Period 1 - We spent this lesson in our groups deciding what to do for Meyerhold, i worked with Autumn, James and Taran, like i did for my previous group when we did mime.
We had to choose a scene from The Government Inspector, we chose Act 3; Wherein Khlestakov has been invited for dinner by a weathly family who are hoping to win him over so that they get what they want from him, he is however, very drunnk and therefor rude and arrogant. Despite this, they still try to keep him happy, thinking that they will gain from doing so.
We started the drama with Khlestakov staggering about and the Man and his daughter trying to keep him upright whilt the wife, stood behind him waves frantically, Khlestakov stands upright for a moment before falling backwards onto the wife, she then pushes him forwards in disgust onto the floor. The husband and daughter, wanting to keep him happy, pick him up and put him on the table, he then goes to try to get into his seat and falls over, rolling about and writhing upside down in his chair, whilst everyone else takes their seat. When finally sat upright, the Husband goes to talk to Khlestakov but is interupted when he falls off his chair and begins the entire awkward sequence again, he eventually sits on his chair correctly, looking mildly confused. The Husband and Wife are on teh end of the table while the daughter and Khlestakov sit next to each other in the middle. Throughout the performance he tries to put his arm around her, to which she screams and pushes him away, or runs off to fetch more drinks.
At one point, the Wife says that she is glad the Khlestakov likes her daughter, to which he drunkenly replies "What did you say about my family?! My dad was... was... was a GOOD WOMAN." there is then a slurred joke about his father being a woman, and everyone seems disgusted. Khlestakov interupts many times during dinner, when they are about to say grace for example, the wife says "Dear lord..." and is then interrupted by him saying "We thank you for all the grape pickers of the world..." Before collapsing into his dinner.
By the end of the night, the trio decide to get him to drink so much that he passes out and doesn't remember the next morning, which is in the end what turns out to happen.
In order to write a successful response you need to create a brainstorm of all the possible directions that you might take your stimulus in. You then need to pick four of these and explain in some detail how you would translate these ideas in performance.
ReplyDeleteIn order to write a successful development you need to present research into your chosen performance idea, comment on this research and then describe how the research has influenced your performance. In order to do this you will need to describe parts of your performance and relate this to your research.
You might consider presenting some research on Meyerhold's theories and how they have influenced your performance. You might, for instance, present research on The Government Inspector, 19th century Russia, communism or silent comedy and then explain how this research has influenced your performance decisions.