Drama Coursework: Absurdism Freeze Frames We used freeze frames in drama
to create many absurd scenarios
Drama Coursework: Absurdism
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Freeze Frames
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We used freeze frames in drama to create many absurd scenarios. We
co-ordinated our bodies with other people to create a scene and we
held our positions for about 10 seconds. We usually did this whilst we
were warming up our bodies; it also helped to see if as a group we
could listen to other people and develop their ideas. We had to use
our facial expressions to create an atmosphere and sometimes tension.
We have used the technique of freezing at a specific point many times
in drama this year. In groups, we have often created sketches and
frozen our positions.
We had to pretend that we were on a train and we had stopped at a
platform. Sheldon walked on the train and was bringing his pet
elephant on a trip. Sheldon held a leash and was patting the pet on
the back. I played one of four passengers; I cringed when they got on
the train; as if the elephant smelt. The others did mostly the same
but were moving out of the way for the elephant whilst holding their
noses. My group for this sketch was: Stephen, Sheldon, Helen and
myself.
It was a very strange image to comprehend, but that is what abusrdism
is all about.
The use of freeze frames in general helps me to appreciate that every
scene counts. Every aspect of the play is important, not just the
important ones. It helps me to just have a little pause in time and
think about what we are doing. Sometimes with freeze frames you can
use thought tracking. This is a pause in time and helps the audience
keep track of what goes on inside the actor’s/actresses head.
When it is used in absurdism, it helps me to stop and look around me.
I’m thinking, “This is very weird” and “what’s happening here”.
Freeze frames help to create an atmosphere. It creates tension and
other emotions.
Mime: There are two types of mime:
· Acting without dialogue or sound. But relying on action, facial
expressions and body expressions.
· Acting with sound and dialogue but without the use of props.
We used mime with no sound to a rhythm. We did every day chores, like
putting your books in your bag or looking for your house key to four
different actions or positions. Just like this:
· Picture 1: I bent down and with both hands push the draw closed. I
showed that the draw was stiff by clenching my teeth as I pushed.
Hamlet makes use of the idea of theatrical performance through characters presenting themselves falsely to others – from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spying on Hamlet to gain favor with the King, to Hamlet himself playing the part of a madman – and through the play within the play, The Mousetrap. This essay will discuss the ways in which Hamlet explores the idea of theatrical performance, ‘acting’, through analysis of the characters and the ‘roles’ they adopt, specifically that of Hamlet and Claudius. The idea, or the theme of theatrical performance is not an uncommon literary element of Shakespearean works, the most famous of which to encompass this idea being As You Like It. This essay will also briefly explore the ways in which Hamlet reminds its audience of the stark difference between daily life and dramatization of life in the theatre.
He came up from almost nothing in a poor immigrant home of Italian decent. His mother and father were working class citizens. Capone began using the Italian heritage at a young age with a slight twist of dastardly aggressiveness. Being kicked out of school at an early age from assault of a teacher then joining a gang was the future for Capone. Torrio left all his work in the hands of Capone, and Al did not disappoint. He was successful in making money. Prohibition alcohol, gambling, prostitution, speakeasy’s, and hits were just a few tactics of his reign in Chicago during the roaring twenties. With his attitude and ability to practically decide who will win elections made him so fearful, and if you ever crossed him you were due to payment for ticking him off. Valentine’s Day and the small-thug are just two examples of the raw decisions of Capone to commit murder. There is no possible answer to the amount of killings Capone is responsible for. Al Capone was finally caught after all the chaos and killing in 1931 where he would serve in Alcatraz and in Baltimore until returning to Miami where he would dance with the devil one last time. The notorious Al Capone never died in Chicago as the Chiraq still ran wild. Al Capone is one of Americas most famous gangsters from the prohibition era and will rest knowing that he is a symbol for modern destruction of law and order
The judge gave Capone a 2-year in a half sentence.But the judge change his mind and sentence 11 years to prison.He chose to spend his last days with his last days with his wife in miami and died January 25,1947 all over Chicago was happy that the evil man has died but his crew were really upset because he was the toughest gangster in the Group.(The image is Al Capone being
Capone was later convicted of tax evasion. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison, he was forced to pay $50,000 in fines and $30,000 for court costs (Melissa Burdick Harmon, “Badfella the Life and Crimes of Al Capone"). He was sent to Alcatraz after spending 2 years in a prison near Atlanta. Capone had gotten syphilis in Alcatraz, he was released and sent to a hospital in Baltimore after serving 6 of his 9 years. He would spend 3 years in the hospital, but he succumbed to cardiac arrest on 25 January 1947, he died at 48 years old (TheFamousPeople.com
Anger can be partly physiological, cognitive, and psychological, and it is also pointedly ideological. Factors such as race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, and religion arouse anger (Kim1). Goldhor-lerner stated that:
In Euripides’ tragic play, Medea, the playwright creates an undercurrent of chaos in the play upon asserting that, “the world’s great order [is being] reversed.” (Lawall, 651, line 408). The manipulation of the spectators’ emotions, which instills in them a sentiment of drama, is relative to this undertone of disorder, as opposed to being absolute. The central thesis suggests drama in the play as relative to the method of theatrical production. The three concepts of set, costumes, and acting, are tools which accentuate the drama of the play. Respectively, these three notions represent the appearance of drama on political, social, and moral levels. This essay will compare three different productions of Euripides’ melodrama, namely, the play as presented by the Jazzart Dance Theatre¹; the Culver City (California) Public Theatre²; and finally, the original ancient Greek production of the play, as it was scripted by Euripides.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” William Shakespeare may have written these words in As You Like It in 1600, but Erving Goffman truly defined the phrase with his dramaturgical theory. Dramaturgical analysis is the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. Unlike actors though, who use a script telling them how to behave in every scene, real life human interactions change depending upon the social situation they are in. We may have an idea of how we want to be perceived, and may have the foundation to make that happen. But we cannot be sure of every interaction we will have throughout the day, having to ebb and flow with the conversations and situations as they happen.
For this paper, I will be focusing on Erving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy. Erving Goffman was a sociologist who studied social interaction, and is well known for his work on ‘the self.’ His book, Presentation of Self, continues to be an important and relevant book in sociology since it explains by social interaction within humans is important. In his theory, Goffman explains that people are like actors performing on a stage because of how they live their lives. Drama is used as a metaphor for how an individual presents their self to society. In his work, Goffman explains that ‘the self’ is the result of the dramatic interaction between the actor and the audience he or she performs to. There are many aspects of how an individual performs his or her ‘self’.
Valentine’s Day Massacre is nowadays one of the most infamous gang massacres in history, which occurred with Al Capone and his rival gangster Bugs Moran. It all occurred when Moran tried to kill one of Capone’s members (Jack McGurn), and was now clearly a threat to Capone and his gang. It was on February 14th, 1929, the day it occurred, and it was how Moran and his men were to go to a garage and buy whiskey, without knowing they were set up by Capone and McGurn. The idea was to send them there, and pretend they would sell them the whiskey, as they were dressed with stolen police uniforms. Both Capone and his fellow mate McGurn both were far away to the scene that was close to happen. Action took place when Bugs and his men were seen passing to the garage, where Capone’s men quickly in a stolen police car went there, and what looked liked to Bugs mans as to being caught by police, was really not police, but their rival gang, everyone was shot and all died except one, Frank Gusenberg. The only bad thing was that Bugs Moran was not dead, when he saw the police car he left the scene, and even though Capone was no where close to the scene, many already had suspicions that he had been the one who planned the
What is Watson’s Classical Conditioning? Classical Conditioning was found by Dr. Ivan Pavlov. Watson’s research was influenced by Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Theory. Watson made a research on children’s emotions using the Classical Conditioning model. According to Watson, love, fear, and anger are the three kinds of emotions inherited by humans (Hall 1988). He believed these emotions could be learned through conditioning. He formed his hypothesis and carried out an experiment. John B. Watson’s classical condition experiment was on a child named Little Albert. This experiment was while a child was playing with a rabbit, smashing two bars to make a loud noise behind the child’s head. After hearing the loud noise the child became terrified of the rabbit (Hall 1988).
“Nothing to be done,” is one of the many phrases that is repeated again and again throughout Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot. Godot is an existentialist play that reads like somewhat of a language poem. That is to say, Beckett is not interested in the reader interpreting his words, but simply listening to the words and viewing the actions of his perfectly mismatched characters. Beckett uses the standard Vaudevillian style to present a play that savors of the human condition. He repeats phrases, ideas and actions that has his audience come away with many different ideas about who we are and how beautiful our human existence is even in our desperation. The structure of Waiting For Godot is determined by Beckett’s use of repetition. This is demonstrated in the progression of dialogue and action in each of the two acts in Godot.
The ‘Modern’ era began, approximately, in the mid-1800s (Worthen), following its predecessor the Romantic period, which was an era that was emotionally charged ad focused on the physical relationships between characters and being one-with-nature, rather than the focus of the modernist period which was to bring social and political issues or statements into the storyline of a script whilst still keeping the stage, characters and overall performance aesthetically pleasing for the audience of the particular period. Modernism in the theatre is the act of bringing the stage and the forms of modern life, at one time, to a critical relationship. As stated by Worthen, the modernist period or the modern world we live in today began in the mid-1800s
instance in our scene we had to enter a lift but to show this in a
Theatre will always survive in our changing society. It provides us with a mirror of the society within which we live, and where conflicts we experience are acted out on stage before us. It provides us with characters with which we identify with. The audience observes the emotions and actions as they happen and share the experience with the characters in real time.
My experience watching a live theatre performance on stage was a fascinating one, most especially since it was my first time. I attended a staged performance of “The History Boys” in a small theatre called “The Little Theatre of Alexandria” at 8:00 pm on Wednesday June 8, 2016 in Alexandria, Virginia. The overall production of the play was a resounding experience for me particularly the performance of the actors and the design of the scene made the play seem real.