Thursday, 24 July 2014

The performance of modern drama texts

"Theatre Royal Brighton" by Ian Muttoo from Mississauga, Canada - Theatre Royal Panorama, Brighton, UK. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Theatre_Royal_Brighton.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Theatre_Royal_Brighton.jpg
Modern plays for modern theatres

Through July Crossref-it.info has launched a range of articles about the form and expectations of theatre in the UK during various epochs.

Our Developments in Drama section already has information about performance from medieval times through to the acting style of the Victorian.

This week material about acting styles and theatre dynamics is being added. Check out the following:

Realism and naturalism

The ‘forth wall’ is explained, along with the ideas of Stanislavsky and the drama of Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg et al. This new information is particularly helpful for anyone is studying dramas including:
  • A Doll’s House
  • All My Sons
  • Journey’s End
  • Dancing at Lughnasa
  • The Crucible
  • A Streetcar named Desire

Expressionism and beyond

Alongside the ‘well made play’, the influence of Brechtian theatre is explored, and there are handy pointers about how to recognize symbolic, expressionistic and surreal elements in drama. This material is relevant if you are covering plays such as:
  • A Woman of No Importance
  • Absurd Person Singular
  • A Man for All Seasons
  • Top Girls
  • Equus
  • Death of a Salesman

Postmodern theatre

From the Second World War onwards, British Drama witnessed Absurdism, kitchen sink drama, protest theatre and the rise of female perspectives, with far greater fluidity in staging. You can get a handle on this to help you understand texts like:
  • Waiting for Godot
  • The Birthday Party
  • Death and the King’s Horseman
  • Translations
  • Arcadia
  • The History Boys
Of course, if you can get to see a performance of your drama text, that’s the best way of all to understand the experience the playwright was aiming for. But that’s not always possible – which is when it helps that Crossref-it.info’s free information is there for you.
Posted by Crossref-it.info at 14:00 0 comments

Wednesday, 9 July 2014

How drama texts work



Plays for performance

Any drama text studied for English A level has got something missing.
It is only a written record of what was always designed to be a multi-sensory event. The experience of a play is a combination of script, movement, sound effects, lighting effects, music, setting, costume, theatre dynamics and the unique contributions of individual actors and directors.

So merely looking at the written words uttered by characters bypasses a huge amount of what the playwright intended to be understood.

Added advantage

Some students studying A Level Eng. Lit. or Lit./Lang. have an added advantage if they are also undertaking the A Level Theatre studies or Performing Arts – Acting syllabuses. They will have a grounding in what it means to transform a play-script into a live performance.

Now help is at hand for the rest of us who need to get a handle on Eng. Lit. drama texts.

Developments in drama

Launching through July is a range of articles about how British theatre operated in various literary eras.

The Crossref-it.info Developments in Drama pages already have information about the Shakespearean and Jacobean stage.

This week material about acting styles and theatre dynamics is being added on:

So if anyone is studying one of the following, they will find the new information particularly helpful:
  • The Rover
  • She Stoops to Conquer
  • The School for Scandal
  • The Way of the World
If you are studying a more modern text, look out for further additions to the series later this summer!
Posted by Crossref-it.info at 02:59 0 comments

Wednesday, 25 June 2014

Teaching and revising the poetry of Wilfred Owen

New launch

This week sees the arrival of a wealth of teaching resources to help teachers deliver well thought through lessons on the poetry of Wilfred Owen. One of the most well regarded poets of the twentieth century, Owen vividly recreated what it was like to serve on a combat frontline, through a variety of distinctive poetic techniques.

To help time-poor teachers, worksheets cover areas such as:

  • How Owen employs the sonnet form
  • His re-creation of specific voices
  • Owen’s use of religious imagery
  • The aural qualities of selected poems
  • Guided explorations of Disabled and The Letter.

In addition, there are helpful revision and/or homework tasks for every poem covered in the Crossref-it.info text guide to Selected poems of Wilfred Owen. Each worksheet on a specific poem helps students investigate:

  • Context
  • Language and tone
  • Structure and versification
  • Imagery and symbolism
  • Themes.

Written by highly qualified UK teachers and educationalists, you can find these and other resources at: http://www.crossref-it.info/textguide/Poetry-of-Wilfred-Owen/36/2706

Helping students understand the ramifications and impact of Owen’s verse has never been so pertinent in this year commemorating the onset of the First World War one hundred years ago.
Posted by Crossref-it.info at 12:47 0 comments

Friday, 13 June 2014

The impact of location in literature

New launch: Impact of location in literature


This week sees the next theme covered by Crossref-it.info’s Only Connect tool, where they trace a theme across various works of literature, including its classical and/or biblical origins. ‘The impact of location’ makes for a fruitful personal exploration (required for a number of A Level English syllabuses) of how place is perceived in literature.

The associations of place

Gloomy caves;
                    open greens;
                                        darkened woodlands;
                                                            arid fields;
                                                                                gleaming urban sprawl;
                                                                                                    humble cottages...

When we encounter any one of these locations, we have an expectation of what might be likely to happen there. But why?

For centuries associations have grown up around locations and the atmosphere associated with them. These allusions have been created by fairy-tales, ancient myths and biblical narratives, then sustained by centuries of literature:

  • Shakespeare deliberately places his characters in woodland or castle, wild coast or tavern knowing that we will expect certain sorts of behavior because of those locations
  • Blake sometimes subverts our expectations, turning a place of pleasure into a place of threat, just as Graham Greene was to do 150 years later in Brighton Rock.

It’s fascinating to see how location has an impact on events and characters, sometimes seeming to determine the plot itself:

  • In Tess of the d’Urbervilles Hardy draws on the ancient classical anxiety of dense woodland and biblical suspicion of sophisticated urban environments, yet by no means upholds the simplistic pastoral ideal that associates the countryside with happy innocence
  • Jean Rhys uses location in Wide Sargasso Sea to disorientate characters, destabilising their sense of identity and thus effecting their subsequent actions.

The impact of location in literature is huge. Why not explore it for yourself.
Posted by Crossref-it.info at 10:20 0 comments

Wednesday, 28 May 2014

Revision help for AS / A2 English Lang. & Lit. students

It’s that time again...





















AS and A2 English exams are happening and time is very short! If you need some quick recaps, here are some website pages that will help:

English language

English Literature (per syllabus)

AQA 

If you are taking any of the syllabuses from AQA, there is lots of helpful info on the following exam texts:

OCR 

If you are taking any of the syllabuses from OCR, there is lots of helpful info on the following exam texts:

Edexcel 

If you are taking any of the syllabuses from Edexcel, there is lots of helpful info on the following exam texts:

CIE or the Cambridge Pre U 

If you are taking any of the syllabuses from CIE or the Cambridge Pre U, there is lots of helpful info on the following exam texts:

WJEC 

If you are taking any of the syllabuses from WJEC, there is lots of helpful info on the following exam texts:
Posted by Crossref-it.info at 08:01 0 comments

Thursday, 1 May 2014

The voice of war: Owen uncovered

Perspectives on the ‘Great War’

It’s hard to escape the huge media coverage of the centenary of the onset of the First World War. Widely supported in 1914 as a fight for King and Country against the forces of oppressive imperial expansion, our perspective today is quite different.

We know now what the people of 1914 did not – that the so-called ‘Great War’ would entail huge physical destruction in Northern France and the killing, maiming and mental carnage of a generation of men. Far from being ‘The War to End all Wars’, its consequent peace agreement would result in further mass conflict just nineteen years after its end.

Our attitude is also different because of the profound poetic voice which came to light during and after the conflict – a voice which brought home the real horrors of warfare as well as the wounding of long established values.

Wilfred Owen speaks out

Wilfred Owen is now regarded as one of the premier English poets of the First World War and a significant poetic voice of the twentieth century. He witnessed first-hand the horrors of the Western front and translated it through the medium of poetry. He fused his growing anti-war sentiment with a combination of his English poetic heritage, a deep love of nature and his traditional Christian background. Born out of an increasing realisation of the disconnect between the view of the war at home and the harsh and gruesome realities of the battlefield, Owen's moving body of work has profoundly impacted generations of readers.

New Crossref-it.info text guide

Just in time for revision before this summer’s exams, now you can discover a new Crossref-it.info text-guide on selected poems by Wilfred Owen:

26 of his most significant poems are provided with a synopsis then examined in terms of:
  • Context
  • Language & tone 
  • Structure & versification
  • Imagery & symbolism
  • Themes – individual to the poem them connected to Owen’s wider thematic strands.

As well as this in depth commentary, there is background information on:

  • Owen’s social influences
  • The contemporary literary context
  • The religious & philosophical understanding of his times.

Crucially, there’s also help on how to:

  • Do well in exam and essay answers
  • Approach his work with critical awareness
  • Find other helpful resources.
Posted by Crossref-it.info at 15:13 0 comments

Thursday, 3 April 2014

An alternative perspective on the afterlife

Only connect

Earlier this academic year Crossref-it.info launched Only Connect, for which the Crossref-it.info team have taken a series of themes and then looked at how each runs through and unites various texts, providing hundreds of helpful links to a variety of onsite sources.

At the end of last term Attitudes to death was released. It showcased how cultures alter through time in the way they approach the end of life, linking texts such as Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale, Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, Hamlet and the works of the Metaphysical Poets.

Take another look

Up until the end of the nineteenth century, many prose texts simply endorsed the conventional Christian Western worldview, that God would decide who ended up in heaven or hell, both envisaged according to established biblical imagery. However, part of the shock that greeted the publication of Emily Brontë’s Gothic classic, Wuthering Heights, was because she envisaged a fate for her protagonists very different to the conventional depiction of life after death.

Why not take a look at the newly launched material at Only Connect – ‘Attitudes to death’? You’ll discover direct links to references regarding ghosts and haunting, judgement and release, the blurred boundaries between death and life, plus imagery about spiritual freedom which has little to do with conventional perceptions. In Brontë’s novel there is no clear demarcation between life and the hereafter.

EPQ students

We know some students are developing theses for an EPQ (Extended Project Qualification). If you are of a slightly Gothic bent, the material you can explore within ‘Attitudes to death’ may be just what you need to construct a winning argument.

Coming soon

Meanwhile, look out for the next Only Connect theme being launched in May, about how texts reflect the ‘Impact of location’.

Enjoy the Easter break and give yourself some time to refresh your mind and imaginations before the hard slog of exam prep kicks in.
Posted by Crossref-it.info at 14:27 0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Headlines