unit 9 research

We found out that we are going to be joining up with the actors to do a musical version of  A Christmas Carol. we started off by explaining what we thought the story was about and i found this good explanation: 

'On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by a series of ghosts, starting with his old business partner, Jacob Marley. The three spirits which follow, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come, show Scrooge how his mean behaviour has affected those around him. At the end of the story he is relieved to discover that there is still time for him to change and we see him transformed into a generous and kind-hearted human being.' (Rsc.org.uk, 2019)

i found that looking for different summaries of the story was good because different people interpenetrated it in different ways so it gave me a feel of all the different ways we could take the story.  

we were told to think of the different themes of the play and what characters we would want to be   

these are the types of clothing they used to wear back in the 1840s

Dickens wrote this story in 1843.  the time that it was written there was a tradition for reading 'ghost stories' on Christmas, thats why there are spirits that Scrooge encounters. there is a lot of wealth and injustice are clear comments in the play

'His own story is one of rags to riches. He was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens. The good fortune of being sent to school at the age of nine was short-lived because his father, inspiration for the character of Mr Micawber in 'David Copperfield', was imprisoned for bad debt. The entire family, apart from Charles, were sent to Marshalsea along with their patriarch. Charles was sent to work in Warren's blacking factory and endured appalling conditions as well as loneliness and despair.' (Bbc.co.uk, 2019)

'his obvious talent for descriptive writing drew the attention of his editor at the Morning Chronicle, who suggested that he start writing vignettes, or sketches, of life around London. Charles is known for is writing skills and has made many different plays in his life such as:

• •  
  • The Pickwick Papers, 
  • Oliver Twist, 
  • Nicholas Nickleby, 
  • A Christmas Carol, 
  • David Copperfield, 
  • Bleak House, 
  • Little Dorrit, 
  • A Tale of Two Cities and 
  • Great Expectations' 
(Biography, 2019)

ghost of Christmas past

for my own character research i have been looking into costume and the way different people have played the character here are some clips i have looked at.

i have found them to be very useful as i didn't know what to act like because everyone takes the character in different ways.

for my costume i want to look either like an old Victorian doll because i really like the idea of taking something innocent and putting it in the show to show that Scrooges past was sweet and innocent
here are some ideas;   

i want my make up to kind of look like this so i look like an old spooky Victorian doll but i also wanted to look at nice doll make up. i wanted to make the make up spooky so that it shows although his past and sweet there was still some cracks in it for example, his father not letting him go home, his break up with belle



the song i am going to sing is once upon a December i like the song because it suits the scene its not to musically and its quite dramatic. i changed the words a bit to suit the play so instead of saying 'me' i changed it to 'you' so its like the ghost is talking to scrooge through song. the reason i chose the song is because it fits in with the part of the play that i put it in because the song is about going into the past to get what you once knew and that works because scrooge needs to get to the past to remember why he loved Christmas 

 reference 

Rsc.org.uk. (2019). The plot | A Christmas Carol | Royal Shakespeare Company. [online] Available at: https://www.rsc.org.uk/a-christmas-carol/plot [Accessed 14 May 2019]

.Bbc.co.uk. (2019). BBC - History - Charles Dickens. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/dickens_charles.shtml [Accessed 14 May 2019].

Biography. (2019). Charles Dickens. [online] Available at: https://www.biography.com/writer/charles-dickens [Accessed 14 May 2019].