Political views

Scene 1:

The vegetables dealers are dogdy and after money.

It links to today, because this play is set in the Great Depression, and it's similar to the credit crunch that happened between 2008-2013.

So this scene is showing how people are willing to scam others of their money so they're able to survive.

Scene 2:

Dogsborough is aware of Butcher and Flake trying to scam him of his money, but he's going along with it anyway.

This is like when the Prussian Junkers offer President Hindenburg an estate.

Scene 3:

Ui wants his "reputation" back; he wants to kill someone in order to do that.

The scene represents Nazi are threatened with bank rupsy - Hitler tries to be appointed Chancellor but Hindenburg doesn't want to see him-(1932).

Scene 4:

In this scene, Ui and Roma turn up to Dogsborough's house and threatens Dogsborough, so Dogsborough allows Ui to protect him.

This scene represents when Hitler was given the role of being Chancellor, promising to prevent composure of Osthilfe scandal.

Scene 5:

In this scene O'Casey's witness is murdered, this represents when

Hitler kept his promises but uses violent measures.

Scene 6:

This scene is where Ui hires an actor to teach him how to present himself.

Hitler actually did this, he also would perform his speeches in the mirror for hours, practicing his accent, the way he moved etc.

Scene 7:

In this scene Hook's warehouse is on fire, this represents the Reichstag Fire in 1933.

Scene 8:

This scene Fish is sentenced for the warehouse fire when it wasn't him. This is a representation of when an innocent is sentenced to death for the Reichstag Fire in 1933.

Scene 9:

In this scene there's a woman who's been brutally affected by Ui's man; Roma's reckless behaviour. 

Dogsborough is saying house he allowed all of the fire and deaths happen to keep himself safe. 

I feel like this scene represents a lot of what is happening today, like in Russia, North Korea and part of Arfica. I feel the woman is representing all those who have ever been injured/murdered for nothing.

Scene 10:

Dogsborough's dying, Giri and Givola want Roma gone. 

This scene represents when Hindenburg died and the Junkers wanted Rohm gone.

Scene 11:

Ui kills Roma.

This scene shows when Hitler went against Röhm.

Scene 12:

Dullfeet meets with Ui. Ui asks for no more bad articles to be written about him. This represents when Hitler met with Dollfuss-(Chancellor of Austria)- and Dollfuss agrees-(out of fear). 

Scene 13:

In this scene we find out Dullfeet has died, and it's his funeral. Ui, Giri and Givola talk to his widowed wife.

This represents when Dollfuss was murdered and Hitler continued to negotiate with the other Austrian writers.

Scene 15:

This is when Ui has an election amongst the vegetable dealers, with his gunman there that give them no choice but to vote for Ui.

This represents when Hitler goes to Austria for his election when there were Nazi terror results. 

98% of the votes were for Hitler.

Our Trailer

http://youtu.be/Hgsfsjm5HLM

For our trailer, Heta had the idea of having all of the Ui's faces on the screen then at the end having the last Ui wipe the moustache on.

Andy agreed, but he thought of having the infront of the black curtain, one at a time, taking the next step where the last one took off from. 

I think this worked really well, because it's showing the audience who the Ui's are, so they don't get confused. 

Getting the accent the best I could

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnhMJN5ItX4

At the beginning of doing rehearsals, I had no idea how to do the Chicago accent and it really did affect my confidence in lesson because I was worried about sounding stupid and not doing the accent right.

So, what I did when I got home I started looking at different videos with people from Chicago speaking. I found that this video was the best, because it went through certain words that they pronounce differently.

Project Proposal

The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui – Project Proposal

A review of your progress and achievement to date.

Doing a Brechtian play is very new and different compared to the other plays I’ve done before in the past. I’m really excited to do it, though, because I’m good at speaking out to the audience-(which is Brechtian). I think the thing that I’m going to struggle with most though is making all of my gests really big and over exaggerated, because I’m not used to being so big and over-the-top so it’s going to feel really unnatural for me to be like that. However, I think it’s a great opportunity for me to act in this style, because where it’s out of my comfort zone completely, it’s building my confidence to try new things.   Or, what could possibly happen as a threat is that I’ll make the movement my main priority on stage and forget about the audience and the story.

A proposal for your production and performance roles within the play.

For this show I'm really interested in playing the Woman in scene nine, even though you don’t know much about her at all, I just think that she’s a great representation of people in war-zones today. I feel that by playing this character it would push me to my limit and beyond- like Artaud’s technique “pushing yourself to the edge”.  I also really like Butcher. I like him because he's sneaky and clever, I like how he always has a plan. At the end of scene one he gathers all of the Cauliflower Trust people together and tells them his plan to convince Dogsborough to get involved in the Dockland Scheme.  In scene two he's also bit of a creep while he's convincing Dogsborough to take the offer.  Which I think would be quite a funny scene if it's done properly.

A rationale that explains why these roles are the most appropriate for you and support the production as a whole.

I think I'd play a good Woman, because I enjoy being "pushed over the edge" on an emotional level and just being able to have no limits. I get a kick out of the audience being shocked and not knowing how to react because that's how they should feel when watching a scene like scene nine because we all forget that things like that are still happening today and we just dismiss it from our brains, but when we're reminded about it, it leaves us feeling cold and shocked. The idea I had for this scene is to be laid on the floor, covered in blood, attempting to get up but not being able too, so crawling around, dragging her legs behind her crying and screaming for help. Butcher, I think would suit me because I can be charming and convincing when I want to be, and I feel like I could really get the side out in Butcher. I also know gests that would suit his personality. As we are doing a Brechtian play, we want to respect his idea of how theatre should be done, so here are some of our ideas of how we can do that; - We want there to be plenty of dancing and music-(we made sure that we only used 1930s music, so it was more real) play during in the show, - We all want to be on stage for the whole show, - We've all been given 2-3+ characters to play in the show, - We want the hall that we're performing in to be done up in a Cabaret style/ decorated like a Speackeasie, - We're thinking about using VIP tables for some members of the audience to sit at for the show, - We want some VIP tables to sit at ourselves so we'll be sat with the audience. -We using signs so the audience know where we are in the scene -Also we want to use some historic videos We can also use some of Le Coq's techniques like, Complicity, Mime for transitions possibly?

Your brief interpretation of the play and a proposed staging.

My interpretation for the show is that Ui is trying to come into power within the Cauliflower Trust to try and gain publicity in the papers so that people will start showing him "respect", but what ends up happening is that vegetable dealers are just too scared to fight against him because they don't want to die so they just do as he says. So Ui never gets actual "respect" he just gets people too scared to speak up. What we want to convey in the show is to not underestimate what people are capable of doing. This play is a great way to do this with because it's based off Hitler, who everyone has heard of, and we're using his story if how he came to power. This can also be a reminder to the audience that there are still dictators like him today, such as Vladimir Putin. For the staging I thought we could use the main stage and maybe use some of the rustre, so we have more room to move about. We could also use the floor too, so we can get closer to the audience and maybe make them feel quite uncomfortable as well?

How you will evaluate and review your progress in the project.

I'll evaluate my progress by taking notes in class, filming the work I do and also taking pictures to show how I'm improving and to show me how I can improve for the next lesson.

How I feel about the show/research

I feel like that doing this show has really opened my eyes about the problems that are happening today.
Because where the show is ultimately based on the well-known dictator; Adolf Hitler, we had to do a lot of research on him.
Doing the research on Hitler linked back to Prime ministers today, such as;
Vladimir Putin, Russia's primeminister, Kin Jong Un Yelling prime minister in North Korea and tghe list goes on.

Doing the research has made me more aware that there are still many traggic problems that are just as bad as what Hitler did going on today. I feel like we all, as a nation like to bury our heads in the ground and pretend that it's not happening all around us as we speak.

I've loved doing the show, because it's made me more aware of the political world today, and really helped have an understanding of what those who are suffering feel.
Also, it's been so much fun and such a crack to finish this year with.
I can't wait to perform it, and hopefully, make the audience realise that terrible things like what happens in the show still happens today.

1930s Chicago history

In 1930s Chicago it was strongly associated with gangsters, the mafia and speakeasies-(where they'd get alcohol).

During the Great Depression, a lot of people were unemployed and were force to rely on food handouts. - Because of this, a lot of people turned to crime to help themselves to get through it. That's why there was so many gangsters and mafia in the city. 

Gangsters; 

Al Capone was one of the most well-known Chicago gangsters. He was in a gang- Five Points Gang, then when the leader Torrio retired, Capone took his place and became a "major crime boss"!

He ran gambling, prostitution, bootlegging rackets-(to do with alcohol) and "expanding his turf", by murdering his rivals.

People say Capone was "worth $100 million" in the late 1920s.

In the 1930s Capone was sent to prison where he had to serve for all the bad he had done. His health went downhill after that and died in 1947.

Dion O'Banion's real name was Dean.

He was born near Chicago, then actually moved there when he was a young child, when he was a little older, he became a singing waiter at McGoverns Saloon and Cabaret- a mobster hangout.

This is where O'Banion met a fellow Irish-American man; Gene Geary, a well-known gunman.

Geary took O'Banion on, taught him how to use guns and rackeering. Not too long after all that, O'Banion because leader of the North-Side Gang in Chicago.

O'Banion's biggest rival was Torrio-(Capine's mentor). 

After a double-cross at O'Banion's flower shop-(to disguise his bootlegging operation), 

Torrio was sent to prison.

Bugs Moran was jailed 3 times by the time he was 20. He moved to Chicago at 19. 

Moran became friends with O'Banion, and after O'Banion died, Moran took his place as leader for the North-Side Gang.

Moran was known for not being afraid of having a bloody shoot-up. As Moran was so jokey and didn't care what he said to the press, he'd lay their stories with insults to Capone. Which led to the Valentines Day Massacre, where loads of Moran's best men died, but not him, himself. 

I think these three gangsters could help give inspiration to those who are playing gangsters in the show.

Because they can look into their lives and use Stanislavski's technique of creating a back-story for each of characters. Even though a lot of their characters are based off real people, they can gather up information about the real gangsters 

From the time period and maybe that could also help with their gests, as the characters are based of Nazi supporters and so on, but not actual gangsters.

Speakeasies; 

In the Great Depression, alcohol was illegal. 

However, Chicagoans "refused" to stop the alcohol from flowing. 

So, as a result in this, speakeasies started popping up all round the place. Hidden, of course. They were mainly ran by gangsters, hitmen etc. 

the speakeasies would be hidden in basements, back rooms and soda shops.

There were some speakeasies that were not quite as discreet as others. 

Like Green Mill Cocktail Lounge- in Uptown, where music and alcohol flowed openly, this place had Al Capone's support and was partly owned by the gangster, Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn. 

Bugs Moran ran another speakeasie, Halligan's. Down the road from there, Marge's Still was making Gin in the upstairs bath.

The Great Depression; 

It started in 1929 and finished 1939. 

It started when Wall Street went into panic and wiped out millions of investors, shortly after the stock market crash in October 1929.

After that, millions of people start losing their jobs and becoming unemployed because companies started laying off workers.

By 1933, 13-15 million people were unemployed!- and nearly half of the banks had failed all over America.

It wasn't until just after 1939, when WW2 kicked off and that was got American's industry sorted out. 

Scene 12

https://youtu.be/C6JRRooZ-xc

Scene 12 is set in the Givola's flower shop.
For this scene we needed all members of the cast to create the illusion that the other characters are in a flower shop.
In this scene Dullfeet and Betty go to the flower shop to meet Ui and Givola because Dullfeet is a journalist and wants to know more about Arturo Ui.
As the scene goes along, Dullfeet feels more and more threatened by Ui and Givola as he can see past their charming personas.

I'm holding a cane with flowers in this scene.
I think for this I need to think more about how I move with the flowers, because at the moment I'm just walking normally, and it looks boring.
So, what I'm going to do next time to improve is think of some the Checkov's techniques, aka; moulding, floating and flying.
I think either moulding and/or floating would be good to use for this scene for the flowers as flowers are meant to be beautiful and elegant, and it would be opposite to what the scene is actually about.