The Homecoming

On the 7^th of December, we went to watch ‘The Homecoming’ at The Trafalgar Studios. It is a two-act play first published in 1964; it was premiered in London 1965 and New York in 1967. Harold Pinter was born on October 10, 1930, in England, the son of a hardworking Jewish tailor. He was a playwright, screenwriter, actor and director who wrote the play. In addition, he wrote a few other best-known plays such as ‘The Birthday Party’. Harold Pinter’s plays are particularly famous for their use of understatement to convey characters' thoughts and feelings.  He grew up in a working-class area, full of railroad yards and factories. When World War II broke out in 1939, Pinter and most London children, was evacuated to the countryside to be safe from the German bombing. Pinter married Vivien Merchant, an actress, for several years and they had one son. He then embarked on many long affairs, which had cost him his marriage and the love and respect of his son.

The play was set in North London; it has only 6 characters, five men and one woman: Max, a retired butcher (Ron Cook); his brother Sam, a chauffeur (Keith Allen); and Max’s three sons - Teddy (Gary Kemp), an American philosophy professor; Lenny (John Simm), who appears to be a pimp; and Joey (John Macmillan), a boxer in training who works in demolition. Lastly, Ruth (Gemma Chan), who is Teddy’s wife. The play concerns Teddy’s and Ruth’s “homecoming”, which has different symbolic and thematic associations. Throughout the play, the set didn’t change apart from some of the props being moved around from time to time, it was very simplistic. The Homecoming is a psychological thriller featuring a torn family who have changed over time, each having their own problems, most likely because of their mother’s death.  As Teddy and Ruth return to the family home after six years in America, a riveting game of sexual warfare, morality and power enter the room. It is an unsettling show of one-upmanship which develops throughout the play as Teddy’s father and brothers battle to impress his wife; they’re all startled at first when they see her because there hasn’t been a woman in the house since their mother. There is a theme of not being trusted by anyone in the family as they’re all capable of doing things if they wish to do. Also, anger is a key theme; each family member seems to express their anger whenever they feel like it. The theme of love prances in the air as they each question each other’s love. When Ruth asks for fresh air, Teddy insists on going to sleep in case anyone wakes up and hears them. From this I can tell that there seem to be a few problems in the marriage with trust. Ruth is overprotected by Teddy causing her to feel unhappy because she is not given space to do what she wants.  The play defeats the purpose of female equality for example, the next morning when everyone sees Ruth and don’t know that she’s Teddy’s wife, they all assume that she is a whore, one of Lenny’s prostitutes after Sam works out that they’ve been up all night together. The Homecoming is set in a matriarchal society where men only see that women are only good for cooking and pleasure; sex. From this I can see that Pinter is portraying feminism.

Soutra Gilmour, the production designer, designed a simple red frame around the stage along. I felt that the idea of having a plain and uncomplicated set was to get the feeling of timelessness; a sense of present living in the past. For example, when Teddy returns home after an absence of six years, he returns to a place where nothing has changed. The house, furniture, lock on the door, his empty bedroom, and his family are unchanged. It is as if a world where all the action has been unchanged for generations. I thought that she did a great job at having a simplistic design because each furniture on stage stood out to the audience which was very effective. The door with the unchanged lock stood out to me the most because it was a gateway to freedom and I think that was a strong symbol in the play. It was very clear to me that the grand chair was the father’s chair because he was the only one who sat in the chair and when Ruth sat on it, the men looked at each other thinking ‘She just sat in Max’s chair!’

Richard Howell, lighting designer, contributed to the play to setting the mood and atmosphere in a scene. I thought the lighting was very successful in intriguing the audience for example, the naked light bulbs pulsing at different moments and the music being played live and not on a recording, made the atmosphere so tense that even the audience were scared to know what’s going to happen when it stops. Another example was that the lighting was adjusted to show a sense of mood and tension was when an actor would step onto the stage and the lighting would go back to normal. I thought this stood out and was a fun special effect to see as it made the character the centre of attention because the spotlight was on the character on stage. Lastly, the lighting was used to establish the different times of the day.

The costumes represented the person they were, in this case they were all middle classed. From the way a person is dressed, you can tell what status they are for example, for someone who is working class you can immediately see that they are poor and wear scruffy clothing whereas someone who is high class is wealthy and is neatly dressed, covered in expensive jewellery. The use of cigars on stage showed the theme of masculinity; I was quite curious as to if they were real cigars being smoked on stage. This is a health hazard that should have been discussed however it worked really well in the play.

Overall, from what I saw of the play, I thought that it was very well directed and it was clear that it had a deep meaning. The cast did a wonderful job of keeping that same energy going when they performed as they had to perform again that same night for a few weeks. I’ve been to see a few plays myself such as ‘War Horse’ and ‘Othello’ and they have all got a similarity of maintaining their characters throughout the play and remembering their lines. However, for musicals, not only do they have to memorise their lines but they have to memorise their dance moves and have a clear throat for their singing; they have to maintain a lot of energy. I enjoyed watching ‘The Homecoming’ although at times it left me quite confused because I didn’t understand some of the words they would say. I think having Gemma Chan or Keith Allen in the play was a successful thing because they are both quite famous actors who enjoy what they do and also Harold Pinter is able to gain popularity from the public to watch it; they are people’s inspiration. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite understand most of the play so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone around my age because it is mostly for the people who are older and much more mature so they’re able to relate and understand the storyline. 

Evaluation on Our Country's Good

The researched I carried out on the play helped to understand the play and my character even more as I’ve never seen this play before and I didn’t know what my character was like so I researched the play and my character. I watched YouTube videos of people performing my scene and my character to get the idea of who my character is and what she is like. I used my own interpretation of my character including Stanislavski’s techniques which I found very useful when researching because I found that it helped me develop my character more. For example I used the technique of Emotional memory where I thought of a moment in my life where I was in Mary’s position and so I adapted to it to make my emotions realistic. Each of the characters in the scene had an objective, a purpose and mine was to help Dabby Bryant and Liz Morden with their lines. The subtext and motivation helped me to make my character more realistic because I could look into specific words and I could find the meaning behind it such as when I say ‘I’ll teach you the lines’ to Liz Morden shows how determined my character is to help her learn her lines.  The motivation of the text makes you think about the emotions you need to stimulate your actions. Overall, the play is based on convicts who supposed that they could take a turn in their life to do something good so they decide to put on a production as they believe starring in a play will help them achieve their goal. This links with Stanislavski’s teachings of believing that when playing a bad character you should find the good in them and vice versa.

I fell as if I’ve developed the skill of physicality in my play for example, throughout rehearsals when Dabby says to Liz ‘..you can’t read’, Liz (played by Stephanie) would quickly attacked Dabby (played by Dulce) by pulling her hair and I needed to run in to break them apart. I needed great timing of when to come in and speed and I believe I’ve achieved that. In addition, I focused on my vocals and tried to articulate the words to make it clear to the audience what I am saying. Even though Mary is quite a shy character, I still used a clear loud voice however with my body language and the emotions on my face I portrayed a shy character.

The collaborative piece with the musical theatre students went fantastically considering we didn’t have much time to prepare it. This brought us together as a performing arts industry. At first, I didn’t think that our Greek Theatre plays would go together with the musical theatre’s movement piece but once we got it all together it managed to work really well.  I believe for me working with the dancers gave me a good experience and idea to use in the future. However, something that could’ve gone well and that we needed more rehearsal time on was the timing of the piece and where the positions for people were. It seemed as if some of the parts were slow and people were confused as to where they should stand.

The ‘Our Country’s Good’ performance went very well as we expected however a couple of pauses and mistaken lines but the audience didn’t even seem to notice. As a group, we worked very hard trying to interpret different ways of performing our play such as doing the play in one emotion; anger. I feel that the relationship between the characters in my group was very strong, it was clear that Dabby seemed to have more power over me and when Liz enters, Dabby’s power over Liz is challenged as they are both stronger characters than Mary so they both try to overpower each other. Another thing I felt was strong was, our facial expressions were strong when reacting to some of the things one of us were saying for example, when Stephanie tells me to read the script instead of her I question her and she used put on an annoyed and irritated facial expression because I was asking too many questions and didn’t just do what she said. This is also an example of the theme of power in the play. We managed to interact with the audience as they seemed to love Stephanie’s character as we got lots of laughter when Stephanie kissed her teeth at Dabby and when I called Dabby a whore the audience went ‘ooooh’. Some things that could’ve gone well was Jireh’s entrance as Ketch, we didn’t rehearse him coming in from behind us and putting his arms around Stephanie and I but we had to go along with it. It seemed a bit awkward but we managed to pull it off. In rehearsals he was supposed to come from downstage right and have his back to the audience so the audience can see Dulce, Stephanie and I clearly forming a type of girl power against Ketch even though we don’t really like each other. Overall, the use of voice was very clear from every person in the group, and the interaction with each other worked very well for example the cat fight. We all stayed in role even when there were slight pauses, we managed to skip to the other line and carry on for example, when Stephanie forgot to say one of her lines I skipped to the next. The use of space and levels of characters worked very well for example, Dulce started off sitting on the floor daydreaming and later on standing up.

The production elements of sound and lighting were successful. Hopefully in the future when we do another performance, we are able to use a wide range of lighting such as red or blue. It seemed quite dull and basic. I think what we need to develop is our movement because I noticed some people couldn’t really stand still and danced about which showed they were nervous. Also, our vocals needed working on as a few of us didn’t really project and articulate their words correctly so it made it hard to the audience to understand what they are saying. To improve this we would need more vocal warm ups and tongue twisters. If we were to take this production on tour I think having costume and more props would introduce the setting of the scene and to show who these characters are. For example, to show a character that is poor, they would have torn clothing and look dirty whereas for a rich character their clothing would be the opposite. Finally, the idea of us wearing all black didn’t reveal which character we are playing because we all looked the same so it was harder for the audience to guess who our character is.

Throughout this term, I think that I’ve improved a lot. At first, it was mostly quick skits to play together so we can get to know each other and we’ve all become a great team in working together and supporting each other. I believe I’ve worked better on my vocals especially my articulation due to the tongue twisters we say over and over again as a class for a warm up. Also, I’ve now realised how important it is to have an objective for your character in a play because without one you wouldn’t know what your character wants to achieve. At the start of the term, I set a few targets/goals for myself and one of them was to be more confident when talking to people because when I’m acting on stage I have all the confidence in the world because I am not myself but when I am myself I tend to be quite shy. However, I do get a bit nervous but I’ve managed to reduce that to not being so nervous and just relax because it causes me to forget my lines. My goals for next term are working with other people who I don’t usually socialise with and deliver many successful performances.


Here's the video to our performance:

Greek Theatre Essay

Greek Theatre

Firstly, for the first term we have been studying Greek Theatre to observe the different between drama performance back then and how different it is in the modern world. Moreover, we were set in groups to perform either ‘Oedipus’, ‘Trojan women’ or ‘Antigone’. Secondly, in the second term we have been looking at a different genre of theatre, we’re exploring ‘Our Country’s Good’ with a practitioner; in this case it’s Stanislavski.

The Ancient Greece Theatre was built in the 7^th Century (700BC) and is situated in the City of Athens. It is a significant theatrical culture, political and military powered during this period of time and is part of a festival called Dionysia. During these festivals, men and boys would honour their gods by performing songs and acting to welcome their god, Dionysia. Tragedy, comedy and satyr plays were the three theatrical forms. People viewed them as separate genres for example, satyr plays dealt with the mythological subject in comedy and Aristotle’s Poetics shows the perfect structure for tragedy. In addition, tragedies were often about the past and actors wore dark colours, whereas comedies were more likely to be about current and everyday life and actors wore bright colours.

Ancient Greek theatres were very large; they were built in a semi-circular shape with rows of stone seating around it and open-air structures on the slopes of hills. The shape of the theatres had excellent viewing for the audience and they could hear the actors very clearly. Theatre buildings were called theatron.  They consisted of three main elements: the orchestra, the skene, and the audience. The orchestra is a large circular or rectangular area at the centre of the theatre, where the play, dance, religious rites and acting would take place. Another part would be the skene which is a large building used as backstage behind the orchestra, this was a place for actors to change their costumes and masks. The final part is the audience where up to 15,000 people are able to fit and the smallest of sound can be transmitted to any seat.

Actors wore large masks that exaggerated facial features and emotions for the audience to see. Masks worn by Greek actors had large holes to help amplify their voices, making their words easier for the audience to hear. The masks showed the audience what kind of character and actor was playing such as sad angry or happy. Tragic masks carried sorrowful and pained expressions, whereas comic masks were smiling. The Greek term for a mask is persona which was a significant element in honour of Dionysus at Athens, most likely used in ceremonies and celebration. Actors also wore costumes such as thick-soled shoes in tragic plays that rose them above other actors however if they were in a comedic play, they’d wear thin soled shoes. Some actors wore padded costumes to make them look fatter or stronger depending on what their character looked like. They also wore wigs to portray their character. The arts, such as music, singing and poetry, played a huge part in Greek festivals.

My group’s play was Oedipus and we took our time going through the script and just trying to make out what is going on, what is being revealed throughout the scene by my character, Jokasta. The main theme of our scene was love relationship between Jokasta and Oedipus and a feud relationship between Creon and Oedipus. Creon wishes to claim Odeipus’ thrown after being told that he must die however, Oedipus believes that Jokasta’s brother, Creon had snitched on him which causes an argument between the two men where Oedipus calls Creon a traitor. Throughout my monologue the theme is about death and tragedy as I am revealing something that no one has realised before, this is shown when we find out that Laios was killed at a cross roads where three roads meet. During my monologue I tell the story of what a prophet once said to Laios causing him to die which is an example of the theme of death.

Our Country's Good Essay

Our Country's Good

In our second production, we had to explore the techniques of Stanislavski. Our Country’s Good is a play written by the British playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, who he adapted from Australian writer Thomas Keneally’s novel The Playmaker, which is based on historical facts. It was first staged at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 10 September 1988; the play is set in Sydney, Australia. It explores the very nature of theatre. The story concerns a group of Royal Marines and convicts in a penal colony in New South Wales. In the 1780s, convicts and Royal Marines were sent to Australia as part of the first penal colony as a punishment, who were mentored by an idealistic young officer – Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark. The play shows the different class systems and explores various themes such as sexuality, the Georgian judicial system and punishment. Keneally in his novel imagines what might have happened and creates a convincing picture of the colony and its citizens to make it an unbelievable project. Whereas Wertenbaker is more interested in telling a story rather than drawing themes from the actions like Keneally does.

Most of the characters in the play are based on real people who sailed with the First Fleet; however characters in the play have had their names changed. Also, the personalities and views of some of the characters don’t match details from the First Fleet. The timescale of the events has also been changed in the play.

One of the themes in the play is the Georgian judicial system; this was the hardest system in Europe. Many prisons in Britain were overflowing due to extremely harsh sentence for criminals from the public. The public weren’t concerned about giving severe punishment to major crimes such as murder but wanted sever punishments for those crimes committed against property such as theft.

Thomas Keneally thought of making Lieutenant Ralph Clark director of the play. In reality, Clark strongly disliked the convicts, specifically the behaviour of some of the woman, which he thought-out to be immoral. On the other hand, he had a relationship with a convict named, Mary Branham who is also known as Dabby; they had a daughter together, he named her after his wife, Alicia. In the play, Ralph’s objective is to stop the play however Captain Philip tries to convince him to carry on with the play.

I was given the character, Mary Brenham who is a shy character and the objective of Mary in the play is to help teach Dabby Bryant and Liz Morden their lines. She feels insufficient to play a noble lady, as she is ashamed of having sold herself to a sailor on the ship for food to feed Dabby and her husband.  With my group, we’ve worked together in rehearsals to develop our characters more and find their objectives in the play. We played around with the text and characters by exploring with different emotions for example, when I say ‘That was different. That was love.’Dabby Bryant, who is played by Dulce, calls Mary a whore but she doesn’t want to admit that so I act quite annoyed with Dabby for talking about the tattoo on my leg and I’m trying to explain to her that I’m not a whore for something I’ve done out of love. I use the gesture of crossing my arms and turning my back on Dabby.  Also, I emphasise on the word ‘her’ when I say ‘No. I have to be her.’ to show that I am very dedicated and want to do my best in the play. Later on when Stephanie comes on stage (who plays Liz Morden), my character acts quite scared of Liz because she is violent towards everyone but when Liz asks for help, Mary sees a soft side to Liz and helps her. 

Individually we all have different feelings towards each other such as Liz and Dabby hate eachother and Mary is the innocent peacemaker however, when it comes to the end of scene eight when Ketch Freeman comes to talk to the girls, we decided as a group to make all three of the girls come together and be against Ketch.

Why do I want to be an actor?

I always thought of acting as a place where I am free without being judged. I love the sensational feeling I get standing on stage and being able to pour out all my emotions that are hiding inside of me. Acting helps you to explore different personalities to fit different characters, however to make it more convincing to the audience you’ve got to add originality to your character such as some parts of your personality.

Ever since I was young I was always told I was confident because whenever I’d hear the word ‘drama’ and ‘acting’ I’d get super excited but I’ve never believed I was as confident as people say. I’d always get someone else to ask for help for me for example, if I had a question for a teacher or if I knew the answer to a question, I would never put my hand up. In addition, I’d always try to find an item that I need in a store myself rather than ask for help. I guess I was just afraid of judgement. I still am.

As an actor you get to live with the imagination of the story rather than the idea given to you, you are creative in the way you work with yourself and others. Having a passion for acting connects you with people who enjoy acting just as much as you do, you’re able to socialise with new people through acting on stage. Also, watching movies brings people together because you’re able to steal ideas from a movie to put into your own play and be creative together.

Overall, acting is just fun. It’s a great way to get together with everyone and enjoy yourself. Acting helps me become someone I can’t be in reality and that’s why I love it.