Year 12 Assessment theatre studies

Seminar on Stanislavski and his life and techniques

In groups you will create a seminar using power point and practical means including use of text and acting to explore:


A) Stanislavski’s life both professionally and private
B) The difference between realism and naturalism
c) The Stanislavski system exploring all the main techniques and how they were used in rehearsing a text.

Use all techniques including non naturalistic means in order to create an interesting and informative seminar.

Date to be performed: 7th October 2008






Acting Practical

Recreate a scene from a Doll’s house. You will be working in pairs and one three. You will create a naturalistic scene using the Stanislavski system to performance standard.

1 create the given circumstances and historical/social/cultural and economic plan of the times
2 create a character biography
3 work out the units and objectives for the scene
4 do practical exercises using the units and objectives
5 utilise the magic if and adaption and communion.

Document all parts of the rehearsal process in detail to enable you to write your exploration notes.

Date to be performed:14th October 2008

forthcoming theatre visitis

Six Characters In Search of an Author
Published Tuesday 16 September 2008 at 19:05 by Gerald Berkowitz
Rupert Goold and Ben Power’s free adaptation, transferred from Chichester, inventively translates Pirandello’s speculations on the nature of fiction and reality into very contemporary terms, but ends up being a bit too clever for its own good.

Eleanor David (The Mother) and Denise Gough (Stepdaughter) in Six Characters In Search Of An Author at the Gielgud Theatre, London Photo: Tristram Kenton
In the original, a family group suddenly appear in a theatre, claiming to be characters from an unfinished play and demanding to have their story staged. Goold and Power replace the theatrical setting with a wholly new frame of a documentary film maker. This works particularly well in the first half as the family, while still insisting that they are fictional, function as real people watching their story inevitably falsified by the film process even as the documentary makers try their best to be transparent presenters of the truth.
In the second act, the adaptors add several further levels of distancing as the supposed reality of the documentary makers is exposed as part of a film about documentary making. Then that becomes part of a play about the making of the film, and then that becomes part of the very play we’re watching.
Meanwhile, the poor documentary maker from the opening scenes finds herself trapped in a limbo separate from all the other levels of reality and unable to break through to any of them.
Pirandello’s point gets made, but somewhere along the way the evening has become more about the cleverness of the adaptors than about the themes of the play, and least of all about the story the six characters wanted to have told in the first place.
Ian McDiarmid is unwaveringly magnetic as the head of the character family, whether coolly lecturing on the play’s paradoxes or writhing in the perpetual torment his story imposes on him, although Denise Gough has been directed to be a little too shrill as the stepdaughter who, in a further complication, insists that her version of the embedded story is more true than his. Noma Dumezweni begins strongly as the filmmaker but seems to lose her hold on the character even as the character is losing her hold on reality. Rupert Goold directs all the other actors to make their characters one-dimensional cliches.

Ivanov

Once a man of limitless promise, Ivanov is plunged into debt.
His marriage is in crisis, and his evenings are spent negotiating loans, avoiding love affairs and fighting to resist the small town jealousies and intrigues which threaten to engulf his life.
Kenneth Branagh plays the title role in Chekhov’s explosive portrait of a man plagued with self-doubt and despair which vividly captures the electrifying atmosphere of Russia on the brink of change.

DV8's Artistic Director Lloyd Newson leadsa multi-ethnic cast in a poetic but unflinchingexploration of tolerance, intolerance,religion and sexuality.
DV8's new production is based onhundreds of hours of audio interviews collectedthroughout the UK with people directly affected bythese issues. Incorporating dance, text,documentary, animation and film,twenty years on DV8 still refusesto be defined.

Theatre visit year 11 and 12

'This examination of teenage lives as they break out into the adult world is an object lesson in the creative use of the stage.' Independent on Sunday
‘Stunning performances from a superb young cast… It is beautiful, haunting.’ **** The Scotsman‘One evocative coup de theatre after another.’ **** The Herald
J is 16. She has lived in care all her life. Tonight is her first night on her own - in a 'practice flat' set up to help her leave the care system. A gateway to the outside world it is a witness to countless hopes, fears and memories.
365 follows a group of young people who pass through the flat, taking their first faltering steps towards adulthood and independence.
The National Theatre of Scotland's Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone has created a powerfully visual piece of theatre, with choreography from Steven Hoggett (Frantic Assembly), songs from Paul Buchanan (The Blue Nile) and text by David Harrower, one of Britain's leading playwrights whose acclaimed work includes the Olivier award-winning Blackbird.
For everyone 16+Contains strong language