year 12 reminder

Don't forget theatre visit on tuesday 2pm national theatre get your tickets from me on monday.

Endgame theatre review timed essay on thursday in lesson.

reviews for End game

Two months ago, Mark Rylance was playing a freewheeling social outcast in Jez Butterworth's hit play Jerusalem at the Royal Court, when he received an unexpected phone call. Simon McBurney, director of Complicite theatre company, was two weeks into rehearsals for his West End production of Beckett's Endgame, and both his lead actors – Richard Briers and Adrian Scarborough – had pulled out. Would Rylance step in and play opposite McBurney?

1. Endgame
2. Duchess theatre,
3. London
4. WC2B 5LA

1. Until 5 December
2. Box office:
0844 412 4659

By rights, alarm bells should have rung. Rylance recalls that another actor once described the typical Complicite rehearsal process to him as follows: "It led to a day when, to a person, every actor was convinced that this was the first Complicite show that was going to be absolute shit. And it wasn't until Simon had fished out the last bit of hope that any of them might have had, and squashed it into a rich compost of all their ambitions, rotting there at the end of the garden, that something original could grow." Sitting beside him, McBurney laughs drily. Rylance continues: "Hearing this, I felt I had come to understand something about Simon. He has more capacity to deal with chaos, a wider love of randomness and impulse, than the rest of us."

Rylance wasn't put off, which is why the two men are now in a bar at the Duchess theatre in London, where they are preparing to play Beckett's tragicomic double act – Hamm and Clov, with Rylance as the imperious, despondent Hamm, and McBurney as his impatient servant. They make an intriguing double act themselves: McBurney, widely revered as a theatre visionary, fidgets with a piece of paper, while Rylance, a former director of the Globe theatre with a reputation for eccentricity, meticulously arranges his packed lunch of tinned salmon, lentils and mustard dressing on the table in front of him. Both speak softly – Rylance in sumptuous metaphors, McBurney with a probing intellect. There is a thrumming quality to McBurney, as though he were plugged into an electric current; his hair flies statically upwards from his head.

What outsiders don't appreciate about the theatre, McBurney says, is that it works in chaos. Even the greatest success can be a happy accident – like Boeing-Boeing, which won Rylance a Tony award for best actor when it transferred to Broadway last year. The production only came about because its director, Matthew Warchus, had a few weeks to spare and said to Rylance that he wanted to do "something silly". "Increasingly, I quite like things coming surprisingly," says Rylance. "Having spent 10 years at the Globe, being responsible for the fates of 100 or more people, it's very nice not to have to live a year in the future."

Admiration and envy

Rylance admits to being apprehensive about tackling Beckett for the first time. He emailed Beckett veteran Fiona Shaw for advice when he took the job (she said an actor needs to find a way of making the play as shocking as it first was), and is reading a biography for background. But the chief attraction of this production was the opportunity to work with McBurney. It's a first, but only by accident rather than design. The pair are close contemporaries – McBurney is 52, Rylance is 49 – and have followed each other's careers with interest.

McBurney says he first noticed Rylance when he was performing at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, in the early 1980s. "He was fascinating to me, because he seemed to be swimming somewhere in the mainstream of things. He was invited to work at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he played Hamlet – all the things that I never imagined would come my way." Rylance regarded McBurney with the same mixture of admiration and envy. The first time they were in a room together, he thinks, was in 1987. McBurney had come to see The Wandering Jew at the National, in which Rylance was performing, and "hadn't thought very much of it", Rylance recalls. "My impression was that Simon was very strident, quite frightening. I would go along to Complicite shows and think they were wonderful, and wanted to be part of that crowd, instead of being institutionalised."

He did try. In the early 1980s, Rylance and six friends set up their own experimental group, the London Theatre of Imagination. "We didn't have anywhere near the same success as Complicite," he says now. "I was very unhappy about that. I still hanker to make pieces – but I don't long any more to have a company. The Globe has kicked a lot of that out of my system."

Knowing McBurney now, Rylance wonders whether he has come to regard Complicite as a burden, in that he is always expected to do something groundbreaking. He sympathises with McBurney's desire not to have his theatre labelled. "I think it was one of the first things that got me into being an actor: I used to do many different, crazy things in my life to try and make people not sure what I was. That was particularly satisfied by acting different parts on stage."

McBurney doesn't contradict him, and adds: "As an actor, it's much easier for me to get work in the movies because nobody knows who I am, except for the work that I've done in another movie. I really enjoy that." (He has recently had roles in The Duchess and a forthcoming Harry Potter.) While he accepts that there are "consistencies and continuities" in his theatre work, he becomes twitchy at any suggestion that there is a Complicite style he might bring to Endgame.

This isn't such an outlandish proposal: Complicite productions are celebrated for their all-encompassing theatricality, and McBurney grows animated as he describes how Endgame is ripe for reinvention. "It's like an extraordinary installation of words – you could put it up in Tate Modern.I sometimes feel I would like to do crazy things with Endgame, where someone says something, but the words, instead of being spoken, are written words projected out of their mouth."

What infuriates him is the expectation that he will always take a radical approach. "In Germany, when you're asked to direct something, one of the first things they say is: 'What is your conzept?' To which I answer: 'I do not have a conzept.'" He emanates scorn. He says he is more interested in understanding Beckett's mindset. "He is extremely careful about his choice of words and actions," McBurney says – particularly when it comes to his precise but sometimes baffling stage directions. "Just as you speak a line of text and say, 'I don't know what that means', you do an action and say, 'I don't know what that's doing.'" The Beckett estate has a low tolerance for directorial interventions but Rylance predicts it will have no complaints: "I haven't been this faithful to a text, ever."

A compulsive curiosity

The struggle for understanding, says McBurney, has been at the root of every theatre piece he has ever worked on, whether it is understanding memory (1999's Mnemonic), mathematics (2007's A Disappearing Number), or the Japanese language (2008's Shun-kin). He puts this down to a compulsive curiosity: "I constantly want to know, what is a table, or what is a cat?"

This is a production he has been working towards ever since the earliest Complicite shows, mime pieces which he describes as "very Beckettian in spirit". His chief worry now is that: "People will see it and think that it's the finished thing. I know Mark and I will go on finding and finding, because we can. I can't think of any two rehearsals in which our interpretation has remained the same. Everything is a search."



Evening Standard
Mark Rylance is a masterclass in Hamm acting in Endgame

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness”, says the legless old woman Nell in Samuel Beckett’s apocalyptic play. It’s a perverse claim, typical of Beckett, yet in Complicite’s claustrophobic production unhappiness does provide comedy. A blind man, Hamm, squirms in a wheelchair. His servant, Clov, cannot sit down and staggers around the stage; we sense he would like to go elsewhere but is inextricably bound to his master. In two bins lurk Hamm’s parents, Nell and her similarly disabled husband Nagg. They and Clov are conventionally thought of as the three nails on which Hamm (a truncated hammer) crashes down. Yet the interdependence of Hamm and Clov is clear: they share their suffering, and so do we. In chess, the endgame begins when there are just a few pieces left on the board. Crucially, it does not have to result in a decisive conclusion, since stalemate is always a possibility. Beckett’s characters seem trapped in that condition. They inhabit a depleted world, tormented by memories of a better past where there were sugar plums and flourishes of greenery.

They return repeatedly to images of this past — Nell lapses into a reverie at the mere mention of “yesterday” — and the future seems unimaginable. In 1957 the Lord Chamberlain’s office refused the play a licence because Beckett would not amend a line about God: “The bastard! He doesn’t exist!” He eventually relented and changed “bastard” to “swine”. Here the offending word is restored.

This is as it should be, for Beckett is the most linguistically sensitive of writers, and amid the play’s remorseless asperity there’s poetry — given brilliant expression by director Simon McBurney, who imbues every blighted element of the drama with a flicker of humour.

Mark Rylance brings mercurial fury and a haunted bittersweetness to the role of Hamm. Seated throughout, he nonetheless gives a performance of kinetic intensity. His modulations are adroit, though occasionally a bit immodestly telegraphed. One moment he resembles a dyspeptic club bore, the next a forsaken manchild; he is a king, a seer and a Christ figure, but also a hysteric and a stingy little bully. Simon McBurney’s stiff-legged Clov recalls a primitive wind-up toy, at once downtrodden and energetically resentful, while Miriam Margolyes is a touching Nell.

The design, by Tim Hatley, is a masterpiece of bleakness. Two high windows are eyes letting light into the set’s skull-like chamber; its mean mouth is a swing door brilliantly contrived to squeak in two different ways.

Yet even as Beckett reduces the world to a dungeon where mankind totters towards its end, he seems to intimate that art is the richest verification of our being imaginatively alive.

Beckett described Endgame as “rather difficult and elliptical”. He wasn’t joking. Some, inevitably, will complain that next to nothing happens, or that it’s
too desolate.

Nevertheless, it is not easy to imagine a much better production of the play than this one.

Henry Hitching - Evening Standard


A bleak world that ought to depress but is a pure delight Endgame is the masterpiece that sorts out the men from the boys when it comes to admirers of the bleak dramatic world of Samuel Beckett.

Waiting for Godot, as the recent West End revival starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart proved, may depict two men stranded in a hostile Godless universe, but at least they have the consolation of companionship and a determination to keep on keeping on. Krapp’s Last Tape may present us with a dying man whose hopes have turned to ashes but it is also illuminated by a beautiful memory of love. And in Happy Days, Winnie somehow keeps smiling even when buried up to her neck.

In Endgame (1957), however, Beckett mercilessly excludes every possibility of the positive. The world outside is described as a zero, and while Beckett was doubtless considering the possibility of nuclear annihilation, his evocation of an arid planet now also reminds us of the possibility of a world laid waste by global warming. Inside the grim penumbral room where the play takes place, cruelty prevails.

The monstrous Hamm, blind, unable to walk, and slumped in a wing chair on wheels, mercilessly bullies the slave, Clov, who may also be his son. Meanwhile, Hamm’s old mother and father are kept in dustbins and fed dog biscuits. Both die in the course of the play. When a flea is discovered in Clov’s crotch it’s a matter for grave concern for it might eventually mutate into a human and perpetuate the misery of life on earth.

The effect ought to be terminally depressing, but somehow one emerges from Simon McBurney’s superb production feeling strangely braced, even cleansed. This is partly because we know that except in our darkest moments, most of our lives aren’t quite as terrible as those Beckett depicts. But it is also because of the clarity, courage, spare beauty and pitch black comedy of the writing in Endgame. Even in this vision of hell, Beckett makes us laugh, and gasp at his sheer courage in making art out of terminal despair.

I haven’t seen a better production of the play than this. Fresh from his triumph in Jerusalem, Mark Rylance has mutated from a wild rural hero into a bitter, emaciated sadist, who loves the sound of his own cruel voice but who somehow also makes us laugh at his extravagant actor-laddy diction and feel sorry for his distress.

McBurney combines the cowed with the comically laconic as Clov, alternately raging at and cowering from his master, while scuttling up and down tepladders with legs that seem to have lost the ability to bend at the knee. And Miriam Margolyes and Tom Hickey, clinging to the rims of their dustbins like chimps clutching the bars of their cage at the zoo, bring warmth and memories of marital happiness to the stage, as well as a grim reminder of the senility that awaits us.

That such a dark, unsparing play can leave its audience feeling so richly rewarded is one of the mysteries of great art.

Charles Spencer - THe Daily Telegraph
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COMPLICITE - Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer Present

Endgame synopsis

Endgame is Samuel Beckett’s second published play. The plot is continuous, unbroken by separate scenes or acts. Roger Blin first produced this play in France at the Royal Court, in 1957, and later Blin and Georges Devine produced it again in an English production. Both were badly received by almost all London critics. Only after the now famous Paris production of 1964, starring Patrick Magee and Jack Macgowran in the roles of Hamm and Clov, was Endgame recognized as a masterpiece.

As the play opens, Hamm is dying in a world that seems to be coming to an end. Hamm takes satisfaction in knowing that all of existence may fade to nothing. Hamm is confined to a chair, and throughout the play he discards, reluctantly, the continuing prospects of life: food; painkillers; his servant Clov, on whom he is totally dependent; the pole that enables him to move his wheelchair; and holding the dog, on which he lavishes his affection.

Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell, having lost their legs many years ago in a bicycle accident, live in ashbins from which they occasionally emerge only to be cursed by their son. His mother dies and Hamm, knowing that Clov is leaving him, prepares for his last battle, first to outlive his father and then to face inevitable death without the help of the few objects that have given him comfort in his final days. Hamm soliloquizes in terms of the last moves in chess, a king evading checkmate as long as possible with stern asides on religion, ‘‘Get out of here and love one another! Lick your neighbor as yourself!’’ He echoes Pozzo’s gravedigger aphorism in Waiting for Godot when he says, ‘‘The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.’’ Clov prepares to leave, hating Hamm for past wrongs, yet now without pity for Hamm.

More about Beckett

interview with Alan Rickman about Samuel Beckett

extract from endgame by Samuel beckett

year 13 inspiration for devised piece Krapp's last tape by Samuel beckett

Look at the movements and the moments of silence and the humour mixed with the sadness of his isolation

1600s linked research

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MhZsGvk7GE

Christopher marlowe links for year 13 research

http://www.marlowe-society.org/

http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/index.htm

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/marlowebio.htm

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=christopher+Marlowe&hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&hs=eb6&sa=G&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=LXAGS_DiLsj44AbFrqXTCw&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=22&ved=0CEwQ5wIwFQ

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doctorfaustus/

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3123

Faustus Christmas holiday work

Faustus Christmas work

Social/Cultural/Historical

1 Find out about Christopher Marlowe, His life, his other plays

2 Find out about life in the 1600s politics etc

3 What were their views on religion/Education/ morals in the 1600s

Visual/Design elements

· Find out about staging of plays in the 1600’s- original staging. How did it affect design elements? Lighting/set/costume/ Acting Techniques.

Language

· Comparisons with Shakespeare/ any similarities?

Form and Structure

· Write out the plot in 10 sections

· Characters: Who are the main characters? Do a character biography for each and what are their super objectives for the play?

Vision

What is your overall vision for your production of Faustus?

Think of time set in, original or modern?

Context: making relevant to a modern audience.

Staging: Where will your play be staged what kind of theatre space?

How will this effect communication with the audience?

Overall message.

Endgame theatre visit for year 12 and 13 Theatre studies on 26th November 2009

Complicite presents:


Endgame

by Samuel Beckett


Directed by Simon McBurney, who also plays Clov, Endgame features Olivier and Tony Award-winning actor Mark Rylance as Hamm, Miriam Margolyes as Nell and Tom Hickey as Nagg.

Endgame will play until 5 December at the Duchess Theatre Catherine Street, London WC2B 5LA







"Simon McBurney...is the greatest theatre-maker of his generation; Mark Rylance is the greatest actor...Now they are together on stage at last."
The Independent

Directed by Simon McBurney
Design - Tim Hatley
Lighting - Paul Anderson
Sound - Gareth Fry
Costume - Christina Cunningham
Co-produced by Complicite, Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer

Year 13 5 different parts of ourselves stimulus for Character work

Five parts of us:

1 What image we try to present to others
2 What we think of ourselves, privately
3 What we don't know about ourselves
4 What others think of us?
5 What are our dreams?

SWED Year 13 first draft deadline Monday 2nd Nov

SWED notes tips

Supporting Written evidence

How is the initial material being researched and developed at significant stages during the process of creating drama?

You need to analyse how you have used your stimulus. (The Freud article) and the message of the piece. “Why is the fear of isolation so powerful in man?”

How have you used it in the piece, give examples from one scene and the whole vision of the piece and how it has affected your plot and structure of the play.

Then discuss your research into Jung and Michael Wesch and Mad V and how that has developed the structure and choices of the piece. Give examples from scenes and how you have developed the ideas.

Discuss practitioners e.g. Artaud and how you are using his techniques to develop the piece. Again give examples and analyse.

How effectively are you personally exploring and developing your roles?

You need to analyse your character development using practitioners, eg Stanislavski or Brecht or through ritual and Grotowski e.g. Arbitrary cycle.
Give examples from the scenes and analyse how they are developing through your rehearsal process.

How did you and your group explore the possibilities of form, structure and performance style?

Discuss and analyse using specific examples from scenes, workshops done with me and then how you utilised them in your scenes. Give detailed analysis don’t just describe scenes or techniques and make sure you use quotes from practitioners to back up your examples. This really refers to use of space, communication with the audience and design and visuals as well as practitioners.

How did the work of established and recognised theatre practitioners, and /or the work of live theatre, influence the way in which your devised response developed?

Analyse Shunt’s money and how that influenced your ideas on use of space and form and style and communication to audience and your response to the message. Then analyse how you have developed the work using Artaud and Grotowski and Brecht. Give detailed examples from scenes and relate them to the play and practitioners, using quotes to back up your points.

How Successfully did the final performance communicate your aims and intentions for the piece to your audience?

Give specific detailed examples of scenes and show what your intentions and aims were for the scenes and overall vision and then analyse how well they were communicated and why. Give quotes from audience responses and analyse to back up your points.

How effectively did the social, cultural, historical/ political context of the piece communicate to your audience?


Give detailed analysis of what your intended aims were in relation to cultural etc context and then give specific examples of how that was realised in performance.

The experimental performance collective Shunt aren’t short of a bob or two. Having started life just over 10 years ago, holed up in some dingy railway arches in Bethnal Green, their relocation to a vast labyrinth of vaults beneath London Bridge station in 2004 coincided with support from various funding bodies. Next year, Arts Council England will be stumping up a handsome £150,000 to keep them in business.

I’m not pointing this out in order to demand they account for every penny - though some may emerge so baffled and bemused from their latest show, Money, a radical response to Zola’s 1890 novel L’Argent, that they rail against the idea of their receiving a single sou in subsidy. However there’s such a huge gulf between the resources lavished on the technical aspects of this production and the detail invested in the text you’re forced to think about the cost of it all. And that, oddly enough, intentionally or otherwise, takes you to the heart of Zola’s work, which was inspired by the notorious collapse - in 1882 - of the Union Generale. By leaving you feeling awed by its big-bucks spectacle and short-changed by its hard-to-follow script, the piece makes you consider the nature of scams.


Without wishing to give too much away, half-way down Bermondsey Street, round the corner from their London Bridge vaults, Shunt have set up a second home in an old tobacco warehouse once owned by Fidel Castro. Inside stands a towering metallic edifice, wreathed with stairways and steaming piping. Absurdly guarded by modern riot-police clutching colourful helium-balloons, so that it resembles an outlandish fun-fair attraction, it fills the air with much ominous grinding, clanking and rumbling.

Summoned inside this three-storey ‘abandoned relic of Victorian technology’ - and instantly bamboozled by an infernal round of pitch-darkness and deafening noise, you’re introduced to a handful of locations that combine 19th-century and modern ambiences. Figures prowl above and below you, glimpsed through ingenious sections of transparent flooring, engendering a vague mood of suspense and debauched excitement.

In a plush ante-chamber you watch comically incompetent beret-wearing guards handle a bearded entrepreneur who is seeking to win the backing of an inscrutable Jewish banker in order to get impossibly rich quick. In a champagne-bar upstairs, you’re invited to hurl plastic lotto-style baubles about the place, while eavesdropping on mysterious conversations taking place in a parlour and sauna below.

What does it all mean? Even Zola would have been stumped. There’s so much cryptic nonsensicality coursing through this 90-minute affair that it’s probably best to relax and let it wash over you. That way you can emerge none the wiser yet curiously refreshed.

Stimulus for devised piece year 13

Does this make us an internet community and have a stronger voice as an individual or are we still isolated?

Stanislavski Exploration Notes Ist Draft Deadline 3rd November 2009

Evaluation Notes tips

The social, cultural, historical and political context

· Write about Norway at the time of Ibsen

· Women’s place in society

· Laws relating to fraud

· Social rules of society at that time

· Clothing / housing/ life of the middle classes

Language

· Give examples of the use of language in the play which helps the reader :

Understand the style of the play eg: Naturalism

Explores the class of the character

Reveals information about the characters personality and or relationship with other characters

Non Verbal Communication

· This should look at the use of subtext in the writing and give examples of that

· Also explore the super objectives of the characters and their units and objectives in the scene that you worked on for your presentation

Vocal Awareness

Explore your response to playing middle class women and how approached the language in terms of clarity / vocal expression and centreing of the voice. Use practical workshop and performance and rehearsals for scene

Characterisation

Write and analyse character choices you made using the Stanislavski techniques and how you developed your character for the scene give examples and quotes from the text and Stanislavski to back up your points.

Include:

Given circumstances

Character biographies

Magic If

Truth and belief

Character five step

Units and objectives

Emotion memory/imaging

Adaption/ communion

The visual, aural and spatial elements of production

Write and analyse all features which make it a naturalistic play and how they add to the themes and message of the play

Set

Costumes

Lighting

Props

Type of staging

Relationship with audience

The response to a practitioner

Explore the difference between Realism and Naturalism and what makes the Dolls house a naturalistic play.

Give examples from your rehearsals and performance on how you worked using the Stanislavski techniques and how it enabled you to create a believable 3 dimensional character and evaluate your understanding of the practitioner and what you learnt about him.

Interpretation

Explore and evaluate the choices you made about the scene and how you chose to show the characters and themes and message of the play through the scene you worked on

Give examples from your rehearsals and performance and analyse all aspects in detail.

*This all should be written in the first person and should be a personal exploration of the work that you have done and evaluation of the play and practitioner you have worked on.

EX Student working with Oily carte Theatre Company

http://www.oilycart.org.uk/complex_disabilities/current/

Take a look at their hydrotheraphy play designed for children on the Autistic spectrum

stimulus for devised piece year 13 Michael Wesch Anthropology

Drama and theatre studies course power point

Drama and Theatre Studies specification

View more presentations from kingalfredmedia.

More Artaud theatre of cruelty footage

Analyse what you think is effective or not

year 13 devised piece rehearsal schedule

Rehearsal for Year 13 devised play


Week 2: 14th -18th September
Brainstorming and establishing extra rehearsals
Character /location/themes
Basic plot.
message


Week 3: 21st Sept-25th

Character development
Work on scenes
Carry on research for stimuli
Utilise practitioners work.
Development of ideas

Week 4: 28th September
Basic plot and scenes
Start on supporting written evidence questions
1st 4 questions especially.


Week 5: 5th Oct-9th
Rehearsals and workshops towards performance



Week 6:12th Oct- 16th
Production meeting
Play should be ready to show as a limp through by end of the week


Week 7: 19th Oct-23rd


Work on difficult scenes and work on who will get costume/set/music/lights etc.

Supporting written drafts given in and handed back before half term.
Week 8: half term




Week 9: 2nd nov-6th nov
Run throughs



Week 10: 9th- 10th Nov
Run throughs

Week 11 16-18th Nov

Dress rehearsal : 17th

5pm
Perf: 18th 5pm to parents/staff/friends

Supporting written evidence completed for 1st day of new term January 2010.

year 12 Theatre studies

Welcome back year 12
HENRIK IBSEN (1828-1906)

This article was originally published in A Short History of the Drama. Martha Fletcher Bellinger. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1927. pp. 317-22.

IN the entire history of literature, there are few figures like Ibsen. Practically his whole life and energies were devoted to the theater; and his offerings, medicinal and bitter, have changed the history of the stage. The story of his life -- his birth March 20, 1828, in the little Norwegian village of Skien, the change in family circumstances from prosperity to poverty when the boy was eight years old, his studious and non-athletic boyhood, his apprenticeship to an apothecary in Grimstad, and his early attempts at dramatic composition -- all these items are well known. His spare hours were spent in preparation for entrance to Christiania University, where, at about the age of twenty, he formed a friendship with Björnson. About 1851 the violinist Ole Bull gave Ibsen the position of "theater poet" at the newly built National Theater in Bergen -- a post which he held for six years. In 1857 he became director of the Norwegian Theater in Christiania; and in 1862, with Love's Comedy, became known in his own country as a playwright of promise. Seven years later, discouraged with the reception given to his work and out of sympathy with the social and intellectual ideals of his country, he left Norway, not to return for a period of nearly thirty years. He established himself first at Rome, later in Munich. Late in life he returned to Christiania, where he died May 23, 1906.

IBSEN'S PLAYS

The productive life of Ibsen is conveniently divided into three periods: the first ending in 1877 with the successful appearance of The Pillars of Society; the second covering the years in which he wrote most of the dramas of protest against social conditions, such as Ghosts; and the third marked by the symbolic plays, The Master Builder and When We Dead Awaken. The first of the prose plays, Love's Comedy (1862) made an impression in Norway, and drew the eyes of thoughtful people to the new dramatist, though its satirical, mocking tone brought upon its author the charge of being a cynic and an athiest. The three historical plays, or dramatic poems, Brand, Emperor and Galilean, and Peer Gynt, written between 1866 and 1873, form a monumental epic. These compositions cannot be considered wholly or primarily for the stage; they are the poetic record of a long intellectual and spiritual struggle. In Brand there is the picture of the man who has not found the means of adjustment between the mechanical routine of daily living and the deeper claims of the soul; in Emperor and Galilean is a portrayal of the noblest type of pagan philosophy and manhood, illustrated in the Emperor Julian, set off against the ideals of the Jewish Christ; and in Peer Gynt is a picture of the war within the soul of a man in whom are no roots of loyalty, faith, or steadfastness.

When The Young Men's League was produced, the occasion, like the first appearance of Hernani, became locally historic. The play deals with political theories, ideas of liberty and social justice; and in its presentation likenesses to living people were discovered, and fierce resentments were aroused. The tumult of hissing and applauding during the performance was so great that the authorities interfered. The Pillars of Society, Ibsen's fifteenth play, was the first to have a hearing throughout Europe. It was written in Munich, where it was performed in the summer of 1877. In the autumn it was enacted in all the theaters of Scandinavia, whence within a few months it spread over the continent, appearing in London before the end of the year. The late James Huneker, one of the most acute critics of the Norwegian seer, said: "The Northern Aristophanes, who never smiles as he lays on the lash, exposes in The Pillars of Society a varied row of white sepulchres. . . . There is no mercy in Ibsen, and his breast has never harbored the milk of human kindness. This remote, objective art does not throw out tentacles of sympathy. It is too disdainful to make the slightest concession, hence the difficulty in convincing an audience that the poet is genuinely humain."

The Pillars of Society proved, once and for all, Ibsen's emancipation, first, from the thrall of romanticism, which he had pushed aside as of no more worth than a toy; and, secondly, from the domination of French technique, which he had mastered and surpassed. In the plays of the second period there are evident Ibsen's most mature gifts as a craftsman as well as that peculiar philosophy which made him the Jeremiah of the modern social world. In An Enemy of the People the struggle is between hypocrisy and greed on one side, and the ideal of personal honor on the other; in Ghosts there is an exposition of a fate-tragedy darker and more searching even than in Oedipus; and in each of the social dramas there is exposed, as under the pitiless lens of the microscope, some moral cancer. Ibsen forced his characters to scrutinize their past, the conditions of the society to which they belonged, and the methods by which they had gained their own petty ambitions, in order that they might pronounce judgment upon themselves. The action is still for the most part concerned with men's deeds and outward lives, in connection with society and the world; and his themes have largely to do with the moral and ethical relations of man with man.

In the third period the arena of conflict has changed to the realm of the spirit; and the action illustrates some effort at self-realization, self-conquest, or self-annihilation. The Master Builder and When We Dead Awaken must explain themselves, if they are to be explained at all; for they are meaningless if they do not light, in the mind of the reader or spectator, a spark of some clairvoyant insight with which they were written. In them are characters which, like certain living men and women, challenge and mystify even their closest friends and admirers. Throughout all the plays there are symbols -- the wild duck, the mill race, the tower, or the open sea -- which are but the external tokens of something less familiar and more important; and the dialogue often has a secondary meaning, not with the witty double entendre of the French school, but with suggestions of a world in which the spirit, ill at ease in material surroundings, will find its home.

It is significant that Ibsen should arrive, by his own route, at the very principles adopted by Sophocles and commended by Aristotle -- namely, the unities of time, place and action, with only the culminating events of the tragedy placed before the spectator. After the first period he wrote in prose, abolishing all such ancient and serviceable contrivances as servants discussing their masters' affairs, comic relief, asides and soliloquies. The characters in his later dramas are few, and there are no "veils of poetic imagery."

IBSEN'S MORAL IDEALS

The principles of Ibsen's teaching, his moral ethic, was that honesty in facing facts is the first requisite of a decent life. Human nature has dark recesses which must be explored and illuminated; life has pitfalls which must be recognized to be avoided; and society has humbugs, hypocrisies, and obscure diseases which must be revealed before they can be cured. To recognize these facts is not pessimism; it is the moral obligation laid upon intelligent people. To face the problems thus exposed, however, requires courage, honesty, and faith in the ultimate worth of the human soul. Man must be educated until he is not only intelligent enough, but courageous enough to work out his salvation through patient endurance and nobler ideals. Democracy, as a cure-all, is just as much a failure as any other form of government; since the majority in politics, society, or religion is always torpid and content with easy measures. It is the intelligent and morally heroic minority which has always led, and always will lead, the human family on its upward march. Nevertheless, we alone can help ourselves; no help can come from without. Furthermore -- and this is a vital point in understanding Ibsen -- experience and life are a happiness in themselves, not merely a means to happiness; and in the end good must prevail. Such are some of the ideas that can be distilled from the substance of Ibsen's plays.

On the plane of practical methods Ibsen preached the emancipation of the individual, especially of woman. He laid great stress upon the principle of heredity. He made many studies of disordered minds, and analyzed relentlessly the common relationships -- sister and brother, husband and wife, father and son. There is much in these relationships, he seems to say, that is based on sentimentalism, on a desire to dominate, on hypocrisy and lies. He pictured the unscrupulous financier, the artist who gives up love for the fancied demands of his art, the unmarried woman who has been the drudge and the unthanked burden-bearer -- all with a cool detachment which cloaks, but does not conceal, the passionate moralist.

From the seventh decade of the last century to his last play in 1899, the storm of criticism, resentment, and denunciation scarcely ceased. On the other hand, the prophet and artist which were united in Ibsen's nature found many champions and friends. In Germany he was hailed as the leader of the new era; in England his champion, William Archer, fought many a battle for him; but in the end no one could escape his example. Young playwrights learned from him, reformers adopted his ideas, and moralists quoted from him as from a sacred book. His plays scorched, but they fascinated the rising generation, and they stuck to the boards. Psychologists discovered a depth of meaning and of human understanding in his delineation of character. He did not found a school, for every school became his debtor. He did not have followers, for every succeeding playwright was forced in a measure to learn from him.


HENRIK IBSEN RESOURCES

* Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) - A biography of the Norwegian dramatist, plus links to purchase all of his works currently in print.
* Henrik Ibsen: Monologues - An index of monologues by the Norwegian dramatist.
* Henrik Ibsen: Poems - An index of poems by the Norwegian dramatist.
* Henrik Ibsen Quotes - A collection of quotes from the plays and other writings of the Norwegian dramatist.
* Henrik Ibsen Quotes - More quotations from his most famous plays.
* Brand - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* A Doll's House - A synopsis and analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* A Doll's House - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* An Enemy of the People - A synopsis and analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* Ghosts - A synopsis and analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* Hedda Gabler - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* The Lady from the Sea - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* The Master Builder - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* Peanuts and the Ibsen Drama - A first-hand account of a performance of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler by Mrs. Fiske.
* Peer Gynt - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* The Pillars of Society - A synopsis and analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* The Pretenders - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* Rosmersholm - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* The Social Significance of Henrik Ibsen - An essay by Emma Goldman on the Social significance of Ibsen's dramas.
* The Task of the Poet - Full text of a speech given by Ibsen to a group of Norwegian Students on September 10, 1874.
* When We Dead Awaken - An analysis of Ibsen's last drama.
* The Wild Duck - An analysis of the play by Ibsen.
* Purchase Plays by Henrik Ibsen
* Search eBay for Henrik Ibsen items

can't pay won't pay production photos

Joyce Henderson working on Can't Pay won't pay with year 12 AS students

Joyce used a mixture of Le Coq exercises and Commedia Del Arte to explore the concept of energy and taking the characters choices to the extreme. Joyce will be doing another workshop with the year 12 next week as part of a new college bursary given each year to KAS for work shops with professionals to help develop students performance skills.

Master class Jon Ronson

Yesterday the year 12 and 13 media students and year 12 theatre studies students met Jon Ronson the writer and Journalist (see interview below). It was fascinating to see how productions are developed and the process of optioning a book to be made into a film. We also discussed the ethics of journalism ie. what is printed from interviews especially if the writer thinks the interviewee has made a mistake in expressing that view. Should he go ahead and print. It provoked a healthy debate. His stories were highly entertaining and thought provoking and the students found the whole experience exciting and fascinating. A big thanks to Jon Ronson for giving his time.

Jon Ronson master class

About Jon Ronson
AN INTERVIEW WITH JON RONSON FROM THE WEBSITE 'THE WOLFMAN KNEW MY FATHER'

As a youth growing up in Cardiff, culturally what were your interests?

Jon Ronson: Chapter Arts Center. I remember seeing a double bill of Woody Allen's Zelig and Martin Scorsese's King of Comedy at Chapter. I remember that better than pretty much anything that actually happened to me. Yes, the things I remember most clearly from my childhood are things I watched and listened to rather than things I experienced. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Spillers Records, where I first heard Captain Beefheart. Listening to Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones at Bill Davies' house in Roath Park during the Cardiff High School lunch-breaks. Reading Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse 5. Sirens of Titan was heartbreaking to me, especially the plight of the jellyfish type animals that lived in the caves beneath Mercury. Seeing The Specials at Sophia Gardens before it fell down in the snow.
I used to go to the Sherman Theatre too. In fact when I was sixteen I somehow landed a part in Death of a Salesman at The Sherman. I played Henry, the next-door neighbour's son. The only line I remember is, "What happened in Boston, Willy?" I don't remember what happened in Boston, but I think it had something to do with shoes.
Other than that, I just hung around amusement arcades (on Caroline Street and Queen Street) with a boy called Dick Johns. I was a hoodie, although I had no hood. Dick and I were obsessed with David Bowie. We used to walk down Cyncoed Road singing Five Years and Rock & Roll Suicide. Non Sadler (who died when she was about 22) introduced me to Lou Reed's Transformer, also on Cyncoed Road. Dick and I and Bethan Morgan used to go busking. I learnt how to play the keyboards.

Did they force you to play rugby in school?

Jon Ronson: Oh God, yes. I was a prop. There was frost on the ground. Prop. Frost.
As I answer these questions I am feeling waves of melancholic nostalgia, which I think is a sign of getting old.

How on earth did you end up in the Frank Sidebottom band?

Jon Ronson: Well, when I left Cardiff I went to study journalism at the Polytechnic of Central London. When I was 20 I became the the entertainments manager for the Student's Union, and somehow I became friendly - over the phone - with Frank Sidebottom's manager, Mike Doherty. One day Mike phoned me up in a panic and said, "We're playing a gig in London tonight and Mark Radcliffe (who was the keyboard player at the time) has had to drop out. Do you know any keyboard players?"
I said, "I can play the keyboards."
He said, "Well, you're in!"
I said, "I don't know any of the songs."
He said, "Can you play C, F and G?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Well, you're in!"
So I turned up at the Cricketer's in The Oval, and I told Frank Sidebottom that I was slightly worried because I didn't know any of the songs. Frank said, "Do you know C,F and G?"
I said, "Yes."
Frank said, "Well, you'll be okay then."
They put me behind the speaker-stack and turned my keyboard right down, and when Frank introduced the band at the end, nobody cheered me because nobody knew I was there.
Anyway, for some reason they asked me to continue with the band, and I did, for about three years. In fact I dropped out of college to move to Manchester and become a member of the Frank Sidebottom Oh Blimey! Big Band. Life on the road was a more glamorous prospect than journalism studies. We supported Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers at the Town and Country Club. It is not easy to describe Frank Sidebottom to readers who are not familiar with his oeuvre. Could you provide a picture?

Chris Evans was our driver, briefly. We used to drive around in a transit van. One time we were playing in London and we pulled up on Edgware Road and the driver - I can't remember if it was Chris Evans - wound down the window and said, "Excuse, mate?"
"Yeah?" said a passer-by.
"Is this London?" said the driver.
"Yeah," said the passer-by.
"Well, where do you want this wood?" said the driver.
My favourite Sidebottom story was when he supported Gary Glitter at some Student Freshers' Ball. Gary Glitter's people were really rude. "You haven't got a dressing room. You can't drink any of our beer. You aren't allowed to use our lights. Whatever happens don't go anywhere near the hydraulic floor."
And so, as soon as Frank went on stage, he jumped onto the hydraulic floor and started singing: "Come On! Come On! Do you want to be in my gang...?" And the floor rose, setting off various fireworks and smoke bombs, and floated out towards the audience. After the show, Frank jumped off stage and ran down the corridor, chased by Gary Glitter's bouncers. Frank took off his head and costume - he had his own clothes underneath - just as the bouncers caught up.
"Did you see Frank Sidebottom?" they asked him.
"He went that way," said Frank.

How much of a grounding for your later books and documentaries was your Time Out column? (I seem to recall lots of new age madness and eccentric behaviour in those pieces).

Jon Ronson: There was indeed much madness in those columns, but I wouldn't say that they had any relation to the later books. When I was a Time Out columnist I was only 23 or 24, and really I hadn't found my voice. I was just copying Victor Lewis-Smith and PJ O'Rourke. I only really worked out how to write when I wrote Them: Adventures with Extremists.
I got the column, by the way, because when I was in Frank's band I started presenting a late night radio show on KFM in Stockport. I co-presented with Craig Cash, who went on to create and act in Early Doors and The Royle Family. Those were happy times. But then we got sacked, and there was a 'Reinstate Craig Cash and Jon Ronson' campaign in the Manchester media. This somehow got the attention of Time Out in London, and they offered me a column. I never got reinstated though.
Craig Cash still calls me from time to time. When The Royle Family was nominated for a BAFTA, Craig left a message on my answer-phone: "Ronno! It's Craig. Am I going to see you at the BAFTAs tonight? Oh no I'm not, am I, because you haven't been nominated again. Poor old Ronno with his face pressed up against the glass."
And when I became a father, Craig left another message on my answer-phone: "Ronno! I've heard you're a father. Congratulations. But you haven't got two BAFTAs on your shelf, have you?"

How did you get your first break in television?

Jon Ronson: It is a strange story. When I was writing my Time Out column, I got a call from my old journalism teacher from the Polytechnic of Central London.
He said, "You should do a TV series. Do you mind if I approach Janet Street Porter?"
I said, "Do you know her?"
He said, "No."
So he wrote to her - I had no idea what he said, I still don't - but the next thing I knew I was in her office at the BBC in White City.
She said, "I think it's a BRILLIANT idea for a series."
I just sat there, because I had no idea what the idea was. I just smiled and nodded.
And the next thing I knew I had been allocated £420,000 to make a six half-hour series for BBC 2.
It was nuts. It is always a mistake to commission a series when one has no idea what the series is.
So I made a series called The Ronson Mission. We basically made it up as we went along. Some of it was terrible. Actually, most of it was terrible. I was just in my mid-20s. I had had no ambition whatsoever to be on TV. It was all quite surreal. There were a few good ideas in there, but I must admit that the Guardian called The Ronson Mission one of the five worst series of Michael Jackson's tenure as controller of BBC2. I didn't enjoy making it, primarily because these were the days before DV cameras, and so there was a huge crew, a van full of us turning up at people's houses trying to replicate reality.
After The Ronson Mission I didn't make any more TV shows for at least three years. I was glad to have it behind me. But then I got a call from one of the series' only fans - a man called Peter Grimsdale who was a commissioning editor at Channel 4. He said he wanted to put me together with a director called Saul Dibb. By now hi-8 cameras had been invented so film-making was much more like writing. the camera was like a notebook. We made a film called New York to California, which was an epic journey from a little village called New York, just outside Norwich, to a caravan site down the road called California. And then we made Tottenham Ayatollah, which was our breakthrough. Tottenham Ayatollah documented our year with Omar Bakri Mohammed, an Islamic militant. That was the beginning of the story that ended with Them.

Which do you prefer - filming or writing?
Jon Ronson: Writing. I am a natural writer, and not a natural director. I have friends - like Adam Curtis, who made The Power of Nightmares, and Saul Dibb, who has gone on to direct Bullet Boy - who are natural directors. They love pictures and sound and pacing. They are aesthetes. I like words.

With regards your presentational style how faux is your naif ? And generally how happy are you with your TV persona?

Jon Ronson: I have only got my TV persona (if it IS a 'persona', that is, I'm not sure that it is a persona) right on a few occasions: Secret Rulers of the World and Tottenham Ayatollah. The rest of the time it hasn't quite worked. Faux Naifery is a delicate art that can get annoying if mishandled. I've been doing a lot of mishandling of late.
I don't know how faux it is. Much of Them is about me trying to track down the Bilderberg Group, who the likes of Omar Bakri and David Icke believe is the shadowy cabal that secretly controls the world.
Now, I could have done a whole lot of research about Bilderberg before I set off to try and track them down. but I didn't want to solve the mystery before I had the adventure, whatever the adventure might be. As it was, I followed them to Portugal with a conspiracy journalist called Big Jim Tucker. I had no idea if Bilderberg existed or if they were just a figment of people's imaginations. There's a passage in Them where we scout around the hotel where this mysterious Bilderberg Group are supposed to be meeting. And afterwards, we start getting followed by men in dark glasses. One of my favourite passages from Them is about this chase. It is the moment when I become the people I'm writing about. Here's the passage:

‘British Embassy.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m a journalist from London. I’m calling you on the road from Sintra to Estoril...’
‘Hold on.’
‘Press office.’
‘I’m a journalist from London,’ I said. ‘I’m calling you on the road from Sintra to Estoril. I’m being tailed, right now, by a dark green Lancia, registration number D4 O28, belonging to the Bilderberg Group.’
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I just heard you take a sharp breath.’
‘Bilderberg?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They watched us scouting around the Caesar Park Hotel and they’ve been following us ever since. We have now been followed for three hours. I wasn’t sure at first, so I stopped my car on the side of a deserted lane and he stopped his car right in front of us. Can you imagine just how chilling that moment was? This is especially disconcerting because I’m from England and I’m not used to being spied on.’
‘Do you have Bilderberg’s permission to be in Portugal?’ she said. ‘Do they know you’re here?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Bilderberg are very secretive,’ she said. ‘They don’t want people looking into their business. What are you doing here?’
‘I am essentially a humorous journalist,’ I explained. ‘I am a humorous journalist out of my depth. Do you think it might help if we tell them that?’
From the corner of my eye, I saw Jim wind down his window. He leant his head out and blew an antagonising lady-like kiss at the Lancia.
‘Hold on a second,’ I said.
‘Jim!’ I said, sternly. ‘Please stop that.’
I lowered my voice.
‘I’m here with an American,’ I said, ‘called Big Jim Tucker. He’s an agent provocateur. That might be the problem. Perhaps you can phone Bilderberg and explain that I may be in the car with Jim Tucker, but I’m not actually with him.’
‘Listen,’ she said, urgently. ‘Bilderberg is much bigger than we are. We’re very small. We’re just a little embassy. Do you understand? They’re way out of our league. All I can say is go back to your hotel and sit tight.’

(And this is what happened when we got back to the hotel).

Sandra from the British Embassy called me on my mobile phone to inform me that she had spoken to the Bilderberg office at the Caesar Park and they said that nobody was following us and how could they call off someone who didn’t exist?
‘He is,’ I said, in a staccato whisper, ‘behind the tree.’
‘The good news,’ said Sandra, ‘is if you know you’re being followed, they’re probably just trying to intimidate you. The dangerous ones would be those you don’t know are following you.’
But this was scant comfort. What if these men were the dangerous ones, and I happened to be naturally good at spotting them? What if I was adept at this?'

None of this would have happened had I done all my research beforehand. I wouldn't have slid into this world of paranoia. Is that faux naive, genuinely naive, or not naive at all?

For Them: Adventures With Extremists you did actually put yourself in some genuinely scary situations - do you regard yourself as a courageous person?

Jon Ronson: Absolutely not. I am not fearless at all. I just felt I had to go where the story took me, and that included being chased by Bilderberg, and infiltrating Bohemian Grove, that strange secret club where the Bushes and the Cheneys go and have their ceremonies. These things were not fun for me at the time, although I'm now glad that I did it.

Why do you think people like David Icke and Ian Paisley allowed you to get reasonably close to them, given that you have a reputation as a journalist who allows his subjects to make themselves look foolish?

Jon Ronson: It isn't always me who makes the initial approaches. Ian Paisley was approached by a Northern Ireland television producer called David Malone, who secured the access before I was brought into it. I did approach David Icke myself. We'd had a bit of a sore past together, but he gave me the benefit of the doubt. Remember that - by and large, I would say - the people in my stories often come out of it very well. David Icke, Alex Jones, Lt Col. Jim Channon and General Stubblebine (from The Men Who Stare At Goats), even Omar Bakri, I would argue, come out of the stories as human beings, with character traits the reader can identify with. Some of the people I write about come out of it extremely well: The Weaver family, for instance, from Ruby Ridge. They have been demonized for years by the media. Them was really the first time that their story was told.

How did you first learn about the new age influence on the American military that eventually produced The Men Who Stare at Goats?

Jon Ronson: In 1995 the CIA declassified the fact that the Army had a team of psychic spies, and they'd been trying to be psychic for 23 years. They'd been based in a condemned clapboard building down a wooded track in Fort Meade, Maryland. They were Black-Op, nobody knew they existed. Anyway, when the CIA declassified them and closed them down it was such a colourful story nobody wondered whether it was the tip of an even weirder iceberg. In 2001 I met a psychologist called Ray Hyman. Ray had been employed by the CIA to evaluate the psychic program. They knew Ray was a sceptic and would say the program was nonsense. They wanted this conclusion so they could close the unit down. Ray indeed concluded it was nonsense. When I met Ray (in Las Vegas), I asked him if he'd heard of anything else going on, and he said he had some vague notion - he'd heard some rumours that they were trying to teach soldiers how to be invisible and walk through walls. He gave me a few half-remembered names: Channon. Stubblebine. So I clung onto that scant information and followed it, to Channon and Stubblebine, and then onto the War on Terror, where these ideas live on in mutated form.

How has The Men Who Stare at Goats been received outside of Britain, particularly in the States?

Jon Ronson: It has been received very well indeed in the States. Rave reviews in all the major papers.

You've used your family a lot as raw material for your Guardian column. Do they find it disconcerting that casual remarks might end up as part of a humorous anecdote in a national newspaper?

Jon Ronson: No. My wife feels the same way I do about the column - if it works, if it is funny, it is fine. If it isn't funny, it isn't fine. I wrote a short memoir called A Fantastic Life, about taking my son to Lapland to meet Santa, which I think is the best bit of writing I've ever done. It is not exploitative of my son. He is the straight-man in it. I am the idiot. I see the columns as additions to that story. One day they will all come together to form something else. Maybe a film script? Maybe a book?

Have any particular writers or humorists influenced your prose style or approach to writing in general?

Jon Ronson: Oh yes. Kurt Vonnegut. Raymond Carver. I learnt short sentences from them. And nowadays, Jonathan Coe's What A Carve Up! This influenced the kinds of subject matter I write about. I love Lynn Barber's journalism. And I am a great fan of an American radio show called This American Life. I contribute to it sometimes. It is full of people who do the kind of things I do - Sarah Vowell, David Sedaris, Ira Glass. William Leith has a brilliant new book coming out called The Hungry Years - a memoir of a compulsive eater.

Finally Jon, you have an excellent website www.jonronson.com with a lively forum but let's be honest, it's like having your own cult. Is there a danger that you might turn into a crazed egomaniac - the kind of person who ends up in one of your own documentaries?

Jon Ronson: Things don't go to people's heads when they get to 37. By the time we get to 37 we are too bowed by the travails of life to become crazed egomaniacs.