Themes, meaning and real 1832 vs the wolves 1832

Reading through the wolves of Willoughby chase I am noticing the differences between the real life 1832 and the 1832 that the wolves of Willoughby chase is set in. The script mentions that the events of the script happen during the reign of king James III when England has never had a 3rd king James and also during that time our country was run by king William IV. It also mentions that the channel tunnel was opened and that's how the wolves came into England but in reality the channel tunnel started construction in 1873 and was only finished in 1994. Moreover wolves don't even live in England so If this was based on a real 1832 England then the wolves wouldn't have been possible. Also back in 1832 there was a big difference in classes of people; there was either poor people or rich people so If you were a servant then you would be thankful that you would live in a big house and have food and clothes. Knowing this it helped my character development of James because If he was lucky enough to live in such a big house the he's not going to throw that away by not doing what he's told so that's why during the script when Miss Slighcarp tells him to do something horrible he doesn't want to then he hesitates to do so. When Sir Willoughby was around James enjoyed his time because the whole family treats him well when usually servants were not treated as human and are just there to do as there told. Because James is treated so well by the whole family then it would help explain his relationship with Bonnie and Sylvia and why he goes so much out of his way and risk getting thrown out onto the streets to help them.

The wolves were a huge part of the performance and were very symbolic of the bad guys of the show. There are two ways you can look at wolves and they are either wolves are noble and generous and seem by people as nice creatures or they are seen as cunning, sneaky and evil creatures that are filled hate and plan there attacks well. The evil side of the wolves mix very well with the bad guys of the performance because of the way they plan and plot for there own gain; this is also shown in the performance by most of the bad guys playing the wolves. Mr Grimshaw's actions at the beginning show how cunning and two faced he is when he saves Sylvia and helps her escape the wolves, all so he can get into the house and help Miss Slighcarp with her evil plan. The is a reoccurring food is the show and that's cheese and I think the cheese is a metaphor for greed as it clashes with the plan of the bad guys to gain the fortune of Sir Willoughby. Mrs Brisket is constantly eating cheese which also shows how much of a greedy character she is. I feel that the show has a particular theme, It's the evil that people commit in order to gain something and also the good that people do and how much they go out of there way to help others. This is shown by the things that the characters do during the performance such as James, he gives Sylvia her doll back and try's free Bonnie from the cupboard. Simon also helps the girls by breaking them out of Miss Brisket's school. The evil Is shown by Mr Grimshaw and Miss Slighcarp by paying the captain of the ship to set sail with the ship in bad condition to make sure it sinks and kills Mr and Mrs Willoughby; also Mr Grimshaw and Miss Slighcarp are also very evil in the way they treat Sylvia and Bonnie by making them do there own things and starving them. Evil and greed are the two definite big themes in the performance because there represented by a lot things whether it's the characters, cheese or the wolves these constantly stick out to me as the main themes.                

End of the wolves

With the show finally finished and the wolves finally over I can't help but think I've grown a lot as an actor because this was the longest show I've every done, before this my longest show was 40 minutes long. Also I know what it's like to create a character properly now because I made the character James come alive. One thing I learnt was that making a character is not easy, it takes time and research before you can truly portray a character. There was still a lot of room for improvement where my characterisation was at but I still thought it was good. I particularly liked what Beth did with 'Miss Slighcarp' she completely changed herself for the character; she changed her posture, her hair, her accent and the way she looked. She made Miss Slighcarp a believe villain and definitely made the performance a whole lot more to enjoy. 

We performed two shows. The first was for parents and family or whoever you would like to invite to see the show and then the second was a matinee that was for other students to see. I think the second show went better for me because I was much less nervous than the first and it seem to flow more smoothly, I felt like James more on the second show than I did the first. Still both shows went really well everyone stayed in character and was focused the entire way through and really told a good story. One thing that went well and made me smile was that the stage gun actually went of multiple times because in rehearsals in took a lot to try and get it to shoot once and then on both shows it shot multiple times. Another good thing was the props that people used they were interacted with properly and used to as much as they can be for e.g. there was a blanket that stayed on stage and that was used 3 times in 3 different scenes; even things like bags were used when people was travelling and by doing this it help bring a scene to life.   

There were still a few minor errors during the performance like at one point there was a moment of silence were someone forgot there lines, all you can do to avoid that is make sure you know all your lines and read the thoroughly. Some people also forgot to be in choruses and this could be avoided by staying focused on stage a knowing were you've got to be at all times. There was not really much technical issues apart from some lights being a bit slow to come on when people were speaking, the best way to avoid any technical issues would be to have a few technical rehearsals and go over were sound effects and lights should be at certain points in the show.  

My final thought is that the wolves has definitely been a learning experience and was a very fun and successful show; it's good to have finally finished it because it's good to move on and get to new things and challenge yourself as an actor.      

Blocking more scenes and Brecht lessons 'Verfremdungseffekt'

This past week we have mainly focused of two scenes, the ice skating scene and the scene were Bonnie gets hit and locked into a cupboard. We changed the ice skating scene around a bit because now we've decided were going to use people holding up cards and they will have projected images on to show the background or an object so now we have that we've had to change the way the ice skating scene will play out. I like the idea of projected images on cardboard because it would be easier to show were the scene is and there is all sorts of weird objects you could make with them like you could make people get closer together and put the cardboard pieces together into a square shape; you could project a cupboard onto that square of cardboard and there you go you have a theatrical cupboard. My only disagreement with this method is that there is such a big chance people could misplace were there cardboard is or the projection could miss the cardboard and I think it's to risky to take the chance. Overall we have decided to use the cardboard and projection technique because it seems more artistic and different; it also leans towards the Brecht's style of theatre which is what most of this performance is linked to. Brecht liked to use placards to tall what's going on or where the scene was and we do that with the projected images and the cardboards. 

This week we've also done another lesson in the Brecht style of theatre; this time we played around with stereotypes and how they can be used to help make characters. We used stereotypical characters and created something Brecht called the 'Verfremdungseffekt'. The Verfremdungseffekt is a technique were you have something obvious about to happen in a scene but then something completely different happens and creates a moment of astonishment and this would in turn make the audience think about what were trying to show/tell them. We had a couple of with our hoods up approach a man sat down and all surround him by sitting either side of him, at this point due to stereotypes the audience may think something bad may happen but then we all ask the man in a polite manner what time the next bus is and then we all realise it's time to go so we al run off stage. This would most likely cause the verfremdungseffekt and leave the audience stunned because they thought something bad was going to happen but then something completely different happened. The whole point of this exercise was to play around with stereotypes because stereotypes will help us get our characters in the wolves of Willoughby chase more accurate to people from that time era. My character in the performance is a house servant and by looking at what servants were like back then I can use that as a template to help develop and build my character 'James'. I've not fully developed James as a character because I need to do more research so that when I'm playing James that I'm believable to the audience.             

developing the wolves of Willoughby chase and the style of Bertolt Brecht

Today we have went through a chorus section of the performance and messed about with some ideas to make the chorus interesting and still tell us what's going on. We had a couple of people on the stage blocks on different levels telling us little bits at a time and also doing small movements such as at one pint they mention waves flowing and everyone leans forward, this would create and interesting image and keep the chorus interesting and not tedious to watch. Just after the scene there is two girls talking (Bonnie and Sylvia) and whilst there talking there ice skating and the two actors playing them were practising ways of non naturalistic ways of skating whilst still being able to talk in the scene and convey emotion. Towards the end of the scene we decided we wanted to have some wolves played by real actors so we had a bunch of actors move around the set behind the two girls in a wolf like way to help bring the fear of the wolves seem more real when the two girls talk about them. I like what's going on with the physical side of the performance and I think we should keep going along this route but I don't think we should go over the top with physical stuff as it my take away form the actual performance. 


In the afternoon we looked at the drama practitioner Bertolt Brecht because his style is linked to the style of the performance. Bertolt liked to use placards which was a way of telling either what someone was thinking or what was really going or sometimes what was about to happen in a scene. Brecht like to make audiences laugh whilst having something horrific happen and sort of make the audience question themselves because they're laughing and really make them think about what's going on e.g. a woman could we on stage crying because something horrible has happened and a clown was behind her mocking her in a funny way. We messed around in small groups trying out quick performances whilst having placards. My group done two, the first one was two friends that were talking and one of them secretly hated his friend and was looking for an excuse to get away from him and the other guy was secretly gay and really wanted to tell his friend but didn't feel confident enough to. As the scene was on a third actor was holding placards and moving around showing what each character was thinking. We could definitely use placards in The wolves of Willoughby chase for things such as scene transitions and helping the audience understand what was going on or maybe we could have some people in the choruses using placards instead of talking to help add some variety of styles into the performance.         

First week in Willoughby

First week in Willoughby 

We got cast and I play the role of a character called James he is a servant of the Willoughby family but is also a good friend to Bonnie. James looks after Bonnie and Sylvia when Miss Slighcarp and Mr Grimshaw take over the house hold and treat Bonnie and Sylvia horribly. I really like the character James because I see a little bit of myself in him because he's a really nice and caring guy who helps people and he knows right from wrong and if he doesn't like something he'll do something about it. I'm definitely going to enjoy playing James. The the first day of rehearsing we went over a few scenes in what's known as 'blocking' them, this is where you just roughly go over scenes to get a basic idea of what you want from that scene; we would decide roughly where people would enter and exit the stage and what the stage would actually look like during that scene and what everyone else would be doing.     

Reading and ideas

Reading and ideas

In the first week of preparing for the wolves of Willoughby chase we done some wolf like movements similar to the stuff we done in the physical theatre show. I enjoyed doing this because we later input it into the intro chorus and it will show people that we haven’t forgotten about physical theatre and that we still like to explore and develop it further. After that we split up into two different groups and read through the entire script with people playing more than one character to see what it were like to be those characters. Later on we got the whole class together and discussed who would like to play which character; we done this by naming characters and whoever wanted to play them we made them both say a line from the script, then we would vote which one we preferred to be the character. Once we all had characters we got the whole class together and ran through the script again with people playing the character with their character voice to slowly help them develop that character. Even though we might not get that character it was still good to learn how to develop a character from that time period early instead of doing it when we got cast.