MONDAY 25TH NOVEMBER

Task one:

In today's lesson as a group we thought that it'd be best if we got all of the remaining lines sorted. I began to pick out lines from the script which I thought would best deliver our ruling idea of deceit and ambition. As well as this we also got a chance to see our previous rehearsal which we recorded. When looking back I thought that we.as the witches did not look scary and 'supernatural' enough for the image we are going for and also for our one of our chosen practitioners which is Artaud. Also when looking at the footage I thought that we are trying to portray Lady Macbeth as having two different persona's. One of her actually being Lady Macbeth and the other of her being a witch, I thought to physically show this we could each where half of a mask which would conceal our chosen identity. One half would be Lady Macbeth and the other a more wicked witch side.

Task Two:

Stereotype: An oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

Assistant Director: The role of assistant director is to essentially assistant the director. They support the director by organising and planning everything. Their job is more to observe what is going on.

Alienated: Making someone feel isolated or estrange.

Actioning: A technique which assumes that every spoken sentence is delivered with a specific intention- and that this intention changes with each sentence.

Task Three:

With the ruling idea in mind I've chosen costumes which I think would reflect this. As our world is set in politics, we've come up with the idea that Lady Macbeth would wear a RED blazer. A blazer for the simple fact that it shows power and gives the impression of being professional and 'business-like'. And the colour red because for me it has connotations of meaning danger, which is what we want our audience to feel. We want them to know this woman is dangerous. It's also bright colour which will immediately grab the audiences attention. 

For the witches I was thinking that I wanted them to look ver different to Lady Macbeth, so we can successfully show the contrast between these two women. A long black, possibly rugged dress would be a good option with the contrast of the bright red blazer she wears. I also thought that the witches would wear half of their face covered. This would conceal their darker side or vice versa. This would keep in with our ruling idea of deceit.

For Macbeth, since we have decided that he would be a politician, a suit seems like the best choice. However I think in the beginning of the play we seem look a bit more scruffy and goofy, but as the play develops his appearance begins to catch up with his status. 

WEDNESDAY 20TH NOVEMBER

In today's lesson we went over our whole devised piece and performed it to our drama teacher. He then gave us some constructive criticism on ways we can improve. For example he suggested that we use the skills we learnt from Georgina Lamb (Theatre de complicite) in our devised piece. I thought this would be a good idea for the witches scenes, when we each change from Lady Macbeth to a witch. I thought that we could use the transitions that Georgina showed us. He also mentioned that we should hand out flyers at the beginning of the show to establish that we are in fact in politics. The flyers would be saying things such as 'Vote for Macbeth' or 'Macbeth for MP', and this will be keeping in with one of our practitioners which is Brecht, ensuring that the audience know that the play is set in modern day politics. 

MONDAY 18TH NOVEMBER

Task one:

In today's lesson we established all of the scenes we were going to include in the play. The scenes are in order: Office scene,Club scene,Dinner with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth,Split screen office scene,Letter scene,Hotel scene Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, MP speech scene,Contract signing scene and Macbeth's death. We went through the whole play with certain scene being improvised and I suggested that when Lady Macbeth asks Macbeth to sign the contract there should be a pause, to suggested to the audience that following action will have great consequence later in the play. After performing the play we decided that we wanted to give Lady Macbeth and the witches even more power, so we collectively decided that we would use levels to convey this. We used two platforms to make a form of podium where Lady Macbeth and the witches would be and that would be our final image for the whole play. I also suggested that in order to inform the audience that we were in fact in an office we should have some 'background' noise that would resemble that of an office. This than sparked the ideas of including eerie music for the witches scene. This really helped to create ambience and set the mood for that specific scene.

Task two:

Elizabethan music and sound.
Music was an important asset of the entertainment to the people who lived during this era. Music and Elizabethan instruments would be performed by musicians or simple songs and ballads could be sung in the villages to ease the tedious tasks undertaken by the Lower class members of society. Many Elizabethans attend church on a Sunday which led to the popularity of hymns and secular songs.
Hymns: A Hymn was a religious song or poem to praise God or a God.
Secular songs: Secular songs were the opposite, they were non-religious songs, very popular in the west.

Music had been used many times before to accompany poems during the Elizabethan era. The Elizabethans desire for the theatre was soon enhance by the attribute of music. The importance of music to the Elizabethans was reflected in the plays by Shakespeare who had more than five hundred references to music in his plays and poems.

Music and sound at The Globe:

Different sounds were used to create special effects on stage. One of the most obvious SFX was music. Musicians were employed to further enhance the overall theatre experience. One of the balconies above the stage housed the musicians. Many Elizabethan composers were instructed to write pieces of music and songs to accompany the works of playwrights. The most famous composer for The Globe theatre was Robert Johnson, who had composed 'Full fathom five' and 'Where the bee sucks' which were written for The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
As well as music other sounds were used to create SFX. Fireworks were often used to imitate the sounds of gunfire which resembled a battlefield. Sounds could be made from 'Hell' including different sounds from various instruments such as the trumpets, chimes, bells or drums. Actor who were skilled in imitating the crowing of roosters or the wailing of ghostly sound would be waiting in 'Hell' to create these sound effects. Also a metal sheet or rolling cannonball were used for creating the sound of thunder.

FRIDAY 15TH NOVEMBER

In today's lesson we started off with a quick warm up. We did a speech exercise around the group, where we told different words to say followed by different actions. For example we had 'yeehaa' which was the word we used to pass along the group. We had other western-related words to say too. I found this exercise really fun and it just showed how quickly you change and adapt your tone of voice to fit a particular word or sound.
After the exercise we went straight onto rehearsing our devised piece. We began to fill in the missing scenes and decided it would be best if we had a script of Macbeth to read lines from, so I went to get the script to make the process easier. We began with a hotel scene, which I was not in, therefore I observed the scene and just gave my opinions. The group members who were doing the scene thought it best to improv the scene since we had not yet picked lines, I thought this worked really for the scene as all the emotion was really let out, which was needed for this particular scene. In keeping with the theme of deceit I suggested that it would be interesting if after Lady Macbeth's argument with Macbeth that we have her casting a spell on him. So that the audience know this woman is evil and supernatural. 

WEDNESDAY 13TH NOVEMBER

In today's lesson I worked on the opening scene, which me and my group decided would be in an office. Lady Macbeth and the witches start off as normal office women, but then we decided that they would go under the table and transform into witches. This allows for a moment in which the audience see these women transform and also it transforms into a whole new scene, which is in a club. After this we began to improv the following scene since we had not yet figured out all the lines. I made a decision that my character would be trying to 'seduce' Macbeth in order to get what she wants. I did this by making sure my proxemics to Macbeth were very close, I slowed down my talking a bit and and also slightly lowered my tone. I then had to move to where the witches where plotting against Macbeth and my tone had to be completely different; I was a lot louder and my body language was a lot bigger then it previously was. We also rehearsed the 'Letter' scene in our play, and we decided that it would look interesting if not only was Lady Macbeth reading the letter but she was reading long with the other witches, mocking him. I sounded very sarcastic when reading my lines of the letter, and I also decided that I would walk around stage and laugh as the other witches read the reminder of the letter. 
 We also made a decision to not include Macduff in our play, as there isn't enough people in our group and also we feared that the audience would get confused.

KEY TERMS

CUE:a thing said or done that serves as a signal to an actor or other performer to enter or to begin their speech or performance

DRESS:the final rehearsal of a live show, in which everything is done as it would be in a real performance.

FADE: to increase, decrease or eliminate gradually the brightness of a lantern or the volume of a sound.

CROSS FADE: (in sound or film editing) make a picture or sound appear or be heard gradually as another disappears or becomes silent.

SFX: abbreviation of sound effects in theatre.

LFX: abbreviation of light effects in theatre.

KEY TERMS

DIRECTOR: a person who is in charge of an activity, department, or organisation.A theatre director or stage director is a director/instructor in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production (a play, an opera, a musical, or a devised piece of work) by unifying various endeavours and aspects of production. The director's function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realising their artistic vision for it. The director therefore collaborates with a team of creative individuals and other staff, coordinating research, stagecraft, costume design, props, lighting design, acting, set design, stage combat, and sound design for the production. If the production he or she is mounting is a new piece of writing or a (new) translation of a play, the director may also work with the playwright or translator. In contemporary theatre, after the playwright, the director is generally the primary visionary, making decisions on the artistic concept and interpretation of the play and its staging. Different directors occupy different places of authority and responsibility, depending on the structure and philosophy of individual theatre companies. Directors utilize a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration.

DRAMATURGE:A dramaturge or dramaturg is a professional position within a theatre or opera company that deals mainly with research and development of plays or operas.

LIGHTING RIG:a structure that holds the lights for a stage in a theatre, at an outdoor concert etc

PLACARD:a printed or handwritten notice or sign for public display, either fixed to a wall or carried during a demonstration.

COLD READING:reading from a script you have not had a chance to read in advance. 

FIRST READING: the first time the actors read over the script.

MONDAY 11TH NOVEMBER

In today's lesson we began to get the first scene ( from which we made a tableaux) up on its feet. We began to work on the opening of the play and I suggested that it should reflect the ideas and theories of Brecht, who is one of our chosen practitioners. We all agreed on this and we thought of how we were going to go about this. Since we had previously discussed that we were going to be politicians, we started the play off in an office. I suggested that we all sit in a line and act like a 'human conveyor belt' and pass these papers amongst the three of us. We all decided to have different functions, I decided I wanted to portray typing into a computer as this is something which you would find someone doing in an office. With our ruling idea being deceit I thought it would be interesting if the papers these three women were reading had something written about Macbeth, with this in mind I suggested that we would smirk at each other; also there will be something written on the back of these papers which the audience would be able to see. We haven't thought of what it could say, but I was thinking it could have different words from the play which related to Macbeth. 
In the second half of the lesson we just began to enhance this scene even further. There was an idea that all three of the witches would go down under the table and come out through the other side into a whole new scene. This was a really good idea so we decided to take it further, we agreed that we would be in a club and this really kept in the theme of deceit as not everything is what it seems to be. We then carried on with this idea of deceit by having the three witches 'remove' any piece of clothing which made them seem some what normal and have them show their true selves as they begin their spell.

STAGE DIAGRAM

FRIDAY 8TH NOVEMEBER

In todays lesson we completed all of our main scenes and added in most of our key lines. We also decided to go through our first scene, at first I suggested that we simply run over the lines so that from there we could see what we could do. After doing this I decided that it would be best if we deliver our lines sounding quite menacing since we were 'supernatural' beings, so for this I made sure that my tone was quite low but still audible and also by adding different hand gestures and movement. But then in contrast to this we would act completly different when Macbeth entered the scene, this kept with our ruling idea of deceit.