Monday the 6th of April. The 29 students on the SVAPA tour started their day with a trip to south bank to view the historical remains of the Rose Theatre before undertaking a tour of the re-constructed Globe theatre. This provided an insight into the way that Shakespeare’s plays were performed when they were first written.
After a quick lunch we attended a workshop with the assistant director of ‘Man and Superman’, a play we saw later that night. During the workshop we read through scenes one to three of the play and, by using students, it was explained to us the characters,
The story goes that there are a close knit bunch of friends/neighbours that care very much for one another. Upon the death of her father, Ann and her sister seek a new guardian. In the will it appoints her grandfather figure Roebuck Ramsden and her crush and childhood friend Jack Tanner. Ramsden and Tanner dislike each other and the arrangement even more. They both set out to convince her to chose Ramsden but she refuses.
Octaves, friend of Tanner and madly in love with Ann, proposes twice to Ann and is rejected. It is then found out his sister Violet is secretly married and with child! There is much confusion and in the midst Tanner realises Ann’s feelings for him and he takes off to get away, not wanting anything to do with her. As he’s driving along Tanner and his driver get stopped and robbed and taken by bandits. But they end up being good lads and they all have a nice chat and the leader of the bandits, Mendoza, is actually a previous lover of Tanner’s drivers sister, Louisa. The rest eventually catch up to them and they go their separate ways.
They decide to travel a little further for their holiday and they soon find out Violet’s secret husband is Octavious’ American friend Hector and his father does not approve of the match because Violet does not come from a wealthy family like him. However he grows to love her.
Octavious gets rejected by Ann once again and he finds out she's in love with Tanner. He’s heart broken but gives his blessing because he loves her. Tanner, after much struggle, is persuaded to marry Ann and despite his rep and pride being hurt, he does love her.
For the workshop we were split into two groups. During the workshop group 1 played the bandits and had to figure out ways to stop cars passing by and how they would rob them. Our plans were more spontaneous and when worked through, most times they ended pretty gruesome. It was tremendous fun and when we later watched the play we were familiar with some of the lines.
In group 2 we played some games and used some acting techniques that the actors in the play had used in the first activity; We were split into groups of 4 and given a monologue from the play. We had to walk around the room saying to monologue and doing special actions when we reached punctuation marks e.g. stop and turn 180 degrees for a full stop, pause our walking for a comma, speed up for an exclamation mark and so on.
This little activity really helped us recognise how important it is to acknowledge these little pauses in punctuation. Next we used an exert from the first scene and were given a chart for which we had to write facts and questions based only on our knowledge from those few lines. Our last game of the day in group 2 was to answer one of our questions about our character by making a little scene in our groups. These were great fun to watch.
After having a lovely dinner at an Italian restaurant close to the National Theatre, we then made our way to the show. The show was amazing with Ralph Fiennes, a well credentialed stage and screen actor, playing the major part of Jack Tanner. The vivid sets interchanged throughout to compliment each scene. The actors were probably the best part. It was incredible to see world class stage and screen performers. We watched on, remembering everything we had learnt in the workshops earlier in the day.
After the end of the show we travelled on the underground back to the hostel. We all headed straight to bed, ready for the next day.
Hannah, Asher and Celeste
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