Tuesday 12th November 2013. Lesson 4.

AMANDA.
Today we were given our lines for the abstract play 'Amanda' by Theatre Uncut. 

Throughout the 4 hours we worked on 2 performances working on politicians to help us understand the play better, as Amanda in the play is a politician, performing the completely human and natural act of taking a bath. Therefore we used this to create 3 short scenes showing the politician as a politician, a human and a victim. 
In our first performance my group decided to focus on the educational side of politics. In particular the act of making the exams harder for the younger generation.

•  POLITICIAN. In the first scene it is a television broadcast of the news where they scene is handed over to a correspondent who interviews the politician on his views on making the exams harder. He is completely for it and gives reasons such of the youth of today don't care unlike in his time, and they just spend their time drinking and having fun so the harder exams will force them to pay more attention and care more. 
• HUMAN. In the second scene it is a flashback to the time when the politician himself was doing his exams and it focus' on his friend studying hard but then he comes in and distracts him with alcohol and music, the scene then progresses to a large number of friends all drinking and having a good time and completely disregarding the fact there exams are in 2 weeks because they were easy enough not to revise for.
• VICTIM. The last scene shows the politician at home with his wife and children but his children are struggling with their exam preparation because their father had just made the exams harder. It shows his children upset with him and angry and blaming him for the way the exams turned out. In the end the father is upset and ashamed of the pain and upset he inflicted on his children. 

In the second performance our group had to make a performance similar to 'Amanda' in the fact that the politician has to be doing something very human and natural (like in 'Amanda' her taking a bath) but add narration of different voices to get an input of what he's thinking and what worries had followed him home. 

• We chose to put our politician on the toilet. We chose this because its something so simple that everyone does everyday. Although i though it would be comical we managed to portray it with a very serious tone.
• The politician walks into the bathroom and has a reflection mirroring him, the side of himself that puts him down. The other voices are part of the bathroom, the reflection being the mirror, the sink being his failing son, the flusher being a voice of all children taking exams, the toilet paper being a man who can't get a job because he failed and the plunger being someone who had to retake all her exams again and again. 
• We chose to focus on the same political problem as before because we all felt passionate about it as we were all effected when the grade boundaries were put up.
• We had a sound-scape pf abuse coming from the narrators as the politician George was going to the toilet. As if the narration was his thoughts they ended up making him sick from all the terrible things he had done.
• We added in lines such as 'you can't flush this mess away' and 'you can't wash away your problems' for irony and to make it clear of where we are.
• Overall I think it was a successful performance as it portrayed the inner thoughts of a politician like in 'Amanda'. 

Monday 11th November 2013. Lesson 3.

POLITICAL PROTEST.

OUR MISSION: 
 To give a theatrical political protest on something we feel strongly about.

WHAT WE CHOSE. 
 Animal testing. 

WHY?
Because all 3 of us hate the fact that poor innocent animals are poked and pricked and smeared with foreign slime all in the name of 'beauty'. It sickens me that defenseless animals who let me say have feelings too, are being abused in this way. 
No human would like it if they were born to be tested on so some animal could have the latest eye shadow or mascara. Humans wouldn't like it if they were poked in the eye just to see if there was some kind of reaction. And if there was, too late, you're dead. Its sick. 

THE FACTS. 

1. Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned and abused in U.S. labs every year.
2. Up to 90 percent of animals used in U.S. labs aren’t counted in the official statistics of animals tested.
3. Several cosmetic tests commonly performed on mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs include:

• skin and eye irritation tests where chemicals are rubbed on shaved skin or dripped into the eyes without any pain relief.
• repeated force-feeding studies that last weeks or months, to look for signs of general illness or specific health hazards.
• widely condemned “lethal dose” tests, where animals are forced to swallow large amounts of a test chemical to determine what dose causes death. Others tests involve killing pregnant animals and testing their fetuses.

      4.  Others tests involve killing pregnant animals and testing their fetuses.

      

Although in 2012 the EU posted a ban on selling animal tested products.  The ban applies to all new cosmetics and their ingredients sold in the EU, regardless of where in the world testing on animals was carried out.

HOWEVER, animals are still being used to test make up and drugs. 

MY JOB:
- to find animal tested products.

- to find well known brands that test on animals 

- find the laws on animal testing in the UK and the USA.

Tuesday 5th November 2013. Lesson 2. Hours 3 and 4.

Lesson 3 and 4.

In lesson 3 and 4 we first discussed the deal of left wing right wing.
Here is a diagram which could come in helpful to understanding left wing, right wing. 

To explain further:
Left wing: are usually progressive in nature, they look to the future, aim to support those who cannot support themselves, are idealist and believe in equality. People who are left wing believe in taxation to redistribute opportunity and wealth - things like a national health service, and job seeker’s allowance are fundamentally left wing ideas. They believe in equality over the freedom to fail.
Right wing: value tradition, they are about equity, survival of the fittest, and they believe in economic freedom. They typically believe that business should not be regulated, and that we should all look after ourselves. Right wing people tend believe they should not have to pay for someone else’s education or health service. They believe in freedom to succeed over equality.

We then read the play 'Amanda' written by Kieran Hurley as part of Theatre Uncut. My initial thoughts on the play were although it was very unlike the naturalistic Stanislavsky work we did last term there was still an underlying element of truth in the play. The thoughts voiced in her head are similar to what many stress over. 

Moving on from this we talked about ways to perform this, we talked about the ideas of theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht and we moved on to exercises in which we could explore his ideas. 

We discussed whilst Stanislavsky would have us thinking about the what when who and why, Brecht would have us embody the character without thinking of this. Just physically becoming them. Therefore we walked around the space and learnt how to physically become certain characters. 
In this first picture we created an old man, to do this we bent our knees bent forward 

 and put our head up- this physically made us an old person without having to think of the deeper questions surrounding the character. 

 In this picture the boys became soldiers. By doing this they had to think of the small physical traits, for example, soldiers are proud to serve their country and this would come through by them tilting their heads slightly upwards which immediately shows their proudness. Also soldiers are very proper and this is portrayed by them standing straight. 

Finally in this pictured we portrayed alcoholics, with our hips thrust forward, a beer in our hands and our head on our chest. This made our characters so clear we didn't even need to stumble or slur our words to show we were drunk.





The importance of this was to work on our physicality as this was of most importance. After this we made a set of freeze frames portraying characters using only our physical bodies to portray what happened. 
The girls were at a ladies lunch- this was portrayed by a group of ladies with high heads (to show class) and open gestures (to show happiness), the next freeze was of a woman getting news her husband died at war, each woman slightly caved in physically to show shock and unhappiness and in the final freeze, the woman who's husband died was very low to show her depression and the rest of the woman were slightly turned away.

This was all to learn about Gestus- which carries the sense of a combination of physical gesture and "gist" or attitude. It is a means by which "an attitude or single aspect of an attitude" is revealed.

Tuesday 5th November 2013. Lesson 3. Hours 1 and 2.

NEWS.

In small groups we discussed a news story from a paper which soon turned into a small controlled debate. Reading our paper we came up with the following stories:
- Prince Charles 19 million a year estate should face tax scrutiny
- The trouble with an MP referring to a policeman as a 'pleb'.
- And a terrorist going into a mosque wearing a burka to hide who he is and the bad name this gives Muslims. 

This was the story we chose to discuss. 


The other news stories we discussed included:
-The want for children to start formal education at the age of 2 to give them a better advantage and to make the equal to private schools. 
- The government spying on us with phone hacking and internet tapping and the general mistrust within our social system.
- Condemning EU migrants.
-And video game rehabilitation centers for children addicted.
   ~ This one I found particularly ridiculous as if a 12 year old child is going to get addicted to a violent 18 year old game his parents brought for him then its obvious who to blame. And if all you do is allow your children to spend hours playing said games then you shouldn't be shocked if they become addicted. 

Monday 4th November 2013. Lesson 1 Politics.

POLITICS

To me, politics is important and should be considered important to the youth of today because it will be us who's running the country one day and contributing ideas on how to make it better. Also I think it's important for us to know how our country is being run as it directly affects us and their is still some laws and agreements in place which i don't agree with. 

Moreover we talked about how plays can be considered political, and we came up with a political play is one which confronts this issues we citizens have to deal with in life and issues we may feel strongly for as well as making the audience think and look back on how we view society ourselves.  

We finished with an exercise in which we all lined up to whether we agree with a statement 100% or if we don't 0%. The point was to get us thinking about politics and be able to back up our political views.