Memorizing the Rubric!

Yesterday night I was on my phone when I got a message from Talah - she had ended up changing the character she was focusing on from heroine to the villain, which was the character I was focusing on. I didn’t know why she made this decision, as it was detrimental to the grades of both of our presentations. I couldn’t change her mind about her decision. This ongoing similarity between Talah’s presentations and mine was definitely a huge challenge for me, and I realized that situations like these can always arise but you have to stay focused on your own presentation rather than creating unnecessary drama by fighting over others because of what they are doing.

So in the morning, Talah was the first one to go. It was funny that as Alia and I watched her presentation, we already could predict what grade she would get based on whether she covered the elements assessed in the rubric – it was then that Alia and I realized that we had reached true mastery of this exam, we could recite the rubric by heart! I felt better after knowing that I understood the exam so well, and I used my knowledge of the rubric to make sure I checked off every element of the presentation being assessed, whether it was the how and why explanation of the theater convention or the how and why explanation of the moment of theater. I used this knowledge I had learned by applying it to my following script (If anything, through this research presentation I have definitely learned the importance of following a rubric clearly and concisely):

Introduction

Hello! My name is Mariyah Jahangiri, and today the theater tradition I will be talking to you about is Victorian Melodrama, a genre of drama that exaggerates plot and characters with the intention of appealing to the emotions. The reason why I chose this genre to research is because it is so much fun to watch and to play: you can show all your emotions with great exaggeration, from happiness *big smile* to sadness *sobbing* to anger *clamped fists* to love *hand over heart.” Furthermore, what really intrigued me about Victorian Melodrama was its long standing popularity, even in society today, as seen from the popularity of soap operas which are modern adaptations of the traditional Victorian Melodrama. Why did this traditional genre have so much of an impact on modern theater? To answer this question, I decided to research this theater tradition in order to understand what makes it so important and impactful.

Theater In Context

Before talking about the conventions of this genre, I will talk about its origins and history:

So where does the term “Victorian” come from in Victorian Melodrama?

Victorian Melodrama was popular in England during the nineteenth century, specifically during the period from 1837 to 1901. This period was called the Victorian age, after Queen Victoria’s reign during this time. This era saw Britain established as a major industrial power with a global Empire due to rapid change and developments including many advances in medical, scientific and technological knowledge. The obvious social consequence of the population increase in London and other cities was an increase in the potential audience for theatre, an increase especially in the new industrial and working class. The urbanization of England meant that more theatres needed to be built. It also meant that due to more labor opportunities and segregated arenas the divide between classes would continue to grow. Thus, as I learned from The Art of Theater by William Downs, Victorian social classes were very clearly defined, and sharp divisions existed between rich and poor.

Initially, Victorian melodrama was created to appeal to the working class: they were constantly in factories, and that’s why melodrama was so appealing: workers would not want to come watch realism after their long, boring days, but the adventurous and larger than life aspects of Victorian Melodrama were attractive. Furthermore, the heroes and heroines were nearly always from the working class and the villains were aristocrats. However, due to the universal theme of the genre of good triumphing over evil, Victorian Melodrama appealed to everyone regardless of his or her social position. Due to this increasing popularity of attending the theater, plus the increasing population of London and other major cities in Victorian times, The Regulation of Theatres Act was passed in 1843 and led to the opening of many new theatres. I learned of this during researching from a journal named “Popular sentiments: Victorian melodrama” by University of Pennsylvania Professor Darryl Wadsworth.

Now you might be thinking, where does the term “Melodrama” come from in Victorian Melodrama?

The term melo in melodrama comes from the Greek work “melos” which means melody. This is because melodrama is almost always accompanied by an orchestra, usually featuring a piano, to help emphasize the exaggerated actions presented in Melodramatic plays.

France is attributed for creating the melodrama in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as part of the Romantic literary period. The romantics wanted to express their emotions through art and embraced imagination, individuality, nature as a source of spirituality and intuition. This new dramatic form triggered emotions through the use of spoken lines with alternating musical accompaniment to show a battle of good and evil. Melodrama often had romantic settings; ruined castles and wild mountains, reflecting the Romantic movement's obsession with the wilds of nature and exotic travel.

Melodrama became popular in England in the early part of the nineteenth century, developing its unique style from the sentimental dramas of the eighteenth century, along with some influences from the Italian genre of Commedia Dell Arte and its stock characters.

The first English melodrama was A Tale of Mystery (1802) written by Thomas Holcroft y French playwright Guilbert de Pixérécourt. The plot involves a murder planned by the villain Count Romaldo in order to marry a rich heiress. I learned about the term melodrama in Victorian Melodrama from an article called “Nineteenth Century Melodrama,” on the website Cross Reference.

Theater Processes

Researching the origins of Victorian Melodrama gave me context for the conventions used in this genre. The performance convention I will be examining is the use of gestures. As I mentioned earlier, Victorian Melodrama exaggerates characters with the intention of appealing to the emotions, and this is conveyed always through the use of gestures by the character. Hence, gestures are very important in Victorian Melodrama as they are the basis used to exaggerate and emphasize on emotions, a distinguishing aspect of the genre.

The reason why I chose the specific performance convention of gestures because of its pivotal role in allowing the characters of Victorian Melodrama to effectively portray their emotions: with the help of gestures, the characters dramatically express to the audience how they feel. Other performance conventions, such as face, movement, and voice are important to apply to this theater tradition; however, in my opinion, I have concluded with the help of Victorian Theatre; The Theatre in Its Time by Russell Jackson that gestures are the most important of the performance conventions used in Victorian Melodrama.

It took a lot of time for actors to perfect these gestures, which they learned for years through apprenticeship before actually performing on stage. Furthermore, actors had to be very agile in order to be able to play the sensational characters.

As we learned in theater class last year, Jacques Lecoq developed an approach to acting using seven levels of tension, of which the first was least expressive and the seventh was the most. Actors of Victorian Melodrama must constantly be acting with the fifth level of tension or higher in order to effectively portray their character. I learned this information from a YouTube video of an analysis Jacques Lecoq's 7 levels of tension called “Jacques Lecoq's 7 levels of tension- a practical demonstration.”

Similar to in Commedia Del Arte, actors would perfect a certain stock character’s gestures rather than attempting to perfect all stock character roles. The Victorian stage melodrama usually featured these stock characters: the hero, the villain, the heroine, faithful servant to the hero, and a villain’s sidekick:

• A hero, who is moral, handsome and manly. He acts on his intuition and is in-tune to nature. And, while he believes in justice, he does not always follow the less-important rules of society.

• A heroine, who is also moral in that she is innocent. She is also beautiful and courageous, but likely needed saving.-damsel in distress

• A villain, who is evil. These characters are often dishonest, greedy, vengeful and corrupt.

• A villain's accomplice, who is usually rather idiotic and serves as comic relief.

• A faithful servant, who helps the hero uncover needed information on the villain. This character also serves a comic relief, but does not come off as idiotic.

Generally, as I learned from “An Introduction to the Theater” by Frank Whiting, the delivery of motion was vigorous, spirited, “exaggerated.” The whole body displayed feeling through foot stamping, sudden starts, eye rolling, etc.

Actors articulated musically and emphatically; they employed large gestures and positioning of body and worked for “points” (traditional places of emphasis in speeches, highly emotional phrases, where actors aimed to elicit applause).

Gestures somewhat categorized: serious/comic, male/female, hero/villain, upper class/lower class. The pace slowed for serious moments, sped up for comic ones.

Serious or good characters showed more curve, grace and beauty; comics and villains were more angular and sharp.

Presenting Theater

I will be applying this knowledge of the theater convention of gestures to apply it to a moment of theater. I will focus on the stock character of a villain, and will apply it to a scene from the children’s fairytale “Snow White.” The reason why I chose this scene is because along with being one of my favorites stories, the Evil Queen in Snow White is much like the typical stock character of the villain in Victorian Melodrama. SImilar to the usual villain, Snow White is greedy, corrupt, and selfish, and she is after the heroine Snow White. She is a two dimensional character, similar to all stock characters of Victorian Melodrama, and this is why she is a perfect match for the stock character of the villain.

Now you may be wondering: how will I go about demonstrating the unique gestures of Victorian Melodrama to this common fairytale? In order to effectively perform the role of a villain using the performance gestures of Victorian Melodrama, I will now tcover the general gestures of a the villain stock character in Victorian Melodrama: I learned of these general gestures after analyzing many villains performing in youtube videos of melodrama, including “MELODRAMA: BEYOND THE BOOS AND HISSES”

Anger – The actor’s hands are both shoulder high … eyebrows are pushed toward each other … with the actor’s face tense with a grimace … hands in tight fists.

Fear – The actor’s face is turned to the right side… eyes wide … with the right hand to the mouth, fingers curled under touching the top of the palm.

Villainous Scheming – One eyebrow up, the other down, a grimace on the face and hands rubbing together, if it is a really good plan, the fingers twiddle.

Villainous Sneaking – Shoulders hunched over, one arm raised to cover the nose on down, eyes free to shift around the room, legs bent on the cross of the stage. If you have one … twirl your black cape or duster as you enter the scene.

As I mentioned earlier, the gestures of the villain are quite strict, sharp, and angular in comparison to other stock characters.

My understanding of these gestures will now allow me to effectively portray the Evil Queen in the following moment of theater:

“ Magic mirror on the wall,

who is the fairest one of all?

But hold, a lovely maid I see.

Reveal her name.

Snow White!

Huntsman!

Take her far into the forest.

Find some secluded glade

where she can pick wildflowers.

And there,

my faithful Huntsm

you will kill her!

You know the penalty

if you fail.

But to make sure...

you do not fail,

bring back her heart...

in this.

The Huntsman has brought me proof

Behold, her heart.

Snow White still lives,

'Tis the heart of a pig

The heart of a pig!

Then I've been tricked!

The heart of a pig!

The blundering fool!

Guards!

Take this imbecile to the dungeons and rip out his heart!

I'll go myself

to the dwarfs' cottage...

in a disguise so complete

no one will ever suspect.

A perfect disguise.

And now, a special...

sort of death for one so fair.

What shall it be?

Ah! A poisoned apple!

One taste,

Then I'll be the fairest in the land.”

Presenting Theater (Conclusion)

Using the performance convention of gestures in my moment of theater, I was able to effectively exaggerate the emotions of my stock character of the villain and contribute towards the energetic and dramatic performances that a typical Victorian Melodrama usually consisted of.

Firstly, I communicated my anger through gestures after finding out that I was not the fairest in the land, and later when the huntsman brought me a pig’s heart and deceived me, by clenching up my hands into fists, tensing my body, and shaking my fists violently.

I was also able to communicate my fear through gestures of being undermined by Snow White’s beauty when I learned she was fairer than me, by dropping back, hiding my face with my hand, turning my face and body towards the left, and curling up my fingers.

I was also able to communicate my scheming through gestures, when I was preparing to go to the dwarf’s cottage myself to kill Snow White with a poisoned apple: I portrayed this by rubbing my hands slowly, hunching my back, and turning my head slightly from left to right while planning Snow’s demise.

Lastly, I was able to communicate my sneaking around when I discussed the disguised way in which I would approach Snow White with an apple, through the gestures of using my cape to cover my face, hunching my back, and tip toeing around the stage.

Overall, these specific gestures of the stock character of the villain allowed me to effectively portray the angry, scheming, sneaky, and fearful nature of a two dimensional villain such as Snow White, and allowed me to master this stock character which is subtly present in many other theater traditions.

By researching and performing the genre of Victorian Melodrama, I have been able to find connections between different methods of acting. For example, the stock characters of Victorian Melodrama are very similar to the stock characters of Commedia Del Arte from Italy which we studied in our unit of theater. Therefore, by studying the performance gestures used by the stock characters of melodrama, it will aid in my ability to effectively portray emotions in the similar stock characters of Commedia Dell Arte, and others present in various types of genres which have similar stock characters.

-challenge

Furthermore, studying this genre has allowed me to practice the higher states of tension in Jacques Lecoq 7 Levels of Tension, which aren’t normally accessed in most other genres. It is important to be able to access these higher levels of tension, as the practicing of these levels allows us practice being more expressive with our gestures, a vital theater convention.

-challenge

Another challenge I’ve had in the past which VM will help me overcome is our unit last year on abstract movement: we had to use body gestures to portray abstract ideas using songs in the background, and this was initially really difficult for me as I did not understand the meaning behind gestures and how I can flexibly use them to communicate emotions: learning about gestures in VM will definitely help me in this area as it has taught me the technique of using exaggerated gestures to communicate emotions

Melodrama has always been primarily concerned with ‘popular culture’. Although the subject matter may sometimes be the lives of the rich and sophisticated, the appeal has always been to the widest possible audience. The modern offspring of melodrama includes both the disaster film like Titanic and television soap operas like EastEnders and Coronation Street, as I have learned from The Art of Theater by William Downs. There men are usually in central roles while women are damsels in distress, and, crucially, there are themes of racial and class conflict in a wide range of melodramas.

Hence, Melodramas effectively provide sites of ideological struggle’ with the genre enabling actors of this performance to pursue critiques of contemporary society via popular entertainment, even now. This was interesting to learn, as I had always wondered why soap operas, the modern version of Victorian Melodrama, is still so popular.

Furthermore, studying gestures in Victorian Melodrama has definitely allowed me to channel my inner actres by allowing me to excessively express my emotions and learn how to do so in a theatrical, fun way. I will be applying my new knowledge of Victorian Melodrama to any other theater genres that use gestures as a convention present in the future, as melodrama has given me knowledge of the how to use gestures to exaggeratedly yet effectively communicate my emotions.