Mother courage scene 11 20/10/16

At the start of the lesson, we were given half an hour to rehearse and finalise what we blocked last lesson for scene 11. Whilst watching the other group perform, I mentally noted a couple of things: they were a lot less aggressive and they more or less stayed in the upstage left corner for the majority of the scene. I prefer the way we did the scene, because we were a lot quicker and fluent with our own lines and in conversation and it really did add the comical effect - also just some of the ideas we had for the scene we really quite good and funny; we also used the whole stage space which is always a positive and it made me feel a lot more comfortable doing the scene because I was free to move around as much as I liked.

Mother courage scene 11 18/10/16

In today's lesson, we were split into two groups to work on scene 11. I was with Hugh, Callum, Alice, Joe and Tyler. When being briefed about the scene, we were told to make a performance of it - hence why we were given a whole double lesson to do it. We made sure we focussed on energy and comedy, and keeping the audience engaged a all times. I think by being given a whole double to do this, we were able to easily keep the audience engaged because we became more familiar with the script and were able to try various ways in which to play our parts and we felt more comfortable in our roles - in turn, this helps the audience to follow what's going on and thus keeping them engaged. I believe with this scene it was much easier to bring out the comedy because it is very hectic and loud, and there is the opportunity for stupid kind of slap stick humour because of some of the lines and the way you can play some of the characters. It was a classic Brechtirian scene - it is very funny in a dark way as it Kattrin dies at the end but the whole scene is very funny. The scene is about Catholic soldiers threatening a farm - whom Mother Courage had left Kattrin with - to show them the path into town. When they go, Kattrin tries to draw attention by drumming up in the watchtower really loudly, much to the soldiers rage. I think we did this scene very well as we really did bring out the dark comedy and it was very entertaining - we used the full space of the stage and we increased out voice dynamics as it got more hectic.

Rotten rhymes and Mother Courage scene 3 13/10/16

In today's lesson, were given about 30 minutes to continue working on our Brechtirian rotten rhymes - unfortunately, we lost the second page to the poem so we had to kind of improvise. We decided to have to majority of the poem narration, but acted as if it's dialogue so that it still feels like a proper play/performance, but also so the audience still get that sense of Brechtirian atmosphere. We were then told to do scene 3 of Mother Courage, but with the same amount of energy we had doing the rotten rhymes - from doing the first task, then applying it to the scene, I finally realised what makes Mother Courage so funny: the energy. So when we were rehearsing the scene, we really focussed on the energy of the scene, moving a lot more, hand gestures and the like. But mainly, we decided to use a lot more space of the stage. I was with Taylor (played Mother Courage) and Joe (The cook) and I played The Chamberlain. Whilst playing the Chamberlain, I decided to play him as a very neutral character, and very chilled and relaxed at first glance - which is exactly how he is supposed to be played so I was told by our teacher. The addition of all this energy made the scene a lot more fun to do and watch, so in the future when working on Mother Courage, I will make sure I put in a lot of energy.

Gestus and further work on Brechtirian techniques 11/10/16

Today we were split into two groups and given some gestus' to create. A Gestus is pretty much a physical metaphor - so a hidden message within a tableau. We were given the following Gestus titles:

• War makes a hero
• The waste of war
• A trustworthy politician
• An insincere politician 

I found creating these quite hard because I couldn't really figure out what actions/tableaus would create a certain image and give a clear message without being too obvious that it's not very good.
*insert pictures of gestus* 

We were then split into groups of four and we were each given a 'rotten poem', but we had to create a performance of the poem in the style of Brecht. I was with Owen, Chloe and Warren, and we were given Jack and the Beanstalk. We used Brechtirian techniques such as placards, multi role-ing, comedy, and talking to the audience. Our main focus was narration - this is a very good Brechtirian technique because not only just talks to the audience, but it informs them what is going on in the story; so it kind of kills two birds with one stone - it breaks the fourth wall whilst also helping the audience understand the storyline. 

Mother Courage scene 2 - 10/10/16

Today we were put into different groups and told to work on scene 2 again, but really focus on the comical elements of the script, and really focus on other Brechtirian techniques. I was with Taylor, Warren and Owen. I played Eilif, Warren played The General, Taylor played the Cook and Owen played Mother Courage. To focus on comical aspects, I put on a very strong Scottish accent and played everything over the top, and I believe I understood and grasped the comical aspects. For example, one of the lines is 'I put my business foot forward' which is obviously a figure of speech, but on that line I put physically put my foot forward to show that Eilif actually thinks he has a 'business foot' which clearly shows his stupidity.

Mother Courage and her children - scene 2 workshop 6/10/16

In today's lesson, we were given the scripts for scene 2 of Mother Courage. This scene is about Mother Courage trying to sell a Capon to the cook on a dodgy deal, and Eilif is boasting about his battle adventures. I was in a group with Hugh, Alice and Tyler - I played the Cook, Alice played Eilif, Tyler was Mother Courage and Hugh was the General. To add a Brechtirian atmosphere, we used chairs to make the tent and used placards to label it as 'the tent' - we also used a placard to label the Capon. We also used soundscapes which helps the audience understand that the performance isn't real because the sound effects are coming from the actors. This scene, like the first, was very hard to understand what was going on at first, but after a few read throughs, we got the jist.

'Mother Courage and her Children' Scene I 3/10/16

In today's lesson, we were split into two groups and started to read though scene 1 of our first play called 'Mother Courage and her children' by Brecht. In my group, we decided that I would play the Recruitment officer. This scene is about finding people to recruit for the army to fight in the war, and the sergeant and rec. officer come across Mother Courage's children, who are fit and healthy and the rec. officer wants to recruit them, and if he doesn't he'll kill himself because he hasn't recruited anyone. We all found it very hard to read through the script at first because we had no idea what was going on and the dialect was very strange, so when we said our lines they didn't make much sense because we had no idea how each character was feeling, nor did we know anything about the characters. However once we done some research, we understood the script much better and it all began to make a whole lot of sense.