Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Starting Assignment 3

Assignment 3 is an assessment of Writing and Reading skills.  Unlike Assignment 2 there is an additional 10 marks available for a candidates ability to infer and interpret information from a text.

We've started with graffiti and vandalism.  To what extent are the following images vandalism of graffiti (art).  What does it take to make the graffiti purposeful - consideration of audience?  Consideration of image?  Consideration of message?






For Assignment 3 only, the following reading assessment objectives are tested (10 marks):

R1 demonstrate understanding of explicit meanings
R2 demonstrate understanding of implicit meanings and attitudes
R3 analyse, evaluate and develop facts, ideas and opinions.

 
The candidate should explain the views presented in the text(s), develop any ideas of interest and argue with or against them, examining them for inconsistencies and substituting complementary or opposingviews.

 
The assignment may be written in any appropriate form (e.g. an article, a letter, or the words of a
speech), but teachers must make sure that Assignment 3 does not have the same form and style as
Assignment 1 in the final portfolio.

 

Saturday, 26 January 2013

Supporting Notes exempler: Drama As


Supporting Notes

Play: The Messiah

Practitioner: Steven Berkoff

Skill: Acting

 

Section One- Key features of Steven Berkoff (our practitioner), and justification of our choice of The Messiah to illustrate his influence.



For our AS Level performance piece, we chose iconic director- playwright Steven Berkoff as a practitioner. His style is founded within physical theatre, often exploiting this to the point of almost opposing realism entirely. He says- ‘Realism can eventually have a deadening effect, since it only mirrors a conscious world’. This factor was our impetus for moving towards Berkoff as a practitioner. Previously, none of our ensemble’s members had experienced acting that diverged from naturalism, so we wanted to attempt something completely new. This would allow us to learn the methods of our chosen practitioner in their entirety; gaining a better understanding of them. Berkoff- a cornerstone of the physical theatre movement- seemed to be the incontrovertible choice.

 

Key Features of Berkoff

 

Berkoff’s works have undoubtedly provoked discernable critical response from their audiences. He sets out to intentionally shock his audience, pushing the boundaries past what is considered to be acceptable, describing his attitude towards theatre as ‘a kind of rebellion.’ Our play relates to this as it presents Jesus as a revolutionary; a normal man, and as the son of God, and contains several scenes which our audience may find controversial or uncomfortable.

 

Berkoff adopts European styles: mime, minimalism, stylised characterisation etcetera. Berkoff says of mime- ‘it is a wonderful tool; it awakes the audience’s imagination’. He believes in the importance of the whole body, using ‘total theatre’ in his productions- the concept that all elements of the theatre are equally important. Berkoff often directs his ensemble to envelop all of these elements in their physicality. An actor may alter their body to become a part of the set through the implementation of mime. In our piece we emulate this by using mime and the ‘whole body’ to create the illusion of the set ourselves.  

 

Plays We’ve Seen to Inform Our Performance

To allow ourselves a greater understanding of the key features of Berkoff’s work, we watched a variety of his productions. East, praised by many critics as being a startlingly outrageous, original piece of theatre, helped me greatly in grasping Berkovian expression. Its unashamed use of cockney rhyming slang and obscene imagery helped our ensemble to identify vocal methods to highlight the ‘kind of rebellion’ in Berkoff’s writing. We have also watched clips of various other Berkoff productions such as ‘Decadence’, ‘The Trial’, ‘Metamorphosis’ and ‘Dog’ to help us with characterisation.

We have seen a variety of physical theatre pieces, such as ‘Don John’ by Kneehigh and ‘A Beautiful Burnout’ by Frantic Assembly. These companies are heavily influenced by the work of Berkoff in their physical styles; so allowed us to see how we could apply techniques that Berkoff has popularised within the genre. For example, Frantic Assembly used mime and slow motion in action sequences, something we have drawn from for our performance.

Deciding on a Play and Justification of ‘The Messiah’ in Relation to Berkoff’s Style

Experiencing these pieces encouraged us to research plays which would allow us to showcase Berkoff’s style. Initially, we decided to adapt ‘Two’ by Jim Cartwright. Although at first we were enthusiastic about performing this play as it enabled us to use Berkovian techniques such as mime and puppetry, it soon became apparent that if we wanted to provide a true expose of Berkovian theatre, we needed to use Berkoff himself as our practitioner. This allowed us more of a scope explore his ideas to the full in their intended context.

‘The Messiah’ appealed to us as it includes a wide variety of characters, meaning we could implement Berkoff’s multi-rolling to a more successful end. It also involves great contrasts in characterisation to build on. The play presents traditional theological figures in a very controversial and humanised light at times, so we could also achieve Berkoff’s ‘kid of rebellion’ in our portrayals.

 

Key Features of ‘The Messiah’ allowing us to Perform in the Style of Berkoff

·         Limited stage directions, leaving the script open to our interpretation, giving us artistic leeway to demonstrate the directorial originality and physical ingenuity that would be apparent in any Berkovian piece.

·         Use of a chorus (i.e.- the soldiers) allowing us to work effectively as an ensemble, every member equal, helping each other to perform to our best ability.        

·         This also justifies our use of Berkovian unison and routine. As these characters are fundamentally a unit, we can manipulate their actions to emulate Berkoff’s use of synchronicity.

·         Inclusion of monologues and dialogues, enabling us to demonstrate Berkovian mime and the ‘whole body’ concept, mimicking the language of these, as Berkoff does in his other plays. This also lends itself to the breaking of the fourth wall- Berkoff often directs his actors to speak directly to the audience, acknowledging their presence as we often do in these instances.    

·         An abundance of distinct characters, permitting us to multi- role, thus hopefully highlighting our skill at interchanging our extended characterisations.

·         Controversial subject of the play- qualifying us to shock our audience, hopefully achieving Berkoff’s ‘kind of rebellion’.

·          Vulgar language allows us to achieve the obscene expression of the script’s content and extends our characterisation to shock our audience with Berkoff’s techniques.

 

Bibliography/Webography

 


 


 


 


 

The Messiah and Steven Berkoff Reviews and responses:


 


 


 


 


 


 

Diary of a Juvenile Delinquent by Steven Berkoff

 

The Theatre of Steven Berkoff by Steven Berkoff

 

Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self- Importance by Robert Cross

 

 

Section 2- Dramatic Intentions, Interpretation of the Text and Berkoff’s Influence

 

Dramatic Intentions

 

Our dramatic intention for The Messiah is predominantly to engage and interest our audience. We aim to purvey the story in an original, interesting manner; but also to challenge our audience’s principles, as this is an important element of Steven Berkoff’s style. We intend to create a shocking, well-paced piece which will maintain the audience’s interest to enable us to achieve the ‘kind of rebellion’ Berkoff assumes using our technique to reproduce this rebellious attitude.

Bryce Hallett said- ‘there is something mesmerising, gleeful, vulgar and outrageous about Steven Berkoff's adaptability as an actor which makes an audience take notice even when he's not uttering a word.’ We hope to attain this level of performance by encapsulating our audience in the worlds of our characters. This ‘outrageous’ nature of Berkoff’s work is a key aspect we aim to include, professing the controversial subject of toying with the idea of Jesus as both a revolutionary and the Messiah, to cause the audience to react with shock and thought. We aspire to replicate Berkoff’s ‘economical, playful and polished’ style by using our bodies to create the illusion of the setting (economical), improvising some of our acting and (playful) and rehearsing our mime and routine thoroughly so that all action is executed with precision (polished).

Interpretation

To be in keeping with Berkoff’s shock element, we portray Jesus as a man, a revolutionary, as well as the Son of God. Therefore we kept scenes such as scene six, which present him as having normal human emotions and faults. We also include monologues from Satan and Judas to show a realistic and balanced story on the crucifixion.

As we chose to use minimalism and regarding set design, we were able to use a timeless setting for our piece. This allows all audience members to relate to the concepts of the play. We decided to present Satan using three additional members besides the devil himself as ‘minions’. The purpose of this was to signify the part of everyone in which Satan ‘lurks’, and to add new dimensions to the scene. The three ‘minions’ become almost a visual representation of what Satan is saying; an instrument he uses to entice and convince the audience.

It was important to us that our choral characters must contrast significantly with the larger characters and each other. The purpose of the soldier could be seen as being to expose the faults in society; the lax attitude towards religion and political issues. Thus, we performed the soldiers as unintelligent and bawdy skinhead cockneys. This is a strong cultural image and can allude to how religion can affect such rich and specific groups, or lead to strong rebellion. The priests are simulated as being slimy, sly characters; that come across as almost perverse in their manner of distorted movement and unnerving voices.

Steven Berkoff’s Influence on our Piece

Steven Berkoff’s influence on our play will hopefully be immediately apparent upon watching. We make a strong use of Berkoff’s techniques of minimalism, economy of space and total theatre in the staging of our piece. Berkoff says of these approaches- ‘I am handing the art of acting, back to the actor’. We decided that we should use minimal props, a piece of dowelling for Lewie to rest his arms on whilst ‘on the cross’. This allowed the cross to be moved at our will, so that Jesus could be more mobile and engaging for the audience. When watching videos of Berkoff’s productions, it struck us that the majority had simplistic costumes- a smart or plain white top and trousers, such as in ‘The Trial’. For our choral characters, we decided on a costume of a white t-shirt and straight- legged jeans, with black braces. The simplicity of these production aspects allowed the emphasis to be on us as performers, and gave us leeway for implementing Berkovian techniques such as mime to create the illusion of the play’s context in moments such as when the disciples mime the nailing of Jesus to the cross.

Continuing the idea of total theatre, we paid close attention to the selection of music for our piece. We have chosen largely 80s ska/punk music for our piece as this fits with the skinhead aesthetic of the soldiers. It also mirrors the rebellious attitude of the play and adds pace to the piece, creating an upbeat and charged atmosphere to replicate the emotions of a revolution.

Berkoff’s most substantial influence over our piece is established in our physicality as actors. To achieve the features of his style we use mime, routine and unison, exaggerated characterisation and caricatured facial expressions. We also incorporate vocal and physical exaggeration to amplify his controversial message. In actualising these methods, it is important that we train ourselves to act with precision as Berkoff would do. Another physical factor of Berkoff’s style that our piece evokes is the partial breaking of the fourth wall. We often acknowledge the presence of our audience, talking directly to them, gesturing towards them. This allows them to be drawn into the story more intensely, hopefully inducing a strong response.

Section Three- Rehearsal Process, Potential Effectiveness for the Audience, the Development of my Acting Skills and health & Safety.

Rehearsal Process

Any Berkovian piece depends on conscientious rehearsal and unified team work for a successful performance, thus we decided to use the ensemble approach. This enabled us to affix multi-rolling, making the rehearsal process more digestible. Switching between roles, constantly adding new ideas into the mix. Pace was also a major consideration for us.

Our rehearsals were undertaken with focus and enjoyment. We began with a warm- up stretch, and an improvisational game. This helped us bond as a group. We then ran through our lines to give ourselves a feel for the atmosphere of the scene. Next, we constructed the skeleton for the section- planning out our positioning and basic movements. The final stage was to focus in on every piece of the play, developing our ideas; and then working on precision and overall execution. In this stage we would, for example, practise the character transition from soldiers to priests several times to ensure it was synchronised and effective.

As we are using minimalistic set and costume, we could play with a plethora of different ideas within the space, without constriction from set. This forced us to create a rich image for our audience. It also affected how we dealt with entrances and exits in that we could do anything we wanted with them. This exposes the audience to the adaptability of our acting.

Many aspects of our performance were changed throughout rehearsals. For example, the casting of Satan was altered when Tom was rehearsing the monologue, as we felt we needed to add more dimensions to the section; so we added in the ‘minions’ alongside him.

Potential Effectiveness for an Audience

Our interpretation of ‘The Messiah’ has remained true to Berkoff’s style with artistic flair and integrity. The potential effectiveness for an audience will hopefully reflect Berkoff’s impact - shock the audience. We hope to provoke an extreme response: disgust, outrage, humour. Hopefully, our skills and arrangement will achieve this.

I find the Satan monologue to be particularly effective as it encapsulates all the Berkovian techniques we have implemented, exhibiting them successfully. Use of mime, synchronisation and multi- rolling highlights the message of human struggles Satan is attempting to expose. For example, the ‘minions’ convert from acting as dogs (‘you become a dog howling’) to becoming irritating characters (‘shall I do this? / Shall I do that?’). This demonstrates a high level of multi-rolling; and is therefore incredibly impactful for an audience.

Development of my Acting Skill

Throughout the process of developing our piece, my adaptability as an actor has improved significantly. Berkoff’s style of physical theatre has stretched me, as it is so different from naturalism.  Multi- rolling was an aspect of ‘The Messiah’ which required me to switch between characters immediately, with conviction and accuracy. The level of precision in our mime sequences has also stretched me, as this requires distinct concentration and awareness of the whole body to convince the audience. My awareness of other actors and timing has improved from practising synchronicity.

Characterisation was an enjoyable feature of development during the rehearsals of our piece. I think I have adapted to this fairly well. For example, when becoming a soldier, I walk in an arrogant gait, pushing forward my pelvis and ‘puffing up’ my body to assume the male appearance. My facial expressions are brash and gormless- I open my mouth, chew on my cheeks, glare belligerently at Jesus etcetera. My idiosyncrasies include things such as scratching myself, wiping my nose unashamedly, and picking at my feet. These all portray the vulgar nature of my character.

However, when performing the part of a priest, my physicality alters entirely. My body becomes hunched and distorted and move in an anamorphic, slimy manner. This appears to the audience as almost perverse, as I clutch on to Judas with clenched hands. I change my expression between an unadulterated, persuasive gaze, trying to seduce him in some loutish, sly manner; and disgust, glaring at him with intense eyes when he diverges from our wishes. My voice here is a nasal, drawn out and devious timbre.

All of these factors and many more have contributed to the strengthening of my skills and adaptability of an actor, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Health and Safety

We are using physical theatre and so need to warm up thoroughly.  The space is free of any clutter to consider.  We have considered the use of a length of dowelling as well as down stage centre blocking as there is a table in the audience.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Monday, 21 January 2013

Radio 2: Story Writing Competition

 
BBC Radio 2 are once again launching the 500 words Story Writing Competition for children aged 13 and under. This is a nationwide search for quality, creative writing and I believe that we have some awesome writers in school who really ought to be encouraged to enter.

 

If you have children in Year 7 and 8 please do encourage them to take part. The deadline is February 22nd.

 

Miss Hague volunteered to mark some of the entries last year and was amazed at the quality of the writing, and is sure there are students here capable of doing just as well.

 

There are some useful and interesting ideas and resources here if you fancied having a look.

 


 

This is the competition website:

 

Wednesday, 9 January 2013

Post-Literature Exam

Year 11 went in for their Literature exam on Modern Texts today: a fraught day for any teacher!  I prayed they would have a positive experience and I'm glad to say that the exam board did not disappoint this year.

We were extremely fortunate that one of the areas in "Of Mice and Men" that we have paid close attention to came up.  In the other section of the paper, pupils seemed happy enough, but we'll keep our fingers crossed.

If you have a child who has taken this exam today you may be wondering what we'll be up to next.  Well, immediately, we will be delving into poetry.  The next exam is in June and between now and then we will be studying a collection of 15 poems.  In the exam itself they are asked to compare different poems that they have studied with me and discuss an analytical question in one section of the paper, in the second section they will be required to respond analytically to a poem that they haven't seen in lessons.  In this section of the paper their ability to identify poetic features and illustrate their ability to respond originally is being assessed.


My class will be deciding which area of poetry they study as there are 60 poems grouped under four headings: Relationship, Conflict, Place, Character and voice.  The group will be breaking up into smaller groups and looking at a selection before they argue for or against the different headings.  Your involvement as parents/carers would be really appreciated if you like poetry.  If you don't you can still help by filling in some of the context gaps that may crop up, some of the poetry refers to the Vietnam war for instance, or the two World Wars which you may have a better understanding of than your child.

The other thing I'd like you to be aware of is that should your child's result not meet their target, they have the opportunity to retake in June.  This simply means they will have an additional exam.  This may sound like unwarranted pressure, however last year one of my year 11s moved from 56/80 in January to 79/80 in her retake and, overall, ended up coming third in the year.  She is now proving to be an exceedingly talented Literature student.

Saturday, 29 December 2012

Reading on Reflection

It can be such a struggle to get our kids reading if they are reluctant other slightest.  This Christmas I've been told by my mother that I was a reluctant reader, a real shock!  I couldn't remember this at all, such is my memory, but it has slowly been coming back to me.  On further investigation, into why this was the case, I was told it was just one of those things: too busy with Lego (probably).

The answer, according to mum and dad, was to find something I could access.  It wasn't that I struggled to read and very often this is the case with boys.  We are quite capable of reading, but we're choosy.  There's all sorts of advice I, and others, could give you and depending on your child it may or may not work.  Fundamentally, what helped with me is that mum and dad were able to find a genre I found interesting, which at the time was fantasy starting with a chap called Stephen Lawhead.  In the links at the side you will see a link to 'The Big Book Review' which may give you some guidance.  The kids, of all ages, have written a review on a favourite book and it may be useful as a guide.  Otherwise, in a previous post, you will see a link to a site that categorises texts for children of different ages in a really useful way.

Happy Christmas,
Mr Stirrup

Wednesday, 19 December 2012

Following

Afternoon all,

I have made an update to the 'Lord of the Flies' page after realising there was no 'Follow' gadget attached to the page, so please sign up so that you can keep up to date with what your kids have on offer for revision etc...

I will be updating it over the Christmas break as they don't have any significant time with me prior to the exam.  If we can really crack this paper then they won't have to re-take it in June, but this will still be on offer should they want to anyway.  For instance, last year one of my pupils took the January paper and scored 51 out of 80 but decided to take it again.  Second time round she came third in the year!  Her 'Of Mice and Men' essay is available, as a post, on that particular blog so you can see what she was doing well.

All the best for Christmas.
Mr Stirrup

Tuesday, 11 December 2012

Reading Books Advice

Here's a great website that categorises texts for a variety of ages.  It's easy to navigate and even has a page for parents, largely aimed at advice for you and that sort of thing.  The Sue Palmer book 'Toxic Childhood' is especially good, as is the Oliver James book, though I wouldn't take it all as gospel if I were you, especially Oliver James.

http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/genre/g12/2012-Great-Reads.html

All the best
Mr Stirrup