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.  

Bertolt Brecht

Brecht was born in 1898, in Augsburg, a small town in Germany.




In the first world was he was serving as a medical orderly, and was disgusted by what the war had on individuals, he then went to Munich, then went to Berlin to try and pursue a career in theatre.  

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Brecht then left the country and hid in Denmark-(where he wrote The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, to show the world what was happening in Germany).
When the Nazis found out they removed his citizenship for the country, then he was then a "stateless citizen".
Brecht then moved to America, where he became a resident in the US in 1941, he he didn't return to EU until 1947, after showing up at the House Un-American Activities Committee. Apparently against communism, this committee also targeted intellectuals. 

Brecht started writing plays and poems while at an army hospital.


Brechtian theatre techniques: 

- various individuals step out of the group and address the audience 

- actors change into different characters 

- non-realistic movement, slow-motion and robotic

- costumes and set to be changed in full view of the audience

- characters being known as "the woman" the "policeman"

- lots of blackouts

Brecht liked the audience to always to be lit because he wanted the audience to feel on the same level as the actors, to make them aware that they were watching watching a show, he didn't want them to feel like they were watching a show. 
This is called the alienation affect is the audience not feeling a connection with the characters. 



 


Brecht's first few plays were written while he was still living in Germany in the 1920s, not very many people knew about him for a long time though.


What we want to use in our show, to keep it in his style;

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

Characters of the show

 

                          . 

Arturo Ui;
Arturo Ui is based on the very well-known dictator, Adolf Hitler. 
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in the small Austrian town of Braunau to Alois Hitler who later became a senior customs official and his wife Klara, who was from a poor peasant family.
Hitler did not do particularly well in school, leaving formal education in 1905. Unable to settle into a regular job, he drifted. He wished to become an artist but was rejected from the Academy in Vienna.


Giri; 
Giri is based on Hermann Goring.
Goring was born on the 12 of January, 1893 and died 15 of October 1946.He was a German politician and leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). 
In the for world war, he was a veteran, ace fighter pilot-("The term "ace" is unofficially bestowed on those pilots and weapon systems officers who have shot down five enemy aircraft. The label became popular among military pilots during World War I.")



Dogsborough;
Dogsborough was based on Paul Von Hindenburg. He was born 1847, 2 October. His political party was Independent.

He was a Prussian-German field marshal, statesman and politician and was a second President of Germany from 1925 to 1934.
He was in the army, he retired in 1911, but was called back after the first break in World War 1.

Roma;

Roma was set on Ernst Röhm. He was born 1887, 28 of November. His political party was National Socialist German-(the workers party). 

He was a German officer for the Bavarian Army. Then he became an early Nazi leader. After that, he became the Nazi Party militia commander. 

In 1934 he was murdered on Adolf Hitler's orders, as he was seen as a potential enemy.







Givola; 

Givola was based off of Joseph Goebbels. He was born 1897, 29 October. 

He was a German politician and a Reich Minister of Properganda in Nazi Germany in the years 1933-1945. 

He was one of Hitler's closest workers and "most devoted followers".

1930s dance and music

The 1930s dance steps include bits from the Jive, swing and jitterbug. 

The Jive: 

The Jive originally came from the United States from the African-Americans, in the 1930s.

the Jive is a lively, bouncy dance which is similar to both Jitterbug and the Swing Dance.

http://youtu.be/vmCOc4N_Sfg

Swing Dance:

The most well-known of these dances is the Lindy Hop, a fusion of jazz, tap, breakaway, and Charleston, which originated in Harlem in the early 1920s.

http://youtu.be/QTkRStdoH9o

The Jitterbug:

The jitterbug is a kind of dance popularized in the United States in the early twentieth century and is associated with various types of swing dances such as the Lindy Hop, The Jive, and East Coast Swing.

http://youtu.be/xS5oCLXrQLs

All of these dances were quite similar in with the style and were all very popular.

Scene 8

http://youtu.be/pOrKJcsianw

When this scene was devised, I was away, ill.

However, when I came back and rehearsed it with everyone we I noticed how Heta-(playing the judge) was playing the judge as a really laid back/not caring person. Same goes for everyone else. In this scene EVERYONE is lying!- apart from the defence council. 

I found this really interesting, considering it's set in a house of law-(a court) and everyone is lying. 

Scene 7

http://youtu.be/J8f1KvlkchI

We did scene 7 in extra rehearsals.

In this scene Ui is giving a big speech to various grocery people. 

For this scene we looked at different videos of Hitler's speeches to give Max ideas on how he should act in this scene. 

We then spoke about Hitler's movements he'd use in the speeches and how he mainly uses his arms and hands to help put across what he's trying to say.

We thought it would be a good way to show Ui's rise to power in this scene by using Hitler's gests and how it's kind of mocking Hitlers to a certain extent by doing this.

Scene 4

In scene four it starts off with just Dogsborough and his son; Young Dogsborough talking about the deal Dogsborough has just made with Butcher and Flake and how it was a bad idea. 

After their little conversation, Butcher calls and says how there was a meeting at City Hall about the deal. Then Ui and Roma show up and offers Dogsborough help, in a passive aggressive manner. 

How the scene is blocked: 

Harry-(Dogsborough) is sat in his arm chair on one of the platforms, and Young Dogsborough-(me) is stood on the main stage. When Ui and Roma arrive, Ui is at the front of the stage, Dogsborough stays where he is and Roma joins me on the main stage.

Young Dogsborough;

In this scene, it shows how much Young Dogsborough listens and does as he's told by his father and copies him to a certain extent -(even though he'd be in his 40s). 

I thought I could have some fun in this scene and take the mick out of Young Dogsborough's personality and make him really alert and really quick with his reactions. 

Because then it will make him seem like an obedient dog. 

Also, when Roma is threatening Dogsborough and Dogsborough says "I said get out" I make it so Young Dogsborough is being "mister big man" and stand up to Roma and gets up in his face, but then he chickens out.

Scene 2

We started reading through the scene. After that, we then started coming up with various ideas as to how we could set the scene out.

Many ideas were shared. There was a lot spoken about using the shadows in this scene, where Dogsborough and his son; Young Dogsborough would stand behind, while washing the glasses. 

We also thought that Jade and I could create a bar by using the blocks.

We thought using the shadowing in this scene would be a great way to introduce Dogsborough and his son, Young Dogsborough, because we could mess around with their heights. 

We agreed that it would be really funny to show Young Dogsborough as a really short man-(because he doesn't have any power, he just follows his dad around, like a lost puppy) and to show Dogsborough as a much taller man, because he's a very well-respected politician in Chicago. 

In this scene there was a slight problem, because I was cast as both; Butcher and Young Dogsborough. 

So, of course I couldn't be both. So we decided that Heta was to play Young Dogsborough in just this scene, and stay behind the screen.

Also, Jade and I found it hard to think of a well-stylised manner to get the blocks into the right positions. So, Siou put people into pairs and got them to improvise with some music, moving the blocks on stage to help give Jade and I some inspiration. 

Also, another problem with this is that I have a bad back, so I'm also limited to how much moving of the blocks I can do with causing any strain.

 

I think next time to improve this scene, we all seriously need to work on our character's gests, to show what kind of people each of them are. 

I also think I need to be a lot more charming and kind of creepy around Dogsborough, because I'm trying to trick him into giving us money.

Scene 14

In this scene Ui is having a dream about Roma haunting him from the dead.

The way this scene is set out is Ui is asleep on a chair with his two bodyguards asleep next to him on the floor. 

We thought it would be really creepy to have Roma behind the screen so we could do some shadow works. 

To make the scene even creepier we are going to have two other people-(Liam and Max) behind the screen with Roma-(Greta) and have them as extra arms, so it's almost like Roma has grown and is more powerful.

In this scene I'm a bodyguard on the floor. In earlier scenes we all decided to make the bodyguards really dopey and stupid. I found this hard to show in this scene because obviously, I'm asleep, until the very end, anyway. But to show the dopeyness of the bodyguard I tried variou different thing, like snoring, moving around loads Eric. But I felt that by doing this it would take the focus away from the important part of the scene- Roma's speech and Ui's reaction. So I thought I'd do something small and sweet, so I started sucking gym thumb and moving here and there, so it's not taking away any main focus of the scene.

Character development

I feel as though I have worked hard towards developing all of my characters over the past few weeks. 

My main character; Butcher, I've taken so much time really thinking about his gests and what he wants in each scene. 

Like in scene two, I wasn't entirely sure how he would act in that situation. 

However, now I've thought about my gests and what his main objection is, I've decided that he's quite creepy and can/thinks he can be quite manipulative and that he'd do anything for a bit of cash in his pockets. 

So to portray this, I've made him really touchy-feely with Dogsborough in scene two and really over friendly and confident. 

My other character; Young Dogsborough, I've tried to make him quite funny, by making him really alert of everything and 

given him a squeakier voice then all of the other characters in the play. His character reminds me of the cartoon character, Scrappy-Doo, because in scene 4, Young Dogsborough tries to stand up to Roma, but gets too scared and pipes down. This remind me of Scrappy-Doo because Scrappy is always trying to act harder than he is and never gets anywhere with it. 

I've had a lot of trouble with The Woman, in scene 9, because I feel really self-conscious having to act so dramatic and upset on stage on my own. 

I also wasn't sure how to act it. 

However, when I performed it to the class, I didn't do what they said too, I improvised a bit, and it felt a lot more natural. I was stood up- stumbling around, screaming, shouting and crying for help. This for me, for my character was a lot better than crawling on the floor because I felt very limited as to what I could do.

As a starting point I used Stanislavski technique of keeping everything naturalistic, then when I got used to this, and comfortable with it I made it bigger and more stylised, so it was more Brechtian, I also used the Artaud technique of pushing myself to the limit, so I could make my performance more raw and real.