Devised Practical Evaluation for 'The Guilt'

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Charlotte Bool 11South

   Devised Practical Evaluation for ‘The Guilt’

For my Devised play project I was given the opportunity to work in either pairs or in threes. I chose to work in a pair with a classmate called Vicki Union because I felt that we worked well together and always achieved to write a good, strong play. We were given the task of writing a play based upon one of three themes that were set for us. Theses themes were; Dysfunctional relationships, Failure to communicate or a play following a structural pattern like ‘Confusions’. My partner and I liked the idea of basing our play on the theme of Dysfunctional relationships but because there were only two of us, we decided that it would be too complex to proceed. Instead of basing our play on just one of the themes we decided to base our play on both ‘Dysfunctional relationships’ and ‘Failure to communicate’ in order to gain more ideas and come up with a more interesting play.

   Once we had finally decided on our themes, we began to try and think of a fascinating and gripping storyline that would be really effective. Our options were quite limited because there were only two of us so we had to think carefully of a play that would include only two main characters. One of our first ideas was to devise a play about a young teenage girl who was being constantly tormented by a bully. But then we realised that this play would have to be set in school so we would need many more people and a few other main characters. We finally decided on a storyline that was both simple and effective. After much discussion we came up with the idea of a dysfunctional relationship between a mother and daughter. In order to make it more interesting we also based the play on the theme ‘Failure to communicate’. We then decided that one of us should play a ghost and a real person through a series of flashbacks while the other plays the relation. After narrowing it down this far we spent a lot of time thinking about how to make our play look as realistic as possible. We thought that in order to create a certain amount of suspense, we would not reveal fully what had happened and let the audience guess for a while. We came up with the story outline that Vicki would play the daughter/ghost and I would play the mother who was being ‘haunted’. I played the mother who was burdened with insufferable guilt after her teenage daughter commits suicide in order to escape the horrendous bullying she was suffering at school. The mother never knew anything about her daughter Vicki’s pain and anguish until the day she found the suicide note along with Vicki’s dead body. The mother holds herself personally responsible for neglecting her duties and for never noticing that Vicki was being bullied. The mother is contemplating suicide when Vicki/ghost is drawn to her pain and tries to help her see that it wasn’t her mothers fault. One night Vicki takes her mother through a series of flashbacks in an attempt to make her see that she was not the one to blame for Vicki’s death. The first flashback was of Vicki arriving home from school sporting a black eye. The mother anxiously asks about it but Vicki blames it on the netball. The mother endlessly questions Vicki about it, but Vicki denies that she is being bullied and lies. There are two more flashbacks where we see the full extent of the bullying and then we see Vicki committing suicide. Vicki tries to convince her mother, but in the end there is nothing more she can do for her. The mother needs to realise herself that the blame for her daughter’s death lays with those who tormented her and not with those who tried to help her.

   Now that we had our storyline sorted, we began to write our script. We shared the writing fairly and we both participated in sharing all of our ideas. Instead of one person writing the first half and the second half we just wrote the script together during the time given in our Drama lessons. Once we had the script written, we got together at my house and carefully typed the finished copy up on the computer to give it a more professional look. We found writing the play very easy because once we had finalised our ideas and had sorted out the story, we found it easy to prepare the dialogue. But it was quite difficult to make the play as realistic as possible because of such a dramatic storyline. The fact that me and Vicki had experienced death in the past made it easier to express fully our character’s strong emotions.

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Final Outline of the play we created:

Scene 1: Mother is sitting on the floor, rocking backwards and forwards in obvious distress. She reads out a poem which expresses her guilt. A hand appears on her shoulder, she looks around to see her dead daughter Vicki.

Scene 2: Vicki and mother sit on two chairs. Mother is in shock. Vicki tries to convince her mother that she holds no blame. The audience sees flashback .Vicki comes home from school with a black eye.

Scene 3: We are back into the small lounge. Vicki and her Mother both sit ...

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