Character Ideas / Relating back to the text

HERO

Shakespeare version: 
Hero -  The beautiful young daughter of Leonato and the cousin of Beatrice. Hero is lovely, gentle, and kind. She falls in love with Claudio when he falls for her, but when Don John slanders her and Claudio rashly takes revenge, she suffers terribly.

Modern( for our piece) :
What we are creating hero is she isn't in this piece as such, she is haunting a character that left her on her wedding day. She is going to have mental issues and we only see her appearance in and out of the scenes. But she is a big character she is the whole story about this piece.  She is haunting Claudio and she comes back till she gets justice.  No one knows who HERO IS? We find out further into the story why she killed herself.


Claudio:

Claudio(Shakespeare Version):  Claudio -  A young soldier who has won great acclaim fighting under Don Pedro during the recent wars. Claudio falls in love with Hero upon his return to Messina. His unfortunately suspicious nature makes him quick to believe evil rumors and hasty to despair and take revenge.


Modern:(for our piece):

Claudio is still a main character however he isn't the hero in this.  He is more the victim and he is guilty of what he has done in his past. He is in love with Hero but he left her at there wedding day because of rumours. Claudio is under a lot of stress and physically can't function.  We have turned it completely round how Claudio isn't the good guy in this he is guilty.



B&B

B&B( Shakespeare)  Beatrice -  Leonato’s niece and Hero’s cousin. Beatrice is “a pleasant-spirited lady” with a very sharp tongue. She is generous and loving, but, like Benedick, continually mocks other people with elaborately tooled jokes and puns. She wages a war of wits against Benedick and often wins the battles. At the outset of the play, she appears content never to marry.

Benedick -  An aristocratic soldier who has recently been fighting under Don Pedro, and a friend of Don Pedro and Claudio. Benedick is very witty, always making jokes and puns. He carries on a “merry war” of wits with Beatrice, but at the beginning of the play he swears he will never fall in love or marry.


Modern B&B: 

We are either thinking a lesbian couple or a couple showing different class. We wanted to loose the idea about how can different classes separate people. There marriage is ruined and they need something to save there marriage. So by coming to this hotel they want to help sort there marriage.

Benedict: will be more higher class and he would want to pay for the best. He won't accpet anything that isn't worth class . He is all about money and wears the fashionable expensive brands. He is very stubborn and it's either what he says goes or he won't like it . Beatrice is his love of his life but they are stuck in a really bad patch. 

Beatrice: she is more lower class money doesn't matter to her . She just wants to be loved and have a happy marriage. She doesn't take shit and she is also very stubborn. She wants to work this marriage out and she wants Benedict to put in effort to the releationship . She doesn't like how Benedict likes everything worth money. There social class sometimes clash . 

Leonato (shakespeaers) -  A respected, well-to-do, elderly noble at whose home, in Messina, Italy, the action is set. Leonato is the father of Hero and the uncle of Beatrice. As governor of Messina, he is second in social power only to Don Pedro.

Leonato modern(modern): will be the hotel manger and will be in control or what goes on with the hotel.  


We are currently building on some more characters we can use into the piece. We need more characters which will add comdey and a hotel is normally packed with different people.  But relating back to the text these are the characters we are going to be using . 

Research of Different Theatre pieces/ Ideas for theatre work

We have decided to look up different shows/ theatre companies that can relate to our show or ideas we can add in. My job with in the group was to look up more key information about faulty towers because, we are wanting to set the hotel a bit like that atmosphere. I have also looked into Benidorm because, I liked the comedy the show brings and we could think of characters to add into the piece.

Faulty Towers: 

The reason for looking into fault towers is because, we like the story line of how there is comedy added into the piece.  We like how each different character makes showing to the show. 

The hotel idea of how we have different characters walking in and out of the hotel we could, copy some of there characters.

Casting:   

John Cleese ........... Basil Fawlty
Prunella Scales ........ Sybil Fawlty
Andrew Sachs ........... Manuel
Connie Booth ........... Polly Sherman
Renee Roberts .......... Miss Gatsby
Gilly Flower ........... Miss Tibbs
Ballard Berkeley ....... Major Gowen

For example we have done the same idea for our hotel we have added a maid like Manuel in the faulty towers. Its going to be a dark comedy but, by adding key characters that will lighten the piece from the dark comedy.  So one of our research was really done on faulty towers of what sort of characters they use.


Also we have looked into PunkDrunk and watched some of what they do ....

 PUNKDRUNK:

 

 

Punchdrunk is a British theatre company, formed in 2000, the pionee of a form of "immersive" theatre in which the audience is free to choose what to watch and where to go.This format is related to "promenade theatre".
The company was founded by its artistic director Felix Barrett. Its executive director is Griselda Yorke. Company members include associate director and choreographer Maxine Doyle, enrichment director Peter Higgin, producer Colin Nightingale, sound and graphic designer Stephen Dobbie, technical director Euan Maybank and design associates Livi Vaughan and Bea Minns.
The company is a National Portfolio Organisation with Arts Council England.

 

 

what I have been doing, is looking on youtube for different things punkdrunk has done and I have been watching ready to be able to get physical movements or to pick up anything to add into the piece

 

 

 

 

How the brain works / Nervous system

How does your brain work?

Your brain is the hub of your nervous system. It is made up of 100 billion nerve cells - about the same as the number of trees in the Amazon rainforest. Each cell is connected to around 10,000 others. So the total number of connections in your brain is the same as the number of leaves in the rainforest - about 1000 trillion.














 

Every animal you can think of -- mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians -- has a brain. But the human brain is unique. Although it's not the largest, it gives us the Power to speak, imagine and problem solve. It is truly an amazing organ.
The brain is an incredible number of tasks including the following:

• It controls body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and breathing.
• It accepts a flood of information about the world around you from your various senses (seeing hearing, smelling, tasting and touching).
• It handles your physical movement when walking, talking, standing or sitting.
• It lets you think, dream, reason and experience emotions.

All of these tasks are coordinated, controlled and regulated by an organ that is about the size of a small head of cauliflower.
Your brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves make up a complex, integrated information-processing and control system known as your central nervous system. In tandem, they regulate all the conscious and unconscious facets of your life. The scientific study of the brain and nervous system is called neuroscience or neurobiology. Because the field of neuroscience is so vast -- and the brain and nervous system are so complex -- this article will start with the basics and give you an overview of this complicated organ.
We'll examine the structures of the brain and how each section controls our daily functions, including motor control, visual processing, auditory processing, sensation, learning, memory and emotions.

Facts about stress

Looking into research on the internet I wanted to find out what the effects of stress can have on someone. The reason for looking into this research is because, we want of the characters he can't cope he is losing his mind. For us as actors to able to show that in our show we need to research different reasons which help us get a sense of how to play that certain character.

What is post-traumatic stress disorder?

Post-traumatic stress disorder affects people who have suffered a terrifying experience like a violent attack, car crash or earthquake. Sufferers often have recurrent nightmares of their ordeal and may feel guilty about their survival. They may also suffer from vivid memories or flashbacks - reliving the event through sounds, smells or feelings that seem as real as they did at the time. Post-traumatic stress disorder was first recognised as 'shell shock' in veterans of the First World War.

What is depression?

People with depression may have feelings of sadness that persist for weeks, months or years. They can experience different symptoms, including lack of energy and motivation, weight and appetite changes, sleep problems, anxiety and tearfulness. Some sufferers feel suicidal. About 15% of people will have a bout of severe depression at some point in their lives. However, the exact number of people with depression is hard to estimate because many people do not get help, or are not formally diagnosed with the condition.

Each of these our examples we can put into the piece to relate to how the character should be acting. Also by researching this information I have found it really interesting because, I have been able to find interesting key facts of how the brain actually works.  And how different parts of your brain works.

The factors Of Depression and Post-traumatic stress disorder is because, our character is going through a lot ever since his wife to be killed herself. He is lost and doesn't know who he is anymore.  Personally I think by researching different effects it may have on it will be a good starting stone for the research.

The type of atmosphere we want for the hotel

We want it very dark and depressing atmosphere but we have funny characters to keep it funny and create that dark comedy to the audience.  But the picture in my mind is these images and how i created the play in my head and how i wanted it to look like. Its what i think of when i read the play or what i think about it. I want it to look like this dark.

But the charatcers will bring the piece alive and colorful by the comedy

Brain

The brains of people with depression, even in remission, respond differently to feelings of guilt, suggesting Freud was right, said researchers from the University of Manchester in the UK who compared magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of people with a history of depression to those of people who had never had it. If further tests prove successful, they suggest the finding could lead to the first brain scan marker for future risk of depression.

The new study, part-funded by the Medical Research Council was published on 4 June in an online-first issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

It is the first piece of research to show there is a brain mechanism behind Freud's classical idea that depression differs from normal sadness by proneness to exaggerated feelings of guilt or self-blame.

Dr Roland Zahn, from the University's School of Psychological Sciences, told the press:

"For the first time, we chart the regions of the brain that interact to link detailed knowledge about socially appropriate behavior - the anterior temporal lobe - with feelings of guilt - the subgenual region of the brain - in people who are prone to depression."

For their study, Zahn and colleagues took fMRI scans of people while they imagined themselves or their best friend acting badly (eg in a mean, tactless or bossy way) towards others, and said what they felt, for instance, guilt, shame, contempt, or disgust, and whether this was toward self or another.

The participants were 25 people who had been in remission from depression for over a year (16 of whom were not currently taking anti-depressants), and 22 healthy volunteers with no history of depression who served as controls.

Previous studies have suggested that the subgenual cingulate cortex and adjacent septal region (SCSR) become active when we feel guilty, and in healthy people with a low risk of depression, this effect is "selective relative to equally unpleasant feelings associated with blaming others (indignation/anger)", write the researchers.

The anterior temporal lobe (ATL) has also been consistently implicated in moral feelings such as guilt, but unlike the SCSR, this part of the brain is "activated irrespective of the type of moral feeling, whether it is guilt or indignation", they note.

There is also evidence to suggest the right superior ATL is important for constructing social concepts that help us make different judgements (eg such as distinguishing merely critical from fault-finding behavior). This in turn protects us against over-generalization and self-blame (eg my pointing out a typing error in a colleague's piece of writing means "I am critical" as opposed to "I am unlikable").

So, prior to this latest study, it had already been proposed, but not shown, that a coupling between these two brain areas, or "ATL-SCSR functional coupling", helps people with low risk of depression blame themselves in an "adaptive" way, without damaging their self-worth or hating themselves.

Zahn and colleagues found the fMRI scans showed the coupling between these brain regions was weaker in the group with a history of depression than in the healthy controls with no history of depression.

"We corroborated the prediction of a guilt-selective reduction in ATL-SCSR coupling in MDD [major depressive disorder] vs controls ... and revealed additional medial frontopolar, right hippocampal, and lateral hypothalamic areas of decoupling while controlling for medication status and intensity of negative emotions," they write.

They also found that lower levels of ATL-SCSR coupling were linked with higher scores on a validated measure of overgeneralized self-blame.

"Interestingly, this 'decoupling' only occurs when people prone to depression feel guilty or blame themselves, but not when they feel angry or blame others," explained Zahn.

"This could reflect a lack of access to details about what exactly was inappropriate about their behaviour when feeling guilty, thereby extending guilt to things they are not responsible for and feeling guilty for everything," he suggested.

Zahn and colleagues suggest the finding is important because it shows there are brain mechanisms that may explain why some people respond to stress with depression rather than aggression.

The team is now testing whether these findings can predict the risk of depression following remission. If they succeed, this could lead to the first fMRI marker for risk of future depression.

Looked through this information regarding guilt and shame and the affects.

Guilt and Shame

We all know that pinching sensation of guilt when we feel like we've done something wrong. It's an unpleasant feeling that can be hard to shake until we apologize for our wrongdoing. Shame can have a similar effect, making us feel badly about who we are. These two emotions are often confused with each other and in the psychology world can be controversial when it comes to defining them and their differences. "There isn't really a lot of agreement about how to define guilt and shame and there are various thoughts on what makes them different," says psychotherapist and authorBeverly Engel. Here we delve into what each word means and uncover what makes them different.

What is Guilt?

Guilt is both a cognitive and an emotional experience that occurs when a person believes that he or she has violated a moral standard and is responsible for that violation.^[1] People can feel guilty about something they actually did or didn'tdo.

Spiritual teacher Iyanla Vanzant says the three reasons people feel guilty are because they:

1. Did something wrong but, knew better
2. Caused hurt, harm, or injury to someone
3. Disappointed or upset someone^[3]

What is Shame?

Webster defines shame as "a condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute."^[4] Shame can be explained as the discomfort people feel when they don't live up to the expectations of others or the remorse and/or embarrassment they feel when they think they have let others down.^[5]

What's the Difference Between Guilt and Shame?

In his book, "Shame: The Power of Caring," clinical psychologist Gershen Kaufman explains that the meaning of the two experiences is as different as feeling inadequate is from feeling immoral. "In this comparison, immoral goes with guilt and inadequate goes with shame," says Engel.

Engel adds that "another clear distinction I've heard is that guilt is when you feel disappointed in yourself for violating your own personal value system or your own code of behavior while shame is when you actually feel disappointed in yourself because you failed in your own mind in some way, whether you failed to cope with something or a failure or weakness of yours has been exposed in front of other people who define it as wrong," she adds.

Still, Engel says another way to distinguish the two is to think of it this way: when we feel guilt, we feel badly about something we did or neglected to do and our conscious bothers us whereas when we feel shame we feel badly aboutwho we are in general.

Is Guilt Worse than Shame or Vice Versa?

Since guilt is tied to what we think is moral and immoral, when we violate a moral standard, we feel guilty and want to right the wrong. Because of this, guilt actually helps us as a society and as individuals to maintain standards for right and wrong.Guilt is viewed more positively. If somebody feels guilty and they admit that they did something wrong, we like that because we want to forgive people who admit they're wrong. However, as a culture we have shame about shame. We equate shame with weakness," says Engel.

Effects of Guilt and Shame

Feeling guilty or shameful can have different effects on people. The following are some common things that these emotions can do to a person.

Guilt

"Feeling guilty overtime can cause someone to become depressed and self-destructive," says Engel. It can also cause you to do the following:^[6]

• Try hard to make things right by overworking and over-giving in an attempt to to make everyone happy
• Ignore your needs and desires in order to avoid upsetting others
• Become overly sensitive to making right decisions in your personal actions, choice of words and decisions
• Become fearful of doing or saying something wrong to the point where you give in and choose to stay within the status quo
• Lack decision-making skills since you always want to make the "right" choice
• Create self-denial by always putting other people first
• Become emotionally closed off and only able to see the negative aspects of life
• Use the discomfort of guilt to motivate you to change things in your life to eliminate the guilt
• Use guilt as a mask for your low self-esteem
• Make irrational decisions based on the guilt

Shame

"Shame is the most destructive of human emotions. Shame destroys a person's self-esteem and sense of who they are and causes people really serious problems. It's core issue of addiction and can cause other issues like suicide,depression and anger," says Engel.

People with shame may also experience the following:

• Have issues with intimacy and therefore have superficial relationships
• Find themselves in relationships with people who encourage their ongoing experience of low self-worth
• Isolate themselves from others
• Have self-condemning attitudes and talk negatively about themselves, which can lead to self-loathing and self-sabotaging behavior
• Tend to bring others down in an attempt to make themselves feel better
• Seek perfection to avoid future shame
• Aim for power in attempt to feel more valuable
• Blame others for their faults and problems to avoid shame
• Be overly nice to others in hopes to prove their worth

How to Overcome Feelings of Guilt and Shame

Since guilt often arises from something you've done or think you've done, Engel says an easy remedy is to apologize for the wrongdoing. "But shame can be something that was done to you. People who have been abused feel shame and they didn't do anything wrong so shame is a more difficult feeling to get rid of," she adds.

Engel believes that teaching people self-compassion is a way to heal shame. Directors of the Conflict Information Consortium at the University of Colorado agree. "By showing people empathy and caring, we indicate that doing something wrong does not necessarily reflect on the person as a whole. By differentiating between the action and the actor, we can help prevent shame and its negative connotations, while still encouraging a healthy sense of right, wrong, and guilt when necessary."