Berkoff: Decadence

Once Mrs Pringle made sure we all understood Metamorphosis and Steven Berkoff a bit more she then gave us all another Steven Berkoff script called Decadence. Before we were given this piece of script in previous lessons we went to the Year 11's class and watched them perform Crave by Sarah Kaine. Crave is similiar to decadence in the way the script is set out with no stage directions or punctuation. The only thing to break the two scripts up were slashes between 'sentences.'

For the script decadence we were told to choose our partners so me and Paige chose each other because I think we connect well and listen to each others opinions and ideas well.
As a pair we sat down together and gave the script a few read throughs to get the idea of it a bit more then we decided to choose different lines for each other and annotate/highlighted the script.

Deciding on where we would have the audience was very tricky. Me and Paige changed our mind a lot because we did not want to be original and boring because Steven Berkoff is very different to this. We finally decided on having two chairs centre stage with walking space width apart and we are going to walk into the audience to break the fourth wall.
Another aspect we looked at was our costumes/makeup. Me and Paige spoke quite a bit about this as I think it is very important and makes a huge impact on the audiences views on the characters. We decided to stick to the colours black, white and red. Black and white were used in Berkoff's plays a lot so we chose to stick by this and we chose the colour red because it can mean a numerous amount of things like, seduction, sex, danger, blood, death etc... We are both going to be costumed the same. White tops, black trousers, white or black shoes, a white drama half mask and bright red lipstick. Steven Berkoff was quite a strange playwright so this fits perfectly.

Berkoff: Metamorphosis

As part of the A Level drama course we have to study two different playwrights. The second is Steven Berkoff. The first script we looked at by Steven Berkoff was Metamorphosis.

Originally, Metamorphosis came from Kafka's famous story. Steven Berkoff adapted it into a modern day version. It is about a family named Samsa but really based on the character Gregor of the family. Gregor balances all his and his families worries on his back making him depressed until he wakes up one morning transformed into an enormous dung beetle. His family allow lodgers to stay in their house whilst Gregor is like this but he becomes very hard to handle...

During lessons we were put into groups of 5 and had to pick a character to play and practice it as a group. I worked with Paige, Michelle, Taylor and John. The first lesson we looked at the script I did not have a part because there was too many people so I helped direct my group and help improve/advise different techniques Berkoff used to make sure they get the grades they should. In the second lesson the lodgers were involved so I played the character of the lodgers which was quite hard as I had to be 3 lodgers all in 1. Although this was quite difficult to do it was also very interesting adapting to it.

Introduction to Harold Pinter...

Harold Pinter

Pinter started writing his own plays in 1957 and his first ever play was 'The Room.' This contained a range of different elements which would be recognised with Pinter's later work including menace and the unknown without any explanation or reason for the action.

Another play wrote in 1957 by Pinter was 'The Dumb Waiter.' This play is about two hired hit men employed by a mysterious organisation to murder an unknown victim. In this second play Pinter added an element of comedy to the menace which is played out through the small talk the two hit men have which hides their growing anxiety.

Pinter thought it was not necessary to have explanations as to why the characters have said or the actions they have taken. By doing this and writing more and more plays Pinter won several awards which included the nobel prize for literature.

Harold Pinter (the son of a Jewish Tailor) was born in East London in 1930. He first started off writing poetry for different magazines when he was a teenager. As he was growing up he studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Central School of Speech and Drama. Pinter soon left to start an acting career under the stage name of David Baron as actor's in them days did not like using their real names for the plays they perform. As his career went on he travelled around Ireland in a Shakespearean company and spent years and years working in provincial repertory before finally making a decision of committing to playwriting.