The idea of playing a woman at different times in her life worked well with doing monologues because it was easy to shape into three interlocking monologues. We hoped this would show clearly that we were all the same person. We performed a series of monologues, trying to convey the major things that happen in the woman’s life.
To help us in our study we referred to the performance of ‘The Godmother’ by David Foxton. We looked at the similarities and differences in the styles of performances
‘The Godmother’ was set in 1920’s Chicago. During this the prohibition was taking place in America. ‘Bugsy Malone was set in the 1930’s which was also in the prohibition era. Because people weren’t allowed to buy or drink alcohol the demand for it increased and it had to be made and sold illegally. People who wanted to drink alcohol had to go to speakeasies were they could drink and be entertained, even thought they were illegal. At speakeasies there would be vaudevilles and cabaret shows. Show girls would be hired by agencies like Spat’s Valetta’s, these agencies were legal.
Also in the 1920’s organised crime was on the rise. This was the golden age of the mob. Prior to the prohibition gang crime was only limited to rackets, extortion, prostitution and infiltration of labour unions. The Prohibition provided an excuse for an illegal service The prohibition provided demand for an illegal service that was too a good a money-making opportunity to pass by.
Our performance is set in modern day England, this is not in the
Prohibition era. In modern day England alcohol is a socially accepted drug which is used frequently and is considered to be frequent occurrence. We used how people see alcohol as a large theme in our characters monologues. We showed how alcohol affects your life and how people think that it is a way out of things but in our performance it only made things worse. We used this in our performance as we showed it in our fourth scene and there was reference to it in our third scene. We used it to show how our character coped with her problems and how this only let to making it worse and making her depressed which they let to her suicide.
Also there are other issues in England such as a high divorce rate, family problems, child abuse and also environmental and political issues. Also in modern England everybody seems to have very high aspirations but his also works that if they fail in their aspirations they will fall harder. This is the flip side and there are a high number of cases of depression and also of frustration about failing. The time difference in which these performances are set creates a large difference between the plays as the style and contexts of the play are affected by the era.
The main similarity between the two performances is that both our performance and The Godmother have direct address to the audience , this conventions is sometimes know as breaking the fourth wall and this allows us to reveal the character’s personality and thoughts to the audience. This is done as the character is speaking to the audience as a friend.
In both the performance the
characters are similar because the main characters are revealed so many of their inner thoughts to the audience that the audience knows what the characters are like. Although in ‘The Godmother’ there was a larger cast and so they were not able to fully develop the characters as much as we were able to in ours therefore they remain two dimensional. In our performance we were able to explore in depth the characteristics of our character and also issues in their life and how they react to them, so that they are closer to the audience and more three dimensional.
I worked in a group with three other people. We all tried to make sure that we all played an equal part in the performance and had an equal amount of lines. However as we elaborated and improved our scripts individually that may not have been as equal as way wanted them to be. In the rehearsals I think that we did try to use the time we were given in the best way we could but we found it hard to focus for long periods of time and sometimes not use our time to the full extent that we could of to get the best out of the time we were given. Also we had problems with rehearsals as most of the time we did not have out full group, think this lack of rehearsal with the full group may have hindered our performance. Although when the group were all focused I think that we did well at being in character and remembering our lines.
