Research: wild dogs

As spirits, we chase trinculo, caliban and stephano offstage in the form of wild dogs. This is quite hard to physicalise because the human body is evidently very different to the body of a dog, but you can come close to it.

There are many different dog breeds that have been around for ages and others haven't and through history they've served different purpose from guarding to bed warming. Originally, all dogs started as wolves and became the dogs we know now or wild dogs and the main ones are dingoes (found in Australia), Indian wild dogs (found in India), African wild dogs (found in sub Saharan Africa), Coyotes and Jackals. It was approximately 50,000 years when Asian grey wolves were domesticated by humans and further down the line when humans understood unnatural selection, we took the nicer wolves and things we liked about them and bred them until we got the dog. One of the goals the humans were going for is to make dogs not behave like wolves and that goal was achieved as wolves are placed in the Canis Lupus  family whereas dogs are in the Canis Familiaris family. Although they are from different families, dogs and wolves are still close enough  to have fertile litters.
There are behavioural differences between wolves and dogs. Dogs bark and howl and wolves howl but make a short muffled sound which is considered a bark, but they rarely make this sound. Dogs love humans, crave their attention and will treats them like their own pups or pack members whereas if a human approached a wolf, the wolf would get scared and run away from them, they avoid humans at all cost. Dogs will mate with many other dogs whilst wolves have partners for life. Male dogs are fertile all year around whereas male wolves are only fertile in mating season, females dogs have their fertility periods twice a year and wolves once a year. Dogs have lost almost all of their hunting instincts but wolves haven't as it is essential for survival.

Wolves are extremely powerful and agile hunters and they have longer legs, larger feet and wider craniums than dogs. a wolf has an edge of running and moving fast with the help of their particular skeletal structure. During trotting wolf’s back legs move backward and forward in the same line like its front legs, on the other hand dog places its back legs between its front legs during walking or running hence making the slow motion of dog as compared to faster wolf.

In terms of hunting, they will hunt all the animals below them on the food chain but won't hunt or attack humans as they don't have interest in them and they're not part of their natural food chain. However, if a human comes into the wolf territory and doesn't back off when given the warning signs, the wolves will attack as they will protect their territory and pack from the unknown. So when we attack Trinculo, Caliban and Stephano off the stage, it's it's because they're in our territory and Prospero ordered us to attack them. I've come to the conclusion that due to our obedience to Prospero, he is our pack leader.

A video of wolves' hunting tactics

Second rehearsal

We carried on blocking this rehearsal and my role as master of the ship is pretty much done after the first scene so I take on my second role as a spirit there onwards.

We went over the scene where ariel and the spirits hypnotise Ferdinand and bring him to Miranda.

Us spirits (including ariel) come in after caliban leaves so that it is only us and Ferdinand on stage. Before he comes on, we explore the space and almost introduce ourselves to the audience and we travel around in an airy manner before bringing in Ferdinand. When we travel around the space, we have to have a light, graceful way of doing it because spirits aren't embodied, they're things that disappear in the air, or a figment of one's imagination and I think that in due course, us spirits will agree on a certain way of travelling.
When we bring Ferdinand in, each of us are holding different parts of him such as an arm, a hand, his head, etc. but he is walking around visually aware of his surroundings. During his little speech, us spirits form a horse shoe kind of circle around him and we watch him. When he finishes talking, we slowly stand up one by one. I'm the last one to stand up and when I do, we start dancing in circles around him and we sing our song. Our main purposes here is to be a source of comfort, hypnotise him but yet we are telling him what has happened and that everyone he knows might possibly be dead.

First rehearsal

For our first rehearsal, we immediately started on the blocking of our play in chronological order but we had a read through of the play first to get a feel for it, know what our lines meant and how to pronounce words we were unsure of.

I'm the master of the ship and I'm in the first scene of the play. I also have the first line of the play. In the first scene of the play it is the ship crew on the ship in the sea storm about to crash and we blocked the scene and the opening.
For the opening the whole cast is on stage doing four repetitive movements on the spot according to what their character would be doing at that current moment in time, for example: I as the captain am steering the boat, reaching down to get my bottle of whisky, pointing and shouting (mouthing) orders at other people and shielding my face from the waves. Others on the ship are attending to the ship, praying, vomiting, crying, that kind of thing. Those on the island are watching what is going on and prospero is there  with his stick conjuring up his spells. If there are two actors for one character, they come up with movements together and mirror each other so that the audience understand that there are two of them. After a minute, the people who aren't in the scene go offstage and the scene begins.

We are just blocking the whole play because we don't have much time left and will go over it properly when we finish blocking. For my scene I feel the blocking was effective because instead of being bland on stage, walking from A to B and saying our lines then sitting at the side for ages we went all out with a lot of energy and we went over it a few times to be sure of what we are doing.
In the scene, there will be loud sea storm noises playing so everyone will have to really shout to be heard, it will seem quite realistic in that manner but we can't make the ground shake so we have to fall from side to side regularly. I will have a whistle so after I've said my line, I go around ordering people, blowing my whistle, attempting to keep spirits up by shouting "Bestir"or " Come on", things like that. I have to be full of energy and very loud for this bit, but I have to be mindful as to when other people are saying their lines because if I shout endlessly whilst others are saying their lines, I'm being unnecessarily difficult.

Romeo and Juliet and The Globe

We went to see romeo and juliet at the globe theatre and it was interesting to see the theatre and how things would have been performed at the time. First, here are a few pictures (I apologise for the last one):

And here is my globe diagram:

The performance had it's positives and negatives.
Because of the space and the large audience, the actors had to speak very loudly, project and enunciate a lot. I understand that due to the globe cleverly having no roof, it is hard because noises from outside come in (such as helicopters and people) and make things harder, but they were starting to shout and it was like a pantomime. Shouting takes the realism away. I think microphones on the actors or stage would make things a lot easier and they wouldn't have to shout so much therefore making everything slightly more believable. However, this would take away from the Shakespearean effect because back 400 years ago, all they had was their voices.
They tried to slide a comical side to the play but I feel it outweighed the serious tone of the play and they didn't remind the audience that this is a tragic love story about two youngsters who are foolishly in love.

I also think that the acting was of a poor quality. The actors knew their lines but didn't know what they meant and they didn't seem to understand their characters' motives and true emotions. This made the audience see the characters as two-dimensional and I lost interest quite quickly because they were just putting words to their actions, they weren't being their characters and if you aren't in character then it's just tedious to watch.

The set was pretty simplistic, it consisted of a bus stop in the standing area and a car that had been burnt, vandalised and flipped onto its back. I'm guessing that they were there to modernise everything and relate it to our time as they did with the characters' outfits: Romeo and his boys were in scruffy school uniforms, juliet was dressed like your average urban girl, nurse was an estate mum (blue velvet tracksuit with uggs), etc. The show crew were trying their best to modernise everything and it worked to a degree. I don't understand why the car was there, it didn't seem to signify anything but it was merely something that was walked over and climbed on. The bus stop was stood on about three times but otherwise it was just there nobody really used it for the purpose your average bus stop serves

Introduction

For this project, we are doing the tempest by William Shakespeare.

The tempest starts with a ship in the middle of a violent sea storm and a very distressed ship crew. They're all bracing themselves for the ship crash; some of the crew are bravely carrying on with keeping the ship sailing whilst others have completely given up hope and are saying their prayers. Aboard are alonso the king of Naples with his family and staff and the cabin crew (obviously). The ship wrecks and watching from a distance are prospero and his daughter, Miranda. It turns out that prospero made the  whole storm happen and this confuses Miranda and so he is left with no other choice but to explain why he's doing this. He reveals to her that twelve years ago, he was the king of naples and his jealous brother, Antonio seized the throne from him and it was taken over by alonso. Prospero was banished to the island with Miranda who was a baby at the time and with the help of gonzalo, he snuck his magic books and food with him. Upon his arrival at the island, he made caliban (who was the only inhabitant at the time) his servant, and freed a spirit called ariel who was trapped inside a tree and when prospero freed him, he made ariel swear to serve him forever. Ariel was trapped in the tree by a witch called sycorax who was caliban's mother who was dead by the time all this happened.

Anyway, the ship is wrecked on the island and everybody is alive and well but they're all a bit separated. Alonso can't find his son, Ferdinand and assumes he's dead but he was actually just washed up on another part of the island. Ferdinand meets Miranda and the instantly fall in love, but Ferdinand is the only man (apart from her father and caliban) she's ever seen. Ferdinand meets prospero who makes him help out and ariel sucks up to Ferdinand in hope that he frees him but Ferdinand says he will on the condition that ariel keeps the rest of the people from the ship safe.
Ariel does as he is told and leads the group to where Ferdinand and prospero and Miranda are. On their way there, Antonio and Sebastian plan to kill alonso so that sebastian can have the throne. Trinculo (the jester) and stephano (the butler) wander around the island and caliban forms a group with them to overthrow prospero so that caliban can become the ruler of the island and ariel tells prospero about their plan. The triad get drunk and set off for prospero's place but they get chased away by the spirits of the island who are in the form of dogs.
Ariel brings them all to prospero's place and he reveals himself to everyone. He forgives his brother and makes plans to return back home, gives his blessing to Miranda and Ferdinand to get married (after 24 hours. Honestly, you'd think this is a Disney princess story), ariel is set free, the triad are forgiven  the ship turns put to be in pristine condition despite being battered and wrecked in a sea storm and they all have a party and live happily ever after.

The end.


So we are doing this play in a punk and hippie style. The people from the mainland (the wrecked ones) are going to have punkish costumes; heavy make up, big hair, leather and studs, you name it. The island people and spirits are going to be more hippie and connected to nature with flowers in their hair and not many clothes on. The island is a magical place and their costumes are going to reflect that.

In terms of performances, we are doing one in the new theatre at school and another outside at the Brighton fringe.