Contextual Studies 2 (The Double Dealer)

William Congreve's play was first produced in 1693, to which Henry Purcell set it to music.
Major events during 1693 are as follows:

February 8 - The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is granted a Royal Charter from King William III and Queen Mary II of England.
March - William Congreve's first play "The Old Bachelor", is performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. 
17th June (27th June New Style) - Nine Years' War: The French fleet defeats the joint Dutch and English fleet in the Battle of Lagos off Portugal.
19th June (29th July New Style) -  Nine Year's War: The Dutch-English army led personally by King William III of England is defeated by the French (with Irish Jacobite Mercenaries) at the Battle of Landen near Neerwinden in Flemish Brabant.
October - Congreves Comedy "The Double Dealer" is first performed in Drury Lane.  (1)

Another event ties in with the theme of justice 'poetic justice' to be more specific, the character Maskwell is a great portrayal of this within the play 'the double dealer', as he takes advantage of other characters bending them to his own will, before he is found out at the end. The historical event was way before the time of this play being written in fact it was when Congreve was a student, the event its self was Robert Young who at the time was a forger being put on trial for forging a document in Marlborough's hand, and for this was convicted to the tower. Although you may think that the story is based around Mellephant this is a small misconception, it actually concentrates more on Maskwell and this character is based on Robert young, the fact that ties this person to the character is the fact they so easily deceive the people surrounding them to their own benefits.   (2)

Themes of the Play:

• Deceit
• Love
• Lust
• War of the sexes
• Manners and behaviours of class it addresses anti puritanical
• Sexual life by large numbers of courtiers
• Trickery
• Comedy

Refrences:

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1693
(2) http://ardhendude.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-double-dealer-congreves-art-of-plot.html

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.

Ensemble Group Radio Project (Seeing Beyond)

The play we have decided to perform for our radio project is called "Seeing Beyond" it was a piece taken from a staged play, in which we have adapted to suit the radio genre Radio Drama. The piece looks at a psychic, Maya, who hasn't been able to see the dead for 10 years, but all of a sudden Felicity, the sister of Tom who is attending the seminar, appears wanting to make contact with her little brother, however Tom's Wife, Becky, who is sceptical of the whole situation is constantly intervening, little does Tom know Felicity has come to tell Tom a dark secret about Becky, which involves Felicity's death.........

Mediums, Psychics, and calling the dead from beyond dates back to early human history, however popularity grew noticeably within the 19th century. This popular entertainment, or also bring peace to family's, was soon started to be investigated, with many cases finding that the "Mediums" were in fact frauds, who weren't contacting the dead, they were just using cheap parlour tricks to make audiences believe they were, a very famous medium investigator was Harry Houdini, who after losing his mother set out to find a way of contacting her, but instead actually became persistently irritated with people being frauds that he perused as many as he could uncovering whether they were the real deal. Situations such as this still continue to this very day.


The time period of this play however is set in the present time, and so with television's in every household anyone can watch this "phenomenon" on shows such as "Psychic Sally" or "Colin Fry", the shows tend to now have less to do with moving objects, creepy voices and gushes of wind, and more to do with "talking" to the dead, this is also another widespread debate that these "psychics" actually have a team backstage researching audience members, this point is brought up within the play when Becky says "she got them of our reservations" after Maya mentions their names, "ill bet she has a whole team of researchers who look into people before they come to the show", these two quotes are in my opinion the reason for this play's creation it's looking into the controversy of these shows, this does come through mainly with the character Becky, but also at one point Maya says she hasn't seen a ghost or spirit in 10 years, which means for 10 years she has been faking her shows.

 

Tom is 32 years old, he has no longer got any biological family relations, hence the fact his sister means a lot to him. He has been married for 12 years to Becky, but sadly his sister past away when he was 22.

The relationship between him and his sister was very close, considering they had grown up together alone, his sister was the parent of the siblings, as Tom is a bit of a push over, he tends to follow the lead instead of taking control of the situation himself.

His relationship with Becky isn't something he is in control of, Becky likes things done her way and so Tom would be found following after her every command, Becky did not like the way Tom looked up to his sister and the bond that they had, so we came to the conclusion she killed Felicity off, and that's what Felicity has come back to tell Tom.

The reason I think that Tom is a push over, and caring of other people, is because of lines such as "Lets go" Becky says, immediately Tom says "Yeah I'm getting really creeped out" the only time Tom doesn't do what his wife says is when Felicity is mentioned, in fact he practically begs Becky saying "Please do this for me", this is the attitude that I don't think Becky liked when Felicity was alive, because he stood up for himself and wanted to do something for himself.

Solo Radio Project (7-11)

7-11 Advert

Who? This is targeted piece of text I believe to be targeted at people my age, maybe starting university, or settling into a new house, I think this because of the lines "It's 2:00 in the morning" people my age tend to be up this early in the morning, "you think about cooking, then you remember the 3' alarm fire you started last time you tried using the stove", older generations would be able to cook.

What? It's an advert for a shop that sells food 24hr's a day.

Where? There is no setting to this advert, so the sound effects I've used are to entertain the audience, as well as make them remember the advert, as that's what adverts are about making your audience remember them, so that they buy your product.

Why? I chose this piece because it differs from the other texts, its short sweet and has a different outcome to the piece, the target audience is very different from the other pieces and the piece itself relies on sound effects to amuse the audience.

Voice:

Normal tone and pitch, to make it relatable to audience members. I want to create a voice that audience members would remember something catchy.

So it’s 2:00 in the morning...

*Alarm clock beeping*

and you’re starving.

 Nothin’ in the fridge, and nothin’ in the cupboards.

*Cricket insect noises*

You don’t even have dog biscuits hangin’ around.

*Barks*

You think about cooking, but then you remember the 3-alarm fire you started last time you tried using the stove.

*Fire alarm, followed by fire truck noises*

Well, check out 7-11. There’s gotta be one right near ya’. They have everything from burgers to tacos...24 hours a day...7 days a week. 7-11. Think of it as your own personal walk-in kitchen.

Normal tone and pitch: I want this piece to be as normal and relatable to the audience as it can so that it does its purpose, people will buy something they need if they can relate to a certain person in a certain scenario they find themselves in.

Catchy sound effects: I want the piece to be to the point and quick, just like the text suggests, so sound effects that are easy to listen to and understand straight away are perfect for a snappy advertisement such as this one.

Solo Radio Project (The Cat In The Hat)

Transcript Key:

*SFX*

Voice Techniques

(Vocal Prompts)

The Cat in The Hat

Who? The target audience of this piece was obvious from the start, this piece is aimed at young audiences, so the energy of this piece needs to match theirs, which is why this piece challenges my vocal techniques of all three, purely for the fact that if the piece isn't fun and silly, then the young audience will not be engaged.

What? The piece is taken from the famous children's book "The Cat In The Hat", by Dr Zeus, the extract I have taken is from the first chapter, and its a lot of setting the scene, and introducing characters.

Where? This piece is set in the young boys house.

Why? I chose this piece as the variation of vocal techniques I need to use are challenging, but this also makes it differ from the other piece, which is why it fits perfectly in my transcript alongside the other texts.  

Voices:

The Narrator:

Deep tone with clear diction. I want it to sound as if he could describe every detail, he should have a raspy tone to his voice kind of like the dramatic trailer voice over. But light, kind of like the narrator from the new version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The Boy: Higher pitch, his diction will be average and the will be a tone of boredom to his lines.

The Cat: The Cat has a deep tone to his voice, that frequently spirals out of control into higher pitches, its slightly psychedelic.

The Fish: Raspy high pitch tone, with a fast paced moaning noise.

SPEECH:

*Rain can be faintly heard in the background* (28 Seconds)

The sun did not shine. it was too wet to play. so we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.

I sat there with sally. we sat there, we two. and i said, 'how i wish we had something to do!' too wet to go out and too cold to play ball.

(Bored Tone, slowing the words, like whining)

*The Sound of a ball bouncing* (2 Seconds)

so we sat in the house. we did nothing at all.

so all we could do was to sit! sit! sit! sit! and we did not like it. not one little bit. and then something went BUMP!

*The Sound of a bump* (One Bump)

how that bump made us jump! we looked! then we saw him step in on the mat! we looked! and we saw him! the cat in the hat!

(Excited, Pace quickens, pitch high, lines sharp)

And he said to us, 'why do you sit there like that?' 'i know it is wet and the sun is not sunny. but we can have lots of good fun that is funny!' 'i know some good games we could play,' said the cat. 'i know some new tricks,' said the cat in the hat. 'a lot of good tricks. i will show them to you. your mother will not mind at all if i do.' then sally and i did not know what to say. our mother was out of the house for the day.

But our fish said, 'no! no! make that cat go away! tell that cat in the hat you do NOT want to play. he should not be here. he should not be about. he should not be here when your mother is out!'

(Telling of the character, Loud, high pitch tone.)

*Swishing of water is heard* (3 Seconds)

'now! now! have no fear. have no fear!' said the cat. 'my tricks are not bad,' said the cat in the hat. 'why, we can have lots of good fun, if you wish, with a game that i call up-up-up with a fish!'

(pitch gets higher on each up)

*Swishing of water* (3 Seconds)

The Narrator:  I had chosen these aspects because it distinguishes the characters from the narrator easily, which is important because the switches between them a quick and pacey, the diction is important as the narrator as he is describing the action. I wanted him to have a dramatic edge to his voice because, all the characters are meant to be drastically different from one another, to make it quite quirky and bouncy.

The Boy: The boy's tone it's self is pretty self explanatory, it had to be high so that listeners could tell who he was just by the sound of his voice, now his energy has to be high because he is a child but his diction is interfered with boredom, so the things he'll say will be a little whinny and so strong diction isn't a must for this character.

The Cat: The Cat In The Hat, needed to have the weirdest and wackiest voice, it's got to be something the target audience can remember, as he is after all the main character, so what I have done is played with the pitch and tone and instead of constantly being at one level, I use my vocal folds to create different levels.

The Fish: In my opinion the fish has to have a funny voice, because it will make the audience laugh as they wouldn't expect a normal household gold fish to sound like that, so I've gone for a high pitch voice as they are small animals, with a quick pace to his lines, because it is almost like he is telling of the kids and the cat all the time.