''I cant wait to tell the missis about this!'' I say this in the last scene, I am in the mental hospital with my 2 freinds. For this line I made my voice very serious, to give a comical feeling, my facial expression was serious as though I really believed I had a wife. I would change my body language so I would look like I was fidgeting, there for, making me look a little nervous. On the other hand on a line such as ''My father always told me so! Every women wrecked his life and all will suffer with my knife!'' I would use a angry harsher tone, my body language would be having my arms strongly around my victums neck, holding a knife in one hand. Hopefully this would show how messed up my head was at that moment.
The relationship between me and the other characters varied, the style of our play wasnt realistic. We showed each characters life indivually, each theme interlocked with a theme basicly saying to understand people who are sufering with any sort of addiction or abuse. In the first scene and the last scene all three characters are shown together and now you can start to descover the different relationships between each character. My character during these scenes is very different from befor, now he has really gon mad and my main interest is watching T.V, insulting my two parteners and pretending I am a married man. Vicey who played Brenda the alcoholic was the most overpowering of the characters and enjoyed picking on my character. A line that demonstrates this is; ''You aint got no wife,... you is lyin!...I is not, I'll kick you in the head now!!'' this implies I lose my temper quick, I would give a gesture such as a fist held high, my facial expression would be very angry and intimigating. Danniel who played 'drugy Dai' was quite a comical character and I found it easy to communicate with her throughout the play. Throughout the play my character developed a friendship with Dai and this gave us lots of ideas to bring a bit of black comedy into our play.
There are lots of different scenes in the play involving different parts of each characters life therefor costume varied,we decided that we wanted to keep our costume as minimal as possible, this resulting in faster scene changes. At first we wanted to use alot of costumes to show how we changed over the years but after alot of disscusion we decided to only use the basic nasesities for example;
*Angel wings, represents each
characters sub contience...
*Dressin gown, worn in scenes
involving mental hospital...
*Basic white shirt and trousers,
this shows purity and innocence...
For scenes involving all three characters in the mental hospital, we didnt have any props signifeing that we were actually in a mental hospital for we really wanted all the audients attension on the three characters before them. To do this in an affective manner we decided that we would all were colourful dressin gowns, this bringing comedi and also helped keep the pace of scene changes quick for we could keep our basic white costumes on.
As I explained we didnt want to focus our efforts on set desgin so for every scene we used what we needed, most scenes were performed on an open stage so we could really use body language and movement more. In the scene where we show a glimps of ''Drugy Dai's'' past we used a simple set with one table and two chairs. The seen starts with Dai sitting on a chair center stage itching her rist, this giving the play a quite ironic twist, for this is what Dai does constantly whist in the mental hospital. I enter playing a drug dealer I argue with Dai about money and in order to show my distress I used the open space to pace back and for. I stopped my feet heavily and threw my arms wilde and powerful to indicate my sence of anger and fury. After she pays me I calm down and sit next to her, I ask her ''How long she's been on drugs, my motivation being pity I touch her shoulder and my facial expression turns to a sad and guilty image, I leave stage slowly leaving Dai centre stage smiling as she pollutes her body. We used this open space to signify how alone she was. We used this same method of emptyness in most scenes because we found this more of a challenge to act and really helped us get into the mind of our characters.
To ensure a mood of depression,sadness and MADNESS we opened our play with a dim red light flashing this giving a good affect. Each scene change we used a fadeing black-out this giving us just enough time to get any props on or off the stage. All scenes involving the mental hospital we used a low red spot light on each character. Spot lights were used during our play only when we wanted to focus on a certain character. In the scenes where each character opens their mind and shows the audients our thoughts, we used a full beam on the character and two angels either side. This giving a spooky affect for nothing else could be scene.
We disscused our choices on music we didnt want to have too much music in our play for we didnt thing it was needed. In the opening scene we used a quiet sound of childrens laughter growing louder and louder. We used simple sound affects such as doors slamming and whilst in the mental hospital we used a loud thunder and lightening affect to show madness. At the end of the play we wanted to really affect the audients views on addiction so we decided that as the lights faded we used a sound affect involving children singing an old fashioned chant this representing the mind of each character trapped in a continuous tortour of chidhood choices.
Throughout the play my main challenge was to act as a mentaly disturbed man. I didnt want to bring comedy into my characters actions so I found it really hard to over come that facter. I decided I would base my motivation on a child who had been servierly abused this stopped me bringing the element of comedi into this part of the play and I found a new acting skill which I hope to you much more often in later productions of improsiation.
The final performance was very moving and I found it went better than all the rehearsals. If I had the chance I wouldnt of changed anything, my friends and I put alot of effort into the play and every scene was developed to the best of our ability. I thing the audients was really affected by the play and as I watched the facial expressions change from happy to serious then finaly to sadness this giving us a real sence of satifaction. As the play progressed I found the audients falling into the palm of our hands and I used this to the best of my ability, I could see they were moved by our piece and all our work was well worth it. In all what we set out to do was acomplished if not better than my own expectations. Rehearsals really payed off and at the end of the play to watch all my class mates applause and chear I thing we accomplished in all every view we were trying to get across.(dont judge a book by its cover!!!)
