http://ryanmcginley.com/photographs/

http://ryanmcginley.com/photographs/

Guardian Review

''Seneca, Euripides and Racine all offer up the story of the queen who falls in love with her stepson as a tragedy. The late Sarah Kane gives it to us as a brutal black comedy, a savage farce in which it is not trousers that are dropped, but a dying man's entrails.

Kane was only 24 when she wrote this brief play as a commission for the Gate Theatre in London, but she already understood despair acutely. Phaedra's Love is about despair - the despair of young Hippolytus, who feels absolutely nothing and understands too much, and of his stepmother, Phaedra, who feels too much and understands too little.

Kane, you suspect, knew first-hand about both, although it is Hippolytus's journey from nihilism to transcendent death that is most absorbing here. This young prince (an excellent Laurence Penry-Jones, all muscle turned to fat) spends much of the play, corpse-like, slumped upon the sofa amid a desert of junk-food containers, watching TV, masturbating and blowing his nose on his socks. There is a toe-curling moment when the desperate, unhinged Phaedra gives him a blow job, and his only reaction is a slight tilt of his head because she is obscuring his view of the TV. It is the merest sign that this young man is alive.

Only at the end, when the mob have castrated him and popped his genitals on the barbecue, does this dying man come to life and start to feel, declaring: "If only there could have been more moments like this." The Greeks offer nothing quite so mercilessly tragic, quite so mercilessly honest. From start to finish, Kane was never less than the most scrupulously honest of writers, even if at times - as here - there is something rigid and adolescent about the honesty.

It is a wildly uneven play that has its antecedents in Dynasty and Dallas as much as Seneca. With hindsight - and the death of Diana - it seems starkly satirical and strangely prescient about our own dysfunctional royal family.

To have a chance of working off the page, it requires an almost reckless bravery in the staging. Anne Tipton's production has a steely elegance, but it is too well-mannered and restrained. It shies around the grim comedy and doesn't come close to the extremes of farce and violence demanded by the climatic mob scene. If Phaedra's Love is really going to hurt us and make us flinch, it also has to make us laugh.''

Phaedra's Love

Final term and I will be doing 'Phaedra's Love' for my theoretical design project. I have decided it will be a good way to track my thought process throughout by blogging visuals and initial thoughts. 

I have just finished reading Sarah Kane's version. I had been tipped off that it was going to be pretty ark but had not anticipated the gore at the end. I have read that with Greek plays, most of the action happens off stage and for Kane to experiment with putting it ON the stage it doesn't surprise me..

I will now need to read Seneca's original version of the play and compare them before starting research into Kane herself, her influences and previous plays, character breakdowns, the action itself.  

Styling Evaluation

The styling project has got to be one of the best projects ive ever done and also one of the projects I am most proud of! I have thoroughly enjoyed having free reign over everything and this has been a really fantastic opportunity to experiment with my interests as an individual. Through research I feel I have broadened my knowledge of paintings and discovered exactly what I like and don’t.

I think I have been successful in creating a challenge for myself as I chose a painting that was outdoors and had seven people in it. I have really enjoyed sourcing; being experimental and creative with resources as there was no budget. In total I spent £0.50 on a hat that I sourced at a car boot sale.

This project has enabled me to use and improve a variety of skills from photography to photoshop which has been a rather enjoyable challenge. I think my time planning has improved as I have had to work to a tight time scale and I think this is a really useful skill to have gained. The styling itself has been really fun and I can see myself doing more of this over the summer break. It has revealed that I would like to take on a supervising role next year to improve my CV and this project has been a great start into that field.

This part of the unit has really been more like fun rather than hard work and would recommend to anyone aspiring to be a designer this has been a thoroughly educating experience. 

Film Evaluation

SDP has by far been my favourite unit of the course so far. I have really enjoyed working independently and I have really surprised myself with my time planning. At the start of the project I made sure that I had made an extremely thorough time plan as a guide to follow religiously. I feel that I have been successful with this as I have found myself constantly busy and for once, on top of things!

This unit has been a great experience for me to work in film, something I have always wanted to do. The project was exactly as we were forewarned it would be. One minute you are stuck for things to do and the next minute rushed off your feet without enough hours in the day. This part of the ‘Painting for Inspiration’ project has been fantastic for my professional practice as it has really revealed that this is something I would love to pursue. Although independent throughout, the tutorials with Bunny have been a fantastic help and a great guide. I feel I have learnt a great deal more actively participating in the design process and seeing an entire project through.

Working alongside the Film course has been fantastic getting to know new faces and names. Everyone within Film is very friendly and approachable and I think I can speak for everyone within ‘PFI’ that we were warmly welcomed by them. There is a great sense of teamwork and everyone is willing to help each other out and open to suggestions to improve ideas and develop them. Everyone seems really passionate and extremely hard working which was really inspiring for me.

I was more than happy to have received the ‘Situation Group’ as my film as during the pitch there seemed to be a great team behind it with a lot of brilliant ideas. Working as a collaboration made me learn a lot about team work and it was really nice having another person to confirm things with and luckily Ruby and I worked as a really great team, having very similar ideas about what we wanted. I felt lucky that our director and producer were so welcoming as I have learnt that is not always the case! James was very clear with us throughout and I learned that communication is key, especially when we had so little time to pull it all together.  Working on set was a really exciting time, as we got to see all our hard work from pre production come together in front of us. We learned that patience is a very important part of film, but for me, it was all worth it in the end! Seeing a project through from start to finish has been a really rewarding feeling and I am extremely happy with the final outcome. This unit was a fantastic opportunity to see whether this is something I would like to do full time and has lead on to gaining some fantastic work experience working on a feature film in London this summer.  I can’t wait to see the Film when it is finished and I am really looking forward to hopefully working on the grad films next year.