2

13^th November 2012

In the first part of this lesson we had a workshop on ensemble work. In this workshop we had to do a number of exercises that explored the different skills you need to have to be successful in an ensemble piece and the issues that might be presented.

In the exercises we learnt about the concentration that you need in an ensemble piece of theatre as we learnt that a lot could be happening at one time, and you need to be aware all the time and to be in contact mentally and engaged with one and other, so that the performers can all be in sync with each other, creating a stronger, more focused and more powerful piece of theatre. This was really interesting for me as it showed me how much mental work needs to go into being part of an ensemble, because people can often think that being in a group you can just go along not really being involved in the piece and thinking that you aren’t important. However this showed me how powerful a piece of theatre can be if everyone is fully involved and dedicated to it.

I also learnt how powerful and visually effective being in an ensemble piece of theatre can be as it can emphasis a point or a message, as before I always thought of acting naturalistically get messages across the best because you can be connect to the emotions and moved by them. However from doing these exercises I learnt that breachtian style of acting, where gestus is used and in fact an ensemble can be as powerful on sending a message to the audience as it grabs the audiences attention and by having everyone engaged can show the audience how meaningful and important the message is.

We then went back to the play that we are using as our stimulus, “Blondie”, and we looked at the list of people that she listed as have engaged in crimes against humanity, for example Bin Laden, Hitler, Blair, we each had to pick a person and create a piece of brechtian theatre around that person. In our group we picked to do our piece on Thatcher, in this piece we highlighted the main things that stood out in her lifetime and in her career as the prime minister, we pick the hype that surrounded her being the first woman Prim Minister, then the shutting down of the mines, the IRA and the taxing of milk. These were just some of the most heard of things that Margret Thatcher did, and some of the feed back was that we could put in more things about her childhood, or something to make us know more about her. We then made her really exaggerated and unbelievable because this unconnected her to the audience and also it made her seem more of a representation of people in government than her as a character. We also made the other actors play more than one of the character this made us not connect to the characters that we were playing, even though some of the subjects could have been quite emotional. However I think that we could have elongated the scenes that we do, because we went over some of the subjects, such as the IRA, to make them more effective and to show more of what happened and the crimes against humanity that she committed. We also used humour, in the form of song, in our piece of theatre because Brecht always liked the use of the humour to send messages in another way. This also uses the idea of alienating the audience as they become very aware that they are watching a piece of theatre with a very distinct message to it.