Vaudeville and New Vaudeville

Vaudeville is a theatre genre that includes different types of entertainment.It was popular in the U.S.A and Canada from the 1880s until the 1930s. A vaudeville performance is typically made up of a series of unrelated performances grouped together. Types of performances have included musicians, singers, dancers, comedians,magicians, one-act plays and scenes from plays.

Vaudeville was developed from different sources such as freak shows and concert saloons. Vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in America for several decades being Called "the heart of American show business.”

Before the civil war theatre was dominated by burlesque and had many risqué things Theatre was not only a place to entertained, theatre was also a place for men to have a drink. Theatre was mainly aimed towards a male auditions. In 1881 Tony Pastor said that theatre shouldn’t be just for men and shows should have a wide variety of different performances. Pastor went on to ban drinking in the theatre, perform Shakespeare, acrobats, singers, and comedy all in the same show. He also removed all the risqué and inappropriate content and aimed to make it for everyone. Pastor discovered he could make a huge amount of money if they kept putting on performances like this. As the years went on more amusements became available. However when Silent movies started to be released for cheaper prices , Vaudeville started to have a big competitor. Slowly Vaudeville became less popular and they could not support themselves as much as they used to.

However Vaudeville still exists today with shows such as ‘Britain's got talent’ and Royal Variety performances. We also have kept the comedy sketches that were bought to life by Vaudeville This is called New Vaudeville .

What makes it new Vaudeville

*Over the top physically

*Comedy sketch type performance

*No character relationship with the audience

*Often recognise your audience. Acknowledging the they are there.

Shakespearian History

Shakespeare

In 1576 James Burbage bought a lease and built “The Theatre” in Shoreditch London. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were the company in residence from 1594 1596 and were lead by Richard Burbage.

Theatre Shakespeare Style:

Writers present their ideas for a plot.

The actors and managers decided whether they want to fund it.

Writers create their characters with certain actors in mind.

Rehearsals were used to sort out the details such as Entrances, costumes, and songs.

1593 London Theatres close due to the bubonic plague.

From 1596 to 1597 the city of London banned public performances within the city limits of London.

In 1597 The owner of the land 'the theatre' was built on, Giles Allen Disapproved of the theatre and refused to re-new the lease.

1597, Shakespeare Company of actors moved to the Curtain Theatre.

1599 The globe theatre is opened.

1603 The return of the bubonic Plague kills 33,000 people. In 1608 Theatres closed once again.

In 1613 June 29th a Fire broke out at the globe during a performance of henry VIII

1614 The Globe is rebuilt

After Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603, King James took the throne. This is known as the Jacobean period and ran until 1625.

Jacobean theatre was extremely dark and gritty.

In 1642 The English civil war broke out and Parliament pulled down the Globe Theatre and replaced it with council houses

A new law was passed and all actors were arrested and anyone who went to see a play was fined.

For the Shakespearian unit we were all split into two groups and given two different scenes from the shakespeare play 'A midsummer night's dream' and were told to try and use the Shakespearian style to show the scenes. My group got the scene were Bottom and his company decided who is going to play which part and how we should play it. This scene highly focuses on Bottom and Peter Quince. As such the actors who were not playing those two characters would not have many lines and would have to interact with each other a lot to keep the audiences attention. Because we were focusing on shakespeare we decided that we should not have a set list of interactions that we would take part in, in shakespearian plays the actors would not rehearse with each other, so we thought that if we rehearse together then we would not get a sense of what it was like to be an actor in shakespeare's time. We came up with a rough idea of what we wanted to happen but we would all improvise around that. This worked out a lot better than I thought it would, because we were playing characters who were considered 'dim witted' it worked quite well that we didn't really know what we were going to do and it looked more genuine overall.

physical theatre

Physical Theatre puts emphasis on movement rather than Dialogue. Physical Theatre is anything that puts the body at the centre of the story. It’s often abstract in style, using movement in a stylised and representational way. DV8 is arguably the main practitioners of Physical Theatre as a “full” art form. They look at potential that can be unlocked from movement and tend to be described as existing at a crossroad where dance, Sound and drama meet. They use Physical Theatre to explore complex aspects of human relationships and or social culture aspects. Although Physical theatre focuses on movement, it can be separate from the spoken word and explore it’s meaning.It may well be devised or contain substantial elements could be other art forms such as music, dance the use of media or visual images.

Techniques

Mime – stylised movement but can be comparatively realistic

Gesture –may be something small but can have a powerful impact or a movement that defines a character

Status – Executed by use of levels or by distance or strength or contact or a combination of all voice work

Proximity

Stance

Harshness and Tenderness

Movement

Not moving

Mask Work

Dance Work

Contact Improvisation

Is a developed form improvisation usually a duet, between two experienced dancers.

Our interest here is the starting point – point of contact.

To absorb an impulse by the partner

To resist or ignore it

Piece one:

For this physical theatre piece we were given the stimulus of religion. As a group we decided to focus on how religion can repress an individual and how they are safe in numbers. To show this we had Danny play the character who was getting repressed and the rest of us would be the religious group attacking him for not believing in what we do. The performance would start of with Danny kneeling in the centre of the stage saying a pray in latin. Then in pairs we would come in and change him into what we think he should be.

As the movement piece goes on we lift Danny up to represent how he is above us for believing in something different and how he is a better person for it.

Throughout the movement we change Danny and force him to do things such as kneeling down and praying. We wanted to show how someone can be shunned by a community for not fitting into the world they belong to. At the end of the piece we do the movements backwards and revert to the beginning to show that we could not change Danny’s characters mind and we were not able to convert him to our ways of life. Overall the performance went really well. This was due to the amount we rehearsed it and how we all managed to work together in sync. We all had the same vision for what the movement piece would be and this helped us shape what the final piece was. If we could do the performance again then I would like to make the piece more physical than dance. The feedback we were given told us that we need to make it more of a physical theatre piece as we accidentally made the performance more dance that physical.

Piece two:

For this physical theatre piece the stimulus we were given was a picture of a stage, on the stage there were actors and one man stood out the most as he was raised up holding a gun above his head. The way we interpreted the stimulus was that it was a revolution. However we did not want to go for the obvious. Instead we wanted to show a different type of revolution. Instead we showed a self revolution and how one decision can change a persons life forever.

To show this we had Liam and Kyle play the same person and they separated and took completely different paths in life. Liam becoming a drug addict and Kyle becoming a respected business man. To show this, in groups of three we represented what Liam and Kyle are. Liam and Kyle then get pulled apart and join in their respected movement.

To show that this is a physical piece and not just a dance we had dialogue and we used our bodies to represent inanimate objects such as chairs, doors and desks.

We wanted to make sure that the performance we made was not a dance and that it included as many techniques as possible. We used synchronised movement, not moving, music and status.

The movement piece overall went a lot better than we thought it would. The final piece flowed well and we all knew what we were doing. Seeing as we didn’t rehearse for a week because we were helping out with the school show, I think this is an accomplishment. If we had more time, I feel we could make the piece longer and more complex. due to us only having a couple of lessons to create an entire movement piece, the end product was a lot more impressive than I thought it would be.

'The Caucasian Chalk Circle' opinions

This week we worked on creating a scene using an extract from the script of 'The Caucasian Chalk Circle' To achieve our goals set by Ms Cordell we had to create the scene using the script and techniques used by Brecht. My group decided not to use every technique as it would not make sense with such a short scene. Instead we only used a few such as 'narration' and multi rolling.' At first I did not think i would really enjoy performing this piece as it was short and I felt that we would not be able to create an entertaining scene in such little time. However after performing the scenes my opinion changed. I actually did enjoy the scene we did and I can now see why Brecht wanted to use the ideas that he did.

I can see why using symbolic props and place cards can be effective as it creates a boundary between reality and fantasy. Brecht didn't want a performance to be seen as an adaptation of reality. Instead he wanted it to be something people go to enjoy and know that these characters are not in any real danger or pain. After some initial research I see why Brecht wanted to do this. He lived in a very dark time and wanted to give his audiences an escape from the reality that they were living in.

http://www.hampsteadplayers.org.uk/productions/chalkcircle/large_poster.jpg

Information about Bertolt Brecht

When Brecht was 16, the First World War broke out. At first he was enthusiastic but Brecht soon changed his mind. To get out of fighting Brecht used a loophole and registered for a medical course at Munich University in 1917 where he studied drama with Arthur Kutscher. Brecht's first full-length play, Baal was written in 1918 in response to an argument in one of Kutscher's seminars.

Brecht's moved to America during the rise of the Nazi party as he was openly anti-nazi. This caused him to have his citizenship revoked. Brecht was very political and has a spoken against the events he had lived through and how the government where corrupted.

It wasn't until 1941 did Brecht gain American citizenship. Brecht however returned to Europe in 1947 and created the Berlin Ensemble.

Brecht's goal with his theatrical company was to cheer his audience up. Due to the horrible times that had over come Germany, Brecht wanted to give his audience an escape from the horrid reality. To do this he wanted to create performance where the audience would be entertained but they would not be emotionally attached to any of the characters. The audience should instead have to think about the performance they just watched and self-reflect.

He wanted his audiences to recognise social injustice and to be motivated to go from the theatre and try to change the world. For this purpose, Brecht used a number of techniques that remind the audience that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself. These techniques are now used widely in the world of theatre.

These techniques include:

Narration

Speaking stage directions

using place cards

multi rolling

song and dance

montage

freeze frames

'It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk'- Bertolt http://www.brechtsociety.org/images/brecht_exil.jpg