Complete answer to Drama and Theatre studies sample paper.
Questions answered on Complicite's 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead', Equus and Woyzeck (inspired by Brechtian methodology)
Answers the questions:
- Analyse and evaluate the live performance you have seen in light of the foll...
01) 'Live performance has nothing to say to a young audience'
The idea that live performance has nothing to say to a young audience implies that the only
purpose of watching live theatre is to feel visually immersed instead of learning about social
issues and being encouraged to evoke change. I wholeheartedly disagree with this
statement because I went to see Complicite's adaptation of 'Drive your Plow over the Bones
of the Dead' at the Bristol Old Vic theatre and was completely blown away by the range of
relevant ideas explored that I, as a young audience member, left the auditorium with a
changed perspective of the world.This eye for an eye type production explores why killing
animals can be seen as a sport whilst killing humans is incriminating. This explosive
unravelling of hypocrisy and societal norms explores the notion of being moral even when it
is 'lawful'.
Live theatre can effectively portray tormented emotions. Much credit can be given to the
director, Simon McBurney, who steered the production in a way unlike any other. Janina,
played by Kathryn Hunter, had a rug role since she could break her role and speak as a
narrator peeing into a tableau which made me feel involved. In scene 1, she used
articulation to perfectly project her voice into the stand-alone microphone using a low pitch
and slow tempo to emphasise her tranquillity upon reflection. This draws on one of the key
messages explored, nature and its peacefulness. However, she contrasts this upon
re-entering with a frantic pitch range, using inflection and a resonant timbre whilst pacing
back and forth. She asks 'whose intellect has the audacity to judge who is better or worse
than another?'. Therefore this use of emotional contrast in acting styles communicated key
ideas such as human duality which evoked an emotional response. Therefore life theatre
must have something to say to a young audience, since I felt emotionally moved and
immersed into Janina's world.
Live theatre can make people consider the danger of certain modern ideas since lighting
designer, Paule Constable, used his unique and immersive style to explore fate and the
alignment of stars since a dark blue revolving sphere filled with each star sign is projected
onto the cyclorama and begins rotating. At the same time, Janina lies on the floor and begins
frantically turning in the same clockwise direction as the sphere whilst letting out high pitch
screams. This emphasises her spiralling which would be related to an obsession with fate
which is relevant for a young audience, whose generation is renowned for obsessing with
sorcery. The axis of the projector is then adjusted so the design is imprinted on the audience
which made me feel immersed and listen to the implied message, which was to ensure
sensibility when entering into the world of magic, given the fact that it can have devastating
emotional effects. This use of immersive lighting fulfils Complicite's ethos as they wish for
the audience to be at the 'heart' of theatre.
Live theatre can introduce audiences to ideas that they may not have otherwise encountered
through an engaging mode since impactful words from 18th century poet William Blake are
projected onto an otherwise bleak black cyclorama. For example the quotation 'no bird soars
too close to the sky if they soar with their own wing' is projected onto the cyclorama which
explores messages of empowerment. This is followed by bright, fast speed strobe lights and
a complete blackout which made me sit up and digest the messages explored on stage.
Therefore live theatre must have something to say to a young audience, since messages
from historic figures are delivered through immersive multimedia which still have great moral
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