Proposal
1. My initial aims or what I aimed to achieve in Blood Wedding for the Acting side of the production was making sure I pronounced my words properly and projected my voice to be heard by an public audience. furthermore, making sure I or we all stood in neutral not getting distracted by our hair and hands or standing with the feet crossed on stage or moving strangely from place to place rather than being relaxed staying tense especially with the posture enlightenment and last but not least making sure we have thoroughly read through the play to understand the character in the way the react and act to objects and other characters, how they behave what they like to eat and what would they wear. What I trying to say by that is that we should ourselves in their shoes in a specific moment and see how they would feel but what I learnt about my character is she generally is over excited, talks alot and very spirited meaning she is full of energy and determined. But on the otherhand when I am not performing what I aimed to do was have the confidence to just say to myself I will go on stage and relax and if something goes wrong just stay in role and continue and that is what I did exdcept for Thursday morning as I did well until I felt the confidence go a bit after we all messed up as a class and lost our confidence and character but then found it and got it back after rehearsing for our final show by the point were we physically were tired but were determined to not give up for the main characters and the whole class. The other two things I and I am sure everyone else had or felt at times was the nerves before the performance and during making less relaxed and always stress out but the best way to help me relax and take my mind of things and ease myself a bit was breathing to make me focus on what was happening at this point rather than later or before, also the other thing I was worried about was stage fright or forgettig lines or frezzing on stage but what helped was thinking about others and other things to make me stay calm and focused especially when at home I started learning the lines but felt tired or pyhisically I could not handle learning the lines I just thought of positive and happy thoughts and that helped me get into the positive mind frame.
Research
2. What play?
The play is Blood Wedding a tragedy by Spanish dramatist Frederico Garcia Lorca. It was written in 1932 and first performed in Madrid in March 1933 and later that year in Buenos Aires. Theatre critics often place it in the catergory with Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba as the "Rural Trilogy". Lorca's plan for a "trilogy of the Spanish earth" remained unfinished at the time of his death. Its success showed a degree in which Spanish audiences around 1933 were happy to accept new sugestions and ideas in theatre and literature that were being developed during the turn of the century. The play included many interesting mixtures of things within the play itself such as songs, chants, poetry, music, dance and rhythm, as well as the action in the play and the set on stage being very symbolic and stylised. In the play the non- naturalistic and antinaturalistic techniques took the chance of advantaging Drama as a live event as to say making the actions in the play or even sets seem exactly like the types of things you would see in everyday life. The play mostly plays out the conflict between individual wishes and societal decrees and laws, but on the otherhand for the people who view the play more on the historical context Lorca's theme is based mostly around rigid laws of the lovers (Bride, Bridegroom and Leonardo's) community in Blood Wedding. It was also fasciation that heavily influenced the most famous tragedy play Blood Wedding. But one of the main reasons why the play was so inspirational was due to the fact of Lorca reading an article in Madrid about a sensational crime in the daily ABC in 1928 that he came about having the idea of writing a similar story of the play known as Blood Wedding which is now known as a well loved classic both in Spain and internationally also translated in English.
Who wrote it?
The playwright that wrote the play ''Blood Wedding'' was a man named Federico Garcia Lorca who was 38 years of age.
Background?
Federico García Lorca was
born in Fuente Vaqueros a isolated village just a few miles from Granada in southern
Spain. His main passion was learning, he
first read about law at the University of Granada, but later persude a career becoming an expert pianoist
and guitar player. In 1919 he settled in Madrid. Lorca met Salvador Dalí Lorca
in 1923 and the two developed a passionate friendship that would influence Lorca
for the rest of his life.
Lorca had discovered that he also had an
inspiration for folk and gypsy music.
In these works he used old ballads and mythology to express
his tragic vision of life. As a traditional thing, he often enjoyed reading his
poetry aloud.
In 1927 García Lorca gained fame with his romantic
historical play (Marina Pineda), with scenery
constructed by Salavador Dali. After living in New York and then making a
short visit to Cuba, García Lorca returned to Spain by 1931. He first wrote and then
produced a series of often experimental and controversial theatrical
productions.
Lorca then occupied himself with the writing of what
has been referred to as the “rural trilogy” three plays concerned with life,
love, and tragedy in rural Spain. Blood Wedding, the
first part of the trilogy, was performed in 1933. Yerma, the second part, performed in 1934. Finally, the House of Bernarda, written just before García Lorca's
death in 1936 and published in 1945.
García Lorca's central themes are love, pride,
passion and violent death, which also marked his own life. The Spanish Civil war began 1936 and the right-wing forces of General Francisco Franco saw García
Lorca as an enemy. The author hid from the soldiers but he was eventually found.
García Lorca was shot in Granada on August 19 in 1936 without trial on the
charge of “liberal politics,” though it is certain he was also executed for
being a homosexual. The Spanish Civil War followed by
the especially brutal fascist regime of Franco that lasted into the 1970’s.
Lorca’s works had been banned in Spain until Franco’s death which was during the period of the 1970’s, and his
passionate and lyrical treatments of love and tragedy in rural Spain have since
made a tremendous increase of rivival. Today he is recognised as one of the most distinguished Spanish poets and playwrights of the century.
What are the themes of the play?
Some of the main themes in the play ''Blood Wedding'' are as follows:
- Generational Conflicts
- Gender Roles
- Physical and Emotional Isolation (within Society)
- Blame
- Humanity in nature/Nature itself
- Greed
- The exchange in Information
- Fate
- Death
- Family/ties/ (bonding and staying together or apart)
- Loss
- Love
- Dinial
- Faith (hope and religion)
The main symbols in the play Blood Wedding are as follows:
- Knifes and flowers as they talked alot about Dahlia and Orange Blossom which were both famous flowers in Spain at the time of the 1900's but thet traditional wedding flower was Orange Blossom used on the Bride's wedding ceremony as a symbol of purity and beatifulness.
How we also addressed this in discussion and rehearsals is reading over the play and highlighting key peices of information to remember and help us later by giving us hints and answers to later questions for the research and by researching it on the internet to benifit and help us for writing the evaluation as well as dicussing the key elements needed for the ingredients to make a good peice of evaluation writing.
3. In terms of ''style'' what did we decide on in terms of how to produce it?
First of all looking at a variety of styles by actresses performing the role of the Servant in trailers, photos and as described in the characters description she is generally very happy and light spirited and chatty and comes across as a friendly person unless of coarse she gets angry with Leanardo the one who most concerns her and she has to protect the Bride against getting anywhere close to each other. Futhermore, in terms of style we decided to produce it differently to the original script as in the normal play for the homes they use minimal stage settings and direction, limited scenery. Rooms are painted yellow, pink or white and are usually decorated with flowers and simple furnishings, where as the Cave in which the bride lives were often used as dwellings in mountainous parts of southern Spain, mostly by Gypsy families. The entrance to the bride’s cave is completely decorated. However, the outside of the cave is “as hard as a landscape” on ceramic decorated with white, gray, blue and silver colors and a completely made up of white house. The building is made up of arches and white stairs, walls, and floors that resemble those of a church in rural Spain. The Neighbours meet here to discuss the ill-fated wedding and its deadly aftermath which is all too much to set up on the type of stage we have in college and would not be enough from the amount we are given budget cost and spending wise to produce such a massive staging in such a short space of time we had and would take the whole class and alot of time to produce into a good result as a result of the rehearsals on top of that. So instead we had to first of all cut the play down to an hour roughly to sustain concentration thoughout dress rehearsals and the show, we had to style the theatre performances in a certain way for example reducing the budget income of how much we spent on costume, make up and props for each day to save enough for extra thing needed last minute as well as having less props so it would be easier to remember what to take on and off stage with us as well as being able to move and carry the set not needed for the next scene which was included as part of the show and remembering which person/people in the group do it at what exact stage. bearing all those things in mind. We also kept audience engaged by exaggerating the characters and making them as believable as possible and not focusing on the words but rather the character itself and the way we potray and present ourselves to the audience and make it seem like we brang them back to the Spanish era by the over the top and fun dancing to get the audience on our side and enjoying themselves to the melodramatic and over the top acting to express how the characters really felt inside and out and also bearing in mind the thought process we had while on stage and coming off and on at certain points as well as thinking about the reasons for example my character went on stage searching for the Bride while the mother and Bridegroom were talking alone on stage. these are things we should always think about and bear in mind at all times. Now here are links to some of the websites I researched:
4. Rhearsals: What worked? What didn't? How did we get round this?
What worked during the rehearsals for Blood Wedding was we helped each other as a team if something went wrong and supported each other and improved the mistakes when given feedback from the teacher, learnt from them until we got them right and they stuck in our heads. What didn't work on the otherhand was the group peice for the wedding ceremony from the poetry to the lines as it was under rehearsed and it showed that we were not confident because of lack of focus and determination or concentration of having the capbility and time to get it done and right independently without the support and help from a teacher which showed as it would have different if we rehearsed several times. How we got round this was with the time we had still in technichal and dress rehearsals and after those we rehearsed a few times getting right the parts we messed up on previously to make it was smooth and crisp for the shows on both days.
5. Performances: What worked and what didn't?
During all four shows what worked well was the confidence we showed when we performed as we had a good use of posture enlightenment as well as body language and facial expression showing we had a good understanding of the characteers we played and the way we were positioned in each of the scenes showed we were able to be seen as most of the time we were aware of spacing and blocking and also by the proxemics it was clearly shown that we could see which characters had better friendships and relationships between them onstage. Futhermore, the amount of focus showed also helped us to listen out for one another and when to say our lines and come on stage. But on the 1st Thursday performance we lacked focus which made it hard to listen of when exactly to come on stage and say our lines as well as it bringing down our confidence level which was also due to tiredness and stress and which was the main reason we messed up the big group peice as well as lack of rehearsal which showed a bit as the energy at some stages in the show was lost especially the middle section on some days. Another thing most of us struggled with in this and other productions previously was projection and pronounciation which meant we rushed and said the words to fast not pronouncing them properly to be heard and understood by the audience which is why it is important to practise tounge twisters and vocal techniques in our spare time.
6. Evaluation
How you have attained certain goals you set yourself at the start of the year?
Every few months we would set ourselves goals to reach for each subject and as a person for acting and everyday in College in general which would help us to reach to that certain stage we are at now where we have reached things we did not feel that confident with at the start such as talking loud and performing infront of bigger audience as well as aiming for bigger more challenging roles for yourself as a person that would not necessarely go for but is good challenging yourself now as in the Acting industry it will get harder and more independent as now you get the extra support which will be harder to recieve and benifit from in the future.
Marketing and Publicity
What you did and how you did it?
What we did is firstly researched images related to Blood and Wedding in two different styles to show an contrast in presentational features and styles of fonts, to make it stand out when shown around our college, secondly we had to present the initial and final ideas to the class, in order for them to vote which one they felt would suite better for a performance. Additionally, we did a Programme in a simple layout form, from giving the address to making sure the audience have guidelines on how to get to there destination, to a scene by scene synopsis, cast list (Thursday) and thanks and messages of greetings for all those who got involved in some way. We used dark red colours and black to focus mainly on incorporating Blood to represent danger and pain, darkness representing darkness and isolation. But also focused generally on sticking to the initial themes in the play throughout all the marketing areas. Another example was white bubble blood like writing to blend in with the background strongly but to match the size of the programme to be readable in the point of view of the audience watching the show. Finally, for the entrance we decided on the materials we wanted to use, then we were developing the materials by sticking Spanish images on the wall to create a Spanish feel to the evening shows as well as putting up a cast list so they knew the roles we played throughout the production, we put a blue cloth and fairy lights with tickets on the table to promote our tickets but could not print them out due to the amount of time spent on rehearsals. additionally, the resources we used included the internet for images, theatre cupboard to get additional things needed for the play and recycled material from home in order to find things that the college don't already have.
What went well?
What went well was Jacob and me worked well as a team co-ordinating together to make it stand out really well, and make it bright and simple but not too complicated for an audience to take in without any confusion the design we made before they enter the theatre and so we makes sure we are not giving too much away on the likes of the culture and hinting the countries traditional play. What we also learnt was you don't need too much to make the audience interested in watching the play for the entrance rather it was more important than focusing on what it looks like with less than more but still make it links and relates to the play. We also felt like we really got involved and felt like we had a big job and focus on getting the whole presentation of the design overall looking fantastic and making sure individually everything was standing out which was a massive responsibility on our shoulders, as well as learning and remembering what we needed to do in case we end up doing that role or something to that in the future but what I found interesting was we were able to do things independently and decide on what to put in the room and where to place everything and how to design it.
What did not go well?
What did not go well was the promotion side of tickets which we made but as a matter of fact could not print out due to the timing of things being rushed and us being stressed out about the shows and having to focus on getting ready and preparing ourselves for the first show coming up. What was another issue was the entrance and box office which Jacob and me and others in the class had to take charge of as the person who was originally set to do it was not able to due to the result of him not turning up we had to in 2 days complete to make it look finished enough for and audience and we just managed to complete as I put the effort and time and work into making it a stunning piece of art work and theatre box office to make the audience feel excited to see the show and get a taste of what to expect before even seeing the show.
The research you did?
The research we underwent with was searching for good images and getting ideas of things we could buy to make the entrance look good from actual websites but making sure things were not to pricy and so things looked professional, make the teachers and everyone think we put in a lot of effort into making it to our best so it would also result in a good night from the entrance to show. As well as watching the trailer of the play to get a better feel of the culture and how it looked in those periods and how we can relate and find pictures that relate to Spain the country as well as the period the play was written in focusing or going back to the time period or setting and context of the script when looking to get ideas. But I decided to get the images from the web and design them to look nice and stand out on the wall, but also making sure they matched with the other decorations. As well as focusing on the colours to bring the vibrance and also symbols talking about colours in the play which are mostly red, black and white.
What went well?
What went well was Jacob and me worked well as a team co-ordinating together to make it stand out really well, and make it bright and simple but not too complicated for an audience to take in without any confusion the design we made before they enter the theatre and so we makes sure we are not giving too much away on the likes of the culture and hinting the countries traditional play. What we also learnt was you don't need too much to make the audience interested in watching the play for the entrance rather it was more important than focusing on what it looks like with less than more but still make it links and relates to the play. We also felt like we really got involved and felt like we had a big job and focus on getting the whole presentation of the design overall looking fantastic and making sure individually everything was standing out which was a massive responsibility on our shoulders, as well as learning and remembering what we needed to do in case we end up doing that role or something to that in the future but what I found interesting was we were able to do things independently and decide on what to put in the room and where to place everything and how to design it.
What did not go well?
What did not go well was the promotion side of tickets which we made but as a matter of fact could not print out due to the timing of things being rushed and us being stressed out about the shows and having to focus on getting ready and preparing ourselves for the first show coming up. What was another issue was the entrance and box office which Jacob and me and others in the class had to take charge of as the person who was originally set to do it was not able to due to the result of him not turning up we had to in 2 days complete to make it look finished enough for and audience and we just managed to complete as I put the effort and time and work into making it a stunning piece of art work and theatre box office to make the audience feel excited to see the show and get a taste of what to expect before even seeing the show.
The research you did?
The research we underwent with was searching for good images and getting ideas of things we could buy to make the entrance look good from actual websites but making sure things were not to pricy and so things looked professional, make the teachers and everyone think we put in a lot of effort into making it to our best so it would also result in a good night from the entrance to show. As well as watching the trailer of the play to get a better feel of the culture and how it looked in those periods and how we can relate and find pictures that relate to Spain the country as well as the period the play was written in focusing or going back to the time period or setting and context of the script when looking to get ideas. But I decided to get the images from the web and design them to look nice and stand out on the wall, but also making sure they matched with the other decorations. As well as focusing on the colours to bring the vibrance and also symbols talking about colours in the play which are mostly red, black and white.
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| Theatre entrance inside |
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| Out side theatre entrance |
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