March 14th 2011

Today we began to practice our performance. We rehearsed the gym scene, which still needs quiet a bit of work. It doesn’t flow naturally like a scene in real life would. For this we need to work on timing, and think about how the characters would act around each other. However, we at least have a definite idea of how the performance is going to go, and we talked about our objectives. Also, we can all portray our characters realistically enough, everyone has an idea of how to say their lines and most of the time how to act. I believe that we are doing fine for this stage of the creation process.

Character study

My Character Profile:
Name: Emilia
Age: 15
Student
Family: Has an older sister who is in University, and her parents. She also has a Labrador.
Personality: Cheerful, confident, outgoing. Friendly to everyone, but is slightly judgemental. She is the typical stereotypical teenager.
Activities:
Sports: Running and working out at the gym, however, she is not so sporty. She does exercise just to keep fit and in shape.
Free time: Loves to go to the cinema as well as hang out with her friends. Alone she listens to music and surfs the net.
Friends: Has a lot of friends, knows everyone. All her friends are nice, and most are outgoing.
School: She’s in 10th grade and does reasonably well, with average grades. Does not particularly dislike school  but does not love it either.

Our Performance- Units and objectives for my character

Character: I’m Louise,  a girl who is confident in herself, her body and so forth. I’m pretty according to the anorexic girl, Alice, but really, I’m not stunningly pretty. I’m also happy and cheerful.
Super objective: To hang out with my friends, and have a good time. I want to know if I've missed something.

Unit 1 (for me): Poppy and Louise are doing sit ups in the background, and the guys are talking in the foreground.
Objective: To engage in a fun conversation with Poppy, and to work out.I want to catch up with my friends.
Unit 2: I go over to where the guys are talking. Peter goes over to Alice and Poppy.
Objective: To catch up with Kev.
Unit 3: The guy goes up to the two girls who are talking, and tells the anorexic girl that he thinks that she’s pretty, but she doesn’t believe him. I go over just as she runs away.
Objective: To try to find out what is wrong with Alice.

Planning of naturalist performance

As naturalist plays often deal with some issue in society, be it in a humorous or serious way, our group began the preparation for creating a three-minute performance with brainstorming ideas for the “issue” that we would focus on. We had all sorts of ideas, racism, environmental issues, stereotypes, ignorance, no freedom of speech, poverty gap, but in the end we decided on doing a performance on negative body image. It was between stereotypes and negative body image, and in the end it was a random decision, as everyone in the group found both ideas good. However, we needed a focus for negative body image, so we brainstormed some ideas. As it turned out, there was not that many different options, and they all lead into each other. Some options that we thought of were media influences, peer pressure, eating disorders, over exercising (including steroids). We decided on sort of combing the two, and having two parts to the performance: pressure for men to have a certain type of body, and for women. We didn’t get that much further, but it’s a start. 

Anton Chekov

Chekov was born on the 17^th of January 1860, in Taganrog, Russia. He studied medicine in Moscow, and wrote at the same time. We wrote a lot even during this period, publishing his first story in a newspaper in 1880. He wrote stories with tragedy, but he always added comedy as well. He became a doctor, and worked as one for a while, even though he wrote enough to survive on writing. However, his career in medicine had an impact on his writing. In 1887, he published his first set of books. Chekov wrote mainly about Russian life, and he was successful in describing that period of time in Russia.

"Anton Chekhov." TheatreHistory.com. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

<http://www.theatrehistory.com/russian/chekhov001.html>.

Chekov wrote about Russian small towns, and the little troubles that occurred. His characters are often hopeless, and his stories deal with societal issues and people’s morals. However, he did not want his writing to be intended as a rebellion or a moral voice. In his stories, though the characters might be suffering, they never try to free themselves, but they surrender to their predicaments.

Liukkonen, Petri. "Anton Chekhov." Www.kirjasto.sci.fi. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

<http://kirjasto.sci.fi/tsehov.htm>.

Death of a Salesman -Play- Units

Unit 1: Page 9 to middle of Page 10 This unit is about Willy working in New York, and how he was trying to drive, but found it hard.

Willy’s Objective: To seem like everything’s alright
Linda’s Objective: To make Willy admit that he is not alright- to make him relax.

Unit 2: Middle of page 10 to end of page 11 This unit is on an argument over the children. Willy thinks that the children are lazy.

Willy’s Objective: To get out his frustration over his children, who he sees as disappointments
Linda’s Objective: Calm down Willy, and to take care of everyone.

Unit 3: Page 12 In this unit Willy complains about their living conditions, in particular he complains about the neighborhood.

Willy’s Objective: To blame others for his problems, to convince Linda it’s not his fault.
Linda’s Objective: Calm down Willy and make him see that other people cannot be always be blamed.

Death of a Salesman- The film

I didn't see the end of the movie but here's what I got:

Objective of Willy in Scene 1:
Willy tries to keep his wife from noticing that he was spying at his sons in the room across them. He also tries to make her not feel anxious , that he is not hurt, as she seems to suggest.
3 characters who against the subtext
Willy: He is offered a job by one of his neighbours, and he acts insulted, telling him that he has a good job, though he had been complaining about his job just before.
Uncle Ben: He was acting like he was impressed by the performance of Willy’s son, Biff, but in the end he brings him to the ground, so he was really unimpressed.