Category: Communication

SEMANTIC
Macbeth is mourning over the death of his wife and is coming to the conclusion that there is no point in living.
CONTEXT
Macbeth’s wife has died, there is an army outside of his castle, and the thought of it is sending his mind into a frenzy.
FIGURATIVE DEVICES
“Life’s but a walking shadow, poor player” – Personification. This personification emphasises Macbeth’s emotions as it portrays his life as invalid, and worthless. “A walking shadow” makes him sound as if he has no purpose and that he isn’t appreciated by anybody that surrounds him. It gives the audience an insight on how he is feeling, not just on the inside, but on the outside too.

Note: The idea of the script turning into a reality. Two parallel worlds, Shakespeare reaching out to the audience by describing Macbeth’s depression.

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare uses many different techniques to present Macbeth’s deteriorating state of mind to the audience. The semantic aspect of the text is that Macbeth is mourning over the death of his wife and is coming to the conclusion that there is no point in living. Whilst his emotions are getting the better of him, there is an army of traitors awaiting outside of his castle. Shakespeare does his best to project Macbeth’s eruption through a series of dramatic devices, ranging from metaphors and personification to the iambic pentameter that he follows throughout the majority of his speech in the play.

Shakespeare uses Macbeth’s state of mind to communicate his own emotions to the audience. It is almost like two parallel worlds, in one of them, Macbeth is releasing his emotions and communicating his thoughts to the audience. In the other, Shakespeare is telling a story through Macbeth’s ideology.

Metaphors are used constantly throughout the play, especially by Macbeth himself. When Macbeth is informed about Lady Macbeth’s death, he uses metaphors to enhance his emotions.

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player”

The quote above describes Macbeth’s attitude towards life after the death of his wife. It incorporates

Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 into a middle class German-speaking Ashkenazi Jewish family. Back in those days German language was considered the vehicle of social mobility. His father was a very dominant figure with a huge appetite for business. Kafka and his siblings were mostly brought up by governesses and servants. His childhood was a very lonely one. The relationship he had with his father was a troubled one. His father was an authoritarian and extremely demanding and that had a profound influence later on, on Kafka’s writing.

He pursued high education which later led him into respectable employment, to please his father. He found himself being very unhappy working the hours as this was preventing him from having the time to concentrate on his writing.

Metamorphosis is one of his most seminal bodies of work.

In it, the main character Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning, finding himself metamorphosed into a large monstrous insect like creature. The novel deals with a burden imposed upon the family members to deal with the situation as well as Gregor’s attempts to adjust to this horrific change.

Kafka himself never gave any explanation regarding the transformation and the reasons behind it were never revealed but there are many possible interpretations to it.

There is a great deal of symbolism in Metamorphosis. Maybe he feels alienated and not appreciated by those around him, hence the transformation? Maybe by turning into an insect he prevents himself returning to a job he hates, allowing himself more freedom to do what he actually loves doing? Is it perhaps only a dream or a nightmare? Could it be a form of self-sacrifice? Or even a way to be finally free? Or maybe a sort of a punishment for the family? There is definitely a cause and effect argument going through it. The interpretations are endless and surreal, as the novel itself is. What Kafka produced in Metamorphosis is most certainly way above realism.

MACBETH

Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.
Exit ServantIs this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There’s no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
A bell ringsI go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
Exit

The use of metaphors is extremely common in this soliloquy. Some examples of metaphors within this passage are :

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

1. Fatal Vision : Macbeth describes the imagery of the dagger as a “fatal vision”, meaning that it could be a clear indication that his fate is to murder the King. The adjective; “fatal”, is extremely effective in this context as it shows that the vision of the dagger will not only do damage to the King, but to Macbeth too.
2. Dagger of the mind: The dagger of the mind is a more obvious metaphor within this passage. It relates to Macbeth contemplating whether the dagger is real or not.  The dagger of the mind could also mean that something is doing harm to his brain. A suggestion to what it could be is Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth could be the dagger of his mind as she is leading him on the wrong path (to murder the King).
3. Heat oppressed brain: This metaphor describes Macbeth’s mental state. “Heat oppressed” could portray how much his brain has had to handle over the last couple of weeks, therefore leading to the reasoning of the hallucination of the dagger.

MACBETH
[Aside] The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
Exit

Modern:

The Prince of Cumberland! What a step! A step that I must take on, or avoid. A title which lies in my path. Don’t shine light on me, don’t expose my deep, dark thoughts. Let it occur in it’s own time, when it’s done, everyone will see.

In this scene, King Duncan is informed about the execution of Cawdor. He congratulates Macbeth and Banquo for their hard work and involvment in the victory. We are also told that Duncan’s son, Malcolm, will take up his role of King.

In this scenario, the key element is dramatic irony. It’s all about the two characters letting the members of the audience know how they feel about their fate without giving it away to anyone else on stage. This is effective as we can see how Macbeth and Banquo avoid showing their thoughts and emotions to the other characters. Many different techniques are used throughout this scenario which makes it easier for us to identify how Shakespeare keeps the story flowing through the use of language.

Example :  I know I am thane of Glamis;

But how of Cawdor? the thane of Cawdor lives,
A prosperous gentleman; and to be king
Stands not within the prospect of belief,
No more than to be Cawdor.

This quote tells us that Macbeth is confused as to why the witches have given him the title of ‘King’. He makes it clear that he doesn’t feel like he should be anything more than the Thane of Cawdor, therefore leading him to think that the witches are leading him onto the wrong path. At this point, the audience are left to think about whether the witches are leading him on the right or the wrong path.

“As two spent swimmers, that do cling together”

With this phrase, Shakespeare makes a relation between the battle of Macdonwald and King Duncan’s men, to a pair of struggling swimmers. The intent behind this metaphor is to imprint an image of the battle into the minds of the audience. The word “cling” makes both characters sound desperate and helpless, which is slightly ironic as they are in conflict with eachother.

Modern day English : “Just like two physically drained swimmers, who are hanging onto eachother for dear life.”

Introduction

The stimulus for our assessment evolves around refugees from all over the world. The idea of refugees is one that is close to me as both of my parents were refugees in the late 90s. This was a result of the Bosnian/Kosovan war which lasted 3 years, from 1992 to 1995. I feel like even before the stimulus was given to me, I was reasonably knowledgeable about the topic. The stimulus is suitable for the situation in today’s world with horrific refugee issues occurring in places in the middle east, such as Syria. This refugee stimulus is easy to work with in terms of characters, potential situations and conflicts. The scenarios can range from the moment you were forced to leave your house, right up to risking your life on a rubber dingy travelling thousands of miles across the ocean.

Many of the scenarios we came up with involved children, we done our best to understand how the parents and the child would feel, thinking about the situation from both perspectives. The situation of being forced to leave home is a difficult and emotional one so the main factor behind the acting, was putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. One of the first ideas that popped into my head was leaving things behind, especially from a child’s perspective and what is important to them. This led to my central question being; “When forced to leave home, what do we choose to leave behind?” I think that the reason why a child came to my mind was learning about Aylan Kurdi. This story really got to me. Such a young innocent child losing it’s life because he had to leave home. My thoughts were mainly with his father, who barely got to spend any time with his child, adding onto that, losing his wife and other children and still trying to find his way out of the terrible situation.

Our initial idea stayed the same throughout the process, it was about what to leave behind when forced to leave home. We went on to develop our ideas, and created a very meaningful piece of drama. There were a couple pros to our initial idea, one of them being that our scenario (father and son), made it easy to express certain emotions of loyalty, love etc. At first, I thought that there would be cons to having a child in the performance, such as drifting of of the central question. However, it turned out to be a huge advantage and made the audience have more empathy, because of the vulnerability of the boy.

Once we done our first rehearsal, we received feedback from our fellow classmates. Many people said that we should make the Son sound more mature and intelligent (Despite him being quite young). We realised that if we done this, it would make the point we are putting across a lot easier to understand, so we took it on board, and made the adjustment. We also incorporated a hallucination where the Son confronts his dead mother, we received a lot of positive criticism for this so we decided to keep it. Throughout this process, I realised that feedback from my peers and Teachers helped more than anything, especially because I only had one other person in my group. More brains led to more ideas which led to a better improvisation.

Item 1

Our scenario began with the son sleeping, and the father slowly circling around him. I played the father role, I decided to walk around him slowly to create suspense and to show anxious body language. I done this by holding my head in my hands whilst walking around, and constantly fiddling with my hands. We decided not to give too much detail on the two characters to show that these things are happening across the world, to millions of people, and that no one’s story is more important or significant than anyone else’s. Mr.Harris told me to perform a short narration at the beginning of the improvisation to give the audience an insight on what is going on. On the day, I started it off with; “I stood in the corridor all night that night, thinking about how I’m going to tell him the news…” This turned out to be effective because it was like a back up, just in case individuals in the audience were unsure about the situation.

After circling around him, the father sits down next to him and hesitantly attempts to wake him up. Hesitating whilst waking him up showed that my character is scared about letting his son know what is going on, and that he is unsure about how he is going to get the words out once he wakes him up. He explains to his son the situation and how they urgently need to leave, but the son is tired, and really wants to sleep.

The father then raises his voice and carefully helps his son up of the floor to show him that something serious is actually going on. I knew that I had to be extremely delicate with the son whilst improvising, as aggravating as it was that he was being un-attentive, I had to bare in mind the relationship that we have, and that the journey ahead was not going to be easy. The last thing I wanted was for him to go against me. I tried to put myself in Aylan’s father’s shoes before he lost his son, I had to clearly show the audience that I am grateful for my son being alive and that I only want the best for him.

He tells his son to pack ONE thing, then turns to the audience letting them know that; “If he takes more than one, it’s going to slow us down.” Communicating with the audience at this moment was something I was extremely unsure about at first, it seemed a bit cheesy. But then I realised that by getting the audience involved, I had a back up for the storyline, and that i’m giving reasoning for what I’m telling my son. Not many people would have jumped to the conclusion that taking more than one toy would slow us down, so clarifying the reasoning behind it to the audience stopped them from losing focus on the story.

The son, being a bit stubborn, takes three toys, slowly numbering them “1,1 and 1”. I really didn’t want to turn this into a comedy, but I wanted to show that children don’t always know the seriousness of situations, luckily we didn’t get any laughs from our audience.

Once the father steps back into the scene, he asks his son why he took more than one and tells him that this is no time for fun and games. The son realises he has done something wrong, but then goes on to explain why each object is special to him, and why he refuses to leave it behind. When he gets to his last object he explains that it’s the last thing he ever received from his mother. He then goes on to ask; “Where is mum?”. At this point there is an effective silence and the father drops to the floor and holds his head in his hands. This was definitely one of the most powerful moments of the improvisation, the silence made it extremely effective and emotional creating a strong tension.

NOTE: From the very beginning of the performance, there is slow paced sad music playing in the background.

I chose an extremely emotional track to play in the background throughout the improvisation, this made a huge effect, as it helped me to communicate my emotion to the audience. I really felt the scenario and so did my partner, it really made me feel like I’m going through exactly what the father would have been. As a matter of fact, it actually got me pretty upset (which is a good thing) and it really got me feeling grateful that I don’t have to go through what so many people across the planet are.

This is where the Hallucination comes in, the son performs a short monologue where he confronts his mum, at the moment when she gave him that very same toy. The father then catches his son hallucinating and does his best to stop him. They both fall to the ground, and the Father has a moment of clarity with his son. They are both extremely upset, and are lost for words. This is easily the biggest risk we took, but it pulled off. A hallucination was something that I didn’t even think about when I was told about the task, but I surely don’t regret including it once it came to my mind.

To finish it off, the father leads off the stage with one of his son’s toys which he picked to take for him, which leaves the son on the stage by himself. The son chooses to take all of his toys with him, and puts them in his bag. He slowly leads off the stage. (MUSIC ENDS). I decided not to do anything too extra for the end, trying not to make it look too artificial.

Improvising definitely made it a lot easier to perform an emotional piece like this, for the simple reason that when those emotions and thoughts were running through my head, I knew exactly what I wanted to say in that moment. It was much easier to stick to the central question too, as I kept track of not going off topic which I might have done if a script was written. Moving on to the central question, I think that we communicated our central question successfully and that we couldn’t have communicated it any better. We made sure that we stuck to it and that we didn’t drift off, we clearly showed that choosing what to leave behind is a very difficult experience, especially for a child.

From the beginning, there wasn’t much that we had to discard, apart from using imaginary toys which we replaced with real toys from home, just to make it more realistic.  We used a “Woody” toy,  which is western merchandise, to symbolise that some people cherish having toys that are taken for granted in the West. I didn’t feel like the audience understood this as it wasn’t mentioned in the improvisation.

Item 2

For item 2, I performed a monologue, which was a continuation of my performance in item 1.  I was carrying the role of a father (the same one from item 1), who had lost his son during his mission to run away from war. It is based a lot on guilt and irresponsibility. I gave the father a more scruffy appearance by wearing a hood over my head to show that I was tired, depressed and was struggling. I also sobbed to make the audience have sympathy for my character. My body language was constantly slouched to show weakness, and I was constantly verbally beating myself up to show that I regret what I had done.

The act begins with me sitting on a box, alone, with my hood up. This is an effective image which gives the audience a gist of the situation before the scene actually starts. I begin to sob, and talk about how I’ve lost my son, how much I miss him etc. If you have read my item 1, you will know about the “toys” scenario, a reference to this comes up in this scene.  “I should’ve just let him take the f*****g toys!”; a quote from item 2. This is a quote which symbolises regret.  Regret was an easy topic to work around as it triggers a lot of passionate emotion. I used barely any improvisation for this scene as I had several lessons to rehearse it in class. I did develop a late idea on the night just before my performance, and that was putting a message in a bottle and sending it off (The last possible attempt to find my son).

For this performance, I didn’t have a central question to work around, but the title of my scene was; “Regret”. I think that I stayed on the topic of the title and communicated it to my audience reasonably well. If I could have modified anything, I would have played voices on the speaker in the background saying things like; “Regret” “Where are you Daddy” “You left me…”etc.

Item 3

My design idea revolved around lighting. I chose lighting as it fitted in extremely well with my Item 1. It is needed to express the status’ of characters and to also make the stage look better. I designed the lighting to give the effect of loneliness at times, but at other times to create the feeling that both characters are on the same page. At one point, I was thinking about using different colours, but then I realised that it looked too cheesy for a play like ours. Our play was based on a horrific situation that people go through on a day to day basis in other parts of the world, so there was no need to incorporate hollywood lighting in a play like this.

The design idea involves the characters being in separate lights, to show that they aren’t on the same page. Then gradually as the father persuades his son to get up and start getting ready, (them getting on the same page) the spotlight gets bigger and circles around the two of them. So whenever the father and the son are on positive terms and are working together, the spotlight covers the two of them. Only fully focused members of the audience will notice the effect and realise what impact it has on the scene.

If you have watched item 1, you will have remembered the hallucination part of the scene. In this small theatre, we didn’t have a projector to use, but afterwards, I came up with an idea we could have used if we did have one available. Although this effect doesn’t involve stage lights, it still comes under the lighting category.

When the son comes into confrontation with his passed away mother, we would have projected a black and white image of her onto the back wall. The rest of the stage would be pitch black, but the light from the projector would slightly shine onto the son so that the audience can see him whilst he performs his short monologue. In this moment, it wouldn’t feel like there is only one actor on the stage, but two. The presence of the mother in this short part of the scene is almost as important as the father’s in the rest of the scene.

The symbolic quality of this design idea is that although they have lost their Wife/Mother, she is still with them, just not in human form. Many refugees have lost several family members along the way, but they are still guiding them through the difficult journey. The lost family members are in some cases the motivation to complete the journey and make it to safety.

“When forced to leave home, what do we choose to leave behind?”

Our performance refers to Nazi Germany. The two actors stand opposite eachother and one holds up his hand, symbolising a Nazi salute and saying “Heil Hitler”, the other character looks extremely uncomfortable with doing this. The character who is refusing to raise his hand could range from the man’s son, to anything else such as a soldier alongside his commander. The man holding the salute gives the other man a look, manipulating him to raise his hand.

Symbols used: Nazi salute. Manipulative looks.

The symbols used are political and were influential back in Nazi Germany, the point we tried to put across is how easy it was to fall under the Nazi spell by being manipulated by someone who you respect.

Semiotics are extremely effective in theatre. It is an easy alternative to physical attacks on stage, especially when there is a shortage of props.

It’s one of the most used methods in modern theatre. Majority of the time, it’s done in a creative and quite abstract way, but at times, it can come across aggressive too. It all depends on what type of play it is, or what the situation is within the play.

In our performance, it was a situation between King Leer and his two daughters. In front of their formation, there was a man on his knees. He looked frightened and vulnerable, especially because he was at a lower level compared to the King and his daughters. In the scene, the daughters began to irritate their father by repeating the same sentence constantly. He went crazy and began to shout, this was the cue for the daughters to lift the black robe in front of the kneeling man so that he is not visible to the audience. The King now walks over the the man, and makes a sudden movement (behind the robe, not visible to the audience) which causes the man to fall to his death.

The Foreman has a very important role in the Scene. He is the leader of a group of workers, but he also has his own leader who he needs to impress. In the scene, the Foreman has the important objective of covering up the death of one of his workmen. He is paranoid about getting caught by the Senior Officer because of the severe punishment he would recieve.

While performing the role of a Foreman, I would like to show his feelings through speech and body action. Especially expressing his anxious and worried emotions. The motivation plays a key part in his actions because it gives him the urge and motivation to do something. Stanislavski’s technique of being in role at all times and being able to answer any question as your character is important because you must maintain the role of the character (In this case, the Foreman) throughout the whole play.

On a normal day, the Foreman would be a strict, serious character, but the situation where the he is worried about what the Senior officer is gonna think, changes his character completely. The audience needs to see how scared and paranoid he is about the consequences of the death of the worker in order to realise how bad the situation is.