In this portfolio I will take you on the journey which I myself have travelled on throughout my IB theatre programme Essay

In this portfolio I will take you on the move around which I myself strike travelled on by extinct my IB domain programme. indoors this portfolio I will portray the processes which we as a group went through and through in order to create our devised instalment as vigorous as how we applied our knowledge and understanding from our experiences into our perfor sm e very(prenominal) last(predicate)-armce design.The StimuliOur production began with each fellow fraction of the group producing a input. Before presenting their ideas we stubborn that we should individually analyse the stimuli and becharm what we as individuals could come up with. We did this before the member of the group verbalize their ideas on their chosen stimulus so that we had the opport unanimity to take the stimulus along diametrical paths and elaborate different ideas and amalgamate them together. Belo is our stimulus and our ideas which we had on each. afterwardwards having discussed the avail able o ptions which include images, music and objects of sentimental value we decided to use my stimuli. My stimulus was of a passwordpaper denomination that had been widely distributed passim the UK.We then discussed the direction we wished to take with our chosen stimuli. We a soak up split into different areas of the room to individually assess our dilemma. Below is the mind map which I created at this time.After thorough countersign we agreed upon the concept of victimisation a current affairs dilemma in order to make for our own. Our group was fascinated by the political outrage that Iran had ca employ with America in regards to enceinte punishment on women.The Research and Development of the p mass utter(a) look returnn how on the 20th September 2010 Iranian Government publically accuse the US of Double Standards in a newspaper article published in The Guardian. Centred on a 43 family old Iranian, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and a 43 year old American in that locationsa Lew is. Ashtiani was solutiond with capital punishment in 2007 after it emerged that she had an illicit affair with a man after the death of her husband in 2006 this was later revoked and she was charged with adultery, manslaughter and the complete of her husband. After heavy media attention in 2010 and the international campaigns lead by her children, the US decided to interfere. It was at this point that the political and controversial fight first took form. Iran employ the case of Theresa Lewis and the issues surrounding her low IQ of 72 in order label the US Government as a hypocrisy. As a group we decided to build upon the idea that this issue was now a hygienic known moral dilemma in the eyes of the media and transfer this to our audience.Preparation of rolesDue to a shortage in group members most people on role allocation vergeinate up with six-fold roles outside of plod. As a strong drawing card I was take to twain direct and create our volume. Other roles distribu ted included head of brightness, head of technology (computer, find outions, music), Costume designer/ score designer and overly a physical driving force leader. After having directed a place setting in two our writ of executions of The Seagull Anton Chekhov and also our modernized performance of Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet I had already gained experience on my course for this role. antecedently I had directed a scene from The Seagull based upon the German presence in the 20th Century, Expressionism.I had began reviewing work from Georg Kaiser, Oskar Kokoschka and Ernst Toller whom were all extremely influential playwrights. As I had already worked hard to gain understanding of this tradition I truly hoped I would be able to use this experience. Following on from this I began thinking that maybe I could find a tradition for each country involved in order to uniquely moderate my imagination to our scrap. After thorough look for however it was evident that Iran had not really adapted a proper(postnominal) practice in order for us to carry out this longing. Whilst researching I stumbled across the book pictured below and I was struck with the actors linemost people do not speak of theater and Iran in the comparable breathBy Willem FloorBecause of this we decided to change tact and opt to symbolise the juxtaposition instead through lighting and staging.The volumeAs well as directing, my role was also to produce the script. After having seen a production of Willy Russells Blood Brformer(a)s I was fascinated by the narration used. Blood Br another(prenominal)s based upon the separation of both twin brothers at birth uses, a narrator to guide the play. I took inspiration from this and used the rhyming couplet format in order to symbolise the 2 women. Before penning the script we produced a flow chart together with annotating the main plot and adding aspects of theatre which we had cont on our journey. Below is a copy of our chart.After havin g an outline of things to be included in the script I began by listing all of the main things we wished the narrator to insert in the play. We had a vision that the narrator would guide the play end-to-end through facts and that he would create a connection between the audience and the cast. Because of this the narrators savoir-faire was conducted first in its entirety. From here it really felt as though my script had a strong sticker on which to build our piece. As our piece began with a police call into question we wished to keep it at a very simplistic level of speech just equal that of a real interview. We decided on exhibit direction so that the interviewer was not visible throughout leaving the actress playacting Ashtiani alone on stage to symbolise how she was alone and not support when interrogated.It was at this point that we reflected upon our past shop classs based upon speech and theatrical forms in which we can convey speech. A workshop came to mind from the pr evious term where we had built upon the idea of a unplumbed collage. A sound collage is where there is a build up of speech from multiple participants aimed at a point subject. We decided that this would be a room of communicating to the audience a sense of anger or disorder because of this we attached it to the chart in relation to the campaign against Astianis meter as we felt this would apply a strong effect. Another was that symbolisation was used through my script writing was through Ashtiani and Lewis monologues again exhibit how they were both alone yet in the same situation. We began our course creating a one-person say based upon a real life showcase or experience which we had within our lives.Within my one-person show I had a vast majority of my speech presented as a monologue and I wished to transfer my craftsmanship of producing monologues into our script. In order to create the monologues I first had to visualise the casefuls whom would be performing them. Bec ause they were both real women I was able to complete a lot more thorough research into them gaining a better portrayal as them as individuals. From this I severe on themes and emotions which I wished to get across to my audience through the monologues. I learnt that Ashtiani and Lewis alike were very religious thus concentrated their monologues from a very philosophical and religious point of view however I tranquil kept in mind that their two religions were very different and ensured that I kept the appropriate context throughout (e.g. Allah instead of God for Ashtiani).Whilst researching our government issue we had found that there had been a lot of media attention on both cases and we wished to portray to the audience just how much the media had been involved also we treasured to show them how much people are influenced by the media. For the section of our chart where we introduce Teresa Lewis an idea was formed so that she would be introduced through a television broadcast. I began this section of the script by visualising a news reporter sat at a desk within the audience sermon directly at them. This idea developed and led us to have another cast member as a journalist very interviewing Lewis at her correction centre. The idea of another interview type duologue was to portray the two womens differences in the way they were being interviewed and questioned.Allocating RolesTo bulge with it was decided that it would be best to create a mindmap of suggested roles that would need to be filled in order to go ahead with the production. Below is a copy of our mind mapHowever we issued a problem when it came to the casting of roles. As we only had two female members of our group we were automatically cast as the two women. This then left us with three males to overfly a total of six casting roles because of this we had to organise ourselves in a way that allowed each male to cater to two parts without them conflicting. We managed to do this by employ a theatre practice wisely after an idea emerged that the narrator would be in the style of a Bunraku beast master the omozukai. We were first introduced to Bunraku puppetry by our elder Baccalaureate students who provided us with a workshop. We decided that everything in the production should be under the narrators control like puppets would be in a way the narrator could be seen as the controlling governments holding the women for their crime. Introducing this style allowed for a lot of stylised doing pieces throughout our performance.CharacterisationAfter having been allocated our roles we wanted each cast member to fully understand their character whether it be an officer of the law, a journalist or one of the women themselves. We provided each member of the group with an image relating to their character Below is the image I was provided with along with how I answered certain questions given(p) to me by my peers in order to develop my characterisation.It was at this point we e xperimented using a technique called hot seating in order to call forth characterisation. We each took it in turns to be questioned in character. Everybody found it super fractious at first however after a few minutes everyone managed to get the hang of it. We also brought in aspects we had learnt from our workshop on Stanislavski in how to apply his theories. We continued building on our characterisation by face for resources. I found a particularly good resource online 2 from forbearance international which was not only personal but also extremely emotive. In particular this helped me with my monologue as I was able to sense connected to my character in order to portray the appropriate emotions.There was a great discussion between the group as to whether we should apply accents or not. It was decided that we should not apply accents but that we should be exceedingly expressive and use the gift of sound/speech in other more appropriate ways such as our sound collages. fron t endFrom a very early stage of production I had a very vivid image of where I would ideally see the piece going in terms of movement. I really enjoyed both Kabuki theatre as well as improvised dance. We tried to incorporate the two into the scene that the Iranian officials came to collect Ashtianis lover. We tried a lot of improvised movements however found that the final product was much disorganise and we really wanted this scene to be both memorable and gelid so we decided to journey down another path.Further discussion led us onto tableaux however after a short workshop this idea was also disregarded on the ground that the scene should have a content of movement in order to emphasise the roughshod separation of the lovers. From this we organised a lesson where we explored the idea of using creative movement on the basis of a fight. We choreographed a routine using levels to show who was in control and also pace to highlight certain features. In the end the product for this movement piece in my eyes was highly effective in the way it showed the lovers being torn apart by their government and law.MasksWhilst developing our first scene we had to identify the difference in authority to the audience. We also had to show the difference in characters through this method acting due to the males playing more than one character. After having workshops on masks antecedently we were aware that the purpose of masks in Greek theatre was to signify the unity of a chorus because of this we used them for our two Iranian officials as they had no speech during their time on stage. The idea of the masks was to create exaggerated facial nerve features portraying the anger and authority associated with that scene yet at the same time disguise the actors true selves. The mask allowed us to show the severalise between the different levels of hierarchy within the scene as well as symbolise the isolation that the couple were feeling being set about with masked intruders.Mus icWhen devising our piece it was decided that our piece required two pieces of music. There was one necessary at the time of the movement scene where the Iranian couple are separated. We found a piece of music by Radio head entitled Talk show host. The tempo of the yell was highly appropriate to the atmospheric desire as it showed confusion, regret and desire all at once. The lyrics in the song such as You want me?Well come on and outwear the door downYou want me?3 we believed were perfectly fitting for the scene. We were able to synchronize our movement so that our choreography was carried out in time to both the music and in time with other cast members. There was also another piece of music entitled We are the World by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson to be played at the very end of the performance. This particular piece of music I believe thoroughly puts the human being into persuasion emphasising the importance of life which at the end of the performance is taken from the women. sparkleDue to there being two separate stories going on at one time on the stage the lighting was crucial. We used 2 spotlights (1 for each female character) with colour faded reflective lighting upstage. The flood lights used were chosen appropriately especially in terms of colour. For example green was used to portray coldness whereas red was used to show anger. We tried a variety of colours for the movement scene however in the end after a lot of effort and error we finally agreed on red fading through to blue to show the anger from the officials resulting in the blue for the loneliness and sadness. I really enjoyed experimenting with the lighting as not only did I learn a lot but we were also able to show the juxtaposition. stageFor our staging we tried to show the contrast through black and clean-living flooring, curtains and endorsedrop. Not only did the black and white create the impression of gravelly and soft but it also symbolised the two races. Below is a wor k of how we designed the set.The idea was that neither side crossed the boundary set out in the middle. We placed 2 old fashioned chairs back to back for the two women in the centre of the stage for them to be seated on at the end. Other than the 2 chairs there were no other props on the stage.Because we tried to use a very simplistic set design we compensated for this with a projector carefully placed to project newspaper headlines onto the white cloth background. Also attached to the backdrop was admixture shackles which Ashtianis wrists were placed into to set the scene of her cell as well as show the restraints that she had against her Lewis however had nothing but the chair and was not restrained in any way to show the two sides of the world two political views on law enforcement. As a hale I really enjoyed making the set as well as designing it. Although we encountered a few problems setting up the projector and laying out the flooring I was very happy with the outcome. The finished product was highly symbolic which was totally what we were aiming for.Bibliography1 http//orangehouse.tumblr.com/post/778392704/campaign-for-iranian-woman-facing-death-by-stoning2 http//www.amnesty.org.uk/actions_details.asp?ActionID=7063 http//www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/talk-show-host-lyrics-radiohead/193ae81bd7d8a3fb4825686600141d5f