Blue Remembered Hills

The plot and background

Set in the West country (Devonshire/Cornwall) in 1943, the playwright Dennis Potter explores the traumatic childhoods of 7 young children.

Originally written for television in 1979, the play follows seven 7 year olds through an actual day of their lives. As the play takes place in ‘real time’ the whole thing is naturalistic and there are no non naturalistic techniques such as flashbacks or other theatrical devices to skip to different times. The play is set in a barn, a wood and a field on a summer’s afternoon. Over the two hour period the friends play and squabble, particularly victimizing a boy whom they call ‘Donald Duck’, the play climaxes when this character is left out of games and activities by his peers and therefore decides to play his own game… a game of pyromania!

Characters

As I said earlier the play is ‘totally’ naturalistic, however there is one significant exception: the playwright Dennis Potter insisted that adult actors were cast to portray the children. He thought that if children were used the audience would lose the ‘true meaning’ of the story within the sympathy that they would feel for the child actors.

The Boys

John: Looks after Raymond, fair-minded, often challenges Peter.

Peter: Bully, very strong, is not very clever.

Raymond: Has a stutter, very gentle and sensitive, is dressed as a cowboy.

Willie: Intelligent and he uses this to overcome Peter’s bullying, is easy going

The Girls

Angela: Very bossy, pretty and very flirtatious for a seven year old, very self-centered.

Audrey: Always trying to be Angela’s friend, very plain, overshadowed by Angela.

The victim

Donald Duck: Boys don’t like him very much, girls allow him to play ‘house’ with them. Very lonely as everyone taunts and bullies him. He is abused.

Important hidden characters

Wallace Wilson: class bully, hear lots about him but never actually see him.

Donald Ducks mother: Abuses him, plays part towards Donald’s depression and pyromania.

Adult Actors

Dennis Potter decided that for his play he wanted to cast adult actors to play the parts of the children, mainly because of the audience’s reaction to the plot. He felt that the audience would lose the ‘true meanings’ of the play, as they would sympathize with child actors. Potter took into consideration how child behavior differentiates when being watched by an audience, whereas adults would truthfully portray their emotions.

My opinion

In my opinion I think that Dennis Potters casting choice was a very bad decision. I see the play as more of a ‘joke’ than a serious piece of drama. The adult actors do not resemble children, but instead adults with mental difficulties, because of this I believe ‘Potter’ has done exactly what he wanted to avoid and took the ‘true meaning’ out of the play.

Lesson 1

In our first lesson we began by exploring playing children, from womb to 2 years old. We turned off the lights to focus on the themes of loneliness and to focus on actually developing in the mother’s womb. I began in a tucked shape as foetus’ do we then turned the light on to represent the birth. From this point we were babies and infants developing gradually from 0-2 yrs.

Examples of body language awareness

Fetus: still, in a tucked position.

Newborn: slight movement of limbs- visual and audio only.

3 months: As above, slight movement of head- side to side to explore surroundings – visual and audio only.

6-9 months: As above, able to roll over slightly-visual audio and kinesthetic.

12-18 months: Able to lift head alone and support self. Movement of all body parts now occurring – visual, audio and kinesthetic.

18-24 months: crawling to explore surroundings kinesthetically; Using objects to pull selves up. It is at this age we felt that we would be capable of interacting with other actors, by both voice and body language. I and Connie chose to play typical childhood activities (clapping games and pulling hair) and squabbling.

We then continued our childhood explorations by spontaneously improvising a classroom scene. My drama teacher acted as a year 3 teacher and my peers and I as the year 3 class. We all interacted well with each other creating stereotypical characters and situations Our task was to build a ‘den’ in competition with the other team. We used stacked staging to act as a tower and I played a princess. We chose a fairytale scenario to portray childhood imagination. This also helped us maintain high energy levels which are compulsory for playing children. We used appropriate vocabulary such as ‘founded that firsted tho’ and ‘you are the bestest’ to show the simplicity of children’s language at 7 years old. We improvised arguments with both our own group and our opponents over props and spacing. We also chose to incorporate a fairytale storyline into it and take an opponent from the other team hostage. We also showed how our moods changed quickly e.g. falling out and then making up again.

As I was acting I could find many similarities in my own and others performances in comparison to ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ characters.

Hayley(me): Very similar to Angela.

I remained seated at the top of our pretend towers dishing orders out and generally being very bossy. I also portrayed her flirtatious side by settling a row between 2 boys over who would be my prince “why don’t you both be princes then you can both kiss me!” This links to Angela because she is also very bossy and flirtatious.

Warren: very similar to Raymond.

He stayed well away from the arguments and instead chose to play alone with his pretend guns.

Sophie: very similar to Audrey.

Backed up everything I ...