.

Throughout the rehearsal period I struggled with having a clear variation between all the pieces vocally, "The Cat In The Hat" was one that I had the most difficulty with, because the piece was so fast paced I often found myself sinking in and out of different voices, I did however finally come up with an idea having listen to the constructive comments given by my peers, that if I made the characters very wacky and that their voices were clearly different than I wouldn't have any trouble, so I played around a lot with vocal techniques such as, pitch, tone, vocal inflections, pace of each character and even the diction.

The group piece we decided to do was "Seeing Beyond", which was originally a staged performance, which we adapted to a radio drama by using sound effects, microphone techniques, such as positioning ourselves closer or further away from the mic, as well as vocal techniques, like vocal inflections when whispering. We chose this piece because the script it's self interested us and we though it would be a challenge to adapt into a radio drama, also it had a variation of characters within the piece so we enjoyed looking at how we could make a distinctive difference between them so audience members could understand the piece with ease.

After we as a group had chosen the piece we spent a lot of time working out the sound effects that would fit well within the piece, our draft script was full of ideas for this, but we eventually cut a lot of sounds, however we did keep most of the ideas for vocal techniques and mic techniques within the script. We had to make the audience understand that Felicity and Maya were in separate parts of the theatre from Tom and Becky, to make this obvious we had Felicity and Maya stand together next to a mic, and the same for Tom and Becky, we also played used whispering within the piece so it sounded like Tom and Becky were actually in the audience and not on stage, this meant that we had to lean closer to the mic so we could be picked up, Felicity had to yell out to Tom and so she took a few steps away from the mic before yelling, this was so the sound didn't distorted.

Vocational Effectiveness:

After listening back to my solo pieces I found I lacked intention to some of the lines in the David Attenborough piece, even though at points I did feel I had the objective of calm and exciting the audience at the same time, I did find my tone sometimes bordering on being bored, to change this for the future I would add more pace giving it a clearer rhythm to the piece, which hopefully would take the bored tone away from the piece. With "The Cat In The Hat" I found myself mixing up the voices of The Cat and The Narrator, this was probably because I had gotten carried away and the lines from The Cat were close to The Narrators, what I should have done was taken a breath before continuing the piece. The overall performance my diction was clear, and I was happy with the variation in my tone through out each piece, this made it easier to tell it was a completely different extract. The performance itself was good, but there was still room to improve it.

Our group piece went well, each character was clear to listeners, and our characters intentions and emotions came across within the pieces. When listening to it the class agreed it was easy to tell the relationships between the characters. I felt though that we could have taken it further for instance Maya could have elongated her words to make it sound more mysterious, and Tom could have put more meaning on the lines for instance "Oh my god" sounded very flat I should have put more emphasis on the fact that he was freaked out. The piece itself had an intense atmosphere and I felt that was because of the sound effects that we had chosen, as well as how well our mic techniques worked, as it did sound as if Becky and Tom were in a separate of theatre because of how we grouped ourselves by the mic and how effectively we use being close or distant from the microphone. I think we also thought carefully about the pace of the piece, it started quite slow so listeners could understand who was who, and then as it intensified we picked up the pace.

Professional Effectiveness:

As a team I felt we all shared an equal part in the creation of the piece, we all contributed our own ideas. However it did take us a while to get working on this script, we did spend too much time looking for a script that suited us, but as soon as we got into it we were fine. We worked roughly on editing the script together and shared our thoughts of what we should put in and where it should go, and then in our own separate time,after Alicia had given us the draft SFX script, we personalised our own scripts to suit us which I thought worked well it gave us a chance to primarily focus on us and our characters within the work. We were very enthusiastic during rehearsals and read through the script whenever we could all together, and after spoke about what worked and what didn't, for instance the group pointed out we could emphasise the whispering for Tom and Becky more.

I felt I progressed my role within the piece well after being given constructive comments, and this was because I would always take the ideas on bored trying them out, for instance our lecture felt I could be more of a push over as the lines suggested Tom was in the script and I was also asked by one of my peers if I could feel more warmth to the fact my sister who had past way and come back to see me, both of these comments made sense to me and so the next week I went back and performed it taking those ideas on board and it worked very well. Through out the process I decided I needed to challenge my vocals more, which at first was difficult considering how bland the script was for vocal techniques, but I felt I acted on that by actioning my lines within my script, therefore giving the lines I was saying more meaning.

This piece itself did interest my class, they were intrigued about what had happened to Felicity and after noticing that I felt this would be good as mini series, that could be played on BBC Radio Seven, also known as 4 extra, because it caters to ideas like this, they put recordings of comedy and drama in the form of radio, and I think that it would suit audiences of 18+ its a simple series idea which could entertain audiences of this age, I wouldn't go any lower in age because I don't feel like a radio series would interested audiences that were younger. I think the best time to play it would be rush hour, as many people are sat in their cars waiting in traffic, and this could be a way of interesting them whilst they wait.