Hi All,

It’s me again, I promise it’s the last blog i’ll be doing for a while.

The Merchant performance happened two days ago (17th Jan 2017). Was it easy to create and put on in a studio space. Let me think about it. Not really. I feel like I need to explain from the very begining.

Idea:

Quite early on into the course I had a feeling that I did not really fancy giving a presentation for the current issues module. Instead I wanted to do some sort of performance, especially knowing that thus year I would not get as many opportunities to perform in the semester. Speaking with both Heather and Selma I soon realised that we all had similar ideas to do performance looking at one character. The theme of liveness and looking through the camera’s eye was key into our research. In our first research meeting we looked into the idea and theme of race within the theatre. Researching on current news about the way Islamic religious people were judged by the general public. At the begining the plan was to write a script based on the research we collected and gathered.

One of the online news articles I read;

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/23/media-muslims-study

You’re probably thinking how does this relate to Current Issues in Drama?

Well looking back to Week Three looking at the sociopolitical side of theatre – we as a group felt that we needed to bring that up as a major issue. Other news stories we looked up and researched was the story of Stephen Lawrence and his hate-crime death. If we wanted to performance a ten minute piece on Lawrence’s story the ideal play to perform a scene from would be Debbie Tucker Green’s Random. However would it be appropriate for Heather and Myself to portray two or more characters that are from an ethnic background? Probably not is the answer.

So back to the drawing board.

As the weeks went on we kept thinking of plays that could work.

Then one day in November the blessed day arrived – that being the day we had a solid play idea with a slight twist. It was agreed that we would take and perform three small scenes from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. The twist on this performance would be changing the character of Shylock and the location the play takes place. Basically modernising the play for the people of today linking it to an issue the media love to cover and twist.

Process:

• One of the first things we did as a group was re-read the play to re-familiarise ourselves with the story. By doing this as a starting point we could select small scenes which would link to our issue point.
• Selecting places we were going to use as filming locations (Originally we were going to live stream a performance to focus on one angle the audience would see through the camera’s eye then a second performance that would happen live in front of the audience to represent the feeling of being in a cinema and the feeling of being in the theatre). But on reflection this would need more people involved for this to work,  so by creating a miniature trailer it would give the audience a an idea of what they are about to see. This is something NT Live do for their up and coming productions.

(National Theatre Live, 2015).

• Making the solid decision to perform our piece in modern English instead of its original text (so we spent three days trying to translate Shakespeare) Such fun…
• Rehearsing, Rehearsing & Rehearsing

Filming:

When it came to film our trailer for the performance was somewhat difficult – Trying to find the perfect location was hard as it was over the Christmas and new year period. We found that many places were closed. In the end Heather & Selma came to Gainsborough in Lincolnshire to do some filming in The Gainsborough Old Hall (not far from where I live). This location was used to film the deal scene between Shylock, Bassanio & Antonio.

. 

(Unknown, undated, cited in Gainsborough old hall website)

For the other scenes we used for filming was Heather’s lounge at home. The quality of footage varied as we didn’t have the use of a professional camera. As students we had to improvise using two iPhones and a small camera. I think it also depended on the lighting in the locations too. So the filming for the deal scene we had natural light coming through the window. Thinking back on it I feel that filming in the morning was slightly better than filming in the late afternoon/ evening. But we had to work around everyone’s job rota so filming had to be done on certain days that we were all free.

Selma being the wonderful helping handed person she is did (with some input) edited all the footage into a trailer that we felt worked well for our piece.

Here is a copy of our trailer;

(James, 2017).

See what I mean about the difference in quality?

Performance Evening:

Tuesday 17th January had suddenly crept up on us and it was time to perform… Scary!

The performance seemed to goes so quickly in my eyes. I don’t know whether it was nerves that made it feel like to was quick – i’m not sure. To us as a group it was lovely to have an actual audience to watch our piece instead of just our two examiners. One thing I did notice which if we had the chance to rehearse in the actual space. I feel we could of used the space more wisely. The rehearsals we had done building up to the performance was in the corridors in the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre or in the Library. Which are not practical but we did our best with the space we did have.

Reflection:

Would I do this performance again? I think I would if I could work with Heather & Selma again. They made the process enjoyable and we worked (I feel) really well. I hope that we covered the media’s interpretation of how people are portrayed well with looking through the camera’s eye. If we had the chance to use the space more I feel our performance would be stronger and more moving.

Well that is it my lovelies. Current Issues is over. But is it really over? Who knows… There will always be a new issue that with occur within the arts world that affects a person or a group of people.

Till next time

Bye x

Work Cited:

James, Selma (2017) The Merchant Trailer. Online.

National Theatre (2015) The Threepenny Opera Trailer [online video] Available from https://youtu.be/v800yLRgKLg [Accessed 19th January 2017].

Unknown, (undated). Gainsborough Old Hall. [online]. UK. Available from https://www.gainsborougholdhall.com/visiting-us/opening-times [accessed 19th January 2017].

Versi, Miqdaad (2015) It’s time the media treated Muslims fairly. [online]. The Guardian. 23rd September 2015. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/23/media-muslims-study [Accessed on 17th November 2016]