Rehearsal 7.3.14

This rehearsal consisted of talking through with Jonathon as a group our three ideas. 

With our first idea - James' Concentration Camp idea - Jonathon thought it would be a hard hitting and intense piece. However, he has told us that for this idea to work we still need to have lovely moments and sometimes comedic to help get our message over to the audience. Our message for this piece is that "Love is a powerful thing". Jonathon also shared his experience of visiting Auschwitz and told us all about how there is a room full of thousands of suitcases - which all had names on and all belonged to people - people who were then later killed. He also told us that it was the sort of place where you leave a different person - he advised us to go if we were ever given the opportunity. 

PERSONAL NOTE: A good thing to research for this idea is the conditions in Auschwitz, personal accounts from people who experienced concentration camps and look at Anne Frank.

Other ideas that came out of our chat with Jonathon for this piece were:

• Naming the piece in German - we translated Much Ado About Nothing into German which was Vile larm um nichts.
• Go up to the audience and hug them - we could also incorporate the song from our last rehearsal (Rose Red) into this. 

Films that would be good to watch to influence and help with this idea are:

• Bent
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
• Schindler's List
• Freedom Writers

With our second idea - Elsa's Witchcraft and Mistrust in Women - Jonathon thought it was a good idea and that we could link it to political issues. 

Plays that would be good to look at for this idea are:

• Vinegar Tom

Here is the mind map of our Idea 2

With our third idea - My Adultery and Jealousy in Relationships - Jonathon suggested that as this idea was quite feminist it would be a good idea to look into the suffragettes and the post war time period. As a group we also agreed that it would be interesting to look at gender reversal. 

Films and Plays that would be good to watch for this idea are:

• Brief Encounter - There is a film version. However, Jonathon has also recommended watching KneeHigh's version of it too.
• Made in Dagenham

Here is the mind map of our Idea 3

At the end of this rehearsal we fed back to the other groups our ideas. Idea One got the best response as it is a very unexpected idea and would be a very powerful piece.

Before next lesson we need to do some more research for our ideas. We have split the group up equally so that each idea has a good amount of research on it:

Elle, James and Mandi - are looking more into The Concentration Camp Idea.

Elsa and Becs - are looking into The Witchcraft and Mistrust in Women Idea.

Me and Daisy - are looking into The Adultery and Jealousy in Relationships Idea. Daisy is going to focus on looking into gender reversal and I am going to focus on the way Women have been portrayed throughout time - especially looking at feminist viewpoints.

Rehearsal 6.3.14

In this rehearsal we started off exploring a song that Elsa had bought in called Rose Red. This is a two verse song:

Rose, rose, rose red

will I ever see thee wed?

I will marry at thy will, sire

at thy will

Ah, poor bird

take thy flight

high above the sorrows

of this dark night

We sang this through a couple of times with harmonies and collectively agreed that the second verse would actually work quite well in James idea of the concentration camp. We then sung and harmonized the second verse and recorded it in unison switching to canon. Listening back to it, we decided to try swelling the song. We then recorded it with Elsa going through the verse once, I joined in on the second verse, line one....then Becs and then Daisy. On the third verse Becs and Daisy did harmonies. As a group we are in agreement that this is a very strong starting point for Idea 1 (Concentration Camp). (Recording of this song can be found on James Blog)

Next in this rehearsal I pitched my idea about the theme of adultery and jealousy in relationship. I got a positive response from the group and collectively we decided that this can be one of our final three ideas. We also decided that our other final ideas would be the exploration into the mistrust of women and witchcraft and the Concentration Camp. To help us view our ideas we did a tablo for each:

Idea One - The Concentration Camp

Idea Two - The Mistrust and Witchcraft

Idea Three - Adultery and Jealous in relationships and the impact on Women

We then started to explore these ideas in more detail. We only managed to mind map idea three today though.

Next Lesson we will explore the other two ideas in more detail and finalize what our three ideas will be.

SparkNotes Research

Today i decided to have a look at the different themes of Much Ado About Nothing. for this i had a look on SparkNotes.

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/muchado/themes.html

whilst looking through this i found the theme of Public Shaming:

Public Shaming

Even though Hero is ultimately vindicated, her public shaming at the wedding ceremony is too terrible to be ignored. In a sense, this kind of humiliation incurs more damage to her honor and her family name than would an act of unchaste behavior—an transgression she never commits. The language that both Claudio and Leonato use to shame Hero is extremely strong. To Claudio she is a “rotten orange” (IV.i.30), and to Leonato a rotting carcass that cannot be preserved: “the wide sea / Hath . . . / . . . salt too little which may season give / To her foul tainted flesh!” (IV.i.139–142).

Shame is also what Don John hopes will cause Claudio to lose his place as Don Pedro’s favorite: once Claudio is discovered to be engaged to a loose woman, Don John believes that Don Pedro will reject Claudio as he rejected Don John long ago. Shame is a form of social punishment closely connected to loss of honor. A product of an illegitimate sexual coupling himself, Don John has grown up constantly reminded of his own social shame, and he will do anything to right the balance. Ironically, in the end Don John is shamed and threatened with torture to punish him for deceiving the company. Clearly, he will never gain a good place in courtly society.

This theme interest's me because it allows us to explore a feminist view on how women were looked on in the past. I would like to explore how in the past women have been viewed very differently to men. Especially on:

• How it is seen more unacceptable for a women to commit adultery than it is for a man.
• How women were viewed on to just 'stay at home and be a housewife'.

I am going to pitch this idea to my group next lesson.

Rehearsal 5.3.14

In this rehearsal we started sharing our ideas of what we can do for our retelling of Much Ado. We took turns in sharing these ideas. These were:

Natalie
I decided that I would like to explore the feministic approach of the play. my idea is to concentrated on the characters of Beatrice and Hero and how they are treated and viewed by the other characters - especially the boys.

James
James found a true story of a girl in a concentration camp who fell in love with one of the guards. The guard then proceeded to save the girl and her sister, but could not save the sisters children - the girls survived. Nothing happened with the guard, however, the girl testified in his favour at his trial. James' idea is to explore the idea of love in Much Ado but change the characters of Hero and Claudio to sisters; Hero and Claudia.

Elle
Elle told us that she really liked the use of audience participation from storytelling and wanted to make sure it is incorporated into our Shakespeare as well. Moreover, an idea she had was to have our piece from Leonarto's, Hero's father, point of view.

Elsa
Elsa's idea was to take a more feministic approach to the play and explore the mistrust in women. She also wants to incorporate the idea of witchcraft into the piece.

Mandi
Mandi told us that she thought it would be interesting to look at an outsider's point of view on Much Ado About Nothing. She thought that the perfect character for this was Don Jon.

Becs
Becs would like to use music from the 1930's and 40's in the piece because she is very passionate about music from this era. Also, she feels that setting the piece in a war time period would work well with this style of music.

Daisy
Daisy's idea was to change the gender of Claudio and make her a women: Claudia. She felt that by doing this we could explore a lesbian relationship within the piece. 

Next lesson we will be discussing these ideas in more detail and start to cut them down to three main ideas.