Melodramatic Acting Style

The Melodramatic Acting Style

Remember in Victorian Melodrama, all emotion is externalized. There is no such thing as inner psychological depth!

Generally, this means “Over the Top” in every way. Here are some techniques which help create this effect

• Slower, clearer delivery of lines with huge projection. Remember Victorian Theatres were huge and there were no microphones. 

• Play everything to the audience, even if you are supposed to be talking to another character on stage! 

• Indicate whom you are talking to by looking sideways at them and holding your hand out towards. 

• Address the audience directly whenever the script will allow you to do so. 

• The Pose: Invent poses of shock, horror, love, evil, intent, cruelty, desire, dilemma, forgiveness, begging forgiveness, etc. A pose should last at least three seconds and should be clearly visible from fifty meters. 

• The working yourself up to the pose: lasts two to three seconds --let's see you get there! 

• The Gasp - very loud expressing a range of emotions. Often accompanied by a pose. 

• The Swoon - often preceded by lines such as "Alas! I can hardly bear it." The swoon should be graceful and provision should be made for someone to catch you. 

• The long walk downstage/upstage/across the stage when hatching a plan or in a dilemma. 

• The Pacing- to and fro across the stage when hatching a plan or in a dilemma. Move before you speak so that the audience can track who is speaking. 

• The Tableau (freeze frame)- the still picture made up of a number of characters to freeze the moment, eg: The Happy Ending/ The Secret Lovers. The tableaux should be very explicit. 

• The Sigh/The Groan/The Tubercular Cough 

• First Entrances are important - may even bow, this is related to the cult of “The Actor” – the Star system. 

Making a sustainability Board game.

The final part of the RIP Assignment was a sustainability project that draws in our personal skills and interests. For this task, I chose to partner up with a mate and create a board game on tinkercad on the topic of Deforestation. As I was making a board game I took inspiration from the well-known games monopoly and the game of life. I decided to make the game simple without overcomplicating the rules, but I still wanted it to be original. As my partner was away for the first few days I didn't want to start creating the rules or the purpose of the game, so instead, I created the board that you play on. After my partner decided to show up we started getting into the final details of the game as in the rules and the cards that you pick up. This honestly didn't take as long as I thought it would, after we got the rules down it was full steam ahead, and we got it done after just a few lessons.  If I were to do this again I would start off by writing the rules as it was much simpler when we knew what we were doing.

What is Melodrama?

In drama, we are focusing on Melodrama! The question we have to answer is "What is victorian melodrama?" Melodramas are victorian dramas where music is added to an action to exaggerate the emotion during the scene. Melodramas feature stock characters which are usually, the villain, hero, heroine, sidekick, and overbearing parent. The Melodramatic acting style includes Slow, clear delivery of lines with a huge projection as victorian theatres were huge and there were no microphones. The acting style also consists of the actors always playing to the audience even if they are supposed to be talking to one another. With melodrama comes huge dramatic gestures one of the most commonly known ones being the "gasp" and the "Swoon" The gasp should be very loud, expressing a range of emotions and often accompanied by a pose. Whereas the swoon is often preceded by the lines such as "Alas! I can hardly bear it." The swoon should be graceful and there should probably be someone ready to catch you!  

                

The Javan Rhinoceros Investigation.

The next part of my sustainability assignments consisted of creating an investigation about a sustainability topic that draws in our mathematics skills that we have gathered over the course of this hurumanu. For my investigation, I wanted to focus on Critically endangered species, so I chose the Javan rhino. The purpose of my investigation was to answer my question "How do we know if what we are doing to protect rhinos is effective?" To do this I had to look into what was being done to save the Javan rhino but also the status of the Javan rhino population over 50 years. The answer to my question was Yes, it is effective. Even though the population has only increased by around 50 from 1965 to 2020 it is a big step to getting a stable number of Javan rhino.  To include some mathematics skills we had to create a graph of our findings from the investigation, I presented my results through a line graph as I thought it was most effective for showing the growth in population.  To present my investigation work I decided to keep it simple and do it on google slides. This investigation was very inspiring as I never realized how critically endangered this species was and what is being done about this issue.

Digestive System!

Vennage timeline!