Physical Theatre

What is Physical Theatre?
Physical Theatre is a type of theatre where the people performing use more movement and gestures and less dialogue to show a scene.

Examples of Physical Theatre-

 In this picture there are 4 people that are trying to show an example of physical theatre where the person on the bottom( David) is being a rocking horse and the two people on the side( Zenia and Yuki), are being the arms/ sides of the rocking horse and the person on the top ( Mehul) is the one going through the house and he sees a rocking horse and sits on it. Since Physical Theatre is a type of theatre where you have to use your body movement to show a scene, we worked as a group to show the audience what object were trying to show with no dialogue and only the body.

 Since the house is a haunted house whenever someone sits on the rocking horse, it starts to move by itself backwards and forwards and we were showing that with just our bodies. In this scene every person has moved forward to show that the rocking chair has moved and the character on top has his expression changed to show that he is shocked and scared about something like this and that it could actually happen in real life. Here we also show no dialogue and only expressions and movement with our body and with different gestures to show a scene that the audience could understand.

In this picture we are showing a different scene with the same group of people and now the same person( Mehul) continues to walk around the house and starts to see different types of scary things now. In this scene Mehul walks down a corridor to see different manikins that are all in different poses and are mysteriously rolling his as he continues to walk down the corridor. In this scene also there is no dialogue at all and just body movement to show the scene. As he continues to walk the manikins keep moving their eyes towards the way he is moving to creep him out even more which gets him scared.

As he finishes walking around the manikins and the corridor the manikins are still looking at him mysteriously which gets him really confused and nervous because he has never seen something like that again and it creeps him out as manikins can not actually move on their own and look at people as they are moving. This and the other pictures are ways to show a scene with just body movement and gestures which is what physical theatre is and we were able to present that in class.

Is All Physical Theatre without dialogue/words?
Not all physical theatre is without dialogue or words. Physical Theatre is a type of theatre that does mainly focus on physical movement but it can include words/ dialogue to explain what is going on in the scene better. Physical Theatre can be done with the use of dialogue to broaden the meaning of the performance and it can also be mixed with different kinds of elements like: Dance, Music and Mime.

Physical Theatre Practitioner- 

A physical theatre practitioner is someone who practices or has written theatrical theory that is a definable theatrical form. An example of physical theatre practitioner would be DV8 and they are one of the main practitioners of this art form. They mainly look at how movement can bring out the best dramatic potential and their work mainly consists of music, dance and drama also known as a crossroad. They are also very well known for using Physical Theatre to show problems between humans and also social/cultural issues that people have.

What art forms does Physical Theatre combine?

 Some of the art form that Physical Theatre combines are :music, dance, and the use of media or visual images. These art forms along with a little bit of dialogue can help show the scene better with showing the audience more meaning rather than just using your body and for them to not understand.

Play Text- Physical Theatre:

You could use Physical Theatre in a performance of a play text such as Romeo and Juliette where you could show their story of love with just a little bit of dialogue and instead more music, body movement and dance where the audience could be able to understand how the story worked just with gestures and mimes. You could also show the performance of play text of Macbeth by showing all the action that happens and the different scenes with just physical movement which would be something very stylish to see.

Things that I did not know-

I actually never knew what Physical Theatre was before and I was so surprised when I heard about it as I never knew that there would be so many different kinds of Drama that you could do and that there were people such as Practitioners that would actually practice the art form and do it as their job to become a professional at it and perform in front of a lot of people. I never knew that you could be able to show Drama with just physical movement and a little bit of dialogue and music or dance.

References:

BBC Bitesize - GCSE Drama - Physical theatre - Revision 1. 2016. BBC Bitesize - GCSE Drama - Physical theatre - Revision 1. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/ztfk6sg/revision. [Accessed 17 February 2016].

Final Domestic Violence Video

Reflection for Domestic Violence Video

For our Drama project for Domestic violence, I worked in a group to create an advertisement about Domestic Violence and the people in my group were Me, Zenia and Amr. For our advertisement we decided the characters would be a wife and a husband and they would be watching and advertisement about domestic violence where Amr and Zenia are the husband and wife. Zenia is a famous actor and acts in advertisements and her husband Mehul is a business man and one day when her ad comes on TV she wants to show it to him and when he see's it he gets really angry and thinks that it is really abusive and something bad. They then go to sleep angry.

Mehul then wakes up in a dream after watching that advertisement and in the dream he comes back home from a stressed day at work. He thinks that to remove the stress he would go and drink alcohol. He then gets really drunk and gets angry at his wife for not restocking the fridge even though he drank all of it and threatens to kill her. He starts holding knives towards her and pushing her down to the full her about to kill her when she screams and Mehul wakes up from his dream.

Once Mehul wakes up he starts panting heavily and then when Zenia is sleeping he say's I would never do that to you in a creepy way and then it ends in a fact about the amount of women that die from domestic violence every year.

The main aim for our video was to show people what domestic violence is about and give them knowledge about what really happens. We were also trying to show them that there are feelings inside you eve when you do get drunk or stressed out and you should always make the right decision because if you want to kill your wife then why did you marry her in the first place? We were also trying to show the audience that domestic violence can happen or start because of many different things and can be something that is so quick and deadly.

The different body language that we used was showing fear with our body by backing away when they are getting threatened and also the body language where the husband is kicking the wife and when the ad is going on in the TV and the husband is kicking the wife there as well.

Our group did many things well which were using different elements of Drama like freeze frames and voices in the persons head. We also had really good editing and a really good idea to show the dream and the advertisement inside an advertisement which were both about domestic violence to involve the characters more.

The negatives in our group was that we were not able to manage our time very well and not meet the deadline because of a group member that left the group which meant we had to record everything all over again. Even though that happened we were able to finish the video with characters played twice and better quality with less time.

I think for this Domestic Violence advertisement we did quite well to show our point and how bad it can be and how it can start with really small things and that people should not support it or do it around the world!