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.