Beauty Is The First Test

I saw this today, it reminded me of the statement 'Beauty = Power?'....

This message made me think of how cruel modern day society can be, beauty is no longer something special it is an expectation. In a world filled with celebrity image and a lack of individualism how can anyone expect to succeed without beauty?
(Of course Blondie avoids any confrontations or failure by being beautiful and drawing attention to the fact that she holds a desirable image.)

I think this idea of beauty being something that we take for granted is explored in Blondie slightly. It is arguable that if beauty is normal then why do people think she is so special, but I feel in the context of politics it is a new and exciting idea that people are drawn in by.

Further questions relating to Blondie:

What is Blondie's motive, is she trying to prove a point that you can't trust beauty?

Can we ever stop judging in relation to beauty and image. Can identity ever be examined? 

Beauty = Power? Response

Rehearsal Notes- Tuesday 20th November

First Impressions of 'Blondie'

To my dismay this play was not about the culinary delight that is white chocolate brownies.....

Instead it is a hard hitting play about four characters (A,B,C,D) discussing and sometimes fighting about their political beliefs.
The characters remain unnamed throughout the play, only being referred to as letters. This immediately distances us from the characters also creating uneasy tension about the play.

-Why are they not named?

The play is incredibly bland and simple, with only a handful of stage directions. These stage directions are almost always instructing one actor to go and physically interact with another;

'catching his throat'
'Stopping his airflow'
'almost choking him'

In light of the recent presidential elections the theme of how a presidents appearance can affect the voters seems particularly poignant. I asked myself 'Did Obama deserve to win?' and 'Would America have voted for Romney if the other leading candidate had been white?'.
I feel this play really attacks the idea that politics is so easily affected and altered by our human reactions and sensibilities.
The line 'You thought you were safe because I wasn't an under sexed, over paid, unattractive, privately educated, smug middle aged man. All you saw was my face.' challenges all of our political history. This play is brutally honest in it's aims, It really holds to fingers up to politics and says 'Your ugly and I don't like it.'.

The staging of this piece has been intriguing me ever since I read it, If I were to stage it I would have a true Brechtian setup. All actors would remain on stage, dressed in a generic and unimportant grey t-shirt and trousers. The set would be bare but well equipped, by this I mean If a desk is needed it is fully described and set and not at all in a simplistic way. I would want this because I feel that the way the characters interact with their props is crucial and should be as believable as possible.

The Houla Massacre is a key stimulus for this piece, such a vivid and strong stimulus could make this play hard to act in a brechtian fashion.
I say this because Brecht liked to make his audience appreciate the humorous side of things.

First Impressions

Our introduction to Brecht has taken me by surprise, I imagined Brecht to be a rather obvious and simple style of acting. In reality Brecht's teachings offer us as actors an opportunity to 'represent' rather than 'become'.
 After an entire term of Stanislavsky which obviously requires the actor to think about our objectives and super-objectives, Brecht is a refreshing contrast.

Betolt Brecht hoped to highlight the constructed nature of the theatrical performance, this made the audiences own reality clearly constructed and therefore changeable.
This would be done for instance by having the actors costume changes on stage. Or by having no offstage.  Typically a Brechtian performance would be suitably bare and simple possessing no elaborate props or set features. The simplicity draws the audiences attention to the actors and takes the attention away from the 'irrelevant' features such as costume and set design.

Immediatley I began to think of what plays might work well as Brechtian pieces, I think a good choice would be something like 'Mad About The Boy' or 'The Witness'.
I think these would work because of their small cast and focus on dialogue and not on action.

I am looking forward to a term of exploring a new theatre style that has become an irreplaceable style for some practitioners and directors.