All the unanswered questions in the song made the group discuss to a greater extent why they were unanswered. All of the unanswered questions helped us to explore in more detail with the class and to create different situations in the class.
DEVELOPMENT ON THE STIMULUS
Miss Williams, the teacher of the class asked us all to create a piece of theatre in groups on one of the ideas we had discussed earlier. We had to use some of the Stanislavski principles we had learnt and it had to be tension based. We were to consider the character’s relationships with one another and their psychological journey throughout the play.
My initial thoughts about the task Miss Williams had set were that it was going to be exciting and fun but at the same time hard work and complicated.
The group I was with consisted of three people. We discussed what we could use in our piece of theatre and that was serious issues, family, the credit crunch and the abuse of alcoholism. We decided that we would use the ideas we had talked about because they were something that everyone in the class could relate to.
There were lots of decisions in our group involving the staging, music and improvising side but the most decisions went in to it whilst deciding the plot and sub-plot. Our group decided that we would base our piece of theatre on a family that has been affected by the credit crunch. It was a family that had been through tough times, the mum and dad had had a divorce and the mother couldn’t keep their daughter anymore through money. This was the main plot. The sub-plot was; the mother buying alcohol everyday to cope and she had lost her job because she was stealing money from the company she worked at, to pay for her addiction.
We started the drama process by improvising and then we developed our work from that. Our group tried to make the audience believe the situation and i feel we did this by using the levels in the staging and the right kind of gestures and movement.
The music we used really captured the scenes well and the lighting worked with the songs which made the play flow. The music we used was James Morrison- Real to me and Marie Digby’s version of Linkin Park- What I’ve done. The lighting we decided on so it would look good with the music was mostly fade in fade out. We decided on this because it brought some sense of a naturalised feeling towards the play and the audience. On scene 1 we used a sudden dimming effect to create tension between two of the characters. This worked really well because the audience didn’t know what would happen next.
The Drama elements that made it work were hard to achieve and get right because we had to look at the performance from the audience’s point of view. The most important elements we used were props because we needed to make it look like we were in a naturalistic environment and to show, without giving away too much, what the play was about.
Our group also used some Drama Mediums and, I think, they worked well as well. The pace, time and volume was hard to fit in the play. It took our group quite a while to make the play look good. The Pace, time and volume had to fit together perfectly to make it a success. We worked extremely hard on doing that and I think it paid off.
EVALUATION OF THE PLAY AND PERFORMANCE
Having performed our groups play, we were extremely happy with our performances. Some of the elements could have been improved over all. I was extremely pleased with my fellow actor’s performance and I think we all worked well together. I was comfortable with my performance and I thought my acting skills were natural. I would definitely work with my group again as I had lots of fun in the process of creating our drama piece.
If I had the chance to do the drama process again I would probably rehearse more and make sure that everything worked perfectly in the performance but I am extremely pleased with the play on the whole.
Our groups aim was to create a piece of drama with a good plot, a good sub-plot and to make sure the audience got the ideas we had put in to it. We worked extremely hard and I think it showed in the performance. We were confident and that made our performance’s stronger. I definitely believe that we achieved our aim.
By Bryony-Kate Sims
