Earthquakes Presentation

Slide 1 – Introduction
We are doing a presentation to about the play  "Earthquakes in London". we are soon going to be performing our own version of the play and would hope to inform you about what "Earthquakes in London" is really about.

Slide 2 – What’s in store?

•       What is the play?

•       Context

•       Style

•       Our production

Slide 3 – plot

What is the play? In a Nutshell, the story follows a woman called Freya who is in conflict to whether she should keep her child or have an abortion like her father says to save her from contributing to over population or a damaged world.  There is a range of other characters that affect her decisions and they also lead their own very separate stories in the play.

Slide 4 – Character Freya

“An important person who is involved in a competition, conflict, or cause”

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/protagonist

The protagonist of the play is Freya as the whole story revolves around her decision on whether or not to keep her baby.

Slide 5 – Character Robert

 “Someone who opposes someone else”

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/antagonist

The antagonist usually interferes with the protagonist so in this case Robert is the antagonist as he effects Freya’s decision about the baby.

Slide 6 – Character Tom

“A character in a play, novel, or the like who voices the central theme, philosophy, or point of view of the work”

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/raisonneur 

The Raisonneur of the play is tom as he voices the author (Mike Bartlett’s) opinions about the main themes. Personally I feel that this is the most important character as tom show the underlying reason of the play in his dialogue.

Slide 7 – Themes

• Global warming - air miles, over population
• Death- suicide and abortions
• Regret – character’s decisions that lead to bigger consequences
• The difference between reality and fantasy happens – how the play time jumps and the final scene with Grace when Freya realises it’s fake and it was all just a coping method
• Consumerism – we are being manipulated to use excess and blissful ignorance in the modern world

Slide 8 – Ruining the Earth

Throughout the play, it confronts the idea that we are slowly killing the earth through our uses of over population, global warming which is causing the ice caps to melt and therefore making there be a rise in sea levels. It also has many prologue scenes that try to show the effect of air miles on our planet. We feel that this is a very relevant subject to present to an audience as many people are going abroad to places like Ibiza just for fun. This relates to the quote by tom

“What’s more important, a stag weekend in Amsterdam or the entire nation of Tuvalu sinking underwater? Six flights a year to a second home, or starving families in Eritrea?”

Slide 9 – over population

·         In 2010 the UK’s population was 65,716,684

·

Less economically developed countries example:

·         Over population will keep on rising if we don’t help the newly industrialised countries, creating more pollution.

·         This links to Tom, the Raisonneur as he’s fighting for the rights of poorer countries. Opening our minds to show us how selfish we are.

·         Also this links to a quote from Brecht, the practitioner we decided to style our piece around.

Slide 10 – Brecht

·         Brecht was a German playwright, producer and director.

·         “Art is not a mirror held up to reality

But a hammer with which to shape it”

First quote - BERTOLT BRECHT, The Mother

 “Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it”

Second quote - BERTOLT BRECHT, Mother Courage and Her Children

Slide 11 – Brecht Epic theatre

Brecht believed in using epic theatre.

Epic theatre is a style of theatre that makes the actor present characters and themes instead of getting emotionally connected to their roles. It tries to make the audience not relate to the characters but judge them and question the decisions that are made in the play.

Brecht does this by breaking the forth wall, using placards which explain parts of the play, have scripts on stage, using narration or many other similar devises that can make the audience realise that they are watching a play not getting involved in the play.

Slide 12 - Feel of the play

In order to start to get a feel for the play we looked into what sort of sounds, smell and emotions would create the atmosphere of the play. Here is what we found.

Emotions

·         Loneliness

·         Love

·         Regret

·         Confusion

·         Lost

Smells

·         Smoke

·         Coffee

·         Petrol

·         Wet concrete

Sounds

·         Coffee pot

·         Cars

·         Planes

·         Club music

·         Static from old TV’s

·         Computers typing

Slide 13 – Contemporising

·         Using modern technology – phones, laptop and projector

·         Using less set than the original production – Bartlett originally wanted lots of set to show excess but we have reduced the set to make it practical for our stage

·         Using modern brands – Starbucks, Facebook and google

·         Using non naturalistic acting – we are using Brecht's style of acting

Slide 14 – staging

 act 1 to 3 staging:

we are using 3 catwalks which each face the audience and they have pathways in between them to show the cracks from the earthquake and the 3 different lives of each sister

act 4/5 staging:

we have to rows of staging that are horizontal to the audience and in the middle of the front row we have a ladder to symbolise the bridge which Freya falls off of.

For our version of the play we have decided to use small designs that will be constant throughout the play

•       Hanging pieces of garbage – tied by string from the ceiling

•       Vivid characters – bright colours and accessories

•       Lots of technology – phones, laptop, projections

•       Excess of people – lots of people on the stage at a time