Triple - Naturalism & Realism - Blog 2 - 08/09/16

This lesson, we spent a great deal of time determining the difference between Naturalism and Realism. This was very confusing for me as until this lesson, I always thought that they both meant the same thing. But after this lesson I realised how wrong I was!

After collating ideas as a class, these are the thoughts we had:

• Realism is set in real situations with real characters who the audience honestly think are real. This usually doesn't take place in a theatre as the stage/lighting/sound makes it less believable.
• Naturalism showcases believable characters in far fetched scenarios but the audience don't mind this as it's much more interesting than realistic events. Naturalism asks the audience to suspend their disbelief in order to fully appreciate the play.
• An example we came up with is in the TV show "The Only Way Is Essex," the situations the characters face are very believable as are the characters, however in soap operas such as "Eastenders," the characters may be believable but the scenarios they encounter are very far-fetched but this seems much more entertaining for the audience.
• The way I liked to look at it was that in Naturalism, actors are performing and the audience is around them watching as the plot is very dramatic and centralised so it's more entertaining to watch. However, in Realism the actors are around the "audience" and they don't recognise it much as drama as it is extremely realistic and to some it may seem dull so it's not looked upon as much as Naturalism.

After learning these differences, we were asked to devise a piece of Naturalism. With no stimulus at all we assumed our imagination would take advantage of this freedom but we weren't sure at all what to do. Our first thoughts went to the ages of our characters and we thought it'd be best to stay with our own ages as this made them seem a lot more believable which led us to wanting to set our piece in a school where people of our age usually congregate. After attempting to write out a script, midway we felt stuck for ideas. We were then given a major event to base our piece around. We were told that there was a dead body in our living room and we had just found it; we were also told to improvise as we would find it a lot easier. After this stimulus, we found it only too easy to generate a piece based on it. Below is the video of the piece (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa2zif3oTlY):

What went well:

• We all kept in our roles very well.
• All of our characters were believable.
• The piece was realistic but just far-fetched enough for the audience to suspend their disbelief.

How to improve:

• Lorna's name didn't stay the same throughout the piece.
• As Ollie forgot the staging we had in place, he tried to call Lorna and I through a wall whilst we were supposedly outside.