SPA- 1984 -4

Today, we were given our cast list! It is as follows:
Rob - Winston
Rhiannon (yo girl) - Julia
Oliver K- O'Brein
Katya - Host, Martin, Thought Criminal
Oliver M - Child, Goldstein, Woman's voice
James - Parsons, Father
Hope - Mrs Parsons, Waitress
Charlie - Charrington, Speakwrite
Lewis - Syme, Man
Lorna - Voice, Mother, Woman

After being told that I am to be playing Julia, I decided to do some research into her so that I have a better understanding of how she should be played;

Julia is Winston Smith's love-interest and his ally in the struggle against Big Brother. She represents the elements of humanity that Winston does not: pure sexuality, cunning, and survival. While Winston simply manages to survive, Julia is a true survivalist, using any means necessary to conduct her self-centered rebellion. Her demeanor is that of a zealous Party follower, but just under that surface is an individual with unchecked human desires and a willful spirit, which ultimately results in her capture.

Julia is an outwardly sexual being and sleeps with Party members regularly - at least before she meets Winston. She does not do this to destroy the Party but to quench her own desires. Whereas Winston's  rebellion is as much for future generations as it is for himself; her rebellion is purely incidental to her own desires.Julia is far more intuitive and realistic than Winston. She understands the Party better than he does and is more cunning in the ways that she defies Party doctrine.

Julia uses sex to attack the Party, but it is far less effective a weapon than love. When Julia and Winston fall in love, they commit the ultimate offense against the Party. Note that the couple are caught at their happiest moment, the moment where they let down their guard and felt like an ordinary couple. Both had been watched for years and could have been captured at any time. But not until their love was strong did the Party intervene. Separating the couple diminishes their effectiveness: As individuals they do not understand the party wholly, nor are they capable of resistance.

Superficially, Julia seems like an uncomplicated character. She functions as a sounding board for Winston, but she is far more complicated than that. Winston has real antipathy toward women resulting from the Party's indoctrination and from its stringent sexual codes. Julia does not follow these strict sexual codes and, in fact, breaks them at every opportunity. She shows Winston, who once imagined raping and killing her, that the Party cannot get to the most intimate places in a human being's mind; she is his proof that the feelings that he has been having are valid. Julia gives Winston hope, and it is the continuation of this hope that gets them both destroyed.
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Julia is Winston Smith’s Juliet. Is the name a coincidence? Probably not. A duplicitous and whimsical creature, her sexual allure inspires Winston to start the rebellious writings (because he fantasizes about her). She then acts as Winston’s ally in active rebellion, although her idea of revolt is more in-your-arms than up-in-arms. Julia is a dark-haired, twenty-six-year-old employed as a machine operator in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Looking like a zealous Party member, she wears an (ironic) Anti-Sex sash around her waist, and always participates passionately during the Two Minutes Hate. Julia’s other side is much more interesting. She is a woman with raging hormones and a cunning spirit. A highly sexual being, she sleeps with Party members regularly to satisfy her own desires. She busies herself with community service and other orthodox activities so that she can escape the Party’s thought crime radar.

Sites used for research;
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/n/1984/character-analysis/julia

http://www.shmoop.com/1984/julia.html

https://writingasiplease.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/characters-of-1984-julia/

SPA- 1984 -3

In todays lesson we broke off into groups of two and then all read and staged from half way down page 43 till page 45 in which Winston and Julia are having a casual conversation about various goods such as real coffee and chocolate (that all have rations and are usually of poor quality) that Julia has gathered from her links with members of the party. Yet more importantly in this extract that we ran through we discover what Winston's biggest fear is, Rats. It is interesting Winston's biggest fear is revealed to us as this is what would be in room 101 if Winston to were to ever end up there. I worked with Oliver K to work through this extract and after reading through it we agreed that it were to be played naturalistically but couldn't derive much else from what we had been given as this is the first time we got a chance to learn about these characters. After reading through the stage directions we decided that Winston although older than Julia is definitely the one who has more input throughout their relationship, due to her having to look after him and reassure him. Oliver played Winston to be not necessarily scared but more paranoid and on edge whist I played Julia to be loving and concerning but at the same time, in a world of her own. As me and Oliver were the last to perform out of the class, we got to listen to the others pairs feedback which prevailed to be to play the characters more mature as they are supposed to be in their thirties, however me and Oliver decided to play them as we had rehearsed to as we felt that from the information we had, we played them to fit that as accurately as possible.




We then broke off into groups of two or three again to work on different passages from the play. I worked with Katya on the prologue that comes from the 'Voice'. As we were working on the opening to 1984, which is already known to be a conglomerate play we wanted to have a homogeneous feel to it, as the opening for such a captivating play should be just that from start to finish. We started with our backs to the audience and both said the opening line: 'In that moment, it became real' and then spun to have intense derisive eye contact with the audience whilst saying a line or two each but both saying certain words, we decided to emphasize the following: death, watched, particular individual, all the time, faltered, pin down, no difference, the Thought Police, he had committed,  Thoughtcrime, concealed, get you, wiped out, denied, forgotten, unpersoned, future, unborn, doublethink. We decided to put intensity on to these words as although we don't know how the play ends we feel that all of the above will be significant and add to the feel of the play. We also looked at each other when saying these words, in a cunning / knowing way to allow the audience to know that although we are telling a story, (due to it being based on individual perception) they cannot be prepared for what they are to witness.

SPA- 1984 -1

Today, we discovered that we are going to now be working on 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' a novel by George Orwell. We are going to be working on the play adaptation created by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the super state Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged elite of the Inner Party, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking which is called "thought crime." The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality but who may not even exist. The Party "seeks power entirely for its own sake. It is not interested in the good of others; it is interested solely in power." Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth, which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line. The instructions that the workers receive specify the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are: forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the ministry also actively destroys all documents that have been edited and do not contain the revisions; in this way, no proof exists that the government is lying. Smith is a diligent and skilful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. Orwell based the character of the heroine of the novel, Julia.




Main character descriptions;


Winston Smith - A minor member of the ruling Party in near-future London, Winston Smith is a thin, frail, contemplative, intellectual, and fatalistic thirty-nine-year-old. Winston hates the totalitarian control and enforced repression that are characteristic of his government. He harbours revolutionary dreams.             

                
Julia - Winston’s lover, a beautiful dark-haired girl working in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Julia enjoys sex, and claims to have had affairs with many Party members. Julia is pragmatic and optimistic. Her rebellion against the Party is small and personal, for her own enjoyment, in contrast to Winston’s ideological motivation.                

                
O’Brien - A mysterious, powerful, and sophisticated member of the Inner Party whom Winston believes is also a member of the Brotherhood, the legendary group of anti-Party rebels.                

                
Mr. Charrington - An old man who runs a second-hand store in the prole district. Kindly and encouraging, Mr. Charrington seems to share Winston’s interest in the past. He also seems to support Winston’s rebellion against the Party and his relationship with Julia, since he rents Winston a room without a telescreen in which to carry out his affair. But Mr. Charrington is not as he seems. He is a member of the Thought Police.

                
Syme - An intelligent, outgoing man who works with Winston at the Ministry of Truth. Syme specializes in language. As the novel opens, he is working on a new edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Winston believes Syme is too intelligent to stay in the Party’s favour.

                
Parsons - A fat, obnoxious, and dull Party member who lives near Winston and works at the Ministry of Truth. He has a dull wife and a group of suspicious, ill-mannered children who are members of the Junior Spies.   

                
Emmanuel Goldstein - Another figure who exerts an influence on the novel without ever appearing in it. According to the Party, Goldstein is the legendary leader of the Brotherhood. He seems to have been a Party leader who fell out of favour with the regime. In any case, the Party describes him as the most dangerous and treacherous man in Oceania.

Big Brother -  Though he never appears in the novel, and though he may not actually exist, Big Brother, the perceived ruler of Oceania, is an extremely important figure. Everywhere Winston looks he sees posters of Big Brother’s face bearing the message “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” Big Brother’s image is stamped on coins and broadcast on the unavoidable telescreens; it haunts Winston’s life and fills him with hatred and fascination.
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Within this first lesson we broke off into two groups (I worked with Katya, Oliver M, Rob and James) to create a prologue for our performance. We discussed and agreed that our aim for this prologue was to show the abduction of individuality and distinctiveness of the people. We started our piece with us walking in, in formation to then stop and move in unison with our movements becoming more precise and exact as we go on to show how we are progressing to have less control of ourselves and are cloning into the same comrades, like big brother wants. We focused on getting the timing of our movements very precise due to the perfection that is expected of people within this universe, whilst still having very jagged and rigged  robotic movements. We were a little rushed towards the end of devising this, but alas we showed the other group and then they did for us too we had very different movements but both had the underlying theme of peoples identities being reaped by Big Brother. As we want our opening to be compelling, we have decided that we are going to combine the two prologues together as if combined, dynamics from the two would suit.

SPA- 1984 -2

Within this lesson after highlighting all lines and stage directions, we read through the Script, which proved to be interesting as we noticed that we will have to figure out a way to establish when the play is alternating between realities. We also became aware of the fact that we all need to work on our diction and articulation. The next thing we did was fill in a auditory sheet to assess these things in order to track them and see if we can develop/ improve them. We spent the lesson analysing and recording our:


Breath Control- I feel that I have fairly good control over my breath, I can speak for a fairly long time with varied volume whilst still maintaining steady breathing, I rarely run short/out of breathe so don't feel that Breath Control is something that I really need to work on.






Projection-I feel that my projection is good the majority of the time, however when I speak quietly my projection becomes slightly less clear, which I intend to work on.






Diction/Articulation-I have no issue with speaking properly and pronouncing words as they should be however unless I am in a situation in which it is necessary I often cut corners within my speech and unfortunately it could be said that my  'Medway' accent can come through which I will work on purely through practice of speaking properly.






Effective use of pace and pauses- I feel that I have a fairly steady use of pace but say I were to be talking about something enthusiastically, so something I feel passionately about, or something that has frustrated me, my pace can speed up too much which I need to work on. However I believe that I use pauses effectively and know when it is appropriate to use them.


Quality of tone- (no bosting, however) I have been complemented on my tone a few times before and I think that this is because I adapt my tone to the person I'm talking to or the situation I am in.