How research material was gathered and used within the process of writing a play.

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How research material was gathered and used within the process

The research material which was gathered within the process have been used in many ways to develop our plot ideas and characters, we have used newspaper articles, pictures, postcards videos and the use of the internet to influence and develop ideas.

Newspaper

From the newspaper articles this gave us a starting point for our devised piece.  We used the articles to create frozen images, which led us to other ideas for opening scenes and other scenes within our play.  These articles were of events, which had occurred recently, majority of them were of older people who were attacked on their way home but also they were stories of children who had also been beaten and assaulted.

Postcards/pictures

We used the pictures to give us ideas for plots and sub-plots within the play.  Also from the pictures we were able to think about what message we want our audience to gain from watching our devised piece.

The main pictures were of old people who had been beaten up.  This stimulated the idea of using the criminal mind.  These images were also used in our final piece as Over Head Projector images.

Monologues

In our group we all created a monologue on a character of our choice.  We then got together and tried to link our characters in some way.

This gave us all a very clear idea of what our basic character would be like, which enabled us to build a background and personality for our character.

Internet

 was the main site used with our group. We were able to research a particular type of person, which built up the background of what the character has been through and the consequences of any life changing actions.  We went away individually and looked in depth at famous cases throughout history.  I found a particular case on Doreen Baired who killed 1 of the 5 children she was looking after.  The pressure got to her so she killed the youngest child. I was able to use this to base my character on which was extremely helpful.

Video

The video, which we watched, gave us an outlook on crime rates and the sentences given to the particular crime.  This video gave the group the idea of using statistics within our devised piece, in order to inform our audience visually as well as verbally.

Books

In the novel Regeneration by Pat Barker Dr. Rivers a was psychologist develop similar symptoms to his patients.  This gave the idea of letting the professor/psychologist have the same symptoms as the subjects and from this she eventually kills a person and ends up in the same institute she was working in.

   

As mentioned for my character research I explored the Internet and looked in murder book for cases.  This contributed greatly as the devising process progressed.

The idea was bought up about one month into our devising that we should have a life size mask, which represented the criminal mind.  We were going to use this for our Physical Theatre scene.  We wanted to be quite physical with this meaning we would move in and out of the mask but as research was carried out on what materials to use we found that this project would not be the best option for the amount of movement which was require.  We found this would have caused the cast great damage and it would be too expensive.

How did your role emerge and how was it communicated?

Firstly as a group we decided on a topic, which we wanted to base our play on. We then individually went away and performed our own research.  The topic we came up with was the criminal mind

I looked on the Internet at the web site  where I was given scenarios or different murders carried out. I then read a particular case on a 14 year old teenager which was interesting and good idea to base a character on.

After I decided what age my character was I thin began to observe different peoples characteristics of and around the same age group.

It was then discussed with the group what we want each character to convey, so from that point we able to focus on creating a better character.

Within our drama class we carried out the Stanislavki’s relaxation technique during this we were able to look deeper into our characters and the characters background and experiences. This enabled us to know our characters on a deeper level and know how our character would act if they were put into a certain predicament.

Within the beginning of the play my character may seem to be quite quiet as far up to the first snippet, but as the play develops it is clear that the character is developing as the play develops and only then you are able to see that the character is the total opposite to how she is portrayed in the first scene.

 

As our play developed my character became stronger but didn’t change in any way.  As I carried out more research I realised that the majority of babies deaths were through suffocation rather strangulation, that was when I decided to change my idea of strangling the baby.

My main focus in the play was to show the criminals who feel remorse for the crime, which they committed, and also to show any one in the society regardless of their ethnic background or up bringing is capable of committing a murder.

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Through out the play my characters role was switching from Cassie to the News reporter.   I was able to keep in role as these two characters by keeping my mind focused on how I believed both of these characters would react and speak and used different tones in given circumstances.  The two characters were very different to each other which made the switch from one to the next easier.  The character of Cassie spoke in a colloquial way where as the News reporter spoke in a formal manor.

“A lie must become, or at any rate must ...

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