Unit 14: Solo Performance Research

Chosen Musical: Sweeney Todd

Origin of the Play 

The musical of Sweeney Todd has stemmed from a long source of previous works of fiction based around the main character's story (more information about those later). The musical itself, however, was first performed in Broadway in 1979, and had over 500 performances in its one year and 3 months of being open to the public, and did very well after winning 8 Tony Awards. Since then, it has been performed numerous times in West End, Broadway and even further to locations like South Africa (2015).

However, when looking at the real origin of Sweeney Todd, the tale of the murderous barber first originated from a fictional "penny dreadful" serial called The String of Pearls. The plot of The String of Pearls revolves around the character Sweeney Todd, with strong differences to the adaptation I will be performing. In it, Sweeney Todd is similar to the modern adaptation as he is a barber who kills his clients and uses a specially designed barbers chair that allows him to effortlessly transport the corpses through a series of chutes to the bottom of St. Dunstan's church, where his friend, Mrs Lovett turns them into meat pies for her shop. What is different however is the penny dreadful series revolves primarily around a Lieutenant Thornhill, who is labelled disappearing after entering Todd's shop, causing a giant investigation that begins Todd's and Lovett's downfall.

Key Context To Infer From This

Penny Dreadful - It is vital to comment on the fact that the serial series Sweeney Todd is first introduced to an audience fits into the literary genre of Penny Dreadfuls. Contextually, Penny Dreadfuls were cheap yet popular literature, typically printed on inexpensive wood pulp paper and would often be released one chapter at a time, most often weekly. They were exclusive to the Victorian Era and were popular amongst young working-class men as the chapters were sold only for a penny. Additionally, Penny Dreadfuls like The String of Pearls as a genre were frequently gothic as a genre and were not afraid to explore distressing themes like murder, gore, and revenge.

How This Will Be Used In Developing My Role

The context of Penny Dreadfuls can be transferred in the genuinity of my role, in regards to how the genre is commonly stereotyped as being gory and murderous. Hence, the fact that The String of Pearls is enforcing this stereotype can help me as it allows me to understand the violent, unapologetic nature of Sweeney Todd as Penny Dreadfuls are unapologetically Gothic, and knowing that the character's intended literary purpose is to shock and thrill can help me in my presentation of Sweeney Todd as a character as he is meant to scare the audience deliberately and so I will use a deliberately disturbing aesthetic with his characterisation, being unapologetic about his taboo nature, as the original author intended. 

Setting 

Sweeney Todd is set in Victorian London, in particular, the year 1846. In addition, the play is primarily set on Fleet Street in London, where both Todd's barber shop and Lovett's pie shop is based. 

Key Context To Infer From This

Victorian London - A society that is recognised by the vast majority, and has been explored and represented in various works of literature from the era to help us understand the society.

Examples include:

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Hard Times - Charles Dickens

The Victorian society itself was a complex one with many layers, but generally, when people think of the Victorian society, they think of the corruption, poverty and strongly classist ideologies. The classism that would result in loads of working-class members living on streets and having a high death rate, alongside the power aristocratic Victorians possessed, are two juxtaposing issues that Sweeney Todd explores.

The aforementioned point is explored in Sweeney Todd's song "Epiphany", with the lyrics "Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief. For the rest of us, death will be a relief.". Here, he is talking about his desire to kill is validated by how the aristocratic were famous for being cruel towards the working class, and would often lie and commit crimes to upkeep their wealth and reputation, and how the working class should die also as they are so miserable with the state of their lives, that killing them will be him relieving them of their pain.

How This Will Be Used in Developing My Role

Todd's awareness of the corruption and cruelty of the society he lives in is essential in my performance of him in my extract, as he uses said corruption to justify his murderous behaviours. The fact that he argues this is verification to Mrs Lovett's raises the issue of Todd addressing the real villain: Victorian society. It was the power the evil Judge Turpin had as a result of him belonging to the aristocratic class that caused him to lose his family, and so in my performance, I must demonstrate to the audience that while Todd is evil, he is not the villain. I must also make the audience understand the horrors of Victorian London, so they view Todd as a character to empathise with, rather than despise, which is essential as his taboo habits stem from pain, not anger. 

Unit 14 Logbook - 5/2/19

With all members of my group present in today's lesson for our group musical showcase performance, the focus of today's lesson was deciding our group performance, and the extract from said musical. We decided as a group to ignore all our previous group ideas and go for a new idea, and we decided on Shrek: The Musical as our chosen play, where I will play the role of Shrek. The reasons we chose this play are listed below:

• The play was easy to pull out scenes from regarding how the musical follows primarily 3 main characters (Shrek, Fiona and Donkey) and there are 3 members in our group. This broadens our options of extracts to perform and makes the issue of being able to perform giant musical numbers that involve loads of backup dancers/singers, which others will face, moot. 
• The plays 3 primary characters each had distinguishable characteristic traits that work with each of our individual strengths as actors (For example, the character of Shrek is one who most people recognise as someone who has been prejudiced against by others his whole life and as a result has put on a tough farce to hide this pain, which is a similar idea I have explored in the development of Peter Pan and so allows previous skills to be transferable to said role)
• Shrek: The Musical is a relatively easy musical to uncover information about, with performance videos on the internet, alongside movie adaptations of Shrek to use as research around the role. 

Having decided the group performance, we then watched various clips of a professional production of Shrek: The Musical and have agreed to first explore the scene where Shrek rescues Fiona and the trio escape the dragon's castle and hike to Lord Farquaad's castle. Exploration and experimentation of this scene and other scenes will commence in future rehearsals. 

Further details regarding my character will be found on a separate document. 

Unit 23 Logbook - 4/2/19

Today's lesson had a focus on confirming our ideas for what performances to choose for our musical showcase extracts, both our group performances and our solo extracts. Due to the unforeseen circumstance of having a member of our group performance being unable to perform, Yolanda and I were limited in the progress we could make regarding the chosen production for our group to perform. Hence, we discussed different play ideas and attempted to come to a general consensus which we will run by Rejoice in the near future. The musical performances considered were:

• The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls: The Musical
• Motown: The Musical
• Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• Miss Saigon
• Little Shop of Horrors

We discussed the merits of performing each of these plays, and our intended reasons for choosing said musical. The reason that the majority of these ideas are either tragedies or gory is due to our group's consensus that we would not prefer to perform any cliche musicals that have a happy ideology. What's more, is performing a horror or tragedy will distinguish us from the other groups and allow us to explore new acting techniques and theatre conventions we have not discovered as intensely.

Afterward, I was asked to consider what play I would like to perform for my solo act, and after extensive research of musicals, I have chosen to perform an extract from Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Sweeney Todd henceforth). My reason for choosing this musical is because I loved the thriller aspect of the musical and how different it was to other musicals. with it's twisted, taboo story, and explorations into madness and bloodlust, it appealed to me in regards to how I have never been given the opportunity to explore homicidal and violent ideologies so far during my course, and will allow me to grow as an actor as I learn an entirely new side to characterization and allow me to enhance my acting capabilities from heroine figures.  

I decided that the extract I will perform will focus on the songs "Pretty Women" and "Epiphany" and perform the extract these two songs are linked together in the musical. The reason I chose this extract is it will provide a challenge, but one that is achievable. Furthermore, the piece allows the main character (Sweeney Todd/ Benjamin Barber) to explore a wide variety of emotions due to the complexity of the extract, and also allows me to use the key societal context of the Victorian era to assist in the genuinity of the performance. Further exploration into details of my solo piece will be explored in a separate document.