Some of the main issues we talked about during this lesson, were how Judy was going to be able to cope with the fact she had killed her sister and how she was going to prevent this from happening again. Throughout the play Judy mentions how sorry she is and how she would never be able to drink and drive again, but towards the end of the book we learn Judy has got into a car drunk and has killed another person. This is a complete contradiction to her views and statements about drink driving, but highlights the fact she didn’t learn for her terrible mistake. For this I feel sympathy and anger towards Judy, not only should she be made to accept the fact she killed her own sister, she killed another innocent person in a separate drink driving accident. Judy obviously felt no remorse and for this I feel nothing but pity for such an uncaring and evil person. At the end of this session we had to explore Judy’s character in a number of different ways, but most people in the class gave the same feedback and response; Judy deserved all that she got.
We used the techniques of;
- Hot seating
- Thought tracking
- Conscience tunnel
- Writing in role
- Key moments.
In our group we decided to use the idea of hot seating and key moments. I played the role of Judy and the other people in my group took it in turns to mention and key moment and then ask me a question about why I did it and what I feel about it now. We decided to show Judy about 10 after the first accident, when she had then killed two people. The group switched between questions about Joanna and then the other accident to show how closely linked they were and how confused Judy would have been. Our piece lasted about 3 minutes, question after question. This was to represent how so many people would have wanted to ask Judy the same question, why? I didn’t like playing the role of Judy but it gave me a chance to experience how closed in and threatened she would have felt before after the first and second accident. Although I didn’t like the experience I think it was a good techniques to have used because it really helped everyone in the group to get into Judy’s mind.
Our final piece.
In hours 5 and 6 we were told we had to device a piece of drama about 6-7minutes long, using some of the themes and topics raised in the book, Too Much Punch for Judy. In my group there was, Jack, Selina, Nick and Billy, unfortunately Selina wasn’t very well so after the first lesson she was unable to attend the exam sessions. Although it took the boys a little while to get focused and working, we came up with some good ideas. We talked about a number of ideas for quite a long time. Jack thought rein acting part of the play would have given our audience a good insight into how Judy was feeling and what her life has been like since the death of Joanna. I understood where Jack was coming from with his idea, but I didn’t see how we could have made the piece our own and formed it into something we would enjoy. After many ideas a suggestions, we settled on the ‘depression stages’ each of us played a number of characters, to portray to the audience how mixed up and stressed out Judy was. We used the same type of story, the car accident, death, memory ect. But changed the characters. Billy was the male version of Judy, Nick played his brother, whilst Jack took on the role of an outsider, someone who wasn’t involved in the car accident, but knew Billy and Nick and what happened in the car. I also played Billy’s character. We used the ‘good angle / bad angle’ technique, to show how Billy had sunk into this depressing and confused state, whereas I was fine with what had happened and saw it as nothing more than an accident. We wanted to make sure the audience knew who the characters were in our piece, so at the beginning we used a section of dialogue that we devised, to show that Billy was the person driving the car and he was responsible for the death of Nick.
Our opening scene began with Billy sitting on a chair in the middle of an empty room, with 5 empty alcohol bottles around him listening to the radio. Jack then read our first piece of dialogue. “And in local new today, two Essex teenagers have been killed in a tragic alcohol related car accident…” Billy’s reaction to this was to turn off the radio and being shaking and panicking. This was to show the audience that the radio programme had reminded him of the tragic way he had killed his brother. Billy then began talking, but not to the audience or another character, to no one. Billy was showing the character in his own world completely, not having anything to do with the outside world.
In our piece was wanted to use the ‘flashback’ technique to show the audience what Billy was remembering about. We needed to make sure we used the same gesture each time, so that the audience knew they were seeing events from the past. We decided a hand movement would have been the best way to do this. Billy holding up his hand signalled to the audience the change in the time period.
Nick then joined Billy (who was now sitting the a scene, set up to look like a car) Billy and Nick were now playing the role of the drunken brothers as they came out of the nightclub the night Nick was killed. After falling about drunk they had a fight over who was going to be driving, Billy won and snatched the keys from Nick, both characters then froze, while the original dialogue was read out and a high-pitched scream was heard, the lights were turned off. When the lights came back up, Billy was alone in the car driving down a stretch of road he uses everyday. The scene showed Billy going about his everyday life, driving to work and so on, but in complete silence. This was where Billy’s other side came out. I walked across behind Billy, reading a short extract form the book (chapter5) “no way did I want to know what has happened, I just wanted to remember Nick he was the day he left work2 as I read this script Jack and Nick acted out Nick leaving work and setting off to meet his brother to go to the nightclub. Jack then froze as I walked back across towards Billy. To show the major differences between my character and Billy’s I needed to show the audience we were the same people but both had very different attitudes towards the death of Nick.
Leaning on Billy’s shoulder I used another section of dialogue, but changed it slightly so that it had a completely different meaning. “No way did I want to remember, I killed him, so what, he dead now, nothing else to say about it!” these cruel words would have meant the audience saw how completely different the 2 sides of Billy were. I then left the scene and Billy returned to sitting in the car, alone. Billy was now shown to be driving down a stretch of road similar to the one where he had killed his brother. Again Jack read out a section of dialog and Billy began to panic about the past. A few moments of Billy’s panic struck face and thoughts; lead into a black out and myself, Nick and Jack entering the room. When the light came back on myself (as Billy’s evil side) were arguing about the number of people we had killed, this scene was designed to be slightly abstract and throw the audience. Our brutal and unemotional conversation about our killings lead to Billy jumping from his chair shouting “IT REALLY WAS AN ACCIDENT, AN ACCIDENT I TELL YOU. PLEASE! JUST AN ACCIDENT” in silence myself, Jack and Nick left the room, to leave Billy again standing alone.
To close our piece we had to use something reparative and striking, so we decided to use the dialogue that Jack had been reading throughout and adding a small section onto the end.
“And in local news today, two Essex teenagers have been killed in an alcohol related accident, the driver, who survived, was said to be 3times over the legal limit, his two passengers sadly died. Our thoughts and greatest sympathy go out to the families of those poor children.” To this Billy did not react and the light went out.
I think between the 5 of us we created and really striking but abstract piece of drama, I was really happy with the outcome and I think we were able to put across each of our reactions to this particular piece of drama. The play ‘Too much punch for Judy’ has some striking images and emotions weaved in and I think we managed to portray this in our piece of drama.
