28.11.14

- worked on monologue from twelfth night, exploring how we can understand it
- themes of the play

  Today we started to look at the themes and relationships of Twelfth Night. We have already watched the movie version, so everyone had an idea of what the play is about, but today's class was to go into little bit more detail.

LOVE & DUALITY

• The plays main theme is love, more specifically, exchanging different kinds of love

In this graph I've shown all of the different kinds of love connections happening in the play

• Orsino, Sir Andrew and Malvolio are all in love with Olivia. Olivia is in the middle of this love drama, but she herself technically only has feelings for one person, Cesario or Viola in disguise. After the reveal that Viola is a woman, Olivia is automatically in love Sebastian, who she had a brief relations when she thought he was Cesario. 
• Viola has quite simple love relationships, she of course loves her brother, but also falls in love with Orsino, who is chasing Olivia's heart. In the end Orsino and Viola do find each other
• Orsino has a very 'free love' kind of attitude, and he seems to have the affections of many, which I think is the reason why Olivia wants nothing to do with him. And perhaps this challenges only makes him want her more. In the play, you can see Orsino, developing emotions towards Cesario, a man, and doesn't seem to have a problem with it. In the end he falls in love with Viola
• Sebastian is seen first with Antonio, who saved him from the seas. Antonio clearly has love towards Sebastian, but Sebastian doesn't seem to have such strong emotions towards him. As Olivia think Sebastian is Cesario and has a loving moment with him, Sebastian seems to fall head over heels in love with her immediately. 
• The relationship between Maria and Sir Toby Belch is a bit more complicated, since there is chemistry, but it isn't obviously love. Even if the movie has adapted it so, it could be adapted differently. 
• Shakespeare has been thought to be bisexual or gay, since in a lot of his plays there is love between men and a lot of women disguising as men.

During a discussion about duality, we realized that Feste is kind of a third force. He has no money, but at the same time he has everything, He is very much a mystical character in a way, since it seems he is free from lust and knows all and tells the truth. He has insight to the characters and happening more than others, but still seems to be there only to have fun himself. He very much lives in the moment.

Compearing movie and stage versions

We have now watched both movie and stage adaptation of  Twelfth night, and I thought it would be nice to a little comparison between the two. I will start by talking about the movie, since we did see it first, and then move on to the stage adaptation.


   I won't go into too much detail about the plot, since I am sure once we actually start reading the play I will have to go over it more in detail. But shortly, the story is about a woman called Viola who, after losing her twin brother in a storm, decides to disguise herself as a man to survive in the land of Illyria. She ends working for, and falling in love with Duke Orsino, who instead is in love with Olivia who after meeting Viola dressed as Cesario, falls in love with her. This mess of unrequited love gets more complicated once Viola's twin brother arrives.
   Watching the movie really cleared up some of the character relationships and the plot over all. This way, once we start reading the play as a group, it'll be easier to picture the different scenes and understand the language.
   The movie was done in a fairly naturalistic style, but set in a later century than the play was written. This was pointed out to us, that a lot of Shakespeare's plays are very adaptable, meaning they can be set in different times era's , without jeopardizing the meaning and story of the play. I think this is something we can really play with once we stand thinking about, how we want to do the play, since we will have more freedom on the setting and costumes.
   The set of the play, and so the movie, is in Illyria, a made up land that is in war with the land that Viola and Sebastian come from. After watching the film, I thought it would be good to do some research in this land and I found some interesting things.

• An ancient region of the Western Balkans whose coast covered the coasts of modern Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Albania
• Description of this land was purely fiction to create a mysterious setting for the play
•  Used in Shakespeare's other plays as well, e.g. Henry VI, as a place of pirates. 

It also has connections to an Italian play, which is probably why a lot of the characters have Italian names Still, some of the places and names connect very strongly to England that creates an interesting contrast.


The stage adaptation took a much more stylistic approach to the play, though still keeping the acting quite naturalistic. They had decided to set it in the 40's, at least that was how the different character's were dressed like. Also, since it was on stage, the director had made an interesting decision to have set be a one room, that changes slightly when characters move or bring on furniture. Lighting was also used to create mood and different situations, such as the storm.
    One of the biggest differences between these two adaptations was their approach on 'love' or rather 'affection' between the different characters. A perfect example would be relationship between Cesario(Viola) and Olivia. In the movie, the love Olivia has towards Cesario is innocent and  in a way pure, she doesn't have any other to be in love other than being in love and she truly wants to marry him. But the play, where first of all the actress of Olivia is notably older than in the movie, it seems as if Cesario is a way for her to have fun or perhaps she wants to get married soon because of her age. At the end, when Cesario is revealed to be Viola, Olivia still takes her with her off-stage, because now Viola is this woman who dresses as a man, a scandal of sort and amusement for this rich and powerful older woman. So, the stage adaptation definitely addresses more the nature of the people with higher status and how all this money and power leaves them with just wanting more and more fun.
   In the original play, there is definitely some undertones to homosexuality, or attraction between people of the same gender. After saving Sebastian, Antonio obviously has some feeling for him. In the movie this wasn't directly shown, but the stage adaptation showed them kissing goodbyes, showing a clear relationship between them. Also Cesario's and Orsino's complicated relationship was shown more sexual than in the movie.

Commedia dell'arte

Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre originating from Italy. It was performed right next to the audience, usually in marketplaces and other busy areas, and to draw attention, but also make it clearer for people far away, the actors would use masks to show different stock characters. It was also very important for the actors to be completely physical to connect with the audience. The stories  are focused on the relationships between masters and servants, where everyone is credulous and cunning, motivated by money, sex/love, and food/drink.

For class, Siou had brought us some of the masks to explore some of the different characters, and later we were introduced to this graph, about the ranking of the different characters:

1. Magnifico
   - 'the master of masters'
   - eagle like physicality
   - when Magnifico dies, a new one appears immediately
   - large presence, takes space

2&3. 1st Actor&Actress
   - no mask
   - take space
   - mysterious, might have dead spouses in their past etc.

4. The Witch
   - supernatural character
   - free from class

5. Pantalone
   - master
   - first one of the 'old men'
       - the old men were like Magnifico, but have then lost their teeth
   - womanizer
   - miser, needy
   - fiddles a lot

6. Doctor
   - master
   - second 'old man'
   - always fighting with Pantalone
   - thinks he knows everything
   - turkey-like physicality

7. Columbina
   - only female servant
   - moves like Harlequino, but is clever

8. Prughella
   - highest ranking servant
   - cunning
   - charismatic
 
9.  Harlequino
   - non-moral, in the way that he doesn't understand the difference
   - pig/monkey physicality
   - over-reacting
   - stupid

10. The Captain
   - pretends to be brave, when is really a coward
   - soldier

11. Zanni
   - lowest cast
   - the servant who comes from the country
   - everything is new and exciting

We explored some of these characters, like Harlequino, Pantalone, Columbina and the Doctor more in detail in class, by improv exercises. Siou would give us the scene and a group of people with assigned roles would play it out. We also explored each characters physicality, which was very interesting. This year, I really want to find a balance between naturalistic acting and physical acting, and so this workshop was extremely useful for me. Every exercise really pushed me to use my entire body to create the character, but also to not think so much during improvisation. These improvisation were very heavily focused on the themes that Commedia Dell'arte performances usually were about, such as how to lay a trap to get the girl, to get money, and/or to get food/drink. With these our class really learned what we needed to do in order to achieve these over-the-top characters - to not have ANY barriers. Later we watched a film that showed some drama school student having a workshop in Commedia dell'arte as well, and I could see how every one of them were ready to to just try things and not worry about looking ridiculous. This is something we should all aspire to be like in our acting, and this workshop really gave us the nudge to do so. It will also help us with toggling on with Shakespeare, since he uses a lot of these stock characters as well.

19.11.14

We started looking at Shakespeare today, but instead of going straight into Twelfth Night, the play we are going to turn into a performance, we started by working on our voice and the way we say Shakespearean text with a text from 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'. We started by only looking at these two lines : "I love thee not, therefore pursue me not" and "You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant". With these lines we did several exercise, such as just trying to say the lines with different inflections and ways. We also tried telling the lines to each other, by only mouthing the words and using our bodies to show our meaning. I personally really found this exercise helpful, since I am not the most physical in my acting. But this way we had to use our bodies and to make our gesture big, so that they can be seen. The follow up to this particular exercise was to start saying the lines, but now, with each word we had to do a gesture either pointing at ourselves, to our counter partner or outside, referring to people and things. Other two exercises we did had more to do with, how the meaning of the text changes as you try different distances from each, moving forwards or backwards, or by touching your partner with each line.  

I felt that today was very important for when we actually start to look at our text, since it taught us different ways we can change and look at our lines, but also to help us understand, what the text is about. With Shakespeare's text, that was written several hundred of years ago, not everyone can simply read it and understand what is going on, especially since the text is in iambic pentameter. But using these different ways of reading the text and responding to it, or by just simply cutting the lines into smaller parts, we can understand the text and the characters easier.