Theatre in Education (17) - Written report

Analyse and justify your ideas for a Theatre in Education performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream that meets the needs of your target audience

Our unit title is "Theatre in Education" so our primary purpose for our performance is to educate. However, we also have a strong secondary purpose to entertain, as the more entertaining we make our piece, the more engaged our younger audience shall be and so the more they will learn from our piece. As our audience are Year Nine students, we have to ensure that our material is age appropriate, and so not containing any foul language or gestures and nothing too crude. However, as we have an all-male audience, our cast knows how to appeal to their sense of humour (hence why we have incorporated stage combat into our piece). Also to keep them engaged throughout, we shall make our piece relatable to them but also comical, so they want to watch on, rather than feel like they are being taught a valuable lesson. To keep our audience engaged, we shall not do a full Shakespeare play as this would overwhelm though, so we decided that we would cut down the dialogue and make it our own version.

As our audience are Key Stage 3 Drama and English students, we decided to do a Shakespearean play, as Shakespeare is on both the KS3 drama and English curriculum. We wanted to give the students the opportunity to see Shakespeare performed live because Shakespeare's work was supposed to be performed and not read - the chance to see it performed is more entertaining than reading it in a classroom for the first time. We also wanted our piece to rid our audience of pre-conceptions of Shakespeare being hard and boring; therefore, we knew that we wanted to do a comedy piece because we would be able to make it more entertaining as it wouldn't feel too serious and like a lesson. We decided on "A Midsummer Night's Dream" because it would work best for our cast, we all like the play and think our audience would enjoy this the most.

To educate the English students (and the drama students), we want to make the language seem accessible to them. To do this we have cut down the massive monologues so they are not overwhelmed with what feels like a foreign language to them. Moreover, the language we do use has to be spoken convincingly as our characters - we want the language to come across as naturally so it is more understandable (apart from as our upper-class characters, as for these we are going rather melodramatic and very posh to almost poke fun at how people expect Shakespeare to be performed, which also creates a contrast to how we do perform it). We want to show our whole audience how you can adapt things and be more creative with a given text - so we have formed our own original characterisations of these characters - the fairies are all very common, the lovers are most like ourselves, the mechanicals are all different and just comical, whilst the other characters are very upper class. Whilst developing our performance, we have been very conscious of our facial expressions, body language and character interactions, as these are three key techniques that the drama students in our audience have been working on before picking drama as a GCSE. Also in our developing process, we have all stretched and pushed ourselves (as we had never done a Shakespeare play before and multi-rolled to such an extent) to show the drama students in our audience what can be achieved if you push yourself and don't hold back.

I have researched three different Theatre in Education companies, to give me a better understanding of what it is and what we could do to improve our piece. I researched "Big Brum", "Rubbish Shakespeare" and "Guildford Shakespeare Company". Big Brum's work is normally aimed at infant and primary school children - all their work is adapted so it is their own version and is suitable for their audience. I liked the idea of making it your own version - obviously we wanted to adapt it so it works best for our audience, but I liked the idea of ours being our own, though I was always conscious so we didn't draw too far away from the original as our audience contains English students who we didn't want to confuse! For example, we did consider changing the setting of our play but decided against it as to keep it true to the original - instead we just experimented with our characterisations. The Rubbish Shakespeare company also adapt their own versions, but they also combine the original text with "modern contemporary language" to make their version more relatable. In our circumstance, I disagree with changing the language, as we are wanting to perform a true Shakespeare piece to educate our audience who will be studying Shakespeare - however, I thought making the piece was essential to their engagement, thus inspiring the idea of making the lovers similar to them. The Guildford Shakespeare Company is also a site-specific company. Their aim is to make Shakespeare accessible to those who normally wouldn't get the opportunity to see it performed. I liked how this company make their theatre immersive, performing in close proximity to the audience - I thought that this was something we could do too - however, we have to be aware of the health and safety implications with this.

When working in close proximity to the audience we have to ensure that we do not have any physical theatre sections which could result in us landing or stepping on any audience members (as they will be sitting on the floor). We will have to put tape down and ask them to stay behind the tape at all times - if our audience were younger we would have not used such a close proximity and the physical theatre sections would not have any risk to them at all. However, as our audience is older, we are able to do these larger physical sections (i.e. the fights) but we have choreographed it so that these sections are the same every time in the space. We are using lighting throughout our performance so to reduce the risk of tripping hazards when our audience enters the room, we shall have to tape down all cables. We shall position the lights so that the audience won't be looking in to them. If we were using flashing lights / strobes then we would have to give warnings and ensure that the strobe doesn't last for more than ten seconds. However, we don't need to worry about this as we don't use any flashing lights - our lighting is only used to show times of day, characters, location and to aid scene transitions. If we were a proper TIE company then we would all have to be police checked, however, as we are students, and there will be teachers in the room, we do not have to worry about this.

We wanted to keep our set, props and costumes simplistic as to not overwhelm or distract our audience. We went through all the possible options for costumes, but we decided on wearing all blacks with representational props for each character. Not only are we not over-complicating it for our audience, but this is a lot more practical for us because it allows us to move easily and change quickly for all of our multi-rolling. We were careful with our choice of additional representational props as we didn't want to include fashion trends as we were aiming to make our piece timeless. We didn't want any set as we didn't think this was necessary - almost the entirety of the play takes place in the woods, and the characters even mention that they are in the woods, so we didn't think any set was necessary. Moreover, including set would minimise the stage space available for us, as we have already lost performance space due to bringing the curtains out further in to the room (on all three sides) to form wings for entrances, exits and costume changes. Our play will include a lot of props for the mechanical scenes to create a busy and chaotic atmosphere and to also for comedic reasons - as they all try on costumes and mess around with the props. Apart from the mechanical scenes, we won't use props to not over-complicate the piece. Although we want our piece to be entertaining, we don't want to lose our primary purpose of education, so we need to make sure that nothing distracts from the story line, characters and language.

Theatre in Education (16) - Rehearsals, Script and Final Stages

Script:   

Recently we have been doing full runs of our version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", but we have timed it and realised that it is rather lengthy and still contains huge chunks of dialogue, which would put us at risk of losing our audiences attention. Therefore, due to timing and engagement (and that Shakespeare is a real challenge to learn and maintain - especially when we are playing multiple parts rather than just one each, as we would if we had a larger cast), we have made the executive decision to trim more of the script. The main sections we cut were repetitive details within large monologues or details that weren't essential - however, when cutting, we had to bear in mind that Shakespeare often wrote in couplets, so we had to ensure that the lines still rhymed if needed.

We also cut down long duologues so that audience didn't lose interest, feeling like they are just watching a long conversation. Therefore, we cut down the argument between Demetrius and Helena, but also added more physicality to the remainder of this scene to make it more comical. Moreover, we cut the characters Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed by ending the scene between Bottom and Titania on Titania's line, "thou shalt like an airy spirit go". We cut the rest of this scene as it wasn't essential to our plot - as it is a side-story and doesn't help progress the main narrative. We also didn't want to over-complicate our piece by having even more multi-rolling and another group of characters. Also, when I speak to the fairies earlier in the play, I act as if they are invisible: I can see them but the audience can't.

In addition, we also cut from the end of Puck's monologue on page 68 to page 78. Instead of having pages of Shakespearean dialogue that is complicated purely because of the actual story at this point, we thought that we should cut them and replace these pages with a movement piece which shows the Puck giving the potion, and the lovers falling in love with the right partner and them becoming friends again. Our movement piece involves accumulation, unison and counterpoint relationships to make the piece look aesthetically pleasing, as well as serving the purpose to educate, as this is another method of story telling, which we are using to avoid reeling off pages and pages of potentially over-whelming language. Our penultimate scene is the mechanicals getting ready and then Bottom returning and then we jump straight to the prologue and do the mechanicals play.

Final stages:

What we have left to do is as follows:

• full run of our new adapted version with lighting and no scripts
• make / gather all costumes and props, and rehearse with them
• put music we use in a playlist on a laptop (perhaps adding more music in places to make the piece more atmospheric and immersive).

Site Specific (23) - Show day

We spent the entirety of today in our performance venue, working in the space and working out where is best for each scene to take place. We did our risk assessment, worked out our entrances and exits and did full runs in costume. My risk assessment is published on the previous blog, but below is what we did to adapt our version intended for "Temple Manor" to work at St Margaret's Church:

• Opening Movement Piece:   Originally we had designed this piece to be performed outside, as it presents the girls "dancing in the woods" and "conjuring the Devil". Thankfully, there was enough space within the corner of the outside walls of the church, forming a square section of grass for us to do our movement piece on. Fortunately, this section of grass was fairly level (as it is so close to the church) thus making this location ideal for this movement section as it contains a lift. The only downside with this area is that it is so close to the main road, thus we had some traffic noise, limiting our eerie and old-time setting and atmosphere we aimed to create.
• Scene One:   This scene took place just inside the church entrance. We moved a table into this area to act as a bed. By positioning the audience in the doorway, we managed to make our piece more immersive as some characters entered and exited through the audience.
• Second Movement Piece:   By setting the first scene in the entrance section, we could easily lead the audience in a straight line, behind the pews, and out the opposite door to get the area outside the back of the church. This is where we set our second movement piece. As there are no lifts in this piece and it is basically walking, we didn't need to worry so much about uneven ground. However, we did have to be careful where we were walking as there were more gravestones here. Unfortunately, our audience didn't quite go where we wanted them to, as we had intended them to stand by the door, but they dispersed a little bit. However, this worked well for this piece as it is interesting from every angle and doesn't necessarily have a front position.
• Scene Two:   Ollie and I got up first, and made our way into our performance space inside the church for the second scene so the audience could follow. This scene happened at the front of the church, on the left, to enable the audience to sit down during this scene, as it is longer than the first scene. Conveniently, there was an electric piano with a cover on which we used as a table. Just behind where we were performing, were two steps with a gate at the top that lead to another room. We used this area to represent the upstairs of the Proctor's house, making this an entrance place for Mary Warren. The entrance to the house that Hale and Cheever use was the aisle in the audience - thus making our piece more immersive.
• Scene Three:   Ollie M lead the audience from the pews they were sitting in to the benches near the alter on either side to sit behind the characters in the court. Meanwhile, I walked up to the podium and put my back to the audience and remained there until I was brought down into the scene - this was to represent me being in jail. This scene was in traverse so we had to make sure there was a lot of movement, so the characters didn't have their backs to certain audience members for the whole time. The church was an absolutely perfect location for this scene as it contained beams that the girls speak about during their accusations.
• Third Movement Piece:   At the end of the previous scene, we all storm out to where we were for the second movement piece. The audience followed us out as we all left at that point. This movement piece worked well being in the same location as the last movement piece, as this one was as a reflection of the previous one - the pieces are similar as they are both centred around Abigail, but this second one creates a contrast and presents the opposite idea. By having the two pieces in the same location helps the audience realise that the pieces are reflected.
• Scene Four:   This scene happens in the same area as the movement pieces - this is the only scene that happens outside, thus foregrounding this scene. The noise of the traffic did prove an issue during this scene, but we just added in pauses where they were needed and projected more.
• The Lord's Prayer:   This section was very effective as the audience seemed to feel uneasy when we didn't say "amen" at the end of the prayer. It made a nice conclusion to our piece as everyone was brought together in unison before Proctor was taken out and the door was shut on the audience, leaving them outside with the rest of us.

Site Specific (22) - Risk Assessment

Theatre in Education (15) - At this point...

We have now fully staged all of our scenes and are currently spending each lesson doing full run-throughs of our version of the play. We have completed our lighting design and setting, with the help of Mr McKay, so now what we have left to do is the following:

• everyone learn all of their lines
• make / source all props / costumes
• rehearse with all said props and costumes
• time our performance to work out where would be a suitable place to put an interval if needed

Site Specific (21) - New Location

Temple Manor has now got back to us and said that we are unable to use this location on the date we desired. Therefore, we are changing our venue to St Margaret's Church, who are very happy to accommodate us in terms of looking around the venue and our actual performance. Although our actual performance shall be in a different venue, our piece is still site-specific for Temple Manor (as we chose our play and style after researching the venue) but we shall work out our entrances and exits for this venue.              https://rainhamchurch.wordpress.com/

This link is to a video of a virtual tour of the church: https://rainhamchurch.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/virtual-tour.mp4. Some of our class visited the church in their free lessons to meet the staff and parish, and to look round the venue to work out where we could perform what. Thankfully the church has a lot of land outside so we are still able to do
our opening piece outside before bringing the audience inside. We shall do our court scene in the church in the traverse seating (1:52 of the virtual tour) with our audience on either sides.

The benefits of this venue include the fact that there is a lot of parking, there are toilets next door in the pub as well, and that lighting and sound isn't an issue. It is also very spacious and has a lot of potential locations for each of our scenes.

Recently, we have been doing full runs of our version of the play. We have been working a lot on eye contact, as our audience is hopefully going to be in close proximity to us to create a strong actor-audience relationship - we want our piece to be immersive. Although we are not sure on our entrance and exit points yet, we decided that we wanted Proctor's line in Scene One, "Be you foolish Mary Warren?!" to be spoken as he barges his way through the audience to get to her - this will help build the immersive theatre experience.

Theatre in Education (14) - Ending & Beginning

Pages 69 - 100:   

This was the first time we staged this scene. For the introduction to the characters Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed, we had them as puppets being poked out from behind the gap in the curtains voiced by Lewis, Rob and James. However, for this scene we realised it would work quite nicely if we had these puppets as Barbie dolls on sticks and the boys in black, so they could come on stage with them. After this scene we shall have a short blackout to get the sleeping Bottom off stage and Egeus and Theseus on stage for the next scene. We had done the next scene before a few times and were confident with our blocking.

The next scene is the mechanicals realising that Bottom is still missing. We worked a bit on intentions to ensure that we all knew exactly what was being said during this scene, to know what tone to speak with. We also worked on Bottom's return and how our characters would react - we have made it so Flute is very camp and clearly has a crush on Bottom so we got him to run over and give him a hug when he enters - everyone is just very excited to see him again.

We cut the next scene down a lot as they contain large stanzas of Shakespearean language and we feel that our audience will disconnect from our piece and also these lines aren't essential to our story. Apart from the end of my line, we cut the whole of pages 83 and 84. We then cut down to Theseus' line beginning "I will hear that play". However, we put Philostrate's line on page 86 before Theseus' line. We then cut to the beginning of the play: the prologue. James and I leave USL to behind the curtains as if about to watch the play, but instead shall be ready to come on as the mechanicals. The actual play section itself went really well today. For the section where the Wall curses, we adapted this slightly from the original. At this point the chink in the wall is supposed to be Snout giving two fingers to Bottom, but to make it more appropriate to our audience, the "curse" is me poking my tongue out at Bottom. To add more comedy again, as Pyramus says "No, in truth, sir, ..." I go to poke out my tongue but stop myself just before I do, allowing me to use very over-the-top facial expressions (something that the drama students in our audience will be looking out for).

Pages 4 - 14:   We run this scene without scripts for as much as we could. We knew our blocking and intention, so our main focus was characterisation in terms of body language, facial expressions and use of voice - as these are three drama techniques that our audience have been working on and will be looking out for.

Theatre in Education (13) - The argument

Today we worked on the argument section from the girls part onwards. We wanted this to be very physical and quite realistic to make a contrast to the boys pathetic argument. To make the most of the fact that Rob is wearing a wig, I shall pull Helena's hair and push her to the floor. We both push each other for a bit, until she turns around. When I say my line "Puppet?" I run at her and jump on her back. We worked a lot on this to ensure this was safe but still looked effective. We worked out how I would throw myself off of Rob without causing risk to the audience - we had to work out where I would land and make sure this is consistent - that I don't land in a different place each time, to ensure that we all know where we are when this happens and that it is a safe difference away from the audience.

After this I get up and go to attack her again, but Lysander stops me as he picks me up when I'm running toward her and spins me round and puts me back down. This emphasises how short I am as the other three lovers take the mickey out of my character for this. As Helena continues speaking, Lysander dotes on her and forgets about the raging Hermia - therefore, I run towards Helena, but Demetrius puts his hand out and stops me from attacking her. Initially we tried a lift where I ran towards her but Ollie picked me up in a fireman carry and turned me round and put me down. This lift was perfectly safe and looked good when I was up, but it looked too pre-empted as we can't get into that easily whilst ensuring it is safe. Therefore we decided that instead we would have him put out his hand, and I would run into  it so my head was on his palm - I would then swing my arms trying to get to Helena. This adds more comedy into the scene and appeals to the sense of humour of our audience, by playing on the fact that I'm so much shorter than Demetrius and Lysander.

Afterwards both boys hold me back so I can't get to Rob. We developed this hold more so that they were almost lifting me off the ground.

Site Specific (20) - Movement pieces

Opening:   We have now altered this to include Chloe and Taylor. We have kept the beginning section which happens in the square, but whilst this happens, Taylor and Chloe kneel at the front and do a hymn hands section (inspired by Frantic Assembly) to present Tituba getting Betty to drink the soup. Originally, after we had done our square section, we went in to a section where Hope (Abigail) would get us to all drop to our knees, however, now that we are using Taylor (Tituba) in this scene, we decided it would make more sense to use her. Therefore, we have got Taylor leading the ensemble, and instead of us dropping to our knees, we all move to our next positions - for the boys that is to the back ready for the lift, whist the girls drop to their knees facing the back. Originally, we had Ollie being lifted, but we then thought that Chloe would be ideal to be lifted as we could show that Betty is getting ill. However, Chloe isn't confident with lifts so we decided that our next best bet would be Taylor. This actually works really well, as it shows Tituba as manipulating the girls and makes the audience think that Tituba is guilty later on, which is ironic as the audience are then being as gullible as the people at the time. Once this lift has happened, Taylor returns to the front of the formation of us girls on the floor. We do a short repetitive sequence on the floor in cannon, starting with Tituba to show that she is leading it. Next Abigail and Betty join in, and then finally Mary and I. We all have hoods up at this point apart from Tituba so it doesn't matter too much about characters - as Elizabeth wouldn't have been there, but we wanted more of us for this sequence. Near the end of this section, Chloe starts doing her moves differently as if she is being taken over by a spirit (when really she is just falling ill). At the end of this piece, Parris walks on shocked and the girls scarper.

Accusations:   Although we have the option to add in Taylor for this movement section, we have decided against it, as it is not necessary.

Realisation:   This section is almost in reverse of the "accusations" movement piece, so we agreed that we weren't going to put Taylor in to this piece either.

Ending:   For our ending, we aren't using any music, instead we are all going to say the Lord's Prayer. We are not going to speak this in unison throughout - we all come in at different times but end up speaking in unison. Rob comes in first because he is the Reverend who is on the Proctor's side. I am the next person to join in as I am his wife and then everyone else starts to join in. We didn't want to do a lot of movement for this piece as we wanted to keep the ending quite simplistic as the final scene is very emotional. Instead we all walk on to random positions and simply stand there and speak the Lord's Prayer.

Theatre in Education (12) - Opening Scene & The Argument

Opening Scene:   We ran this section today without scripts for as much as we could. We worked a bit more on proxemics today to make the relationships more clear for our audience. However, we also focused on our intentions and voice. We wanted to make the lovers realistic. We also thought that Lysander and Hermia could be very clingy and represent the typical young clingy couple, so that Helena is majorly "third-wheeling" - something that our specific audience will find comical and perhaps relatable for some. Meanwhile, we are making Demetrius quite geeky, very similar to the "Horrid Henry" character, Perfect Peter. This therefore makes Demetrius more similar to Helena, and Lysander and Hermia are similar, thus making the two pairs seem perfect for each other, and making it more obvious when things go wrong and who should be with who.

The tree...   James did some research on the scenes where Puck and Oberon watch the lovers, as they hide in the woods. James was inspired by this video of a company at the Globe Theatre, and thought that we could perhaps do something similar. This was really comical and something we could easily include. We tried to work out some lifts between James and Lewis, but Lewis didn't feel very confident lifting James on his own - he could manage having James on his back, but he wasn't high up enough to make the 'tree' idea work, so we have decided against having a lift between the two. We also wanted our version to be original, so instead the boys stand in between the two curtains at the back and watch forward and back in silence... this is then very comical when Lewis does a slow look at James and says "what hast thou done?". However, we have been original with pages 65 - 68, when Puck imitates Demetrius and Lysander's voices to each other to get them to end up in the same place. James moves places during this scene to get the lovers to move, but he only moves when they are not looking, and stands still for the rest of the time mimicking a tree. To show Puck impersonating the other lovers voice, we are making the most of the fact that only one of them are on stage during these scenes - the characters voice he is impersonating shall say their line off stage whilst James mimes saying the line (this will make it clear who he is supposed to be impersonating whilst adding to the comedy element).

The Argument:   We staged the first half of the argument. We worked a lot on proxemics and movement to ensure that this scene had movement throughout and didn't end up static at all. Our main struggle was to not end up in a line, but we worked on how close we were to what characters to reflect their current relationship and feelings at that time. We also worked out how the boys would fight - we didn't get to work on the girl's fight section, but we knew that we wanted the boys fight to be pathetic in comparison to the girls for added comedy! As Demetrius is big-headed but cowardly, we got him to mime hitting Lysander where it hurts to spark the fight on the line "quick, come!". If we were performing this play to a younger audience we wouldn't have included so much violence, but as it is an all-male audience and they are going into their GCSE's, we didn't think that we were over-stepping the mark and is still suitable for them. The fight then consists of them holding each other in a sort of head lock and struggling. We didn't want this fight to be realistic, as this would make it too violent, and we didn't want it to look impressive because we wanted to make this fight look weak and pathetic compared to the fighting girls. 

Theatre in Education (11) - Research

Our performance is going to be in front of Year 9's, which are Key Stage 3's. We chose to perform a Shakespeare play to them as Shakespeare is part of the KS3 Drama and English specification. Last year they studied Macbeth in drama and Richard III in English. Some of us agreed that we didn't enjoy Shakespeare in English when we did it, but this is because Shakespeare was meant to be performed not read. Therefore, we chose to do a comedy Shakespeare play to try and destroy  negative pre-conceptions of Shakespeare before they know what it is like. We wanted to make Shakespeare accessible to the students and help improve their understanding.

Below are some Theatre in Education and Shakespeare companies that I researched:

• Big Brum -- http://www.bigbrum.org.uk/index.html -- It is a registered company founded in 1982 and based in the West Midlands. Earlier this year they toured their version of Shakespeare's play "Macbeth" and are now currently touring "Rumpelstiltskin - The Straw Baby". Their production of "Macbeth" was an adapted performance and was followed by a workshop which got the children to "analyse, collaborate, make decisions, justify and evaluate". It was designed for students in years 5, 6, 7 and upwards. "Rumpelstiltskin" was designed for years 2, 3 and 4. Their performance is followed by a workshop which children learn to empathise with different characters.
• Rubbish Shakespeare -- http://www.rubbishshakespearecompany.com/about-us -- The company's ethos is "Shakespeare for all". They perform their own adapted versions which combine the original text with "modern contemporary language" to make their play more engaging and relatable. Although I really like this idea, I don't think we need to do this as our intended audience is a bit older and they are studying Shakespeare for English (as well as drama) so the language is very important. However, their idea of making the piece relatable inspired me and inspired us with the idea of making the fairies very common. Below is a quote from their website that explains about their version of the same play we are doing and how it became famous.
  

  "The company have collaborated with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Canal & River Trust to deliver the critically received 'Stratford 2 Stratford' project. This saw the company take thirty students from Stratford in London to Stratford Upon Avon on canal boats, and over the course of ten days create a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The project received national attention, celebrity endorsers and the pupils not only had the opportunity to perform at the RSC with the company, but also to participate in and learn new life experiences that will benefit them throughout their lives."

  They believe that Shakespeare needs to be performed or viewed performed to be understood properly - for a younger audience, I definitely agree with this! They do performances to schools and then follow their performances with workshops. 
• Guildford Shakespeare Company -- https://www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk/vision.html -- Their aim is to make Shakespeare accessible and understandable for people who wouldn't normally see it or come across it. They are a site-specific company whose honorary patron is Brian Blessed. They make their theatre very immersive, performing in close proximity to the audience - this is something that I liked about the company and thought we could experiment with at times - however, as our audience is a bit younger, we have to remember the health and safety factors and that we don't want to overwhelm our audience either - we want them to feel safe and comfortable and simply enjoy the experience whilst learning from it. They run a variety of different workshops and tailor these workshops to suit the needs of the school - the play, the theme, the age group, etc. How adaptable this company is got me thinking more about the specific needs of our audience and who our audience really are. As stated at the beginning of this blog, our audience are Key Stage 3 students who will be studying Shakespeare for both drama and English. Moreover, they are all boys so what they find amusing may be different to what a mixed audience would find funny - they may be less sympathetic to the female characters and prefer certain male characters depending on how they interact with other characters.

Theatre in Education (10) - Production meeting

We spent this lesson having a production meeting to discuss what we shall do in terms of costume, characters and style. As we have almost staged the whole of our performance, we didn't want to make any changes in terms of time or place setting - we have aimed to make our piece quite timeless (so not putting in anything that brings it into modern day) and we kept the traditional location of a forest. Although we could have been creative and changed the setting, we thought it best to keep the original location, as our purpose is to educate, and we don't want the Year 9's going into their English exam and writing how the piece is set in a school, for example!

Below are the ideas we came up with for costume:

• Traditional Full Costume:   Fits the entertaining purpose (will be funny to see the boys in tights!) /// Characters are clear /// Ideal for a larger cast as they wouldn't need to multi-roll, but not practical for our cast as don't have time to do a full change
• Timeless:   Not too modern to make the piece look modern day, but not traditional clothing /// No fashion trends to make it era specific
• Modern dress:   Would be relatable for the younger audience /// Playing off stereotypes would make it understandable /// Might require changing the setting of our piece, which we don't want to do as would lose the educational element
• Own clothes:   In the Elizabethan times, they would have worn for the performance what they turned up in. We don't want to do this as we would lose the fantasy element and the atmosphere. The characters wouldn't be as clear either.
• Moschino (Velcro cardboard clothes):   Used in the Milan Fashion Week // Good for younger children /// Entertaining but not overwhelming /// Stripped-back approach to Shakespeare makes it seem more simple /// Not practical for our very physical piece
• All blacks with representational items:   Ideal for the amount of multi-rolling we do /// Easy to move in /// Characters are still clearly presented /// Ideal for our smaller cast
• Shirts & trousers with representational items:   More aesthetic than all blacks /// Suitable for multi-rolling /// Could work for different groups of people (i.e. if we set one section in a school, or for gangsters... etc) 

We have decided that we are going to go for all blacks with representational items as it is easy for us to manoeuvre in, it isn't complicated, quick changes are easier and the audience still get a clear idea on characters. For representational props, we have decided to group certain characters. The high society characters (Hippolyta, Theseus and Egeus) shall wear waistcoats or a shawl, to show they are upper class - waistcoats are also timeless as they have been around since the Restoration Era. The lovers are going to be quite modern, but to reflect their rebellious attitude in not doing what their parents want, we are making them rebels - so they shall wear leather jackets or flannel shirts (they are modern and relatable to the audience, but not too common. These characters are most like ourselves).

We were planning on making the fairies gangsters, but we don't have much time to develop these accents, nor do we think it is suitable for our piece - it would be too weird to have a gangster Titania falling in love with Bottom. To make this love more comical though, we thought that we could have the fairies as extremely common, exaggerating the Medway accent! This would make the piece entertaining but still practical for us.

For the mechanicals, we are still undecided, but I think we should just wear all blacks (apart from I shall wear a hat as Starveling as I swap between Starveling and Snout whilst on stage) as the body language clearly shows that they are different people and the use of music as a motif for them. However, to show Bottom as an ass, we discussed using a full-mask, a hat with ears or a half-mask. We decided against the full- mask as it would hide his facial expressions. We decided to go with the half-mask as Ollie made a half-mask for when we learned about Commedia dell'arte, and this worked really well. We shall just add some ears to the mask he used. This way, his look has been totally transformed but we can still see his facial expressions and his voice is unaltered. For the Wall, I shall wear a sandwich board as this is the quickest way for me to transform into Wall and is comical in the fact that I could put my arms down but I don't. It also enable me to bring an arm forward to form the chink still.

Theatre in Education (9) - Scripts, Monologues & Accents

Scripts:   Over half term, I have been trying my best to learn all of my lines! I have been reading the script repeatedly, gaining a better understanding on what is going on. Although the descriptive details the characters use, I felt Titania's section to Bottom was too much - I have decided to cut this down as to reduce the risk of our younger audience getting detached, as this was a fairly large section of dialogue. It is better to lose some descriptive detail in order to maintain their concentration, rather than doing the full script and them getting bored or lost.

Monologues:   As we were missing Rob today, we broke off into pairs and worked on our monologues. I went with Ollie, whilst Lewis and James went together. I did my Hermia monologue - where she wakes up after a bad nightmare to see that Lysander has disappeared. My first step was to add in pauses and work out my intentions - in such a short monologue, she goes through a few different emotions.

Help me Lysander! Help me! Do thy best
To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!
Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here!
Lysander, look how I do quake with fear.
Methought a serpent eat my heart away
And you sat smiling at his cruel pray.
Lysander! What, removed? Lysander! Lord!
What, out of hearing? Gone? No sound, no word?
Alack, where are you speak, an if you hear;
Speak of all loves! I swoon almost with fear.
No? Then I well perceive you all not nigh
either death or you I'll find immediately.

The first two lines are her waking up, still in fear and in her nightmare. The next four lines are her describing her nightmare and a bit emotional and shaken, but clearly relieved. The last section is her panicking about where Lysander is, and then a new panic as she fears for her own safety.

Accents:   Whilst Ollie and I were working on our monologues, Lewis and James worked on some Puck and Oberon scenes. They tried this out in a variety of different ways but decided that they needed to make these characters clearly different from everyone else, but similar to each other (to show that they are from another world - they are the fairies). They realised the best way to do this was through use of accent. To make the characters different from the others, and to make them a bit comical too, we have got the fairies to speak with a New York / gangster accent! This also shows the children that Shakespeare isn't all heightened and over-the-top melodramatic British speaking, but it can be whatever you make of it - we have made our piece original. Whilst the fairies speak with New York accents (to show they are completely distant), the lovers shall speak like us (to make them relatable), the higher status character (like Egeus, Hippolyta and Theseus) shall speak with exaggerated RP (to show their high position in society) and the mechanicals speak with a variety of different British accents (to make them comical).

Site Specific (19) - All scenes

We have now fully set all of our scenes, focusing on our proxemics and our own character's intentions. We have not been able to make definite decisions on entrances and exits due to the fact that we have not physically been to our venue yet. We are hoping to do a scene per room, but if there are not enough rooms, we could return to a room we have used previously - but this room will look different as whoever was not in the last scene can go to the next room we want and move the furniture so it looks different.

All we have left to do is to learn our lines, work out our ending and re-work the opening scene to include Taylor and Chloe. Our opening scene can be altered so that the audience get a slight insight to what is to come - they roughly know that the girls are up to mischief.

Theatre in Education (8) - Mechanicals

The mechanicals are supposed to be extremely funny, so we decided to spend this lesson working on our characters and exaggerating everything to make it more comical. We have decided to create a motif, by every time that they enter comical tuba music plays. The more physical we are with our characters, the more comical the whole scene will become. We decided to create a busy movement section to introduce our characters. We enter at different times carrying cases of costumes and props to prepare for the production. We workshopped our opening and what we could all do. I enter carrying a briefcase of costume and props, which Bottom then opens and takes things out of - he opens it so I can't see over the top, so I peek over the top and make it clear that I am struggling with the weight of the case. In the case, I have an old-fashioned phone which Ollie uses - when Lewis' character come over to speak to Bottom, Bottom just put his hand out in Quince's face. We added as many comedy moments like this in our opening scene as possible. Throughout our scenes, we have to keep this movement up. During this scene, I am taking random things out and putting them on. I have tried to make my characters as different as I can to make a contrast to show that I am multi-rolling.

For our second scene as the mechanicals, we do another movement section, but shorter than the first and slightly more organised, as the mechanicals are more confident and together as they have already had one rehearsal. We worked a lot on discovering and presenting our intentions in this scene, so we fully understood what was being said and how our characters felt about this. We worked on proxemics to show character relationships and to add comedy too. At one point, Lewis is sat DSL on a stall because he needs space - however, as each character has an idea or agrees with the idea being spoken about they move over to Quince on his stall. Quince breaks away and moves to SR, but unbeknown to him everyone else follows him. When he turns around to speak he is shocked to see us all there, gets frustrated, and moves away again, but everyone follows him again too. To add another bit of comedy, we are getting a long piece of paper to be the calendar they look at - we make a tableaux around Rob who holds the calendar up. Also, when Puck comes on everyone freezes when he speaks - this allows us to freeze in comical positions.

Theatre in Education (7) - Page 1 - 14

We began this lesson with another characterisation walking exercise, moving as our characters. By doing these movement exercises in class as a warm-up and by my work at home, I have now established my five characters (in order of appearance):

• Hippolyta:   erect carriage // elbows out but hands clasped // RP voice // leads from the chest
• Hermia:   very natural // basically me in terms of voice and movement // leads from the head
• Starveling:   bent knees // deep common voice // wears a hat // leads from pelvis
• Snout:   has a double chin // higher voice with lisp // leads from shoulders
• Titania:    free light movement // higher RP voice // leads from arms 

 As we finished the script last lesson,  we went back to the beginning of the play to begin setting in properly. Our main aim was to add movement in to the scene so it wasn't too static, but not too much movement that it becomes confusing. We have used all of the space at all times, but really worked on proxemics to make our relationships clear to our audience - thus supporting our primary function to educate. Our tone of voice is extremely important as this is what will help our audience understand what we are saying. As well as proxemics and tone, our body language is essential for educating our audience, so we were conscious of how we stood and moved.

We spent a little bit of time on Rob's monologue today, working on his tone and portraying the meaning of what he is saying. We did add in a bit more comedy by the way Rob said paused before saying "qualities" - this formed an innuendo, but we had to remove this because it wasn't appropriate for a younger audience.

Theatre in Education (6) - Reading to the end & Play section

Reading to the end of the play:  We decided to read from page 82 (Act 5 Scene 1) to the end of the play. We altered what had previously been cut from our version - we had originally cut out all of the lines that weren't part of the 'play'. However, when reading through, we realised that we needed Thesus' line "The Wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again" as the following line is in response to this comment. Therefore we have put this back in, it also very comical as James is playing both Thesus and Thisbe, so he can put his head out from the wings for his line as Theseus, to then go back and come on again as Thisbe. We also decided to put Moonshine back in, as this can be played by Lewis carrying a lantern (which we then tried later on and it was hilarious!). We had to put back in Theseus' line "Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead" and Demetrius' line "Ay, and Wall too" in order for Bottom's following line to make sense. However, as Ollie is on stage as Bottom we changed it so Lysander said Demetrius' line.

'Play' section:   We decided to set the 'play' section today. Our main focus was movement. As Wall, I shall be holding my arms out to the sides for the entire time - we are going to get sheets with a brick pattern printed on them; I'll attach them to my shoulders and wrists, so they hang down to the floor. Whenever I move, I waddle with all of my limbs stretched. To show the "chink" I put my right arm out directly in front of me, and my hand is the chink, as I create a hole for them to look through. To add more comedy in to it, we have made the most of the fact that James and Ollie are different heights - they move my arm height to suit themselves. Moreover, there is another moment in the play where Thisbe goes to kiss the chink, so as his lips approach my hand, I move my arm to the right away from him. We did try to add in another comedy moment that was quite risky - where they alter the height of my arm, we were going to have James look through the chink when the chink is quite low down... level with Pyramus' crotch. This did look really funny, especially with James' reaction... but we scrapped this as it is inappropriate for our younger audience.We also worked on the section with Thisbe and the Lion. When Rob roared as the Lion, he just managed a frightened "grrr", which added to the comedy when James did a full on scream.

Site Specific (18) - Characterisation

Although we are doing a site-specific performance, where we need to focus on making use of our chosen setting and our piece fitting in to it well, we still wanted to do work on characterisation and character relationships to make our narrative clear. Above is how I think my character feels about the other characters in the play, what her relationship to them is and how they feel about her.

Site Specific (17) - New movement & Scene 4

New Movement:  We decided that we wanted more movement in our piece; however, we were debating where to put it. We have our opening, a piece between the first and second scene and the idea of potentially adding an ending. We agreed that we wanted to use the Lord's Prayer to end it all, but wasn't sure what movement we would do. Therefore we discussed what other movement we could do. We decided that we wanted to show Abigail realising that she is going to get found out and her deciding to leave, with Mary. We decided that we would show everyone turning away from Abby as the sequence continues. We kept the same characters we played from the previous movement piece - which were very similar to our actual ones: I was carrying a child, which would still work for Elizabeth. We decided to use our ideas from our previous movement piece to create a sort of motif - we begin this new movement piece in the same positions as we ended our last one, but this time we all face the back, apart from Ollie K and Hope. Hope and Ollie K do a hymn hand section to show how they used to be quite intimate but Ollie then backs away and turns to face the back. We then all did a short round-by-through section one at a time with Abby - we did these duet sections in reverse order to which we got accused in the previous movement piece. When we are not partaking in a round-by-through we would walk around the space, but go into slow-motion when a duet is taking place. This is fitting to our last movement piece. The benefit of doing a fairly simple but captivating movement piece is that there are no lifts that could be risky in a different location - we wouldn't know if we could do a lift in our chosen location as we don't know how high the ceilings are at the moment and how big the rooms actually are.

Scene 4:   We performed some of this scene in the space today, but we didn't manage to complete it due to timing. However, we understood our characters feelings and worked on our character interactions and relationships.

Theatre in Education (5) - Page 48 to 58 & Page 74 to 78

Staging:   Due to exam season approaching, it will be difficult for us to book the school hall - it will be possible to get a date, but difficult to be able to book it for extra rehearsals in the space. Therefore, we have decided to change our performance venue. We shall now be performing in the drama room C5 - we are glad that this has happened as we agree that C5 will actually be a better venue for us anyway. Not only can we rehearse in this room every day, but we are able to light it more easily and we can use the curtains as wings. We propped the four white curtains (which two hang at that back wall and one on both side walls) further forward with chairs to give us space behind them to use as wings. We positioned the chairs so they were facing the wall, meaning we would be able to put any props we need on these chairs. It has also enabled us to have more entrance and exit points.

Page 48 - 58:   The beginning of this section is Puck telling Oberon what he managed to do with Titania - he used a potion to make her fall in love with Bottom, who now looks like an ass. The two then hide as Hermia and Demetrius enter. Demetrius is angered as she believes Demetrius is responsible for Lysander's disappearance. After their argument, Hermia leaves and Demetrius sleeps. Oberon and Puck re-enter. They have seen the whole argument as we have positioned them centre back, between the two curtains - this enable more room for comedy as they can move their heads between the two (as if watching the ball at a tennis match). Later in this scene, Demetrius and Lysander are both confessing their love to Helena, but she is livid as she thinks they are both taking the micky out of her. When Hermia then enters she is shocked and confused. We read through the majority of this bit, but we are leaving this section until we have done our research and all completely understand what is being said. We shall add movement in to this when we know our lines for this scene as we are wanting to add some fights in. Lysander and Demetrius shall fight, whilst Helena and Hermia have a cat-fight - we thought we could make this really comical, maybe I could pull Helena's wig off.

Page 74 - 78:  This section finds the four lovers all in love again and in the right pairs - Helena and Demetrius; Hermia and Lysander. This scene was difficult in terms of spacing, and entrances. We spent time working out where it would make sense for characters to enter and exit.

What we need to work on most is line-learning and making all of our characters completely different. I have made Snout and Starveling completely different in terms of voice and movement, but I need to make Titania, Hippolyta and Hermia different.

Site Specific (16) - Movement, Scene 1, Scene 2 and Scene 3

To begin this lesson, we went over the movement piece we did last lesson. Our timing was much better today as we managed to finish all of the accusations in time for Ollie to get to the centre before the music ends. We are happy with this movement piece, but we need to go over our first movement piece. As we made our opening section before getting the cast list, we have made a generic piece - I think we should consider altering this piece a bit so we can all be our characters (as we involve some of our own characters in the movement piece we made last lesson).

We then ran the first scene and staged it in a bit more detail. We considered our entrances. We decided that we would like all characters to come through the audience in this scene. We then moved on to the second scene. I think that these two scenes are getting a lot better every time we do them, but we should be off-script as soon as we can to then be able to work on our body language more. I think we understand our characters better now and how we would interact with other characters. We did a little bit of the third scene today but not all of it.

As we have cut down our scripts a lot, to make it our own version and practical for us, we now have four confusing looking scripts each. Due to the amount of cuts, we are wasting rehearsal time trying to make sense of our scripts and find where we cut to - therefore, I have edited the scripts and re-printed copies so we all have a clean copy which we can then annotate with notes on blocking if need be.

Theatre in Education (4) - Pages 37 to 47

The first thing we did this lesson was a physical / character warm-up. This play requires a lot of energy anyway as it is a comedy, but more so for our version as it is aimed at a younger audience. We did some walking exercises at different levels of ourselves. We then applied this to how one of our characters would move - to make them all so different. We learned how to implement our own traits into our characters, and how exaggerating one of our own traits for each character can make them completely different.

This scene is the second mechanicals scene; they are deciding where to rehearse and beginning rehearsals. There are lots of comedic opportunities in this scene - we want to make it as funny as possible, as the more funny we make it, the more likely the kids are to remember the play and learn something. We worked a lot on our movement and characterisation in this scene. Our individual movements and proxemics can add comedy to a scene - for example, Quince (Lewis) often tries to get away from Bottom (Ollie) because he is so annoying. I have to do a lot of multi-rolling in this scene as my characters talk to each other - I shall put on a flat cap for when I'm Starveling, but completely change my body language and take the cap of for Snout. As Snout, I make myself have a double chin and a higher pitched 'lispy' voice, whilst Starveling leads from his pelvis and has a deeper voice. To make it more comical, when I swap back to my other character I assume their body language and voice as quick as possible. On page 37, my last line is as Starveling, but I swap straight back to Quince ready for my next line.

Lewis and I enter again (as Quince and Snout) when Ollie (Bottom) is on stage. In the script, it states that Quince and Snout enter and exit at different times, but we decided to get them to enter at the same time as we could add in more comedy here. Lewis and I run on as if we are running away from Bottom - I enter first and Lewis is following me. When I stop in fright at seeing Bottom, Lewis doesn't notice that I have stopped so he runs in to the back of me.

The next section of this scene is between Bottom, Titania and Titania's fairies. As Ollie and I are both on stage for this point, we only have three people off stage, but Titania has four named fairies: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed. We did initially think of just cutting one of them, but then we thought that they don't have to be on stage and instead we could just hear their voices. This then lead us to the idea of them using puppets from behind the flats. To add more comedy into this, we have given them all ridiculously high voices, apart from Mustardseed, who shall speak with a really deep voice. In Titania's monologue starting "be kind and courteous", we have added in some sound effects from the fairies. We added a giggle, a gasp and a yawn to make it very cheesy and entertaining.

After working on this scene all lesson, we quickly ran pages 31 to 36 too as we didn't spend that much time on this scene, in comparison to today's scene.

Theatre in Education (3) - Pages 22 to 36

Pages 22 - 30:   This scene contains Puck, Oberon, Titania, Demetrius and Helena. The scene starts with Puck on stage as Oberon and Titania enter. We spent some time on Puck's monologue to bring out all the comedic potential in it - it ended up really comical, as James acts out all of the characters he speaks about. Oberon and Titania have been arguing for some time. To make their argument clear we had to really use our body language, tone of voice, facial expressions and proxemics. We enter from stage right and we get in each other's faces. To ensure we knew exactly what we were saying, we looked up translations on the "No Fear Shakespeare" site - by Sparknotes. Titania and Oberon are arguing about honesty and loyalty. They have both cheated on each other. Our spacing for this scene fluctuates from being really close together, in each other's space to being on opposite sides of the stage. When Demetrius and Hermia enter, they are also arguing - Demetrius is fed up of Helena following him. When they first did this scene, it was good but a bit messy - their tone of voice was great, but their movement / blocking was untidy. By working on the blocking, we managed to evoke more sympathy for Helena and make Demetrius come across as more horrible.

Pages 31 - 36:   This scene begins with Titania telling the fairies to sing and do their jobs whilst she goes to sleep. As we have cut this section down (as it is not all necessary for our version) it is very short, so I say this as I walk out from behind the left of the flat, round the front, to the go back behind the flat on the right side. Oberon then enters from where I entered and follows my path, stating the effects of the liquid he is going to put in Titania's eye - that she shall fall in love with the first thing she sees, no matter what it is. Lysander and Hermia then enter (so Lew and I will have to do a quick prop or costume change behind the flats before we enter) and Hermia is very tired from walking. Lysander is flirtatious and tries to get her to give in to him - she rejects him sweetly and goes to sleep (upstage centre), whilst he goes to sleep in a different place in the space (downstage right). Puck enters and puts the potion in Lysander's eyes and leaves. Demetrius and Helena enter arguing and Demetrius leaves. Lysander is awakened by Helena and falls instantly in love with her, due to the potion that Puck put in his eye. She thinks he is taking the micky out of her and leaves. Lysander then has a monologue stating how he hopes Hermia never wakes up and that he'll be with Helena. After he leaves, Hermia wakes and claims she has had a terrible nightmare - she then realises that Lysander has gone so she leaves to look for him. Our main focus of this lesson was to sort our blocking and to ensure we understand what we are saying. It is important that we know what each lines means so we know what parts to emphasise and how to deliver each line to help our young audience understand.