Wire and Hands Picture Stimulus (PMD1)

Using old western films and novellas as inspiration.

Of mice and men – looking at the idea that everything always ends the same. That things will go wrong but you will always be trapped. Almost like your fate has been decided for you.

Beckett – taking his idea that there is no meaning to life.

Scorpion’s on a skewer

The hands representing the scorpion and the wires representing the skewer.

Artaud – using uncomfortable movement and using a dark setting to make the audience feel uncomfortable and on the edge of their seats

Being trapped – holding onto something that you are trying to forget about or trying to let go of.

The idea of moving on but not being able to because you are being held back (trapped and the wires itself being what’s trapping you)

Beckett & Stanislavski

Start with naturalism and show the character leading up to one of the above. Then use Beckett to portray how their views change and use his style of work such as just focusing on the words and use this to communicate to the audience the views that Beckett believed in as well as emphasising on his style of work.

The wires – represent a ladder

The hands – represent climbing the ladder – a ladder of hierarchical status & trying to get to the top.

Could link with being trapped and it could show a chain of being and how a person is made for one purpose

Beckett – No purpose to life – no matter how hard you try, not matter how ‘successful’ you try to be – you’re always going to end up in the same place. Everyone’s ending is going to be the same. Death.

The idea of falling (if you look at it upside down)

Trying to hold on to something to stop yourself from falling down.

-          Could take aspects from each idea and link it all together to come up with how they fall and the effects that this has

Could use something from each practitioner mentioned in the other ideas from this stimulus

The age range for this stimulus would be aged 15-25 because for ideas such as the old western movies such as Of Mice And Men, the younger ages such as 15-16 would be able to gain something from the performance as Of Mice And Men is one of the novella's you study for GCSE English Literature. This would bring an educational purpose for the audience. Alongside this, the higher age range would be appropriate because, similar to the other stimulus' that have been explored, the ideas consist of quite serious topics that would need a mature audience to be fully understood and a younger age range wouldn't fully understand the concepts and therefore the performance wouldn't be as effective.

This stimulus and performance idea wouldn't be suitable because it requires a lot of research for the concept to be fully understood and it would take a lot of preparation to make the performance effective and with limited time I don't think we'd be able to make the performance as successful as we'd want it to be.