Ancient Greek theatre.

Today we have learnt alot about ancient Greek theatres.
Ancient Greek theatres, or amphitheatres, originated between 550 - 220 BC. Performances were divided into 3 different genres; tragedy, comedy, and satyr.
Theatres were designed to hold a chorus of up to 50 people and an audience of about 14,000. In 465 BC theatres began using backdrops and scenic walls which were hung up for scenery, cranes were used to simulate flight and trap doors for lifting up actors. Wheeled wagons were also used to position dead bodies.
There were rarely more than 3 actors and these were all male. Becauses of shortages they had to play multiple roles. They wore padded clothing in order to appear larger.
There are many similarities between theatres then and now such as they are both round so that sound can spread, and today many are still designed to hold massive amounts.

Journal

9/10/09 - Today I comlpeted my 'Musical poster collage' an uploaded it onto blogger.

15/10/09 - Today we began research for a presentation. I researched the 1940's and discoveres that Rogers and Hammerstein created a string of popular broadway musicals.

21/10/09 - Today I contributed to our groups presentation by researching information and sending to the others for use in the presentation. this useful information was easy to find as I used sites such as musicals 101 and wikipedia.

11/11/09 - Today I created a powerpoint describing my roles in set design and photography in preperation for the performance on the 1st of December.

13/11/09 - Today I finished up the powerpoint on my roles.

18/11/09 - Today I performed a test for images using a piece of software called rasterbator. These images are to be used a scenery during the performance.

19/11/09 - Today I created a piece of scenery for the performance and found images for other
pieces of scenery.

21/11/09 - Today I drew a casset player for a prop in the performance.

25/11/09 - Today I made more scenery using rasterbator, I feel that it has turned out well.

26/11/09 - full day - Today we had all day to work towards the performance. I worked on alot of scenery and the casset player, which we had to start again and paint.

27/11/09 - Today me and Michael finished the casset player and I finished the last of the scenery. With just a few days left I am looking forward to having everything finished.

1/12/09 - Today we all had some time to make the last preperations, we stuck the scenery up on the black boards and gave the casset player some card to stand up on.

1/12/09 - During the performance I Took some photos of what was happening on stage and changed some scenery .

Musical posters collage.

This is my musical poster collage. I started by searching ' Musical posters' I then compiled them together using microsoft powerpoint. I chose these musicals because they are well known and because of this I chose to use them so I could familarise myself with them and easily identify the posters.

Unit 2 Performance

2.1 To understand the development of a musical from the 1920's to the present day.

So far in this section of work we have researched the history of musicals since the 1920's. We also created a collage out of posters for many different musicals. Then we watched a performance called "Dancing in the streets", after this I wrote a review to practice our review writing skills.

A review of Dancing in the streets.

Dancing in the streets is a performance based on the mo-town era. It could be considered a tribute to the great artists of this time. Singers sung songs produced by various artists such as; the Supremes, Stevie wonder, Diana Ross and more. When ever a song by an artist was played during the performance a narrator gave background information into the artist, any one who wants to learn more about artists from the mo-town era should consider this performance.

Many different effects are utilised on stage; machines such as the smoke machine, spotlights, and other stage lights to create a mood. To give more effect to the songs, a band was performing in the unlit areas of the stage. Large images of buildings and artists were placed in the back ground and lights were shone on to them at certain times to create an effect.

In conclusion I found the performance to have a slight educational value, however it is a must see for anyone who loves the music of the mo-town era. With brilliant costumes, special effects and professional acting I give this performance 6/10.