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.