Kecak Theatre

Kecak theatre is a relatively new form of Drama, only coming up during the 1930's. It was invented by a German man, and is very often shown to tourists. The dance looks at a group of 30-60 men who, sit shirtless in a circle, chanting together. The chant is of a cak cak cak noise and it starts suddenly and changes between upbeat and downbeat vert suddenly. There is often a single leader who leads the chant. The story follows the plotline of the hindu story, the Ramayana. In the centre of the chanting there are dancers who, symbolically, tell the story.

Our explanation looks at the way that the chanting takes place within Kecak theatre.

This is our exploration of the practical, movement aspects of Kecak theatre. It shows a simple form of the chanting with the movements.

The movements, especially in chorus with many performers, can work towards building and controlling tension, rising and falling with the scene. The movements represent primal human emotions, and can be a good way of easily showing the audience the true human feelings within a scene. This can be compared to the hakka, the physical movement that is done before a game by the New Zealand rugby team the "All Blacks".

Melodrama

Melodrama was created at a time where theatre was just returning after being oppressed for a while. People were not educated and because of that melodrama was simple for them to understand. The plot is always exagerated and the has many stock characters, for example the stereotypical Hero and the Damsel in Distress who's always in the need of rescue. The plot is always extremely straight forward, with the Damsel being kidnapped by an evil villain, who's the defeated by the Hero, who lives with the damsel happily ever after.

Our attempt at looking at the form looked at using the same storyline. We used cue cards, a convention of melodrama to make it easier for the audience to understand. the props also allowed every character to stand out. We removed dialogue to allow us to focus on exaggerating our movements.

Theatre History - The renaissance

The renaissance was a time when the arts and literature flourished throughout Europe. Many new theatre performances sprung up as the theatre moved away from religion and the church.

This is the Sistine Chapel, a work by Michaelangelo, this shows the extent of the flourishing of the arts

This is the Mona Lisa, a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci.

Here are many of the events that went on around the renaissance time period. A notable contributor to theatre at the time was Shakespeare, his works are still in use today, and he has impacted the English language to such an extent to having changed the way plays were written and performed.

These events changed the way that arts was prioritised and changed the way that theatre, and the arts in general, are performed and created. The renaissance was important in allowing the art forms to evolve to where they are now.

Theatre History - Medieval Theatre

• 500-800 BC - The dark ages. Theatre is almost extinct as it was heavily discouraged by the Church.

The church began to use theatre in events that taught christian values to the public. Much of the population was illiterate. In addition the church gained a lot of power and forced christians to attend, theatre and the performances were to ensure that the people in attendance didn't get bored. 

The way that the theatre was performed was that there were multiple performances going on, and the audience was free to move around and watch a little bit of each one. This form of performance is a form of interactive theatre still in use today.

There were three types of plays in medieval time:

1. Mystery Plays - Dramatisations of the Old and New Testaments lasts for days or weeks with over a hundreds actors.
2. Morality plays - Battle between God and the Devil, Questions your religious morality. Personifies abstractions of virtues and vices.
3. Saint Plays - Dramatic performances of the lives of the martyred saints

In the picture we have a performance of an old tale of "Everyman". "Every Man" played by Sahitya travels along the path towards heaven, he must not stray from the path, however the path is beset by personifications of the 7 deadly sins. In this picture I represent Lust, I lay on the block to provocatively lure in "Every Man". 

These plays are to educate the illiterate public on how to remain a pure christian, by not using complex metaphors, and instead being simple for anyone to understand 

Theatre History - Roman

Exploring the Roman aspects of theatre, we found that the romans used and adapted greek theatre. Roman theatre was more violent and sexual and it changed what theatre did. Theatre became less philosophical and more of entertainment.

This is our attempt at trying a roman pantomime, detailing a roman myth. It was very difficult to create a piece of theatre with very little lines or understanding of the topic. It was interesting to try and explore the story without speaking or using dialogue, forcing us to be more emotive and use our physicality better to emphasize our theme.

The roman theatre evolved into the entertainment that we see today, it changed from the philosophical criticism of gods and heroes, to a more senseless event that keeps the audiences entertained. This changed the way theatre was made and performed. 

Theatre History Greek theatre

Today we looked at exploring Greek Theatre, its conventions and its impact on modern theatre.

• Greek theatre was conducted in large open air theatre spaces, these were designed to allow a large amount of people to watch performances. The way the structure was built was to allow the maximum amount of people to see and hear what was happening on stage
• To help all the actors get the message across a group of actors called the "chorus" would act and speak in unison, this allowed all the audience, including those at the back to understand what was happening.

• All the actors in a greek theatre performance wore masks to emphasis and exaggerate their characters emotions
• Greek Plays came in three different categories, Comedy, tragedy and Satyr, these three plays evolved throughout the ages into the different types that we have now. 

We explored simple lines, performed in a chorus, with actions and lines in unison. We used a simple topic to try and see how difficult it was to try and act out lines in such a way that it would be simple to understand.

Theatre of the Absurd

Looking at theatre of the absurd, I was quite interested with the weird conventions of the the practice. Looking at an extract from 'Waiting for Godot' I noticed that although the lines and dialogue make sense, the lack of context really makes the text different from other styles of theatre.

One of the main points of Theatre of the Absurd that I found quite interesting is that it does not come from a specific practitioner and instead it represents a number of theatre practitioners who shared a common interest in looking at the way humans question life. It represents a common interest shared between all of humanity and the number of practitioners adding to the theatre practice as a whole.

Looking at the aspects of Theatre of the Absurd, the one that stands out the most for me is the meaninglessness and the devoid of reason that the practice has. A lot of other practitioners place a lot of their emphasis on the meaning and representation of their scripts and performances, however the Theatre of the Absurd is purposefully meaningless. For me, an intended effect of the theatre practice, is to have the meaningless words, yet still have the dialogue make sense in snippets. Much like 'Waiting for Godot' the dialogue, makes sense and follows like a story, however the dialogue makes no sense in terms of an overall plot.

The Dumbwaiter - Harold Pinter

A good example of a comedy used within Theatre of the Absurd, is the Dumbwaiter by Harold Pinter. Most of the dialogue takes place between two actors. The part that stood out the most would be at the beginning where both pieces of dialogue revolve around two articles "Dan" reads out of his newspaper. Whats interesting is that both discussions about the articles end with the same line. This brings up the repetutuin. In addition, a none of the dialogue progresses the plot and its almost all comedic banter between the two characters.