Puppetry Performance

Our first performance of the verbatim piece went fairly smoothly.
The only issue we had was during the bus stop scene where the 'male' puppets leg fell off. Unfortunately the puppeteers on the puppet didn't notice until the puppets were back at the table. If they had of noticed sooner should they have acted out about it? Would it have taken away from the seriousness of the issue we were trying to raise?

After the performance we received a lot of good feedback asking about the topic and how we went about collecting data. We also received opinions and a small debate about whether or not other people dealt with this kind of harassment and a few conversations after the play lead onto where the piece could go from here.

with more research and more time it would be interesting to face more difficult issues and experience than what we performed. However unfortunately the research we gathered didn't have anything particularly shocking. It was difficult to get people to talk about their experiences let alone to get really mentally scaring material out of people. That was just one thing that would have always been difficult to get from people as it is a very personal experience.

Q: why puppets?
Puppets allowed us to discounted our prior thoughts that we have about somebody before they talk. We judge people from their clothes, hair and how they present themselves. With puppets we can not project an image of a 'stereotype' onto it and therefore we listen better to what they have to say.

Violence in Hamelt

Violence in Hamlet

Suicide

Ophelia (Hamlet)
Ophelia, driven insane by Hamlet's cruelty and the murder of her beloved father, plunges from a tree branch into the current below. Although her fall is an accident, Ophelia makes no attempt to save herself, and thus her drowning is viewed as a suicide.

Murder

Polonius (Hamlet)
Acting as a spy for King Claudius, Polonius hides behind a curtain in Gertrude's chamber to listen to her conversation with Hamlet. Hearing a noise, Hamlet stabs through the curtain and kills the old eavesdropper. 

Gertrude (Hamlet)
The Queen drinks from the poisoned chalice of wine intended for Hamlet. She dies exclaiming, "The drink, the drink! I am poison'd" (5.2.320). 

Claudius (Hamlet)
Hamlet stabs Claudius with the poisoned rapier and then forces him to drink from the poisoned goblet. 

Assassination and Execution

Hamlet's Father (Hamlet)
Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, assassinated Hamlet's father by pouring the "juice of cursed hebenon" (1.5.63) in his ear while he slept in his orchard. Hebenon is a folk name for Henbane, the expressed juice of the fresh plant, Hyoscyamus niger. Other folk names for Henbane include Black Nightshade, Cassilago, Devil's Eye, and Jupiter's Bean. The death of Hamlet's father was inspired by a real event in 1538, when the Duke of Urbino was killed by a poisoned lotion rubbed into his ears by his barber. 

Killed in Combat

Hamlet (Hamlet)
Hamlet is stabbed with the end of Laertes' poisoned rapier. 

Laertes (Hamlet)
During the final climatic fencing match, Laertes and Hamlet scuffle and their rapiers are accidentally exchanged. Hamlet grabs Laertes poisoned rapier and wounds Laertes. Laertes soon dies from the injury. 

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/violenceinshakespeare.html

What does each of these deaths say about the killer and the victim?

Building the Table

• Industrial materials, used scaffolding wood and scaffold poles to create the table
• We use clamps to allow the table to open and pivot
• Concerned about the weight of the wood? -how can we make this safer?

The inspiration for the table came from The Wired Cafe- the industrial feel of the cafe gave a nice aesthetic to the story and it felt like a place in which the character go for coffee as a group of friends.

Attaching the scaffolding boards to a piece of MDF, this will be the base that attaches all the pieces together and allows the boards to lift up for the end scene.

 Theses are the clamps that allow the table to open and pivot. We had trouble in rehearsal initially before making the table as the ends would not line up when pushes back together.

As you can see from the picture the attachment of the hinged support was not ideal for health and safety. We decided to drill a screw into the main body of the board, underneath to give a better lock onto the support, and to reduce the risk of injury. 

Window Inspiration

For the back wall of the stage I decided that the design needed a feature that helped influence the idea of inside and outside space.

For this i decided to create a back wall of windows to allow for the space to be changed between inside and outside.

The wall of windows at the back came developed from the idea of Paris and religion. As religion was a big influence during the time The Duchess of Malfi was written I wanted to use church window to emphasis this.

Inspiration

Art Deco Inspired Windows from 1935

Gaudis Casa Batlló in Barcelona

Window for the Notre Dame in Paris 

My final thoughts for the window meant that It should be tall and strong but simple enough not to distract away from the costumes

my final choice was...

I have edited this window in photoshop to make it to the size of my window cut outs. 

Using acetate i traced over the line of the frame with Pebeo Cerne Relief which creates a raised blakc line. I then used watered down acrylic to create the stained glass. To add effect and age to the windows, i scratched off bits of the paint.