Unit 8-Context

Context

Caryl Churchill was born on 3 September 1938, (80 years old to current date). Churchill is a well known worldwide play writer that focuses on society changes and equality. She takes extra time to make the society understand how women are important and understandable beings. That is why she also acts as a human rights activist. To date, Caryl Churchill is still known as one of the remarkable writers that are widely accepted by all ages. The idea of Churchill focusing on different problems around the world allows us as actors to see different perspectives of writers, which allows us to have a easier knowledge whilst devising her plays.Through the research on Caryl Churchill I was able to see the different sides of interpretations she showed whilst writing plays. For example,'Top girls' is a play which was written in 1982, it was targeted around the area of feminism and politics. Although, Churchill would write her plays as different factors of problems surrounded by gender equality, feminism and other things that surrounded that category. A play which I researched about and have performed is 'Love and Information' the play is a compilation of seven sections each with a number of scenes that range from less than a minute in length to few minutes long.The play is built up of 29 scenes which all have a different theme inserted, each scene can be creatively shown and interpreted towards the audience. By Churchill writing the play so that the actors have a wide range of creativity that could be put into the the hidden meaning or background story of each scene. This then allowed us as actors to be 'open-minded' towards the interpretation of our given scenes. The use of the non-naturalistic techniques gave actors a wider range of techniques to pick from. For example, a scene at the gym could be shown through a flying carpet being added to the scene and the meaning of the scene could be shown through the flying carpet.


Additionally, by 'Love and Information' having a wide range of creativity that could be shown, an idea which was added in our piece was the use of a simple white box that designed the different locations of play. For example, by two people sitting on the box it allowed the audience to visualise the different setting/atmosphere the actors could be surrounded by, which could be: Fear, sadness, anger, etc.

Some research which helped me with the process of the project of 'Love and Information' was the styles of Brecht used in his plays. For example, the way Brecht helped me perform some of my scenes was analysing the use of his creativity of the connection between the actor and the audience.Therefore, which helped me as an actor because through my piece I was able to have a stronger connection with the audience through facial expressions and spacial awareness. I did this buy touching onto the idea of breaking 'The fourth wall', this idea allowed me as an actor to get in touch with the audience so that they could see the deeper meaning of the scene. For example, an area of where I did this was in 'The child who didn't know what pain was', this was shown in this scene where I would be talking to my partner Michael and suddenly I would have side thoughts that would lead to me pointing at the audience, whilst Michael told his story about not feeling pain. Overall, through the research about the different styles of theatre and the use of different techniques through practitioners, it allowed me to have a wider range of understanding of what I have to do to communicate a message through my piece towards the audience.