Character Back Story

Ursula Scottnitski was born on the 12 December 1904. She was born and raised as a Jew in Lanckorona, Poland (Near Krakow). At the age of 4, her parents (Thaddius and Juliett) gave her violin lessons, however after finishing school she chose to follow a different path. In 1914 she was called to the front line to aid injured soldiers, it was there that she met her husband Joszef. In 1915 they were married and had their first child Anka. Unfortunately at the age of 27 and 3 Joszef and Anka died of spanish influenza in 1918. After this tragedy, she left her nursing career, and threw herself back into her music, the only way she knew how to express herself, and became a highly regarded violin teacher in the community of Lanckorona. After the loss of her child, she relied mainly on her neighbour Hero and over the years became great friends with her family. They were both sent to Auschwitz to work in its Sub-camp, Canada in 1940.

todays lesson

In today's lesson, we blocked our final scene (other than monologues). This was the scene where Joanna threatens Margaret and Ursula into tricking Benedick and Beatrice into falling for each other. Mandi directed the scene exactly how she envisioned it, as she wrote the script. She wanted the scene to climax just before Benedick, Hero and Beatrice exit the scene so that when Joanna points the gun at Ursula and Margaret, there is true reasoning and emotion behind her actions. The scene moves from Joanna making her feelings known to Officer Benedick about his behavior in the camp, to Joanna threatening Ursula and Margaret into doing her dirty work on pain of death. We then went to the costume cupboard to find 1930's costumes for the opening scene. For me, this was really helpful as it made me realise that my character had a life before Auschwitz.

Walk through notes

Striking opening- sets tone well

Need a sparkle between james and elsa- first time theyve met.

Singing-haunting but lovely

Wooden coat hangers needed-make coat characters 3D.

Violin entry needs more defiance.

Tricking scene think about dynamics and the reasoning behind us doing it and the consequences if we dont.

Shoe sorting-already sorting shoes and then audience walk in?

Daisy needs to be more present and observe/see more

James needs to be more truthful when ursula dies because of the loss of music-more humanity needs tl be seen through james and his love of music.

At end-facts needed.

Gassing audience come earlier?

Work on intent and merging shakespeare into our plotline

Emotion recall

We started by getting everyone to lie on the floor imagining being on a beach in the heat of the sun whilst fighting the need to get up to go home. We used this feeling to replicate and understand the feeling of inmates at auschwitz on a daily basis of having to work but fighting their need for rest.

We then moved onto focusing on emotions. Mandi and i asked the group to think of the happiest moment and the senses and feelings associates with it. We then asked them to take this memory and the people in it and imagine them lost. This was to give them an idea of how inmates felt when they were in a foreign environment after losing everything.
The group focused well and allowed themselves to go to another place with their emotions.

Liberation-mandi

Group of people in canada at gate waiting to leave. Franz hands helena a note of his mums address for her to stay at as she has nowhere else to go. But she refused as her dad always said to her that 'i am a jew and i have to remain a jew' Franz then gave all canada workers wooly boots to keep warm to replace their clogs.

James' idea

Liberation to gass chamber to courtroom scene.
Gass chamber-split audience and move to scene dock with smoke machine (gas). Then take a fresh view to the courtroom scene with a spotlight with a noose hanging from the grid into courtroom scene.

Much Ado Plot Synopsis

Leonato, a kindly, respectable nobleman, lives in the idyllic Italian town of Messina. Leonato shares his house with his lovely young daughter, Hero, his playful, clever niece, Beatrice, and his elderly brother, Antonio (who is Beatrice's father). As the play begins, Leonato prepares to welcome some friends home from a war. The friends include Don Pedro, a prince who is a close friend of Leonato, and two fellow soldiers: Claudio, a well-respected young nobleman, and Benedick, a clever man who constantly makes witty jokes, often at the expense of his friends. Don John, Don Pedro’s illegitimate brother, is part of the crowd as well. Don John is sullen and bitter, and makes trouble for the others. When the soldiers arrive at Leonato’s home, Claudio quickly falls in love with Hero. Meanwhile, Benedick and Beatrice resume the war of witty insults that they have carried on with each other in the past. Claudio and Hero pledge their love to one another and decide to be married. To pass the time in the week before the wedding, the lovers and their friends decide to play a game. They want to get Beatrice and Benedick, who are clearly meant for each other, to stop arguing and fall in love. Their tricks prove successful, and Beatrice and Benedick soon fall secretly in love with each other.
But Don John has decided to disrupt everyone’s happiness. He has his companion Borachio make love to Margaret, Hero’s serving woman, at Hero’s window in the darkness of the night, and he brings Don Pedro and Claudio to watch. Believing that he has seen Hero being unfaithful to him, the enraged Claudio humiliates Hero by suddenly accusing her of lechery on the day of their wedding and abandoning her at the altar. Hero’s stricken family members decide to pretend that she died suddenly of shock and grief and to hide her away while they wait for the truth about her innocence to come to light. In the aftermath of the rejection, Benedick and Beatrice finally confess their love to one another. Fortunately, the night watchmen overhear Borachio bragging about his crime. Dogberry and Verges, the heads of the local police, ultimately arrest both Borachio and Conrad, another of Don John’s followers. Everyone learns that Hero is really innocent, and Claudio, who believes she is dead, grieves for her.
Leonato tells Claudio that, as punishment, he wants Claudio to tell everybody in the city how innocent Hero was. He also wants Claudio to marry Leonato’s “niece”—a girl who, he says, looks much like the dead Hero. Claudio goes to church with the others, preparing to marry the mysterious, masked woman he thinks is Hero’s cousin. When Hero reveals herself as the masked woman, Claudio is overwhelmed with joy. Benedick then asks Beatrice if she will marry him, and after some arguing they agree. The joyful lovers all have a merry dance before they celebrate their double wedding.

ALL INFORMATION FROM http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/muchado/summary.html

Helena and Franz

By 1943 Auschwitz
had grown significantly and now had multiple subcamps,
many of which provided slave labor for armaments factories and other industries, eventually generating millions of Reichsmarks for Nazi Germany. In March new gas chambers and crematoria opened at Auschwitz-Birkenau, dramatically increasing the camp’s killing capacity.

“There was no God in Auschwitz. There were such horrible conditions that God decided not to go there.”

– Libusa Breder, Jewish prisoner, Auschwitz

A few hundred yards from Birkenau’s gas chambers and crematoria was an area of the camp the inmates called "Canada." It was so named because Canada was thought to be a country of great riches. Inmates’ possessions were taken from them upon arrival and brought there. The items were sorted and sent back to Germany, although some were stolen by SS guards.

“Working in Canada saved my life because we had food, we got water. And that was the best working unit for life because we were not beaten,”
– Libusa Breder

Mostly women inmates worked in "Canada," and it was one of the few sought-after jobs in Auschwitz. They could grow their hair out and were able to steal extra food from the belongings as they sorted through them. Also, relationships between German guards and women prisoners sometimes developed in Canada, although such relationships were strictly against SS rules.
Helena Citrónová, a Slovakian Jew deported to Auschwitz in 1942, drew the attention of a SS guard named Franz Wunsch.

Helena Citrónová

Slovakian Jewish survivor

“When he came into the barracks where I was working, he threw me a note. I destroyed it right there and then, but I did see the word 'love’—'I fell in love with you.’
“I thought I’d rather be dead than be involved with an SS man. For a long time afterwards there was just hatred. I couldn’t even look at him.”

Helena’s feelings for Wunsch, however, changed over time, especially when her sister and her sister’s children arrived at Auschwitz Birkenau. Helena learned that they were to be sent to the gas chamber and her SS admirer tried to help them.

Jews deemed unfit for work on their way to Gas Chamber 4, Auschwitz-Birkenau

"So he said to me, 'Tell me quickly what your sister’s name is before I’m too late.’ So I said, 'You won’t be able to. She came with two little children.' He replied, 'Children, that’s different. Children can’t live here.’ So he ran to the crematorium and found my sister."
Franz Wunsch was able to save Helena’s sister by saying she worked for him in Canada, but he could do nothing for the children. Helena and her sister survived Auschwitz, and although her relationship with Wunsch never developed further, she did testify on his behalf years later at his war crimes trial.

“If a lot of stuff is piled up together, then you can easily stash away something for your personal gain. Stealing things for yourself was absolutely common practice in Auschwitz.”

– Oskar Gröning

Oskar Gröning (right) was an active member of the camp's sports club

SS guards preferred working at Auschwitz over fighting against the Red Army on the deadly eastern front. Liquor was in ready supply and military discipline was lax. A black market existed for just about everything. Women also served as SS guards; they could be as brutal as the men. Oskar Gröning, an SS guard at Auschwitz, remembers what it was like:

“The main camp of Auschwitz was like a small town, with its gossiping and chatting. There was a grocery, a canteen, a cinema. There was a theatre with regular performances. And there was a sports club of which I was a member. It was all fun and entertainment, just like a small town.

ALL INFORMATION FOUND FROM http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/corruption/

Character list

(don john) Joanna daisy
Elsa beatrice
Nat margaret
Mandi hero
James benedick
Becs ursula

Production meeting notes

-involving hero more..making it known that hero is the main reason for beatrice and benedick falling in love
- costumes...plain white pyjamas and SS uniforms
-nats opening idea in foyer
-elsa and james scene..give notes and direct
-set discovery of violin scene

23rd April lesson time

We also ran pedras death scene and our opening scene and discussed logistics for setting

Action plan

Easter workshop

The boy in the striped pyjamas

Pitch feedback

MUCH ADO PITCH FEEDBACK
Focus on love story that happens to be set in auschwitz. Good understanding of background info. Digital theatre- national jewish society survivors if the holocaust. Dont tell much ado, use much ado to tell the story. Focus on how you tell the story- actor muso in an artistic form.

Some iconic images from Auschwitz, including Canada.

Production Meeting

today we worked out whose absent this week because of trips.
Daisy absent: Monday
Elsa absent: Wednesday
Mandi absent: Monday and Wednesday
Elle: Tuesday and Wednesday
Natalie: n/a
James: N/A
Becs: Tuesday

Because of this, we have planned around the absences and ordered our time sensibly so that we make the most out of the time that we are all around

Ah poor bird

I've just found out some interesting information out about our song 'Ah Poor Bird' (although i found this information out through a comment on youtube, it fits with the song even if it is unreliable)
The song is about a young woman who is forced to marry a horrible man and ends up committing suicide. this is 'supposedly' the song that he sings to her every year on their anniversary

Auschwitz research

Today I watched a programmed about prisoner and Nazi life in concentration camps and how this effected these people in later life. It focused on Hungarian Jews as well as Polish Jews. Some interesting facts were:

75% of Hungarian Jews died in Auschwitz.
Auschwitz protocol allowed allies to understand layout of camp from escaped prisoners.
From 1944 Jewish organisation requested that the railway line to Auschwitz was bombed. All ideas to bomb it were forwarded to the USA and 'forgotten' about.
21000 out of 23000 gypsies died. Gypsies were the only people to be treated nearly as badly as the Jews.
On the 2nd of August 1944, the gypsy camp was liquidated in Auschwitz Birkenau. After this killing dropped from 10000 people per day to 1000.
On the 7th October 1944, sonderkommando set fire to crematorium 1 and 2 and attacked their SS guards with rocks and pickaxes. Some managed to escape into the woods but were rounded up and every third man was shot. Only 92 men were left alive.

I will upload notes from the second episode soon.

Witch Craft

In this lesson I researched our second idea of Witch Hunts. I've found images of witch trials, a dunking, witch hunters and an old public poster. these will be uploaded later with full annotations.

05/03/2014

Much Ado Ideas

SIMPLICITY FOCUS AND SUBSTANCE

Elsa-
 mistrust of females- gender and sexuality
persecution of women- witch hunts
feminist twist
women being persecuted for being women
gothic/supernatural twist
historical context
Don John? why is he the way he is and does what he does?
Daisy-
live music
audience participation
feminism
homosexuality- 2 females (hero and claudia)
acceptance
prejudice against women
gender swap
Elle-
narration
audience participation
perspective of leonato and hero rebelling with her friends being the witches
how society views the couples in much ado
James-
Nazi Germany
SS officer falling in love with someone in Auschwitz (benedick and beatrice)
live music- jewish?
Schindlers List
My Idea
set in WWII
juxtaposing music eg. Jazz in a war scene

In this lesson we discussed our ideas and discovered that the majority of our ideas fit together really well:
Feminism, WWII, live music, audience participation

04/03/2014

In this lesson we discussed our Fundraiser pitch to begin with and then moved on to making our own skills audits.
My Skills Audit:
violin
singing
classical music
folk music
musicals
jazz dance
1930's, 40's, 50's and 60's music and culture
audience participation
world war II- music and themes
costume (period)
dark comedy
seasons
film noir
breaking the fourth wall (Brecht)
performing outside
nightmares
Jekyll and Hyde
darkness vs. light
the tudors
heightened vs. real
shadows
the borgia's
lord of the rings
game of thrones
boldness
musical scoring
juxtaposition
warped circus
jazz
dream vs. reality vs. nightmare
projection
tim burton
rocky horror picture show