Drama Performed to Others :: Drama

Drama Performed to Others Our drama group was given the task of introducing a year nine class to the play 'Macbeth'. Apart from the obvious, there were five themes in the play that the group as a whole thought needed exploring: insanity; good versus bad; the supernatural; guilty conscience; and murder. We looked into each of these topics individually and decided on how we could include them in our final performance, in each lesson we learned more and more about both 'Macbeth' and the skills needed to teach a younger year group the basics of the play. We decided that the first thing that needed to be learned was the creation of atmosphere on stage. We did this by lowering the lights, putting just a candle in the centre of the room, and playing the sound effect of rain and howling gales. We each had to find one word that summed up the 'feeling' in the room. The key words that came up were remembered throughout our development of the piece of drama and we tried to capture these feelings on stage. Keeping in role and developing a convincing character was essential for the task and I learned this over the period of time building up to our final performance. We had decided to show five still-images to the year nines and, along with a narration, tell the story as an introduction. In groups we picked out the five points that seemed most significant: the meeting of the witches on the heath; the 'persuasion' scene (between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth); the banquet scene; the second witches scene (the premonitions); and the scene where Macduff finally kills Macbeth. In these groups we performed the still-images and showed what each character was thinking through thought-tracking, which added depth to the image. In pairs we performed our own versions of 'the persuasion scene', with one playing Macbeth and one playing Lady Macbeth. Through manipulation, Lady Macbeth always beats Macbeth one way or another, and we learned to create the right mood on stage, this improvisational work helped develop characterisation. After discussing the scene we were to study (the 'banquet scene' [Act Three, Scene Four]) and read through the original script, we began improvisation of a modern-day remake of the scene. Our class decided to work in just one group and we were sure we wanted to bring the scene to a modern-day setting so we could come up with our own interpretation. As a group we had to decide on who the Macbeth of the 21st century would be, and came up with plenty of suggestions. The one we finally decided on was a night-club owner, the night-club