When we
started devising practical work our teacher showed us clips from The Nightmare before Christmas, he then
went on to show us a practitioner called Antonin Artaud and how he believed that
theatre should have elements of reality in order to have the maximal effect on
the audience. Antonin's theory was to bring people's deepest fears to life. He
did this by making people feel anxious, disturbed and queasy. He also liked to
use disturbing sound and lighting as well as other performing elements.
As well as
working with Antonin’s theory we were asked to base our performance on Timothy
Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas
and make the story more abnormal. We used the characters for The Nightmare before Christmas as a
starting point for our character development.
To help us
get an idea on how to be successful with this unit, we were shown videos via
YouTube of multiple A-level performance, for example, 4.48 Psychosis. After
watching 4.48 Psychosis it made me realize that we had to push ourselvess
beyond our comfort zone, as well as the audience.
We performed
our monologues in the style of installation
theatre, which is about taking over a certain space and making it performable, therefore
we decided to take over the flyovers.
I requested
for the character Doctor Finkelstein, which I was later given, I stared create
my monologue around Ian Brady and Harold Shipman. After writing the monologue and
a discussion with Head of Drama, it was clear that the amount of detail in my monologue
was not appropriate. During the preparation I unified scene with Lock and
Shocks, I had to change some of my monologue for this to work. I continued to
bases my monologue on Ian Brady, however when changing my monologue I forgot
about Harold Shipman and the fact that Finkelsteinis a doctor, so I need to incorporate
this in to my character. Lock and Shocks monologues were based on Myra Hindley.
Lock and Shocks monologues were seen from two different perspectives, almost as
if Myra Hindley had a split personality. Writing the monologues was the most challenging
part of the unit, after writing the monologue our scene had to be rewritten several
times to make it appropriate for our audience. Later on in the preparation we realized
that our monologues we based too much on reality, we need to make it more surreal
in order to meet the brief for this unit.
I know the difference between right
and wrong and I know for a fact that what I did wasn't wrong. The murders were
all a part of my fantasies, I already had the scripts. I just need those two to
help me fulfil my dreams. If they refused to give me what I want, I was going
to take it by force. I was going to strip them of their dignity if I had to.
The reason why I abused my powers as
a doctor are personal and private to me, and I'm never going to give that up.
You will never know the know the truth. All I can say is that I have been
killing people for years. In some ways I guess you could call me a psychopath
because I needed harts.
It was the killing - the point of
death - the harts - that interested me.
Our audience
was full of compliments and we revised grate feedback.
Throughout
the unit, I personally think that I have developed my ability to create characters
and relate to them in a way that I have never down before.
