much ado 3

Interrogating your Relationships

·                     who is your family? None in the play

·                     Who are your friends? Hero, Beatrice, Margaret, Leonato

·                     Who are your acquaintances? Benedick, Don Pedro

·                     Who are your enemies? I have no enemies

·                     Who do you openly like? Hero, Antonio,Margaret

·                     Who do you openly dislike? Beatrice

·                     Who do you secretly like? Benedick

·                     Who do you secretly dislike? Margaret

Notes For Improvement From Director

• Volume and diction when speaking
• Fill the space with my voice successfully (new theatre is big)
• Energy and pace
• Bold and confident decisions, don't half don anything
• make sure space is balanced when a lot of people are on stage
• Think about the play in terms of the different atmospheres (party,private convo, etc.)
• slow down with the hero and ursula scene, have fun, be playful

IMPORTANT!

historical context

The Gulf War 


Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighboring Kuwait in early August 1990. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as Operation Desert Storm. After 42 days of relentless attacks by the allied coalition in the air and on the ground, U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire on February 28; by that time, most Iraqi forces in Kuwait had either surrendered or fled. Though the Persian Gulf War was initially considered an unqualified success for the international coalition, simmering conflict in the troubled region led to a second Gulf War–known as the Iraq War–that began in 2003.

Character soundtrack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OPc7MRm4Y8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THL4nsTS0CQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTXGL0xPyLA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUZeSYsU0Uk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqhfLTsEeZg

Some songs on ursulas playlist on how she feels at different points in the play.

much ado 2

Interrogating your Character and Objectives

My name is Ursula, I am a young girl who works for a very respectable young man called Leonato and am one of the women for his daughter Hero. I ma a working class girl who is very grateful for Leonato taking me in and i am very happy that i am working for him. It's currently night time as I stare at the mask for the party later, it make me nervous just to look at it, because i know who will be behind one of the other masks that i will see - Antonio, I can feel the cool night breeze through the window and see the stars shining through illuminating everything in the room except me. I enjoy the silence that surrounds me, that calm and peace and innocence before the party begins, i can hear hero and Margaret laughing off somewhere, all i want right now is one night to be someone else, who is sexy and wanted by an older gentleman such as Antonio, but my fear and my status stops me from ever getting something like that. Yes i feel happy and blessed i my circumstances but i can still want more, and i will get what i want - once i put this mask on i will no longer be ursula, ill be whoever i want to be.

The 9 questions

1.     Who am I? (Diary entry)

2.     What time is it? (For each scene i'm in, Year?, season, time of day or night?)

3.     Where am i? (For each scene)

4.     What surrounds me? (People and things)

5.     What's my relationship. (People and things)

6.     What's just happened before the scene starts? (what happens after the scene ends?)

7.     Objective (What do I want?)

8.     Obstacle (What's in my way?)

9.     Action (Tactics to get what I want?)

·     

Much ado character

Interrogating the text

·                     Given circumstances. (What do I know about my character from reading the play?)

·                     What do people say about my character?

·                     What do I say about myself?

·                     What is my journey through the play

·                     Action your script so you know what you are doing to the other person on every line

• I know that my Character is working class
• she works for Leonato
• she is close to everyone is the house
• has a naivety about her due to her youth
• has some sort of a crush or soft spot for Leonato's brother
• is close to hero and the other girls in the house
• cooking and cleaning is her duty
• Enjoys working with and for the family

I think my journey through the play isn't an extreme or profound one, it is more one of silliness and helpfulness for other characters such as hero and Beatrice. I think at the start of the play I am very set of doing my duties and being professional especially as the soldiers from the war are coming to stay but I feel like by the ending of the play I am a lot more confident in myself and in other characters, I am still keeping up professionalism and know my place in the world of the play as one of heros ladies but I'm also not afraid to have fun at parties and prank Beatrice for fun. People do not say anything about my character apart from Antonio who compliments me physically and who I openly flirt with.

The main two points of action for me is at the party with my split screen with Antonio and also me and Hero walking around the garden pretending that we do not know that Beatrice is listening to our conversation where we talk about her lack of being able to fall in love with anybody.
For the scene with Antonio i need to remember to just enjoy a game of almost cat and chase, him trying to catch and grab me while i play coy and say my lines and as for the scene with hero i walk around the garden at a leisurely pace whilst being extremely over the top with hero and reacting off of her energy and storytelling. 

Peer Assessment - Mani

When on stage Mani embodied the character of verges effectively through the use of his voice and body language and that made the character come to life. Showing his status and power through his body language but also effectively showing his naivety by the interactions with him and dogberry on stage. Furthermore his character choices in terms of voice to improve he should remember to keep up the accent and the voice because it is such a bold choice for his character means he has to successfully keep doing it throughout or we as an audience will stop believing in his character, i also feel like it will be effective if her has a character trait that will maybe show how almost lost his character is, such as a twitch or maybe lack of hearing or attention span.

Week Six Historical Context

The narrative of much ado is that a man called Don Pedro wins a war against his sibling Don John, and touches base with his men (fighters) to stay with Leonato who is the duke of Messina. One of Don Pedros companions, Claudio, becomes hopelessly enamored with Leonato's girl called Hero. A wedding is organized and, as a carefree joke, a gathering of companions plan to trap Beatrice, Hero's cousin, and Benedick, another trooper, into falling for eachother.
In the meantime however Don John likewise has an arrangement: he needs to ruin the wedding, and figures out how to persuade Don Pedro and Claudio that Hero has been unfaithful before she they marry, through untruths and misdirection. Claudio, on the big day declines Hero, calling her a whore. Her family are convinced to lie that she is dead. Afterward, the men acknowledge they were deceived - Hero was totally honest.
To compensate, Claudio consents to wed another person, despite the fact that he can't see her face amid the service. A short time later, he is charmed to discover that Hero is alive and he is to marry her. The other amazement is that the other arrangement works: Beatrice and Benedick really begin to look all starry eyed at and toward the end she acknowledges his proposition to be engaged.
It is believed that much ado was first performed during 1598 and 1599 - early sixteenth century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5qQRepozGU

I watched contemporary production of Much ado where they have adapted it into a play, this does give me a good idea of the play overall and the relationship that a lot of the characters do have with each other, it was helpful to that extent, however in some ways I dint think it helped because they are performing for film and are able to play it a lot more naturalistic than it would have to be played on stage to clearly get the story across, it made me see my character as this young cheeky girl who is very naive to some extent and it also showed how much energy is needed throughout the play for it to work, especially when it is scenes such as the masquerade party scene where a lot of people are on stage and there are cut scenes and such, it will look very poor if the energy is low. I think it works to keep the set and costume to what is needed during that play, so just the house as the main set and the costumes to naturalistic, however the style that the movie is in is very much so set in those times, i think it could work to take a risk and modernise it - make all the characters a little younger than they are actually cast in the play and give it that naive, chaotic atmosphere, I believe it will work seeing as the play is already a comedy and has this almost silliness to it.

Week 5 Historical context

I recently went to watch a more modern interpretation of one of Shakespeare's most famous plays - A midsummer's night dream. I say modern because the way it was performed was so original and modern it could only be described this way. This play has been performed probably thousands of times across the globe and yet they were still able to surprise me in the way it was staged and directed and i found myself falling in love with the characters all over again. One way it was different to the original is that they had a lot of very extravagant props, they used harnesses and wings and stripper poles and human sized swings with tents and all sorts ad i found myself anticipating what they would next bring out. I think the use of all these props not only modernised the play as previously mentioned but i think that it also left it feeling a more realistic and made it so the audience could picture what Shakespeare was trying to get across to us even more so as there was little left to the imagination unlike in Shakespeare time when props were not a priority and were not used as much.

Another way it is different is that they used a lot of songs and sound effects that weren't in the original production of the play. Due to when the play was first performed, they wouldn't be able to have huge technical changes,and people breaking out into modern songs with modern day backing tracks, thoroughly entertaining the audience like they did in the performance of Midsummers Night Dream. Back then they probably used the cello and other classical instruments like the violin and even though there was a woman at the beginning playing what looked to be a cello there was also others like guitars and keyboards which they would not have had during the Elizabethan age. In addition the set was extremely glamorous with very efficient scene changes. A glamorous and complicated set is something that they definitely did not have during the original production of the show and due to the nature of the show and how it was performed it did work extremely well, for example there was a scene in the play that particularly stood out to me in terms of set and staging - when the queen of fairies first falls in love the man in the horses head due to the potion she drank, she was brought up into the air by a swing like structure whilst the lighting focused on her and music added to the atmosphere, it was a very extreme yet effective way of portraying the scene and is in a way that would have been impossible for Shakespeare to do.

Another reason as to why this play was very effective was how it was cast. The cast was very diverse in terms of age, gender and ethnicity which i think added to the contemporary feel of the play as it wasn't stereotypically cast, this is interesting as during Shakespeare's era everyone would have been not only caucasian but all of them would have been male, therefore it was very interesting to see how these different characters were played by theses different actors in such a non-traditional way and how amazing the end result was.