Performance notes on our piece - John Godbers Teechers

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Scott Millar                                                                                                           34625                                      

7168                                                                                                    Merchant Taylors’    

Supporting notes

John Godber’s Teechers

Practitioner: John Godber/Hull Truck Theatre Company

Chosen skill: Acting

Part played: Salty who plays the parts off Mr.Nixon, Oggy Moxon, Teacher B, Deanie

Section 1 – clear and concise evidence of detailed exploration of the chosen practitioner and good level of understanding of their theatrical purpose. Justification of play and extract in relation to the practitioner’s work.

With only having 3 members in our group, this restricted us into what play we could choose from. After reading a few of the Godber’s texts (e.g. happy jack) I found that I enjoyed his plays. He writes from experience and as he says himself “I think the best kind of writing is something that comes out of yourself, there’s no point writing anything unless it’s felt.” Through his writing I could see the depth of his understanding of the characters and their regional setting (Yorkshire).

In the play there is a lot of mulit roling, for example I play the part of Salty who plays the part of 4 other different characters just in the sections of the play we have chosen. This then gave me the challenge of having to play 4 different roles and changing characters on stage at some points, this then gave me the challenge of creating different voices, and making them all as distinctive as possible so as soon as you heard the voice you would know what character I was playing. Salty would need to be more naturalistic as he would exaggerate some aspects of the characters he plays in the ‘play within the play’.

We all played the parts of directors throughout rehearsals, one of the problems I faced was trying to tell my 2 other members what I think they should do at certain parts of the play. I found this a problem as it was hard to get across an idea I had in my head of what I pictured how I would play the part. I also wasn’t 100% sure if the idea I had in my head was right and so I would sometimes tend not to give an opinion on how I think the part should be played. In some parts of the play were we were all needed I found it hard to spot the problems we faced as I was not able to fully see how it looked from an audiences point of view, this problem was not faced however when 2 of us were only needed on stage as the other could take the role as the director. At some points we would all have different ideas, some contradicting each other, we would then try out all the different ideas and then choose which one we wanted and then main way this was done was by what we wanted the audience’s reaction to be like at this part of the play.

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Godber’s style

  • His plays are fast paced and move along quickly.
  • His emphasis is on what the actors do, rather than on sets,costumes or props
  • His characters are stereotypical working-class with humorous traits
  • His characters often directly address the audience
  • His productions feature music to create the necessary atmosphere

Hull Truck’s aspirations for theatre

  • To make theatre accessible
  • To bring in new audiences from all sections of the community
  • To be a progressive force in theatre
  • To broaden horizons, develop new writing for theatre, be imaginative and professional.

To help me ...

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