Sleep, My Beloved Powerpoint

Winter Presentation: Lab H

Abraham and Isaac presents a biblical tale of a sacrifice. Abraham is told by an angel of God to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as an offering to God. When Abraham takes Isaac to the top of a mountain to sacrifice him, an angel intervenes, telling Abraham that God does not want him to kill his son, but rather God was testing Abraham’s faith toward God.

Abraham is part of the Mystery Plays, also known as Cycle Plays.

The playwrights of the Cycle plays are anonymous. However, there is evidence showing that the cycle plays were written on the continent of Europe. The playwrights were most likely not professional writers but members of the trade guilds.

This play has two different versions. In one version Abraham only has one son, the second version Abraham has several sons.

Main themes that Lab H got out of Abraham and Issac were:

Sacrifice

Faith and Trust

Obedience

The Mystery of Irma Vep is a Victorian form of Literature that mixed sensationalism, melodrama, foreign locales and romance.

The plot centrals around discovering who killed Lord Edgar’s first wife and son. This play takes the audience on a twisted adventure with a plot filled with monsters, mysterious death and eerie settings.

The playwright is Charles Ludlam , who had a career as a playwright, actor, director, and designer.

Ludlam is attempting to poke fun at literature and theatrical conventions.

The entire play is traditionally played by two males. Through this Ludlam is trying to make the audience question their biases about gender and sexual orientation.

Main themes that Lab H found in The Mystery of Irma Vepp

Deception

Disguise

Good vs. Evil

Writers’ Notes:

One of the most difficult parts of the writing process was integrating the two plays, "Isaac and Abraham" and "Irma Vep" seamlessly into a new script called "Sleep my beloved", while keeping the base plays' themes in mind.

While the plays contain similar themes the two base plays were from entirely different time periods and thus have very different dialogue. Irma Vep uses more modern dialogue, while Abraham and Isaac uses complex rhymes and biblical verses. The challenge of deciding what type of language to use was the most difficult. In the end, we found that the best way to integrate the scripts was to remove all contractions to allow for more formal and aged dialect.

Lab H, titled their dramatic piece as, “Sleep, My Beloved”

Lab H originally wrote a script based on the theme of “Death as Fate, Life as an Option”, however after completing the script this theme was only relevant to the first scene of our play. Lab H, as a team, decided that we needed to take more risks and look deeper into our play to find something more meaningful that could be communicated to our audience.

After taking a closer look into our script one theme that was constantly reoccurring was religion. As a lab we began to ask our selves, what does religion mean to everyone? What does religion mean to these characters?

The answer to our question was that our characters are very religious people. Everything the characters do is motivated by religion. Thus, a new theme became visible, religious justification. Meaning that everything our characters do is based on their religions beliefs, and even when they do something that is wrong, the characters justify their actions with religion.

This theme of religious justification is communicated not only through our script, but also through lighting, set and costumes. Watch carefully for our choice of lighting specific areas of the stage at certain times.

Due to the change in theme, there were slight adjustments that had to made :

The first scene of the play, which strongly displayed our old theme “Death as Fate, Life as an Option” was cut from the script. Lab H enjoyed this scene, however in order to better communicate our new theme of Religious Justification , it was necessary to change the first scene.

The religious affiliation of the character Jane was changed. Prior to, Jane was a non-religious character, that was married to a very religious character, Abraham. Lab H chose to make Jane have a stronger faith. This adjustment not only made for better communication of our theme but also allowed for easier comprehension of Jane’s actions.

The concept of setting: We wanted to represent religious setting such as a church. This choice was made to show how religion surrounds this family, and how Abraham is so incredibly devoted to God and his religion.

Due to the main theme, religious justification, we wanted the mood to be sacred and dim.

The choice of Irma’s picture to hang above the alter was made to show how Irma is a force that will always remain in the Vep’s home, and linger over everyone.

Since the theme of our piece is religious justification, and our characters are very religious, the set resembles a Church. We wanted to go for a representational environment for a home of a family that is not all together but is governed by the word of God. This is why we choose to represent the home as if it were in a church. We include crosses over the beds and center stage is made to look like an alter in a church. Here is a rough sketch of our set:

The costumes for each character relates back to their personal relationship with God. For example, Abraham’s costume shows him as being very tight with his personality and with his relationship with God. This is demonstrated through his tidy and uniform look of a suit.

Here are a couple rough sketches of our costumes:

Originally, Lab H had a very representation set and costumes. We attempted to make it more presentational by setting the stage as a church-like home, with the alter as a focal point. We also adjusted the costumes to better fit our setting, as well as added colour accents for character symbolism.

We chose to use God’s voice rather then see God as a person because we did not want to embody God – we wanted to the voice to represent any ‘higher being’ and allow the play to appeal to all religions.

The angel was incorporated because it is the connection between the two different views and justifications of religion.

Each play represents the opposite ends of the spectrum

Religion permeates the lives of individuals as well as entire societies and countries

Capacity for a huge range of interpretations

Religion has evolved and will continue to evolve

Religion is still a contentious issue in our society

We wanted to probe our audience to ask questions

Due to restricted resources, Lab H thought it would be interesting to create a list of what we would have done with our piece, if we had all the resources in the world:

Costumes: Lab H would change the costumes to better resembles the sketch’s made. Lab H would have liked to seen costumes that fit our actors better, and that would more effectively communicate our theme.

Set: Lab H could create an more elaborate set with extra money. This would help make our set better resemble a church. Also an actual portrait of the actor playing Irma Vep would be an interesting addition to the set.

Lighting: Lighting that better suited our individual piece would be essential if we had an endless budget. This would include lights that only light one side of the stage.

Casting : Due to the ratio of males to females in Lab H, the actor casted as the character of Isaac is female. However, with a larger budget we would be able to cast this role as a male.

Advertisement: With a larger budget Lab H would hire a public relations specialist in order to advertise our play. This would include the creation of posters, tickets, commercials, and pamphlets.

Location: Lab H thought that this piece would portray its theme more effectively if took place in a different location such as a church or a cathedral. This change of location would completely change the feeling of the play.

Music/Sound: With more money, Lab H, could have more dramatic music. Rather then a single voice, there could be two or more. Also access to musical instruments would be beneficial.