“Shakers” is about 4 cocktail waitresses who pretend to be men whom they have met in the cocktail bar, they talk about how they would get a women and what they want in a woman etc… It is also set in modern day England, but in a cocktail bar rather than a secondary school.
This play is similar to “Teechers” because it has the same style of how people go around acting like other people to prove a point to the audience. It is by the same writer and connects to how people think of others. It also shows a similarity in the fact that both pieces themselves are in the style of Comedy Drama and are both shown around Physical Theatre.
However there are some differences, these are that “Teechers” is aimed to an audience of teenagers rather than adults and “Shakers” is more for an adult audience than teenagers. Other differences are that “Shakers” is an all female cast and therefore is ideal for a female audience as it talks about the female perspective on men. Whilst “Teechers” is both female and male cast and therefore appeals to all. Also “Teachers” is about a play within a play where as “Shakers” isn’t.
The characters in the beginning of “Teechers” are all school children with ages around 15 and 16. These characters are “Salty”, “Gail” and “Hobby”. They are the three students that end up acting out a play about other characters that are teachers. The teachers that appear in the segment of the play that I performed were “Mr. Nixon”, “Mrs. Parry” and “Mr. Basford”. In contrast, the characters in “Shakers” are older that the characters in “Teachers”. However they have similarities in the way they behave towards their peers such as the way both sets of characters use swear words in their dialogue to show their feelings.
In preparation for my role I read the script thoroughly and got a feel for the many different characters. I then tried out different ways to play the characters that I would be performing in this piece.
For the part of Gail I had to be loud and bossy, I tried many ways until I found the point in which I felt in control of this particular character.
However, for Nixon I had to think a bit more deeply about how I was going to play this part especially because he is a male. As Nixon was known as a young casual teacher I had to think about how teachers would act in different situations (especially a male teacher). I did this by watching my subject teachers to see how they reacted to some of the situations that Nixon would have to face. In the end I found my self being able to understand the ways in which a teacher like Nixon would behave
The most useful material I looked at was real life experience. What I mean by this is that I was helped a lot more with watching how situations from “Teechers” are dealt with by real people in reality. Because of this I was able to develop a much more real life character and create more complex skills in acting.
In conclusion I would like to say that I have benefited from the challenge of having to learn how to play more than one character and creating my own way of performing each one individually. From this piece I have also learnt the importance of having a strong character through the hard work and effort I have done with my research and acting.
I have enjoyed working on this piece as I found the script was well written and very funny. It was a great opportunity to really get to know a lot more about scripted work and what it’s like working in Physical Theatre.
