Shakers Evaluation.

Shakers Evaluation

During the last six workshops we have been studying the play ‘Shakers’ By John Godber and Jane Thorton. The play is primarily centered on four working class females who work in a cocktail bar/restaurant “Shakers” But multi-role-play and cross cutting are used frequently within the play to allow the audience to meet a wide range of characters.

Two lessons I felt were successful were the lessons where we performed a monologue, originally performed by Adele in the script and when we explored the characters of Mr and Mrs Untrendy!

For the monologue, we were given the script form scene twenty-one and had to perform what happened and project peoples opinions from the 1980’s. In the monologue Adele explains how she indulged into a relationship with a school teacher and at the age of 16 got pregnant and had an abortion. No-one knew about this. The monologue in the script was powerful and really worked as everyone saw a side to Adele that they had never witnessed before, it was our task to show this side of Adele.

In a group of four we decided to involve the school teacher, Mike, point of view, feelings and emotions as well as Adeles. We split down into two groups, Kacey and I, showing Adeles thoughts and Matt and Richard showing Mikes.

The scene starts with the group of us, talking about general chit chat, and as we freeze, Kacey steps aside and uses direct address to talk to the audience about how she and Mike first met and the way she felt about the beginnings of their growing friendship. As Kacey stepped back into the group they continue their chit chat. As each of us step aside this is how the scene continues. Next Matt steps out and tells the audience about how he met Adele, and his thoughts for their relationship. Next, Richard and I, talk about Mikes and Adeles memories of the trip in Scotland. We then used a series of flashbacks, of different memories of their trip to bring the audience to reality. We end this part with all four of us facing the audience, raising our voices and shouting ‘I was expecting a baby’ to set the scene of confusion, which was how I imagine Adele and Mike were feeling at the time, we played that line several times, with us all saying it at different times so the audience couldn’t clearly make out what we were saying, but finished it by all saying the line at once. As we stood in silence, we wanted the audience to feel confused, shocked and also to get them thinking of what Adele would do next, was she going to keep it? Our group then continued the general chit chat but froze again as Kacey and I stepped out to tell the audience about the abortion she went through, how she felt afterwards and what happened between herself and Mike. Finally Richard and Matt stepped out and told the audience of how Mike was then feeling.

Our group decided to contrast Adele and Mikes responses. Adele believed that Mike had fallen in love with her and gave him excuses to why he finished with her after she had her abortion; whereas for Mike It was nothing but a fling, gone wrong!

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For the second lesson that I felt was successful, I will talk about Mr and Mrs Untrendy. For this we used a lot of the play script, adding in our own exaggerated ideas. My groups own idea of being ‘untrendy’ was to be loud, rude, having a strong cockney accent, rough looking and very stupid. In this piece we used still images, thought tracking and direct address. The scene was set in the restaurant, Shakers; the untrendy couple waltz in loud and proud and get shown to their table by the waitress. The couple sit down, portraying their lousy attitude and mannerisms. The untrendy couple both sit with their legs wide open, slouched into their chairs, both accents are strong cockney-like and they mispronounces their words often. We have a still image of this look, which then takes us onto the waitresses. At this point they are all picking straws; the one who picks the short straw has to serve the couple for the night. We decided to do this so the audience would realise that the waitresses understood how much trouble and grief the couple were able to make! When it came down to the couple ordering their food, we wanted to make this part as comical as possible. We used the idea from the script of mispronouncing the names of food and added our own;

Salmon → Sal-Mon

Chardonnay → Pint of Char-don-nay

Rose Wine → Ros-ET

This went down with the audience really well!

There was one main lesson that I felt wasn’t as successful as the others, this was the lesson where we had to create a busy scene in a restaurant. We tried to just create mayhem but that went wrong, as we didn’t rehearse it enough for it to become controlled mayhem! Instead it looked messy and improvised. After seeing other groups performances it made me think to what it’s really like in a busy restaurant; everything gets repeated, but with a faster pace; everyone is rushing around and bumping into each other. To improve that I would make it more smoothly run and make the knocks and bumps work compliment each other. Another way to improve it would be to not only set the scene in a restaurant but also take it back into the kitchen so the audience could see what goes on in there. I believe that pace is a main attribute to Godbers plays, a good idea would be to slide from the busy restaurant into waitresses having a break. The pace is completely different but this would only really work if the transitions in and out of the break back to the restaurant were smooth and clear. If they weren’t then the audience would be lost.

Another group’s success would have been on the busy restaurant scene by Kacey and her group. They connected well to the audience and all transitions used were clear. Their main focus was a chair and by half way I realised that the person sitting on the chair at that time was the customer. By separating the customers and staff with height, this made it clear to the audience who was who. This was very good as it then let the audience watch the scene properly instead of having to think who was who and what they were doing. The main strategies the group used were multi role play, still image, mime and repetition. These were all used effectively and pushed the actors to a limit. The group were one of many who also decided to not only focus on the restaurant but also in the kitchen. This gave the audience something different to watch and the comical happenings in restaurant kitchens are quite bad!!! Such as food being dropped on the floor but then being picked up and shoved back on a plate!

The group managed to maintain a fast and steady pace, which made the audience feel excited as well as exhausted, even though they were only watching! They way group finished was brilliant, by completely stopping the scene with a waitress being flopped onto a chair. The pace came to a halt, which made the audience look on in disbelief and even relief!

I have really enjoyed studying Shakers. In the play the audience encounter many different characters, which I thought was fun and varied to explore the individual characteristics of social groups. The characters showed the diversity of 1980’s English city life. The play shows the real backgrounds of peoples lives; showing that the majority of the time being a full-time waitress isn’t through choice, but because they have no other option. With the play not having a proper storyline this gave it a real sense of excitement as well as confusion. As the audience you were not sure on what was going to happen next; where a scene would end or who the next scene would be based upon.

To be able to play John Godbers plays successfully, an actor needs to be versatile. They need to be able to take and swap between different physical forms with ease and remember the mannerisms for each different character. The characters are sometimes to an extreme so the actor needs to be able to act as different people and apply all of their skills.

By Sarah Foley