Unit 3 - Vinegar Tom

 For this Unit we have been working on the topic of Vinegar Tom and the Stanislavski technique. Vinegar Tom is a play written by caryl churchill in 1976. Caryl Churchill (born September 3rd 1938) is a British socialist-feminist playwright. Her first plays were produced by student groups when she was at Oxford. Churchill is regarded as one of Britain's most influential playwrights, her work widely varies in different subject matters but mainly focuses on political or feminist topics. Vinegar Tom is set in the 17th century and based on the witch trials. Themes in the play include Feminism and gender and power relationships in the 17th century. The play was inspired by the Women's Rights Act in 1970, exploring the thought that women were treated unequally to men. The play uses Brechtian (Bertolt Brecht) technique. Bertolt Brecht was a marxist and made his theatre highly political. He wanted to spark an interest in his audience's perception of the world and caryl churchill agreed with this. A main example in the play is the use of songs throughout to make political statements.  Other techniques Brechtian techniques are: 4th wall, use of signs, freeze frames, use of technology, and use of narrator as well as that the narration needs to be told in a montage style. 

The witch trials in England began in the 15th century and ended in the 18th century with an estimated 500 to 1000 deaths, 90 percent being women. Witchcraft was a criminal offence until 1735, and was punishable by death during the Tudor and Stuart periods. In 1597, King James I wrote a book on witchcraft which suggested ways of identifying and catching witches. Ways people did to identify and cath witches was the swimming test. This was where they would tie a person up and toss them into a river if they floated (meaning if they could swim) they were a witch, if they sank they were innocent, either way the person being accused of being a witch would be dead. Another way people would try to identify if someone was a witch was if they had 'witch marks'. Witch-hunters often had suspects be stripped and publicly examined for signs of blemishes that witches were said to receive upon making their pact with satan. This 'Devil's mark' could supposedly change shape and colour, and was believed to be numb and insensitive to pain. It was easy for even the most smallest physical imperfections to be labelled as the work of the devil. Moles, scars, birthmarks, sores, supernumerary nipples and tattoos could all qualify. 1645-1646 marks a short period of time when 'witch fever' gripped England. A man named Mathew Hopkins, a renowned witchfinder, had 68 people put to death in Bury St. Edmunds and 19 people hung in Chelmsford in a single day. Witches were seen as the devil's helpers on earth. Often, people's lack of understanding led them to believe bad things were the work of the devil.

(Stanislavski's techniques)

 In the course we also have been learning about the Stanislavski technique. Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev (Stanislavski), Born January 1863 in Moscow, Russia, grew up with a family that loved theatre so as a boy he was also interested in theatre. At the age of 14 Alexeyev started acting. He developed his theatrical skills overtime, performing with other acting groups while working in his family's business. In 1885, he gave himself the stage name stanislavski - the name of a fellow actor he met. He married teacher Maria Perevozchikova three years later, and would join her husband in the serious study and pursuit of acting. As a serious practitioner, he would make careful notes and evaluated his work, a thing he did regularly at the start of his career. Later he was to write major texts on the art of performance such as: My life in art, An actor prepares, Building character, Creating a role. Throughout this unit we have been learning the Stanislavski technique and how it helped our performance for Vinegar Tom and how it helped developing our characters. Those techniques are: Objective, Given circumstances, Magic 'if', Subtext, emotional memory. 

Objective is a main goal for a character or for a certain scenario. An example of this technique is when we were put into pairs and one was on a chair and the other wasn't. The goal was for the person off the chair to try and get the person on the chair to get off the chair. This is helpful as analysing the scene and the characters give a better understanding of the characters goal in the scene. When reading my scene it it didn't look like my character (Susan) had an objective throughout most of the scene apart from the beginning when she asked another character (Alice) questions about a man and a woman they saw riding a horse. But for Alice, her objective was to just test Susan and mess with her emotions and throughout Alice is just playing with Susans emotions and at one point there is a part where she just breaks down in tears. Analysing the script and analysing the objective of my character and others helped me add on to my character and made me think how their objective would affect my character and how I can apply that.

 

Given circumstances is the information given about the character before getting into and developing your character. When we started Vinegar Tom and got our roles we were given sheets of paper and wrote down what we knew about our character so far.  For this we analysed the lines of the scene as well as research about our characters by watching other performances and scenes with that character as well as reading the script and having our own interpretations of what we think the character is like. This was helpful as it gave me a better understanding of my character and a better idea of how I think my character talks and behaves and get into character better. Magic 'if' is when you imagine yourself being in your character's situation, if you were in 'their shoes'. An example of this is when we did a warm up exercise where we would act as if we were someone else in a random scenario e.g. What if you were 85 years old? What if you were homeless? We also did an exercise where we pretended to cook something. This helped me as when reading the script it helped imagine what it would be like to be in Susan's shoes and helped me get into depth of susans emotions and what she is feeling in the scene and how she acts and behaves and help me understand susan better as a character. Subtext is the hidden meaning of the lines that are spoken or acted out. An example of this is when we did an exercise where one person interviews the other and the interviewee's objective is to get the job but there is a hidden meaning behind why they want the job. This is helpful because it helped me analyse my scene better as well as getting a better understanding of my character and other characters and their intentions and what they are really trying to say and how I can apply that to my role. 

At the start of rehearsals we got our scripts and read through our lines analysed them and put them into BEATS and labelled each sections of our scene. When we broke our scenes down into beats we worked out each characters objective. The reason why we did this is because it helped us pinpoint where the conversation changes and find out the objective in each section and how you can add to that as your character. This was helpful as it made it easier to understand my character better as well as other characters in the scene. Throughout rehearsals especially at the beginning it was difficult to rehearse as there was always one person missing during rehearsals so we always just read through the script and memorise the lines. However, towards the end of rehearsals all of us were together so we managed to work on the scene and put a performance together, it was difficult starting off but in the end we managed to pull it off. The day of the performance I think went really well and the performance was very clean throughout and we were sure in what we were doing. When watching the performance on video I couldn't hear myself too clearly so to improve for next time I will try to speak more clearly and loudly. For rehearsals I feel like I could've contributed a bit more and spoke up more when coming up for ideas and could have tried a bit more in rehearsals when there was one person missing during rehearsals.