Author Archives: Stephanie Alcock

Dialogue as opposed to Monologue

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Concluding the decision of using themes of Power, Fame, Beauty and Feminism throughout the performance, it was the general consensus amongst the cast that using Shakespeare within our piece was a fundamental aspect due to the challenge of re-interpreting Shakespeare being a challenge we openly accepted. Thus looking at the male monologues in particular from various plays such as Hamlet, MacBeth and King Lear links were found between certain characters. For instance subtle links were found between Hamlet and Titus Andronicus’ monologues in their theme of contemplation, or rather I interpreted them thus. Therefore by editing both of these to create a dialogue between both characters, this was taking them completely out of the context of the play as their deliverance would be comedic, as opposed to them originally being a part of a tragic play.

Subtle links were found between King Lear and Titus also in terms of their maddening tone, with MacBeth and the character of Caliban it seemed that their similiar plan of plotting murder evoked comedic tones and so coupling these seemed appropriate. As well as pairing King Lear’s famous “O reason not the need…” monologue with Hamlet’s monologue, they both comparatively sound alike a teenage tantrum once read as such. And so these 4 individual pairings seemed to each produce themes of Contemplation, Madness, Murder and Indulgence, and due to each of their ‘dialogues’ lasting roughly 2 minutes it seemed that they would work well as transitional scenes, acting as sub-themes, between the main themes consisting of Pop Culture, Power, Fame, Beauty, Feminism and Comedy.

Playing with Power

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Throughout our process our initial idea of incorporating political speeches into our performance was something that I felt as a director, would be a challenge. Yet exploring the theme of ‘power’ is something that has so many outlets; for example indoctrination and facism, especially in the case of Adolf Hitler. Speeches I also studied in relation with power were Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’, yet reading Hitler’s speech out of the context of Nazi Germany seems to have a much more profound and eery effect given the content of his speech.

Because of the controversial content of what Hitler’s speech delivers, the most effective way to incorporate this speech was to contrast the sinister and indoctrination with a form of innocence and youth to really hone in on the words that are spoken. I was able to film my 6 year old cousin speaking a section of Hitler’s speech from January 30 1941, exactly 8 years after the Nazi’s achieved power.

The result of this 6 year old Aryan looking child (bringing connotations with the Hitler Youth) will hopefully create a sense of omnipotence and reflection upon hearing these powerful and manipulating words being spoken by a young child.

Altering, writing and improving

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As Director of Hand Me Down Theatre, it is my job to maintain the progress of the script and that each scene I direct coincides with the company manifesto. Framing our piece at the beginning of the process, we outlined the main themes we wanted to explore. Yet deciding on an innovative opening scene is something that needed to be perfected in order to shape our piece and lead into the rest of the performance. Therefore deciding on the initial idea of exploring the absurdity of modern song lyrics in pop culture, we decided to introduce the 8 performers of the ensemble that would be performing in this opening scene.

 

Opening Scene Script

Opening Scene Script

 

Experimenting with a confessional and therapy style scene, we created an intimate performance whereby each character was drawn from our interpretation of the song lyrics. Our initial catalyst for this idea was Pitbull’s lyrics:

 

Me not working hard? Yeah right, picture that with a kodak. Or better yet, go to Times Square and take a picture of me with a kodak. Took my life from negative to positive. I just wanted y’all to know that.

 

It seemed that whilst these lyrics are completely ridiculous out of context, and arguably within their context, we were able to interpret them as a kind of confession when delivering them. And so this led to the thought of creating a dialogue constructed with lyrics that made no sense at all yet when delivered in a context they would seem understandable, almost Dadaist. Rudolf Kuenzil defined Dadaism as questioning

 

the myth of originality, of the artist as genius, suggesting instead that everybody should be an artist and that almost anything could be art. [and]… Dada works still have radicalism and freshness that attracts today’s culture jammers and disrupters of life as usual. (2006, p. 14)

 

Essentially this is an element of what our opening scene consists of. We shared this scene in our class workshop, mainly consisting of spoken lyrics acting as dialogue throughout the 10 minutes by 8 performers, each adopting a trait of a character, e.g. an alcoholic or sex addict. The feedback we received of this scene was constructive; elements such as the rhythm of the piece leading into a crescendo needed improving as well as not revealing too much a sense of the piece at the outset. Before sharing this scene the following week, I essentially changed the scene completely, creating more of a dialogue at the beginning to ease into the scene and then slowly interjecting lyrics of songs that led to a montage of songs. The crescendo that we hopefully achieved was through the rhythm of the words being interjected at a consistent pace by every performer.

 

Yet as the scene was staged by integrating the audience into the circle we created to try and replicate the atmosphere of a therapy style session, the characters needed to be more relatable to the audience and less extreme if this is the style that we are going to maintain. However, experimenting with the idea of staging our performance as a promenade would mean that the audience would see this scene from another perspective; observing in rather than being included. Thus this would allow the scene to be more effective in terms of challenging the audience to observe from an outsider and listen to the words of the piece rather than being caught up in the surrealism of this scene if they were included in the circle, as our objective would be lost.

 

Works cited:

Kuenzil, Rudolf (2006) Dada, London: Phaidon Press Ltd.

Shaffer, Smith (2014) AZ Lyrics, Online: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pitbull/givemeeverything.html (accessed: 31 March 2014).

Material Girls

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When deciding which speech to experiment with, it seemed that the idea to experiment with Marilyn Monroe’s notorious speech regarding ‘beauty’ was a good place to start. This we found due to the words Marilyn is saying, seem to contradict the persona that she is portraying.

 

“I feel that beauty and femininity are ageless and can’t be contrived,

and glamour, although the manufacturers won’t like this,

cannot be manufactured.”

                                                – Marilyn Monroe

 

The above quote itself a contradiction as the truth was that she was a platinum blonde whose image was constructed to be a sex symbol, her identity changing so much that her name did also. Taking all of these aspects on board we felt the best way to represent the concept of irony that is being conveyed through this speech would be for an average male to speak it, who is out of the limelight and not a symbol of glamour. Our workshop led us to experimenting with our stage manager Andrew, reading the speech as if he were in the tech stand on opening night (which would be pre-recorded), whilst three glamorous and extremely fake looking women strutted on-stage. Whilst on-stage they moved in unison in a robotic like rhythm (to create a manufactured doll like image) in time to the words, so that it resulted in a choreographed piece of physical theatre representing all that contradicted the spoken words.

 

Making the transition from  the beginning of the scene as beautifully manufactured like dolls to insecure natural beauties to contrast with this image of ‘beauty’ that is being conveyed in the speech, we felt that this hopefully represented the concept that we were trying to portray; that beauty should not be constructed, as Marilyn suggests, even though she presents otherwise.

 

Marilyn-Monroe-9412123-1-402

 

Following the exploration of feminine beauty in the previous scene, I felt that the next scene would work perfectly exploring the concept of feminism and its topics that are continuously discussed throughout generations, yet all women are guilty of doing. For example, we are all products of consumerism, whether it be wearing make up to trying to ‘perfect’ ourselves. This being so, we experimented with using this idea of ‘generations’ to try and follow from the previous scene into a scene of comical relief, yet which is a satirical approach to women throughout generations discussing feminist topics. And so we explored the idea of presenting this in a ‘generation game’ type scenario which, along with lighting, would look aesthetically pleasing when eventually performed.

 

Thus after experimenting and workshopping these two themes of ‘beauty’ and ‘feminism’ that we had discussed in weeks passed, these two scenes compliment each other in terms of subjects presented.