So about two weeks ago LibraryGirl's laptop finally gave up the ghost, may it rest in peace, so I have been unable to update this blog and have now resorted to writing it on my Kindle. It is a bit difficult but I have been itching to post for over a week so it was this or nothing and nothing was not an option!
So onto the RTDA and the great tome 'Approach to Theatre'. When I last left you I said I had read King Lear and let you know how I got on, well I got on . . . well. I found Lear to be a riveting tale that has a lot of potential as a farce if it wasn't so tragic. To start I have to admit I really didn't like Lear himself who acts more like a pectulant child than the King of England. He bases the division of his Kingdom on a daughters single refusal to showboat her love for him. The denouncing and demonisation of this daughter is a shocking scene akin to a public flogging. After all this when his other daughter's started mistreating him I just didn't care. He was a contemptible character and there was no tragedy for me by the end and SPOILER ALERT!!!
When his daughter he denounced at the beginning dies with him at the end I just felt like Lear got his comeuppence. In the main plotline there was no sympathy for Lear, his actions and his selfishness were his downfall and no amount of moaning was going to make him sympathetic. The illegitimate son and love triangle plotline involving Edgar and the two daughters Lear favours seems like a staple of ribald comedy that became popular in the regency period, and is still very popular today, that would be very funny if it wasn't for the underlying themes of patricide and regecide. There is my biggest problem with Lear, it is just doom and gloom throughout. King Lear does not have the morality difficulties that plagues Macbeth and it doesn't put you on the edge of your seat like Othello where you are watching and willing someone to stop that vile villain Iago. Lear is a flat play that depressed me and had no payoff at the end, I don't need a happy ending and Romeo and Juliet which had a similar ending, sorry more spoilers, at least left us with hope that the war between the families was over. Lear gives you nothing inspirational or good just bleakness.
Staging Lear at least seems cheap and simple. The settings are basically great halls and the great outdoors. A throne is pretty much all the scenery you will need so it really is a simple production and that is how I would do it. I would minimise the amount of set but have a huge throne to dwarf Lear to show how small a man he truly is. My direction for the piece would not be sympathetic to Lear I would side with the daughters initially but after act two I am not sure what I as a director could do but present the action as it comes. This play comes down to each individual audience member making their own mind up about Lear. I think to a point the daughters have a point in their quarrel with Lear but murder is never the answer. So does he deserve to die? I think a more appropriate question is how would I tackle this piece? I gave my initial ideas but I keep pondering about it, i've been pondering for four weeks, and maybe that is this play's redeeming feature for me.
Showing posts with label King Lear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label King Lear. Show all posts
Friday, 18 February 2011
Sunday, 16 January 2011
RTDA Update and Musings
Ok so another Saturday and another day out and about on the South Coast where yet again I found more tomes for my studies with the RTDA. Here is the list of purchases...
State of Revolution by Robert Bolt
Presence by David Harrower
Shakespeare - Hit or Miss? by John Gielgud
German Expressionism Five Plays by Georg Kaiser
Marat by Peter Weiss
Postwar German Theatre An Anthology of Plays printed by Macmillan
Punch at the Theatre
All in all a good little haul which was most fun gathering together.
This dance studio has produced several dvd classes worth investing in but when I saw the title of the complete beginners I was hooked. 2 Left Feet Complete Beginners looks like its exactly what someone like me who has hardly any talent needs to increase their technical base and boost their confidence. A snip at £26.99 and something which the RTDA may need to invest in for the future.
RTDA isn't going to address everything that a drama school will but there is always another way of getting round these problems you just have to be willing to look and get creative with your solutions.
As for Lear, it is there waiting and it will be done soon. Having read the background and contexts has made me mull ideas over of the staging and presentation of such a dramatic piece of work. All of this is very well and good but for me as a creative person I really cannot put together a solid vision until I have studied the content and hopefully in the next week time will become available to really crack on with Lear and Approach to Theatre.
Remember to check in throughout the week for new articles and further content from the RTDA project. I hope you have a great week and please feel free to comment.
State of Revolution by Robert Bolt
Presence by David Harrower
Shakespeare - Hit or Miss? by John Gielgud
German Expressionism Five Plays by Georg Kaiser
Marat by Peter Weiss
Postwar German Theatre An Anthology of Plays printed by Macmillan
Punch at the Theatre
All in all a good little haul which was most fun gathering together.
Musings from the Week at RTDA
So this week whilst getting drenched at work a couple of thoughts about RTDA crossed my mind, slight little things that I didn't take into account when enrolling in this course. Learning prose, verse and the intricate nuances required to properly convey emotions on stage is relatively simple with practise and study, which is of course the point of this whole exercise, compared to learning two skills that most drama academies and schools teach but for which I do not really have the facilities nor the talent to teach myself. These are 1. Dance and 2. Singing. Now my singing voice is alright and and in many ways perfect for choral singing, plus when I get round to Cicely Berry's Voice and the Actor its breathing techniques and voice control exercises will probably improve my singing voice. I just wonder how much I can learn on my own singing along to 'Starlight Express' and 'Grease 2' compared to taking lessons, however perhaps I should peruse youtube and see if anyone on there is offering free lessons or tips. Then there is the dancing, well I have two left feet and when I HAD to do dance on my BTEC ND in performing arts course I was atrocious to the point of looking like I had only had one rehearsal when performing for an audience. So in a world and industry where you are expected to sing and be able to handle simple dance moves in Street Jazz, Tap, Jazz and Classical its kind of a problem being rhythmically challenged like myself. In the past I had looked up home dance courses and they were very pricey, I think the cheapest course I found back then was around one hundred pounds so I initially ignored the idea. Then today when I searched again I found a UK based company that offered a reasonably priced course on DVD.
This dance studio has produced several dvd classes worth investing in but when I saw the title of the complete beginners I was hooked. 2 Left Feet Complete Beginners looks like its exactly what someone like me who has hardly any talent needs to increase their technical base and boost their confidence. A snip at £26.99 and something which the RTDA may need to invest in for the future.
RTDA isn't going to address everything that a drama school will but there is always another way of getting round these problems you just have to be willing to look and get creative with your solutions.
As for Lear, it is there waiting and it will be done soon. Having read the background and contexts has made me mull ideas over of the staging and presentation of such a dramatic piece of work. All of this is very well and good but for me as a creative person I really cannot put together a solid vision until I have studied the content and hopefully in the next week time will become available to really crack on with Lear and Approach to Theatre.
Remember to check in throughout the week for new articles and further content from the RTDA project. I hope you have a great week and please feel free to comment.
Monday, 10 January 2011
Yeah well the Dog ate it! Excuses to the RTDA
Ok so if this was a Monday Morning about five years ago and I was supposed to hand in or produce some work that I was meant to have done for University and I wanted to stretch my deadline I would have come up with some excuse. I think my main excuse during my college and University years was 'My Printer is playing up again/My computer crashed and wiped the work' which was true due to the strange models of printers and pc's my Dad would purchase. Today I have no excuse really for why chapter two of 'Approach to Theatre' is not completed, I started doing it but didn't finish it. I read the introduction to King Lear and a whole load of information on its historical background, context and source. I even read about where the text originates from and how the great Tragedians throughout history modified the script to solidify their performances but not a stanza of Shakespeare's verse has passed my eyes yet. This is because I was busy this weekend. Busy doing what I hear you cry? Well here is what I was busy doing.
As I mentioned on Saturday we went into the manic and heaving town centre where we added several tomes to my collection of theatre books. However two other things were picked up during this trip to the shops. One was a video game called 'Heavy Rain' and the other was a dvd boxset of that 90s Fantasy television series 'Xena'. Saturday afternoon was then spent watching a couple of episodes of Xena and then copious amounts of Heavy Rain. Now this may seem like a complete waste of time however there were lessons to be learned and I found both very helpful.
Xena the Warrior Princess is about a former Warlord named Xena who is trying to right the wrongs of all the slaughter, chaos and general misery she has rained down on the Ancient World. Along the way she meets friends such as Gabriel who joins her in her roam around Thrace and Greece (I am only up to episode four) doing good deeds and kicking evil doers behinds. Now you may ask what on earth I could possibly learn from such a fantastical piece of television but there are real lessons to be learned from material such as this. One is conviction, the actors in this show give great conviction to their lines and Lucy Lawless (Xena) plays it very straight and honest. There is a certain campness to the whole show, I love it, which would probably make most theatre goers and people who worship the method and serious acting cry for the blood of the producers actors and anyone else involved but the truth is that Xena is well acted and it is a great example of entertaining television. If as a drama student I need to remember anything its that ultimately being an actor is about being able to entertain people and Xena entertained me. Also the way it is costumed and designed is very theatrical and that instantly gives it credit to help me with my understanding of design for film, theatre and television.
Now Heavy Rain may seem like a very odd thing to be writing on a theatre blog but this piece of video gaming is amazingly theatrical. It is essentially an interactive film noir in which you control the outcome of the story and characters involved. Set in an American city somewhere in the Northeast this story revolves around a man named Ethan and his relationships which are ruined by two tragic events. Now I loved this game and LibraryGirl and myself were hooked to the screen all evening and all of Sunday nearly too which is all very good I hear you all cry but again what does it have to do with the theatre? Well Heavy Rain wasn't really animated in the conventional way that video games are done, no its characters move because they were motion captured to move that way. Their faces were motion captured in the same way that Tom Hanks was in Polar Express so what you actually are watching as you interact with this epic movie is real actors playing out a real script. What this game has shown me is the subtle nuances within facial features and movements, because of the way it was constructed I was in the game more and I felt as if the fourth wall no longer existed that I was the characters. I just admired the whole game and the acting ability put forward. The voice acting was very good as well, in recent years people have praised games such at GTA IV for the acting involved but having played both these games Heavy Rain is vastly superior. I really need to work on my facial expressions and vocal skills if I want to be a good actor and that is what I learnt from playing this game.
So yes that is why I did not do my work, that is what led to my distraction. Am I sorry? No not at all because I did learn some things and I can go back to Shakespeare now. This week I will be back on track with King Lear being analysed. This time though I won't fix myself to a two day working period. With home schooling and education you have to balance everything within your day to day life and maybe thats the biggest lesson this weekend has taught me. So keep up with me as I continue working hard at the RTDA.
As I mentioned on Saturday we went into the manic and heaving town centre where we added several tomes to my collection of theatre books. However two other things were picked up during this trip to the shops. One was a video game called 'Heavy Rain' and the other was a dvd boxset of that 90s Fantasy television series 'Xena'. Saturday afternoon was then spent watching a couple of episodes of Xena and then copious amounts of Heavy Rain. Now this may seem like a complete waste of time however there were lessons to be learned and I found both very helpful.
Xena the Warrior Princess is about a former Warlord named Xena who is trying to right the wrongs of all the slaughter, chaos and general misery she has rained down on the Ancient World. Along the way she meets friends such as Gabriel who joins her in her roam around Thrace and Greece (I am only up to episode four) doing good deeds and kicking evil doers behinds. Now you may ask what on earth I could possibly learn from such a fantastical piece of television but there are real lessons to be learned from material such as this. One is conviction, the actors in this show give great conviction to their lines and Lucy Lawless (Xena) plays it very straight and honest. There is a certain campness to the whole show, I love it, which would probably make most theatre goers and people who worship the method and serious acting cry for the blood of the producers actors and anyone else involved but the truth is that Xena is well acted and it is a great example of entertaining television. If as a drama student I need to remember anything its that ultimately being an actor is about being able to entertain people and Xena entertained me. Also the way it is costumed and designed is very theatrical and that instantly gives it credit to help me with my understanding of design for film, theatre and television.
Now Heavy Rain may seem like a very odd thing to be writing on a theatre blog but this piece of video gaming is amazingly theatrical. It is essentially an interactive film noir in which you control the outcome of the story and characters involved. Set in an American city somewhere in the Northeast this story revolves around a man named Ethan and his relationships which are ruined by two tragic events. Now I loved this game and LibraryGirl and myself were hooked to the screen all evening and all of Sunday nearly too which is all very good I hear you all cry but again what does it have to do with the theatre? Well Heavy Rain wasn't really animated in the conventional way that video games are done, no its characters move because they were motion captured to move that way. Their faces were motion captured in the same way that Tom Hanks was in Polar Express so what you actually are watching as you interact with this epic movie is real actors playing out a real script. What this game has shown me is the subtle nuances within facial features and movements, because of the way it was constructed I was in the game more and I felt as if the fourth wall no longer existed that I was the characters. I just admired the whole game and the acting ability put forward. The voice acting was very good as well, in recent years people have praised games such at GTA IV for the acting involved but having played both these games Heavy Rain is vastly superior. I really need to work on my facial expressions and vocal skills if I want to be a good actor and that is what I learnt from playing this game.
So yes that is why I did not do my work, that is what led to my distraction. Am I sorry? No not at all because I did learn some things and I can go back to Shakespeare now. This week I will be back on track with King Lear being analysed. This time though I won't fix myself to a two day working period. With home schooling and education you have to balance everything within your day to day life and maybe thats the biggest lesson this weekend has taught me. So keep up with me as I continue working hard at the RTDA.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)