Playwright & Context of Beautiful Burnout

Beautiful Burnout is set in modern day Glasgow. The idea for Beautiful Burnout came from a 10 minute visit to Gleason's Gym, a world-famous boxing gym in Brooklyn. The title of the play comes from the title of a song by Underworld, who created the soundtrack of the play. They approached Bryony Lavery simply because she knew very little about it because they felt that she would created something different from the normal cliche's of the boxing world. Boxing is very physical in its self and perfect for the Frantic style, also they wanted to give the audience the same visceral, thrilling and conflicting experience. Despite the controversy surounding boxing supporters refer to boxing as the 'noble art' and the 'sweet science'. Frantic assembly had no intention of shying away from the moral debate surrounding boxing. They struggled to convince people about the merits of Beautiful Burnout. They didn't want a title that sounded too sensational or provocative.

Live Theatre Review

On the 15 of November I saw media at the Rose theatre in Kingston. The David Stuttard adaption of Euripides play was directed by Abigail Anderson and performed by the actors of Dionysus.Set in Ancient Greece, a woman by the name of Medea has been left by her husband to marry the princess of the city they live in Corinth. King Creon knows of Medeas maniacal schemes so he banishes her. With one day more in Corinth she plans to get revenge on those who betrayed her, the princess Glauce, Creon, and her husband Jason. This particular adaption is unique because they use a lot of arial work throughout which proposes many different and new ideas to this historical tragedy.

Let's start with the arial work, this play was originally produced in 431BC and has been performed countless times since, leading me to believe all that could be said about Medea had already been said, however incorporating the Arial work into it brought a new breath of imagination to the play and allowed the audience to see it from a new perspective. There was a seen were Medea and Jason were arguing over his betrayal, during this seen the two actors were attached by a rope which was looped through some scaffolding making the actors counterbalances, during the scene the actors pulled up and down on the rope throwing the other up and down, whilst watching this I realised that the rope was representing there relationship and how these two struggled for power over the other, which I had not seen in previous adaptions. Another point is how in one of Medea's monologues she was running up and down the large red wall behind her, this effect was made by having the actor who plays Creon run up and down a ladder whilst being attached to Medea by rope in the scaffolding, if the rope does represent the relationships in the piece then this shows that no matter how scary, crazy or evil Medea's seems to be she is only capable of doing these Exorcist like movements because the people of Corinth, represented in Creon there king, aid her into the abyss of madness. 

Secondly I would like to mention the fantastically designed sounds of this production, instrumental and vocal. All five actors contributed to a splendid vocal performance were they sang some sought of Hymn in Greek, despite not knowing the words they were saying I still knew the atmosphere was full of tension and foreboding, which fits perfectly with the events of the play. The score of this performance does its job perfectly, to help get across to the audience what to feel at which time, an example of this is in one of the more stylised sequences were some of the actors were banging on the large wall one after another whilst this was happening the speakers around the theatre made a harsh drumming sound in time with the performance, this initially made me jump and then eventually caused a small and instinctive sense of paranoia, as a audience member this made me more immersed in the story and there for made me enjoy it much more.

Thirdly I would like to mention the use of the colour red throughout the play. The colour red has many connotations that relate to the themes in Medea, examples are romance, danger, blood etc, and this would explain the amount of different times it was used. The ropes used in the arial work were red, this makes sense because it refers to risk they take when performing these move and tricks, which can also relate to my point about the arial work and how it represents the risky business Medea's causes. Another example of red is the large wall at the back of the stage which Medea crawls out of at the beginning, throughout the play Medea Is referred to as demon or a victim of possession, I believe that the wall could represent the plains of hell that this sick mind comes from, this is good because it indicated more towards the mythical and abstract side to the play than most previous adaptions have. In this production the only colours used were Black, White & mainly Red, I believe that this shows how Medea has been outcast from the rest of Corinth. The character Medea is almost synonymous with the colour red because they are both attached to these concepts of romance and danger, were as the rest of Corinth fade into the normality of Black and White.

Finally I would like to talk about Tamsin Shasha's Interpretation of the character Medea. In this interpretation of Medea the character hinted more towards her mythical heritage, more of a magical monster than an average woman, I felt this because of the first sequence in the piece were all the cast had Medea tied to them and was pulling her around as she tried to escape, it was as if a monster was being trapped, the effect showing this scene to the audience at the beginning was surprising enough to immediately get them excited about what is to come, also it hinted to what sought of sequences were coming up. Despite the more demonic side to Medea in the arial sequences, she showed a more grounded interpretation of Medea in dialogue, I did not like this because it would have caused the audience confusion as to who or what she was, however it is not the most important part of  piece so it didn't detract from the main performance at all.

In conclusion I thoroughly enjoyed this production of Medea, the arial work helps show a more stylised version of the classic, the sound design helps support the main performance, the colour red hints towards the characters mythical heritage, and the actress of Medea showed both sides to this interesting character. I would recommend this play to any one looking for a surprise.

Vocal Awareness

Last lessons, we had to do an exercise with a partner about directing a monologue from the script of 'Gotcha' by Barrie Keefe, and they had to perform the monologue we chose for them to do. We had to annotate the monologue with instructions for our partner on how to perform it in terms of accent, tone, pace, volume, pitch, and also the words we wanted them to emphasize. I worked with James Pullen acting as Ton. He would speak in a subtle cockney accent; with a very sinnister yet sarcastic tone to it; the pace would start off quite fast but then it would slowly drop towards the end of the monologue to create more tension; the volume would be quite to start with and would then become much louder.

Laban System of Efforts

The tasks in class we had done were set to explore the 7 states of tension, we chose to use different states to see how our characterisation would change. We changed our body movements and speed of the movements to improve the details of our performance. The states dictated our movement, I could be at state 7 which highly restricts our movement, or state 1 which is almost dead, people would be slow and faint almost unable to function though their pace, tone of voice and effort levels. In a different task we walk around at different levels and change how the same situation can be interpreted, this exercise helped to understand what the states included, when I was at Californian my body was relaxed, flimsy and this made me develop specific characteristics that fit with this character, I became more care free and happy towards others. These were effort levels that showed the amount of energy to put in and gave me as an actor a guidance to how to respond on a scale.I played the Kid in the final task and the context of my scene was at a school detention where Ton was in charge and I was not, however Lyne enters because I am suppose to be in her class, this leads to the teachers arguing and me leaving. In this task we explored the different effort qualities which are governed by the four polarities of time, weight, space and flow, I replicated the quality of Floating, this is when the character feels light and uses in direct movement, the character is also free to flow and has sustained movement.My performance related to the context of gotcha as we used the three same characters and used them in the same settings of a comprehensive school however we did change the direct realism and replaced it with a more comical performance because we naturally gravitated towards this style in rehearsals.

Stanislavsky's techniques used in gotcha Barrie Keefe

Stanislavsky's techniques revolutionised characterisation and still effect how we approach drama today, he devised 5 techniques that are used around the magic if. The magic if is when you add a piece of information to a character in order to make them more realistic, for example what if I did this with the character? Another technique is the given circumstance this is when a emotional or physical thing effects your performance, for example the kid has a slight itch, this is good because it can help you make your character more detailed, however it may distract from the performance, the circumstances I used for Ton were a terrible cold and the craving for a fag, Another technique is visualisation, this is when the actor imagines the scene and it's contents, I did not find this to useful because I find it easy to create scenarios in my mind because these days we have a plethora of scenarios to choose from thanks to the media, were as 100+ years ago actors did not have this advantage.Another technique was emotion memory, this is when an actor remembers a real event in order to replicate the emotion experienced, this was really helpful because it makes the performance more authentic and the emotion gets across to the audience better, however this technique is not useful when trying to be subtle or minimalistic. Despite helping me understand all the characters better these techniques were not very useful for Ton because it is clear how he is feeling through out the text, however I think these techniques would help characterise the headmaster because he could be played in a multitude of ways.

Visual/oral/audio gotcha Barrie Keefe

When considering the options for the staging of gotcha I evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of proscenium arch, traverse, thrust & in the round. the only reason I could see that would make one of the other options better than proscenium arch was to use these different perspective to create different points of view, eg you may like a character from one side of the room but dislike them from the other side. I placed large pieces of set, eg door frame, window, etc in front of each side of the stage, this gave the effect that the audience were flies on the wall seeing the truth that the characters could not see. I think that this set design would also present a message about society, people show there true selves when no one is looking. In eventually decided that proscenium arch was the best option because in the round would create a unclear message, were as proscenium arch would create a clear linear message which is my goal. I decided that the lights would start bright and become dark to show time passing, I thought about changing the lighting depending on the tone of the seen, however I avoided this because this play is suppose to be naturalistic. This diagram represents my final decision.

Reactions to gotcha Barrie Keefe

 in the 70's there was a major economical depression, led by mainly labour who were in power at the time. at the time labour believed social justice, decency and reward for hard work. they are a centre left wing party, were as the conservatives are completely right wing. this play points out the errors of the comprehensive school system which began in 1965 by the Labour Party, therefore i believe that this play is anti-labour like many other plays at the time.

Gotcha is set in a east London comprehensive school in 1976 and the boy is a lower class student.

I believe that the topics brought forward in this play are still relevant today because it points out the flaws in the comprehensive school system, which is still being used today. One example is the large number of students in a single school, 2000, and how it can lead to less focused learning environments with 40+ students in one class. Another topic is that of recognition, in the play the teachers don't even know the boys name therefore showing they have never truly viewed him as a human being despite having him in there classes, recognition and reward is an important part of education and this play highlights how the comprehensive system usually doesn't account for these components. Finally the boy is obviously mentally unstable and besides sharing with people the faults of the comprehensive system, the play also touches on the issue of cognitive instability, this subject is unavoidable and will always be as relevant as day and night are daily routines, because depression, delusion and even insanity cannot be wiped out.