Week 5 – Shakespeare Today

Analyse contemporary Shakespeare productions with reference to live performances you may have seen or clips of footage available online. You should comment on what you notice about them and how they differ from what you know about the original performance conditions of Shakespeare’s work.

Consider how these productions are employing all the techniques, technology and resources of modern theatre.

I have seen three different Shakespeare Theatre Plays in which I have been impressed by all. Those were Imogen at the Globe Theatre, The Taming of the Shrew at the Globe Theatre, and Twelfth Night at the National Theatre.

Now

For Imogen, I was able to understand what was going on, what the storyline was, and how everything was pieced together. This is because of the theatrical techniques, technology and resources used. To start off with, they changed the way the text was said so that it gave more of a street and gang connotation. However, in The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night, I found it a little bit more difficult and this was because of the way they performed with their body language along with the words; I couldn’t quite relate or be able to understand it’s context fully. The costume in Imogen wasn’t as expected as they had modernised the play in a contextual way; portraying street youths and the stereotypes, as well as archetypes, of young people themselves. The costume in The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night seemed to be slightly stereotypical with a little bit of a change. In Imogen for example, their costume was presented as most characters were wearing designer tracksuits, bags, trainers; i.e. Nike, Adidas, Puma, Stone Island, Ellesse, etc. In aid of their costumes was the colours used to match them, their fellow ‘gang’ members, and the set of the stage which represented their territory. Examples are, white and gold, black and green. The colours resembled them and their significance towards other characters as well. The set in Twelfth Night was extraordinary. It was completely unforeseen. It was a huge staircase-pyramid type of shape which had revolving walls to change the set of the scenes. The sets in these plays ranged from huge and extravagant, to a fair size with fairly large props.

The lighting seemed to add the effect even more as it enhanced the atmosphere and was made clear, with the wash of colours, which territory was who’s in Imogen, and the atmosphere’s in The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night. In Imogen, their use of props was versatile as there were specific colours for specific props which symbolised or represented a certain group. However, the props in The Taming of the Shrew helped add the storyline to the play, and in Twelfth Night, the props helped with characterisation. This therefore shows that props can be used in a variety of different forms to portray or evoke a specific type of technique, feeling, or sometimes enhancements of characters. The sound in Imogen and The Taming of the Shrew illustrated to the audience that it was a more modern version, due to the fact that they were using particular types of songs to go with their characters at times within the play, using the rapping artists Stormzy and Skepta for Imogen and singer, Jessie J for The Taming of the Shrew. Though, in those two plays they used recorded audio, in Twelfth Night, they used a lived band to play live music between transitions of scenes and sets, and this consisted of a pianist, a saxophonist, and a few string musicians. The way that they performed the stage fighting in Imogen was clever and very technological in the sense that they used harnesses to hoist people up into the air, by using others to walk up and down the frame ladders of the stage. The actors on stage in all three plays were also gender balanced too which is something that it very common in today’s theatre society.

Before

In Shakespeare’s time, not everyone would have been able to understand what was going on or being said, based on the fact that not everyone was privileged, or wealthy enough to get an education by attending school.  Those that did understand obviously were privileged enough, but could also have been taught by others. The costumes were totally different due to the fact that Shakespeare’s plays were stereotyped as being upper class performances, which therefore was thought that everyone would be dressed up in frilly dresses (if playing a female) and cravats. As time went on, the idea of big, exaggerated and stereotypical costumes began to become less glamorised, and so they became simplistic at times. They never really had as vibrant and bright colours that we use unnecessarily nowadays, but what they did have, and how they used it seemed to be just as important and special to them. The characters with the brightest and most vibrant colours, signified them to have more importance over the other characters. They had very basic lighting which meant that there was no extra major addition to the atmosphere or feelings created. They didn’t have a lot of props as budgets were small back then, but the props they used had to mean something particularly to resemble or signify something important in the play. Their use of sound was quite minimal to the extent where it was very traditional to their era. The music used was generally quite slow and sometimes they even had a live band perform, in which was similar in The Taming of the Shrew. Stage fighting would have been overly exaggerated to the point where it would actually look fake and unrealistic because they didn’t think of any creative ways to make them interesting. The major difference between the eras is that in Shakespeare’s time, there were no female actresses. This was because women weren’t allowed to perform in theatres and so men had to play all gender roles. Women would have been looked down upon if they had been actresses in theatres, more so than they already were.

Theatrical Employments

All or most of the productions nowadays, are taking everything for granted. Essentially, they have nearly limitless supplies of things needed for a play to be performed at a really high standard. This is because of the advanced technology we are open to, and the fact that there are loads of specialists in particular fields of production, the processes as well as the work, is able to run more smoothly without disruptions. The technology used can create illusions and visual effects to add to performances showing that there is a special effect and need for the technology which therefore can be seen as a cheat to draw in the audience. The techniques of modern theatre are being inserted and used all the time, as you can sometimes tell when a character has a specific objective that they are playing on stage with other characters. Playing on stage is a good way to keep a scene interesting because it shows that something new, and unexpected can always be created on stage, which is the reason as to why audiences sometimes receive different experiences from the same play, but from two different nights. We also seem to use as much theatrical resources as possible, thinking that it is essential to do as much as we can in a play to make it interesting because audiences are used to excitement and business sometimes. These theatrical employments are successful because they capture the essence of what their job entails and gives the audiences an enhancement on what they have witnessed.