Theatre in Education (2) - Casting & Pages 4 to 20

Cast:

• Ollie:   Demetrius // Bottom
• James:   Theseus // Puck // Flute
• Rob:   Helena // Egeus // Snug
• Lorna:   Hippolyta // Hermia // Titania // Snout // Starveling
• Lewis:   Lysander // Quince // Oberon

Spacing:   We shall be performing this piece with minimal set, as the focus is on our characters. The picture shows how we are having our staging. We initially though bout having our audience further round the edges, so that it was almost in-the-round, but we decided against this as it would ruin the effect of us entering and exiting behind the flats because they would be able to see us more. We liked the idea of our audience being in a curved shape as it gives us more performance space and allows us to be a bit more creative with our blocking. Behind our flats, we shall have all of our props and small costume pieces, so we can run off stage, put on an accessory to them become our new character.

Act 1, Scene 1:   Page 4 - 14
Act 1, Scene 2:   Page 15 - 20
Act 2, Scene 1:   Page 22 - 30 (Cut 21)
Act 2, Scene 2:   Page 31 - 36
Act 3, Scene 1:   Page 37 - 47
Act 3, Scene 2:   Page 48 - 68
Act 4, Scene 1:   Page 69 - 78
Act 4, Scene 2:   Page 79 - 81
Act 5, Scene 1:   Page 82 - 100

Page 4 - 14:   With Shakespeare, it is extremely important for our characters to be larger than life and that our body language and tone of voice tells the story - especially for our younger audience, as they are not likely to understand it all. For the characters Theseus and Hippolyta, we are having to play up the flirtatiousness to make it clear what is going on. James is playing Theseus as quite desperate and clingy whilst I am playing Hippolyta as quite playful. On my last line I run off SL to behind the flat, to then be able to enter as Hermia SR. I am playing Hermia in this scene as very frustrated. We positioned ourselves to create different effects - for example, I am positioned in between Demetrius and Lysander, so when I look between them, my feeling as clear - I look at Demetrius in disgust and Lysander in adoration. We made sure we used all of the space to keep the piece moving and interesting for our younger audience to keep them entertained. Our use of proxemics throughout help our audience understand our character relationships.

Page 15 - 20:   The mechanicals scenes are the funniest scenes - we have had to make all of our characters very contrasting and very exaggerated. We have made the beginning of this scene very frantic and busy. Bottom is very arrogant and big-headed and gets on everyone's nerves, though the audience tend to like him. As Snug is the character who gets the part of the lion, Rob is playing Snug as very timid and stuttering whenever he goes to speak. It doesn't matter how the rest of us play our parts, but we are trying to make them as contrasting as possible.