Vaudeville (1881-1920)

Pre-Vaudeville

Before the America civil war, Theatre in America was dominated by burlesque. Theatre was not just a place to go it was a place for men to drink so it was mainly aimed at males.

In 1881 a man named Tony Pastor decided that theatre shouldn’t be just for men, so he decided to put in a verity of performances like, stand up or circus shows. He then removed the rude and risqué content so that more than the rich and men were interested in Theatre, drinking alcohol was also forbidden in Theatres.

What he found out

He found out he could made a large amount of money by putting on cleaner performances for families to watch, as years past a bigger variety of performances came like mines and riverboats

Risqué Theatre was still around but was no longer the focus

The purpose of Vaudeville was to only entertain the audiences, between 1880-1920 they realised the most effective way to do this was using comedy sketches (mainly slapstick).

The demise

As years went on Vaudeville became more popular to many audiences attracting more performers but comedy sketches became more racist were the people performing would be very racist to them creating stereotypes. Silent movies were also at an all-time high and being concededly cheaper than theatres which caused vaudeville to lose a large amount of their audiences. A lot of Vaudeville theatres were shut down due to a loss of money.

New Vaudeville

Vaudeville has now been reborn as performances like Britain’s got Talent and the Royal Variety performances.  39 steps is a comedy spoof of Vaudeville performances.

What makes it New Vaudeville?

·         Overtop Physicality

·         Comedy sketch type performances

·         No character relationship with the audience

·         Often recognise your audience. Acknowledging that they are there.

Our performance:

We were given a scene from “The 39 steps” where Hannay runs into a Milkman outside after discovering a dead woman in his flat. I was partnered with Toby to perform this scene with. We both read the scene a couple of times then casted me as Hannay and Toby as Milkman. We played around with the scenes opening as it starts with Hannay colliding with the Milkman so we first opened with Hannay opening a door that hits the Milkman in the face. We then changed this to have Hannay to run straight into the Milkman and knock them both flying. We first practiced saying the lines and the voice we would use for our characters like Hannay was a posh well-spoken man and the Milkman was a cockney and older man. When we worked on this again we improved our spacing on stage to use our space as we were very close to the back when we first staged it. When we were restaging the scene Hannay would take a step forward when he started talking about the two men on the other side of the road. The Milkman would take a step forward to match Hannay when he spoke as well. For our ending when Hannay tricks the Milkman into giving him his Cap and Coat we have an overlong and exaggerated laugh at the story Hannay had told him. At the end Hannay starts to walk away then runs away as the Milkman looks at the 2 pounds he had just been given and we have a slow realisation in his face as it goes from really happy to be sinking into a really angry face as he then chases after Hannay.

Naturalism

Naturalism is a type of drama and theatre that was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to performances that attempt to create an illusion of reality by using a range of dramatic and theatrical skills.

The three primary principles of naturalism are called “faire vrai, faire grand and faire simple”.

Faire vrai: The play should be realistic, and the result of a careful study of human behaviour and psychology.

Faire grand: The characters should be flesh and blood; their motivations and actions should be grounded in their heredity and environment.

Faire simple: The presentation of a naturalistic play, in terms of the setting and performances, should be realistic and not flamboyant or theatrical.

Darwinian understandings pervade naturalistic plays, especially in the determining role of the environment on character, and as motivation for behaviour. Naturalism emphasizes everyday speech forms, plausibility in the writing, (no ghosts, spirits or gods intervening in the human action).

A choice of subjects that is contemporary and reasonable. (No exotic, otherworldly locales, fantastic locales, nor historical or mythic time-periods).

Influences:

Naturalistic writers were influenced by the theory of evolution of Charles Darwin. They believed that a person’s heredity and social environment determine one's character. Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism also attempts to determine "scientifically" the underlying forces (i.e. the environment or heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects. Naturalistic works are opposed to romanticism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic or idealistic treatment. Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, sex, prejudice, disease, prostitution, and filth. As a result, Naturalistic writers were frequently criticized for being too blunt.

Our performance:

For our performance we were put into a group of 6 and created our own piece of drama around Naturalism. As a group we decided that we wanted to focus around a dark theme like most Naturalism plays are based around. We agreed that we wanted to set ours around death and have the setting at the funeral of someone who has died. The idea for our piece came from the idea of when someone dies everyone becomes there best friend. We explored this idea and each created a character for this by planning out how they each knew her and could make it seem like they were friends, for example my character was the boss of the person who died, who makes it sounds like he is a good boss who tried to push the person who died to tried harder with work but in reality was giving the person way too much work and harassed this person in the work place. Our piece was based around this theme as we created characters like an old school bully and a family member who was never there for them. We had one good character which was the husband of the dead woman. We had all these characters talk about how they cared for the dead woman more than the rest until we had the husband shout at them all which reveals to the audience what all of our characters really are, which were bad people who only cared about the woman when it was too late. 

Shakespeare

In 1576 James Burbage ‘Farther of Richard’ built “The Theatre” in Shoreditch, London on a piece of land he leased. This was the first theatre in London. The lord chamberlain’s men were the company in residence of “The Theatre” from 1594 to 1596. Writers presented their ideas for plots with actors and managers for a show they want to create, if they presented a good idea people would invest in the show to be made. Play writers created performances as well as parts in the play with certain actors in mind of when they were creating there plays. Each actor got his own role own role for the show and only were given their lines to learn. Rehearsals were used only to plan staging and costumes as actors were expected to know all there lines when they turn up for rehearsals. Theatre closed 1593 due to the plague.

1597 Shakespeare’s company moved in to the “Curtain Theatre” due to falling to negotiate a new deal with the leas to the land “The Theatre” was built on. 1599 The Globe Theatre opened on the bankside, on the opposite side of the river to “The Theatre”. In 1603 the Plague appeared in London again which eventually closed the Theatre. Outside Theatre where open from April to October 1613. The Globe Theatre was burnt down due to a fire in the Theatre. 1614 the Globe Theatre was rebuilt on its original foundation, 2 years before the death of Shakespeare. There were also Boy Theatre Company which was young boys from prestige families who performed only to the well-educated and the rich. These performances were indoors with music and candle light. Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and King James took the throne which made the Jacobean theatre until 1625. King James only aloud dark performances in theatre which were to do with death. There were two types of performances:

Revenge Plays: Disturbing and violent, main character=Revenger

Tragicomedies: dark and grotesque humour.                      

Theatre Decline:

1642 The English civil war broke out between Parliamentarians and Royalist, Parliamentarians were against theatre and tore the Globe Theatre down and ordered all other theatres were torn down, all actors would be arrested and people would be fined for watching plays. 12 years passed before any form of entertainment was shown again.

Our performance:

We were given a scene from “a mid summer nights dream” where puck and a fairy were fighting over who was better, Oberon or Titania. Oberon and Titania then enter and argue with each other, then it ends with us hearing Oberon’s plan to put a love potion on Titania. We all played around with certain roles because we struggled with the pronunciation of some of Shakespeare’s language. We also decided that we would split the Fairy into multiple roles and divided there lines between us. We casted Dan S as “Puck”, Meg, Dom and Ashley as “Fairy”, Kyle as “Oberon” and Freya as “Titania”. We  then played around with our staging and had tables and chairs placed all over the stage which our characters interacted with. We made Puck to be a very energetic person who is running all over the stage on and off of the chairs and tables. For the fairies we spread them out on the left side of the stage at different heights and had them change there heights each time they spoke. For the performances as well we had Puck and the Fairies stay on a certain side of the stage to show two sides of the conflict. Oberon and Puck were on the stage right while Titania and the fairies were on the left of the stage.

Physical Theatre

At its simplest form you can define it as movement in place of dialogue but it is not to be confused with dance. As a result it’s often abstract in style. Physical theatre shows that you don't have to use words to your express ideas; instead u can use techniques like movement, mime, gesture and dance normally exploring complex social and cultural issues.

DV8: are among the main practitioners of physical theatre. They focus on looking at the dramatic potential that can be unlocked from movement. Their work is often described as a cross road where dance, sound and drama meet. It is led by Lloyd Newson, whose intent has been to have a different approach to most contemporary dance. DV8 are well known for using Physical theatre to explore complex aspects of human relationships and social or cultural issues.

Frantic Assembly: They create thrilling, energetic and unforgettable physical theatre pieces. The company attracts new and young audiences with work that reflects contemporary culture. Frantic Assembly's unique physical style combines movement, design, music and text. Frantic Assembly is led by Artistic Director Scott Graham. Scott formed the company with Steven Hoggett and Vicki Middleton in 1994.

Physical theatre combines Physical movements with other techniques like dialogue or music. Physical Theatre can break the 4th wall by reaching out to the audiences or moving between them. Contact improvisation is a dance technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for exploration through movement improvisation

Commedia: began in 16th century Italy, it was a popular form of street theatre based on improvised scenarios between stock characters. Commedia is a very Physical form as many characters wear masks so you can’t see facial expression.  This meant all physical actions had to be big so an audience could understand their emotion you showing.

Traits:

·         Proximity- how close or far you are from other performers and audience

·         Gestures- a particular movement that defines a character

·         Harshness and Tenderness

·         Status- this may be executed by use of level, distance or strength of contact

·         Mask work

·         Contact improvisation- contact improvisation is a developed form of improvisation usually a duet between 2 people where the interest here is in the starting point.

3 rules of Contact improvisation:

To absorb an impact

Resist or ignore it

Respond to it

·         Mime- this usually means stylised movement but can be comparatively realistic

·         Stance- this is the strength or weakness of the body to assert your character

·         Dance work

·         Not moving

·         Movement

Our piece:

In our group for physical theatre we had to look at a religious issue and make a physical theatre piece around the religious issue. The religious issue we chose was an event called “Je suis Charlie” which is about a shooting by Muslim extremists at a French magazine company because they made a cartoon of Mohammad. We started our piece in a big ball as a group which was to symbolise the Muslim belief, we separate from this ball into an office where we start working on the cartoon of Mohammad and we all start chanting “Charlie” building in volume until someone shouts Mohammad. We all reform the ball but two of us peel of this ball to show people abandoning the religion. The ball disperses again into a park where we I come on as one of the  brothers who will be involved in the shooting, I go into the park and push toby and freeze as Toby is knocked away and Harry comes over to take his place and knocks me back. I go to leave but he pulls me back, I tell him Charlie, he says it as well then we both say it and leave. We reform the ball and see 2 more people peel away from the ball, what happens next is the group then spreads across the room for me and harry to go on as the brother and kill each one of the members in a stylised way except one person because the religious issue said that they didn’t kill everyone. they all the rise up into  a line, me and Harry then walk across the line touching them all in a certain spot which they the fall in cannon to as if they had just been shot in the place we just touched. The ball reforms again and has 2 more people peel away. Me and Harry and go and stand centre stage as the rest of the group run around us trying to hit us but failing because there is something blocking them. Finally they all end up sticking around this shield around us, me and harry then stamp which causes them to ripple but the throwing there hands at us which causes me and Harry to fall to the ground which showed our death. The ball then reforms again and one person peels away leaving a single person left in the ball, we all spread around the stage and start shouting stereotypes of muslin that came about after the shouting because people started thinking all Muslims where the same, this builds up until the last person in our ball rises up and shouts “Je suis Charlie” which showed he was against what the brothers had done at the shooting and at the same time shows he still believes in his religion. Our entire piece is performed to the song “once upon a time” by Good Charlotte.

Brecht

Name: Bertolt Brecht

Birth: 10^th February 1898, Germany

Job: Practioner, poet, playwright, and theatre director.

Description:

In World War 1 Brecht was a medic and became appalled with war as well as any forms of violence. He moved to Berlin to peruse his career in drama after war but had to flee Germany in 1933 due to the Nazi party and ran away to America. Brecht returned to Europe in 1947 and created the Berliner Ensemble. He changed theatre to a more unique and exciting performance by creating what soon was known as “Epic Theatre” because he wanted to make his audiences think. He said he wanted audiences to “hang up their brains with their hats in the cloakroom”.

He wanted the audiences to be distant from emotional involvement with the characters he creates by using certain techniques to remind audiences that their watching a show. Verfremdungseffekt is often called the audience effect which the separation of the stage and audience but Brecht didn’t want this for his audience, to prevent this he broke the 4^th wall in most of his performances.

Traits:

·         Narration/Narrative which jumps around in time (non-linear)

·         Coming out of role

·         Speaking stage directions

·         Directly addressing the audiences

·         Using placards

·         Multi-roleing

·         Minimal props/set/costumes

·         Symbolic props

·         Symbolic lighting

·         Song and dance

·         Montages (a series of short scenes grouped together)

·         Spass (fun)

·         Gestus

·         Freeze frames or tableau

Our performance ideas:

Based around the performance traits of Brecht we have stylised our performances of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” to be like one of his performances.  We had an idea for the part of the singer to be changed in to a narrator who we thought could have read our stage directions of our characters out loud to the audiences. We positioned him near the front of stage so he could address the audience when speaking and we also thought he could watch the performance with the audience to help destroy the 4^th wall. We had an idea based around Brecht’s methods that for each of our character we have a piece of paper tapped to our chest with our character names on as well as the other characters we play because we have a lot of multi-roleing in our scene. We also had a similar idea that for some of our props we would use in the scene like a prop we use is a trumpet but we created it using a picture of one instead with musical notes on for the music instead of real music. We also had the idea of using our phone to play music for the trumpet in the scene but we decided we prefer the musical notes on the sheet as we feel it was funny and more true to Brecht’s drama methods. Other ideas we had involved the voices of some of our characters like the Monks voice isn’t well pronounced and speaks like “Chav” which helps to show that the Monk was inexperience in his work which we believed would add humour to the scene.