Colin rises from his seat to break then tense atmosphere. He offers to buy his friends drinks and walks to the bar with his conscience, who says ‘I don’t understand what is wrong with everyone. We just had such a good time.’ His confusion was shown by the frown upon his face and the puzzled look he had.
As Colin comes back with the drinks, he sits down and brings up the subject of the baby with Barry. They light-heartedly started to joke about whom had hurt the baby the most. Fred’s body stiffened and his eyes widened. This showed the audience that he felt shameful and did not like the others talking about the death of his baby. Everyone became fidgety as there was an awkward atmosphere. They argued about who did the worst deed to show that they were masculine and daring than one another.
Mike’s frustration with everyone’s attitude slowly built up until he told Colin and Barry to stop talking about the baby and to change the subject firmly. Colin gets angry at Mike and starts to call him a wimp. The tension increases and the atmosphere is very uncomfortable at the point as the men are aggressively arguing. Mike’s hands start to shake and his turns red to show his anger.
The climax of the scene is when Fred abruptly stands up and shouts at both Colin and Mike, as he can’t bear everyone talking and arguing just after they had all murdered his baby. He made wild arm gestures and shouted uncontrollably at the others with an expression full of pain. He said “It was my baby!” several times. This implied that he is extremely distraught about being involved of the murder of his own baby. The rest of the group sit there shocked and had their mouths wide open to show this. The scene ends with Barry’s conscience saying ‘why is the idiot making so much commotion? He is attracting attention, He’s going to get us all into trouble if he doesn’t shut up!’ Barry squeezed his knuckles together and then violently raised from his seat, grabbing Fred by his collar. The scene freezes at this point. This would keep the audience e anxious as they would wonder if Barry is going to hit Fred as he is irritated that they can get in trouble as they had just killed a baby.
My role- play character in this scene was Mike. In order to play this character successfully I had to change my girlish behaviour and adopt the characteristics of a man. I did a research of men, so I would have a better idea of how to play the character of Mike. I then decided to focus my study on Caucasian men, as I thought this would be best suited to my character. I observed that men sit with their legs further apart from each other than girls do. They tend not to fiddle with things and sit with their hands still. They also sit with their backs slightly hunched whereas females generally sit more upright. When playing the character of Mike, I realised that I would have to stop my self touching my hair as I spoke and instead of walking with one foot in front of the other as I usually do, I would have to walk with my feet further apart in a more casual manner.
Mike behaved very differently to his conscience. Amongst his peer group, he tried to act normally, as if nothing was bothering him but laughing and smiling etc. However, his conscience was feeling distraught. This was shown by the conscience looking down at the floor with a sad expression upon their face. The comments they made also demonstrated how distressed Mike felt. For example, the conscience said “What have I done? I’m a murderer, and now I’m sitting in a pub with my friends. I feel so bad.” This showed the difference of how Mike was really feeling to how he was behaving.
However, the conduct of both Barry and his conscience were very similar indeed. He was very contented and so was his conscience. To illustrate this to the audience Barry and his conscience frequently smiled, talked a lot and seemed very relaxed. This was done to show the audience the variety of feelings different people undergo after an incident.
The staging we used was effective to a certain extent. The consciences were positioned in a particular way on stage to enhance the feelings of the character. For instance, the conscience of Mike sat very close to him on the floor. This suggests that Mike was feeling very down and that conscience was bothering him.
On the other hand, the conscience of Barry was further away from Barry to show that his conscience was not harassing him like Mikes. The conscience stood very upright with their hands on their hips and their head in the air with a smile on their face. This portrayed that Barry’s conscience was very happy.
The audience could differentiate between the consciences and the characters as the consciences were always sure of their feelings therefore they would express them more clearly. However, the characters were trying to hide what they were feeling and so they were slightly more hesitant. At the beginning of the scene when they all enter the pub, the characters sit on the chairs whilst the consciences position themselves accordingly. This way the audience is able to identify the characters, as the consciences never sat on the chairs. Also the characters looked right through the consciences as if they would not see them. This was effective because the audience felt as if they were the only people who actually new what each character was feeling and thinking.
