Bald Prima Donna,The
The Bald Prima Donna is a short play, drama
Writing by Eugene Ionesco and was Translated from French to English by Donald Watson.
This play is a hilariously maniacal assault on the banality of English suburbia. A family is discussed, every member of which is called Bobby Watson; a young couple is alarmed to find that they have been married for years. For such people, words can have no meaning. The play ends in a crescendo of Non-sequitur. the setting of the play is A typical middle-class English interior.
Author:
Samuel French Titles by Eugene Ionesco
(born Nov. 26, 1909, Slatina, Rom.died March 28, 1994, Paris, France) was a Romanian-born French playwright. He studied in Bucharest and Paris, where he lived from 1945. His first one-act antiplay, The Bald Soprano (1950), inspired a revolution in dramatic techniques and helped inaugurate the Theatre of the Absurd. He followed it with other one-act plays in which illogical events create an atmosphere both comic and grotesque, including The Lesson (1951), The Chairs (1952), and The New Tenant (1955). His most popular full-length play, Rhinoceros (1959), concerns a provincial French town in which all the citizens are metamorphosing into rhinoceroses. Other plays include Exit the King (1962) and A Stroll in the Air (1963). He was elected to the Acadmie Franaise in 1970. source:wikipedia.
videos:
I chose this video because it went into clear details and help me understand everything about the absurdists, what's it's about why it dint make sense how they came up with the idea. it even say how everything started.
Martin Julius Esslin, born Pereszlenyi Gyula Martonwas in Budaspest. He was born on the 6 of June 1918, and died the 24 of February 2002, at the age of (83). He moved to Vienna with his Family at a young age. He studied Philosophy and English at the University of Vienna and later studied directing under Max Reinhardt at the Reinhardt Seminar of Dramatic Arts in 1928; actor Milo Sperber was a classmate. of Jewish descent (but not of Jewish practice), he fled Austria in the wake of the Anschluss of 1938, moving to Brussels for a year and then moved on to England. He was a Hungarian-born English produce, dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama. he was best known for coining the term
"Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of the name. in the 1960's (Theatre of the Absurd) was called "the most influential theatrical text of the 1960's" by reviewers.
his book, Theatre of the Absurd, was written in 1962, he defined the "Theatre of the Absurd" as follows:
This attribute of "absurdity" was not accepted by many of the playwrights associated with this trend. Playwright Eugene lonesco stated that he did not like labels. Ahmad kamyabi Mask criticised Esslin for a purported "colonialist" quality of this title for the Avant-garde theater. However, his work inspired other playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Arrthur Adamov, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter (as well a Ionesco). He began working for the BBC in 1940, serving as a producer, script writer and broadcast. He headed BBC Radio Drama from 1963-77, having previously worked for the external European service. He was later given the position of head of Radio Drama, in which he tried to bring to life his dream of "national theatre of the air". He and his BBC team also translated many foreign works into English during this time. after leaving the BBC he help senior academic post at Florida State University from 1969 to 1976 and Stanford University from 1977 to 1988. source: Wikipedia
I chose this video because it went into clear details and help me understand everything about the absurdists, what's it's about why it dint make sense how they came up with the idea. it even say how everything started.
"Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of the name. in the 1960's (Theatre of the Absurd) was called "the most influential theatrical text of the 1960's" by reviewers.
his book, Theatre of the Absurd, was written in 1962, he defined the "Theatre of the Absurd" as follows:
| “ | The Theatre of the Absurd strives to express its sense of the senselessness of the human condition and the inadequacy of the rational approach by the open abandonment of rational devices and discursive thought. | ” |
This attribute of "absurdity" was not accepted by many of the playwrights associated with this trend. Playwright Eugene lonesco stated that he did not like labels. Ahmad kamyabi Mask criticised Esslin for a purported "colonialist" quality of this title for the Avant-garde theater. However, his work inspired other playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Arrthur Adamov, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter (as well a Ionesco). He began working for the BBC in 1940, serving as a producer, script writer and broadcast. He headed BBC Radio Drama from 1963-77, having previously worked for the external European service. He was later given the position of head of Radio Drama, in which he tried to bring to life his dream of "national theatre of the air". He and his BBC team also translated many foreign works into English during this time. after leaving the BBC he help senior academic post at Florida State University from 1969 to 1976 and Stanford University from 1977 to 1988. source: Wikipedia
Albert Camus, is generally regarded as the father of modern Absurd-ism, expanding on, or rejecting the notion of absurdity confronted and his existentialist philosophy. Camus wrote extensively about the subject during his life in the aftermath of the second world war. Theatre of the Absurd is the new genre that we are focusing on in lesson and aim to perform the scripted piece.Theatre of the Absurd is to make our acting and dialogue nonsensical as everything has to be absurd. nothing you do make sense.
These are some of the words that describe the word' Absurd':
. Crazy
. Ridiculous
. Non-sense
.No meaning
. Nonsensical
. Random and Silly
Furthermore, Absurd-ism is a non-linear narrative, meaning that there is no structure to it.
About: Theatre Of The Absurd.
an important factor about Absurd-ism is that war people were confused and wanted to know what the meaning of life was. Absurd-ism has no purpose, and absurdist plays are just for humour and comedy, followed by being entertaining towards the audience.
dramatic structure is changed in order to prevent life being meaning meaningless, which means it is nonlinear and enhances the play to make it enjoyable.
Key Terms:
Farce is a subcategory(subordinate category) of comedy, characterised by greatly exaggerated characters and situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jhaH-bjBWg
"a rejection of narrative continuity and the rigidity of logic"-
dismissing the story line and the continuation of a story line and the inability of sense.
6) Rehearsals log!
1. In the first, lesson, Miss Katie made us do a workshop to prepare us to perform in an absurdist style. We did this by communicating through improvisation. We formed a pair of two people per group, and we had to communicate a conversation in a very illogical and nonsensical way, this was really hard to do because it didn't give you the time to think you just had to say the very first thing that comes mind. And because in this society were so used to thinking and trying to make everything make sense it was frustrating a bit, however this really help me prepare and understand Absurdity because it really destructed the logic we have of making everything making sense, it showed me that you don't always have to make sense of it at all, everything is just meant to be chaotic, ridiculousness and very nonsensical.
2. In the third and 4 lesson, Miss Katie give all the groups 30 min to work on their own. And my group and i took 4 chairs and gather together and started experimenting different tones and pitches, moreover we tried different physicality and variety gestures and proxemics. We also explored different staging and ways to stay as classy as possible due to the fact that we were suppose to me mocking British people and the way they do things and trying to maintain staying in character whilst doing that. ones the 30 min finished Miss Katie came back and we had to show each other what we came up with so far and we were allowed to give and receive feedback from each other and Miss Katie herself.
3. In the 5 lesson we started learning our lines and trying our best to get off script so we could focus on our acting and movements and focus less on the lines.however in lesson 6 Miss Katie did a different workshop but this one was for the voice and a different acting style called ratio acting, which is when the actor's are only using their voice to act and people listen to it on the radio, so we focus on that. For the first 30 min Miss Katie then made us lay on the floor in our groups and made us do our piece one by one in the dark so that we can focus on working on our articulation and clarity of our voice. and we did this by listing to the other group and see how well their clarity and how well their articulation and pronunciation is. after that she give us the next 25 min to give feedback on what we need to work on.
4. Three weeks before showing miss Katie our final ideas, we took time off working on our practical and focus on the script a bit more, my group and i took time to read and analyse the script, to see what we could add, such as gestures, reactions in different places where we could move in sync or moving together as an ensemble, however going though this whole process of Absurdist was very challenging to come up with ideas due to the fact that it's nonsensical, the reason and saying this is because when trying to add gestures etc. we didn't want it to look like it make sense, therefor we would try to do the opposite for example when saying "There were nobody there the fist time nor the second time what makes you thing their well be the this time" in-staid of putting two finger up we put one finger up.however we manage to overcome everything at the end and make it work.
pictures of the script with our final ideas.
5. This lesson we my group and I showed Miss Katie our final idea, and miss Katie was really pleased with what we came up with. However their was movements and different tone of voices Miss Katie told us to take out some of the movements and gesture, and try to make it more simple, because the simpler it is the better i could be. Adding to much could make it to dramatic although it suppose to be dramatic, the lest action sometimes is the best.
6. In the last lesson before half term and the show, as we were the fist group to be off script my group tried the piece without the script, and we tried or final idea, as you will see in the video i will put at the button most of us knows our line and we were off script however it wasn't as perfect as if could have been because we did make lot of mistakes and for some of the actions, i also forgot one line,but i still enjoyed doing this and getting the opportunity to make Miss Katie record this for up to see what we need to work on before the final show. Miss Katie give up feet back and told us what we needed to work on and am sure we toke it into consideration and work really hard to perfect it as a group.
Video Miss Katie toke for us.
It was an amazing pleasure and honor to learn about theater of the Absurd.
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