Since we have now finished acting for camera, we had today time to do some rehearsing. So we set on to block and rehearse scene 10. Our POLITICAL VIEW for this scene is that Ui is being thrown around and manipulated by all of his henchmen. Both Roma and Giri are talking to Ui, trying to get him against the other henchmen. Giri is black painting Roma, saying that he is plotting against Ui, but in reality Roma is only thinking what is best for Ui.
The death of Hindenburg. Junkers demand Rohm's removal. The occupation of Austria is planned. This is what our sign will be saying at the end of this scene, connecting to the real life happening following Hindenburgs death. Hitler had already agreed with the Cabinet to combine the positions of the Chancellor and the President of Germany to avoid a new election, but also to make him the man in power. Hindenburgs will would have told, that one of his last wishes was to restore the monarchy in Germany, but since Hitler never published the will, he managed to twist Hindenburgs words and make it seem like it was the old mans wish for Hitler to rise to power. This also convinced the public about this decition, and when a vote was held to determine, whether these changes would be held, Hitler won by 90%.
Hitler always saw Austria as part of Germany, or at least something that should eventually become a part of it once again. Because of the happenings during WWI and following it, mainly the because of the Treaty of Versailles, Austria and Germany were forbidden to create an union between them, to protect the small country of Austria. Italy had created a protecting relationship with Austria and after the Austrian chancellor Dollfuss died in 1934, Italy moved their troops into Austria, fearing that Germany might want to take the opportunity to occupy the country. But in 1936, Germany and Italy started to create a friendship between them and by the end of the year Mussolini, the leader of Italy, had withdrawn all support for Austria, giving Germany the opportunity to take over. Under pressure from Hitler, who was threatening Austria with bombing if they wouldn't follow his command, Austrian chancellor Schuschnigg resigned with the entirety of his cabinet, except Seyss-Inquart who was a Austrian-Nazi. He followed this by inviting the German troops into Austria. Mussolini did nothing in response to this, where as France and England remained only verbal, which was something that Hitler had expected, not being afraid of conflict. And so, Austria became apart of German Greater Reich.
Something that is similar to this, that is happening right now is Putin going into Crimea and trying to transfuse it with Russia. Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union, and since it separated from Russian, Ukraine still has a high percentage of people of Russian ethnicity in it, especially in Crimea which is 50% Russian. This is something that Putin has been using as his reasoning for going into Ukraine and holding elections for combining Crimea with Russia, which have been allegedly rigged. In Putin's words he has been "'protecting the Russian people of Ukraine', even though this has resulted into more conflict and distress in many of the affected areas.
Coming from Finland who has stayed neutral so far with this issue, I have conflicting feeling about this all. I feel that a lot of countries do not want to get too much involved with the fights in Crimea, some because they could lose important gas resource import, since the great power oil line goes through this area(also a good reason for Russia to want to invade this area). For Finland, one of the reasons to decide to remain neutral is the protection of our own people. Finland is a neighboring country to Russia, and we were part of the Soviet Union before WWI. My country has always had a complicated relationship with Russia, since at the same time we want to remain as part f the western world and not be associated as one of Russia's allies, but at the same time we are afraid of what would happen if we turned against them. I feel this is exactly what Brecht didn't want to happen, but rather have us actively try for change, meaning that neutral is the same as moving down people with bombs ourselves. I do not kno what to think about this, since everything isn't always that black and white.
We do not have video of this video yet, but I will put one up as soon as we run the scene again. The blocking for this scene is pretty simple, it a scene with a lot of talking so we wanted to maintain a balance between what the characters are saying and the action on stage.The action blocking shouldn't be too complicated since most of the action comes from the characters and them plotting against each other. We set the scene mostly on the main stage and some of the island, similar to what it was in scene 6, since it is also located in the Mammoth hotel. The main bit of action we had to block was when Roma and his men threaten to shoot the others. When first trying out the scene there was a problem of having too many people blocking each other, since there are eight people on stage. Giri, Givola and their two bodyguards are being pointed with guns and we weren't able to see their reactions properly and it simply felt unnatural for them to just stand around with their hands up. It was suggested that we could have Roma's bodyguards quide the other to the wall, or in our case the screen, which would give a more organized look to the scene, but also give Giri and Givola the change to fight back. In this scene we also wanted to focus on the fact that Ui is tired and irritated, he doesn't really pay attention to what is happening until he starts to suspect his henchmen are plotting against him.
We went trough this scene in a hurry, meaning that we probably have over looked some things, and will need to tweak it later. I feel it is important for us see this scene done at Pelham with the staging, so that we know what the distances are and can try out the different levels to our advantage. It would have been extremely useful for us to film this scene, since there is so many of us in it, that we couldn't really get an outside view on the scene, with most of us in it.
We also wanted to film a short trailer for our show, to add to the website and Facebook page. We had a simple idea of having all of us who play Ui appear in it, so that the audience can see the transitions between us different actor's of Ui. We thought it would be cool to have one of us start behind the black curtains, which would then open and reveal Ui. Then, we would would one by one step forward, each of us actors changing with each step to the next one and ending with the actor of Ui who started. The video would simply end with one of us painting on our mustache, like we will be doing in the show. The mustache brings in an almost humorous taste to the video, as it does in the show as well, but it also shows the clear connection to Hitler and his rise with Nazi Germany before the Second World War. We originally planned just to use this short video for our websites, but after some conversation, we thought it could a good way to show the audience the change of Ui in the show as well, using this video during the introduction of Ui in the prologue. In the past, we have had multiple actors playing a single character, and we have had some feedback from the audience before saying, that often the transition has been confusing to them. This time, we want to make very clear that Ui is played by multiple people and show right in the beginning who the actors are, but also that the mustache will be the defining factor of the character, to hopefully clear up any confusion.
After our lessons, me and Sophie set out to make, or at least start making, our program for the show. We felt that this would be a nice add to our last show, telling a bit about all of us, but also bring the performance to a more professional level. I already talked about creating the program a little in THIS post. We had a lot of ideas about what we could put in the program, for example summaries of each scene, but we decided to have a more simple program instead. The program will include:
- Cover - Same as the poster
- A synopsis of the play, introducing the our inspiration for style, Brech and Epic Theatre with a quote from Brecht on the page next to it.
- Headshots and introductions of each actor, also telling which characters they are playing - Everyone gets to write their own intro. We asked everyone in our class to write these by next Monday, so that we can finish the program next week and print it.
- a spread with pictures of our rehearsals and acknowledgements.
- The last page will have our websites and any other links we want to include.
The style of the program follows the style of our poster, with the colours of black, white and yellow. We want it to be dark and simple, with all the pictures being black and white and the only colour being yellow to accent titles.
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