Mini Task-Amy Taylor

Our devised piece of theatre was used to show awareness of suicide and to tell a story. We decided to do it in a story because this way the audience will get attached emotional to the characters and that way they can feel the feeling that the characters are feeling throughout the piece.

We used techniques such as masks, to dehumanise the actors because at this point facts would be shown to the audience for example how many people die a year from suicide, this is for the underline message of being scared of the facts. This technique was perfect in our piece and worked really well as the audience evaluation said that they were surprised with the facts and the masks really help to draw the attention away from the actors but more on to the facts. Masks were used in commedia dell’arte which is what initially influenced me to use them because it shows that tey are an effective tool in theatre. I researched masks in more depth and I found a French director that tried to push the boundaries of theatre and he goes by the name of Jacques Copeau , he “attempted to move away from Naturalism. He turned to sources such as Oriental Theatre and commedia dell'arte, both of which forms feature masks prominently.”

Harvard referencing

Wikipedia. (12/02/2013). Jacques Copeau. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Copeau. Last accessed 19/02/2013.