political theatre workshop blog

Left wing/ Right wing- Left wing- Left wing is the political ideology's on the left side of the spectrum who believe in looking towards the future and supporting others. Political parties on the left are Labour and Green. Left ideologies are anarchy, socialism, communism. They make laws that protect and save the planet. Right wing- Right wing is the term used to describe people whose political views are on the right side of the spectrum who believe in tradition and economic freedom. Parties on this side are UKIP and Conservative. The right view is more likely to be pro Brexit and NHS and prison privatisation. They believe in the rich getting richer and want security. The two sides were formed during the French Revolution. Newspapers have a biast opinion depending on what political view they have. The guardian is left wing and will have a different perspective on a political issue to the Daily Mail which us right wing. Housing-  250,000 homes a week are needed for ...

Brecht didn’t believe theatre should be a mirror but a hammer used to shape life into the way we want it and smash the mirror. We started looking at our scenes for Cathy, my scene is housing office 2, in our groups we had to devise 3 minute performances around the script including the following things- -Breaking character Reading stage directions breaking the fourth wall- talking about irrelevant stuff like whats for dinner -Use song or music- Luke singing -A sign to give information – House advertisement -A moment of gestus for each character- each have a pose -A montage in fast motion or narrated before seen or tablot              

The audience understood the message we were trying to portray that 16 year old's should be able to vote and not being able to vote when you’re contributing to society is unfair because we had a clear visual images and factual prompts around us. However I don’t know how much they took away from the performance, they may have been more educated but I don’t think the message was sustained and probably won’t stay with them because our performance wasn’t very shocking. The audience were talking about the issue and picking up our cards interacting with us and Max which was good and unexpected because we weren’t sure how involved they would be, some older kids and teachers were arguing with Max but more younger kids agreed showing how most young people want to be able to vote. There was a huge issue that occurred where our tape went missing so we had to re-plan everything and improvise as we were performing. Cat wasn’t even there at the very start because she was looking for duct tape fo...

Bertolt Brecht- original name Eugen Bertolt Friedrich Brecht. Born- 10th February 1898, Augsburg, Germany Died- 14th August 1956, East Berlin, East Germany. He was a German poet, play write and director. His mother was a protestant and his father was roman catholic. He read a bible and was raised quite religiously which effected his work. His father worked in a paper mill. He had one brother Walter born in 1900 He was middle class Brecht had a heart condition as a child. first world war broke out when he was 16 but he felt "only an empty headed person would die for their country" His mother died in 1920, she had breast cancer most of his life. He studied drama at Munich university where he was also doing a medical course. He studied medicine until 1924 and served in an army hospital in the war (1918). His first play Baal was written in 1918 and it was about suffering caused by excessive sexual pleasures. He was a Marxist. His work was heavily influenced by...

“The artist never acts as if there were a fourth wall besides the three surrounding him, he expresses his awareness if being watched, the audience can no longer have the illusion if being the unseen spectator at an event”- Brecht - Brecht conceives us at artists and owners of our craft not just as actors or puppets on a string. -  He emphasises "NEVER" as we are always engaging the audience and objectively aware of our characters and the audience - The audience know the actors can see them and are impacted more because of that - Everything should look like they are used and worked to make it real and break the illusion. Actors performing in Brecht's plays often take in more than one character so characters need to be clearly defined and easily recognisable, Brechtian actors explore different postures and ways if moving in order to create bold physical characters in making these bold choices actors are making a social and political comment about the character a...

Today we were looking at gestus Brecht's gift to modern theatre is social usefulness, He liberated theatre from imitations of life and allows different styles of acting to co exist. Naturalism gives way to bold outlines comic exaggeration and a collage approach to production to put over a particular message.  Brecht says the most important thing is the story and you should take whatever means possible to get that across.  Stage life is artificial and can never be completely true to real life. Brecht believes social situations change the way people behave unlike Stanislavsky he didn't believe there was an essential truth to a character, someone weak and humble could be changed into a hero if they had to.  Brecht believed people are formed by their society and culture and the time in which they live this can create a collective madness. All theatre should be appropriate to the modern age and reflect life now as a social call to challenge soc...

Why the voting age should be lowered to 16- When you turn 16 you legally can- - Move out of the family home (social services may be involved) - have sex meaning become a parent and care for child - get married (with parental consent) - rent accommodation - give consent to medical treatment - be detained in custody - claim benefits - get a national insurance number - pay tax - Smoke - drink alcohol with a meal - join the army - get a job - pay more for public transport When you are 18 you can- - Sue or be sued - Buy fireworks - Get a tattoo - Buy cigarettes - Buy alcohol - Pawn items in a pawn shop - Make a Will - Carry an organ donor card - Own land, buy a house or flat & apply for a mortgage in 2015 only 43% of 18-24 year old's voted, in 2017 72% of 18-24 year old's voted showing a growing interest in politics with young people. In Scotland the voting age was 16 for the referendum and they aim to keep it there....

In today's lesson we began by discussing what politics is and what political theatre is. The overall conclusion was that politics is the debates and ways that the government and higher powers tackle the issues that we have in society, the google definition for politics is the activities of governments concerning the political relation between states and the activities aimed at improving the lives of the citizens of the states. Political theatre is theatre that addresses the issues of society and aims to draw attention and fix those issues. Political theatre aims to educate people to the issues of the world and fix the issues by giving others knowledge of them. We then discussed news stories we were passionate about which included the Harvey Weinstein case as it is something very current that effects people in our chosen career field and could effect us in the future. The main aim of this was to start opening us up to the different political issues and creating opinionated actor...