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 on chairs. Vicki is trying to persuade her mother to see how well she hid the fact she was being bullied. Mother isn’t convinced. Flashback two. Mother and Vicki are sat around a kitchen table. Mother and Vicki begin to argue about the fact that Vicki never tells her mum anything anymore and how much she has changed.
Scene 4: We are back inside the small lounge. Vicki tells her mum that it wasn’t her fault that she never wanted to talk about anything. Mother angrily says that Vicki should have told her about the bullying. Flashback three. Vicki is walking to the shop to get some food for her mother. Bullies surround her, taunting her and screaming things at her. Vicki stands up for herself when they abuse her dead father. She is roughly pushed to the floor and is kicked repeatedly.
Scene 5: Mother is pacing the room in obvious distress after seeing the way her daughter was treated. She angrily screams that she wants to kill her daughter’s tormenters. Vicki tries to make her mum see that she in now free and at peace. She doesn’t want it to destroy another life and begs her mum to try and forget it. Flashback four. We see Vicki placing a piece of rope around her neck.
Scene 6: Mother begs for Vicki to give her the names of these people that were responsible for her death. Vicki refuses. Vicki gets up to leave saying that everything she could do has been done. Mother begs her not to go, sobbing hysterically at the thought of never seeing her precious child again. Vicki pledges that she will never really be gone and will always be near. Mother is left alone. Blackout.
The Character I played was Vicki’s mother who is burdened by insufferable guilt because of not realising her daughter was being bullied which resulted in the daughter taking her own life. The character was extremely close to her daughter until the bullying started. As the bullying gets worse and worse Vicki moves further and further away from her mother.
Whilst playing the role of Vicki’s mother before her daughters death I had to really adopt an anxious and worried attitude. Vicki’s mother was constantly worried about Vicki but never knew what the reason was for her sadness and sorrow. During the flashback scenes I had to be careful to make sure I was acting as if I was genuinely concerned for my daughter’s well-being. Whilst playing the role of Vicki’s mother after her daughter’s death I had to completely change everything. I had to speak with a lot of sadness and sorrow and act as if what I had done was completely unjustifiable. My facial expressions were always morbid and sad to really portray the full extent of the mother’s emotion. I never smiled when playing Vicki’s mother, after her daughter’s death, and always half closed my eyes in order to look weary and tired of the pain I had to endure everyday without my child. I made sure to always be on the verge of tears to show how unstable I was. Although they were the same person, I had to act two completely different characters throughout the play. One was an anxious but quite content mother and the other a complete wreck who was living a life of endless pain and grief without her child. I wore plain black clothes while playing the grief stricken mother in an attempt to mirror the sadness and blackness that was inside in my appearance. I wore simple black trousers and a black jumper. But whilst playing Vicki’s mother before the death, I always wore a bright yellow cardigan on top of my all black costume to portray that there was still happiness and light left in my life.
I found the character of Vicki’s mother quite difficult to act. Because I have never lost a loved one so I didn’t have anything real to base my emotions and reactions on. I found the flashback scenes a lot easier to act because I felt more comfortable than the scenes when I had to be really emotional and sorrowful.
Vicki and I discussed how we were going to act during the play because we desperately wanted to make our play appear as realistic as possible. We both agreed that the loss of a child would have to be one of the hardest things a parent would ever have to deal with so when playing the parent of a dead child I really had to imagine how difficult it would be. Although the deaths on T.V are always over done, they gave me an insight into the true emotions any mother would be feeling. By doing this, Vicki and I created the accurate affect that we both wanted for our play.
When I played Vicki’s mum in the scenes when Vicki was a ghost, I tried to remain seated as much as I could to mirror the deadness and weakness inside. I used gestures and facial expressions to portray my desperation for Vicki to give me the names of her tormentors. But after the flashback when I saw what my daughter had been put through by the bullies, I paced the room to show my obvious distress and rage. When playing Vicki’ mother I really tried to show her desperation to be released from the constant living hell she was trapped in. To try and show this I tried to act as numb and hopeless as possible to show that I just could not bear to go on anymore. When Vicki tried to persuade me that things will get better and that I was not to blame for her death, I shook my head, refusing even to listen. In one scene Vicki tries to hug me and I push her away. I felt by doing this I could show that Vicki’s mother can’t even bear to be touched by her own daughter because of the unendurable guilt that she feels. The way in which I used my voice while playing Vicki’s mother showed how much sadness and pain she had inside of her caused by Vicki’s death. While speaking in the ghost scenes I tried my best to fill my voice with utter sorrow to show to the audience the full impact of a mothers anguish at losing a child. During the flashback scenes where Vicki is still alive I tried to act as anxious and worried as possible. I used my voice to show my true desperation and concern to get to the root of the unknown problem with Vicki. In one flashback scene when Vicki’s mother reaches breaking point due to her daughters complete change in personality I made sure to speak in pleading tones to emphasis my anxiety and worry about Vicki.
By rehearsing the play I began to create my character of Vicki’s grief stricken mother. By designing the set I practiced how I was going to move and where I would stand or sit for different scenes of the play. The tech and dress rehearsal helped me greatly to really create my character because I felt huge connection towards my character when I was acting as if it was the real thing, this moved things forward and helped me significantly to fully expose my characters disturbed emotions and feelings.
Whilst writing the play Vicki and I decided to keep props to a minimum on the Ghost scenes but on The flashbacks we included many in order to make it look as much like a normal home as possible and give a homely atmosphere when we acted out the various flashbacks .In the ghost scenes we simply had two chairs facing each other on an angle so that the audience could see everything we did. In the various flashback scenes we just created different parts of a home such as a bedroom with a bed, side table with a photo frame on it and candles. We created a kitchen with one large surface at the back of the stage and a table with flowers in the middle using a split set with everything laid out previously. See ‘Set section’ for a more detailed plan.
Vicki and I thought a lot about our body language and determined that in the ghost scenes it would create a better effect than props because it would fully portray our characters emotions. I used a range of different body language to show the different emotions that my character was going through. When I saw how my daughter was being treated by her tormentors, I paced the room to show my anger and used many violent gestures to emphasis my rage. When Vicki tried to persuade me that I held no blame for her death I shook my head and looked away from Vicki to show how I didn’t want to listen to it. When I sat talking to Vicki I sat slightly hunched over with my arms folded as if trying to protect myself from a world that I did not want to be a part of anymore. During the flashbacks I had to change my body language completely this time being more open and emotional. When Vicki arrives home with a black eye I run to her and hug her tightly this emphasises how much I love her, how much she means to me and my need to protect her. When I try to get to the root of the problem concerning Vicki’s mood swings and aggressive behaviour I used body language like trying to hug her and leaning forward in an attempt to coax the truth out of her.
During my performance I used only a photo frame as a prop because I wanted to use my voice and body language to show my characters different emotions and to show what she was going through. We used props in the Flashback scenes because these were necessary to add reality to the play.
At the very beginning of the play I am the only one in the first scene. During this scene I had to express my guilt and remorse for what my character had done. I started this scene sitting on the floor holding a photo of my dead daughter and saying a poem expressing my guilt. I kept my voice quiet to show the sadness of my opening lines. As the scene progresses the volume of my voice increases as Vicki’s mother gets more emotional and sorrowful and starts to beg for Gods forgiveness. As the play continues we see more of what my character is like so I used my voice to show my characters personality. In certain scenes we wanted to create a really depressing and miserable atmosphere which would be cause by Vicki’s mother. To achieve this we decided to play sad music at the time when we wanted to accomplish such a miserable scene, e.g. when I am reading the poem out.
To facilitate a smooth performance we had to plan the right set which would enable scene changes to be fast and straightforward. We realised that the scenes concerning Vicki’s Mother and Vicki’s spirit would be more effective if the set was simple. So we decided against a lot of unnecessary props and chose a basic set including just two chairs which gave the play a more realistic image. We placed that set in the right hand corner of the stage. In the middle of the stage we created a kitchen with a table on an angle CS and a surface along the back US. In the left hand corner of the stage we created a bedroom with a bed in the centre with a small table next to it. We positioned the lights so that when we were in one of the sets the other two were in darkness. We used convectional end on staging with the audience sitting close to the action in order to make the audience feel a part of the play so that they could relate to it more.
Luckily Victoria and I had the same simple ideas for the lighting of out play. We discussed them thoroughly in order to create the right mood with the create colour lighting. We realised that on the day of the performance we would be unable to operate the lighting ourselves so we arranged for another group to do it for us instead, making sure that we created a lighting script that covered the correct brightness and colour of light in the different scenes. Throughout the ghost scenes we kept the lightening the same – a dim red light that successful created a rather eerie and gloomy mood. When we did our flashbacks we used normal white lightening so that the audience could distinguish between the different scenes.
Besides using the lighting equipment, we were given the choice of using sound effects such as music playing in the background on some of the scenes. Vicki and I decided to use music as it would be effective in some of the most sorrowful scenes such as the beginning when I read out my poem and at the end when Mother and daughter are separated once more. The music we chose had no words in it because we wanted our play to be as realistic as possible and we felt that words would destroy the atmosphere we were trying to create and make the play less serious.
We determined that our costumes would remain as simple as possible throughout the play because of the many scene changes it would become to difficult to change in such a short amount of time. This gave us more time to concentrate on more significant areas of the play such as the lighting and set design. I wore black throughout the play but in the flashback scenes I wore a yellow cardigan so that the audience could distinguish a change in costume. Vicki changes her costume more, wearing her school uniform on two occasions in the flashback scenes and normal clothes on the other two which were blue jeans a navy t-shirt and trainers but she also wore black in the ghost scenes. Even though the costume change didn’t go as smoothly as we first expected, overall we made them work well with the rest of the play by the simplicity of them.
Before the dress rehearsal we found it difficult to change between scenes smoothly and with continuity. But when we received help we found it a lot easier therefore the changeover and connection improved greatly, and even though we had many different scene changes the simplicity of our costumes made them a lot easier to deal with.
Vicki and I panicked about the technical rehearsal because before then we did not have an opportunity to run through the whole play with our complete set and lighting. We made many improvements changing the brightness of the red light so that it was more intense. Also we realised that the positioning of the chairs in the ghost scene had to be brought much further up the stage because the red light did not reach it otherwise. Vicki and I both agreed that the technical rehearsal was enormously useful and it helped that we treated it like the real thing because it gave us a chance to change some significant things. But the technical rehearsal made me extremely nervous for the actual performance that was the next day.
After the final performance I felt really relieved. In my opinion it went quite well which was surprising because we made few major errors. Although I was very nervous after I nearly burst out laughing when Vicki put her school t-shirt on inside out and the wrong way around, luckily no one noticed. I always have a problem with controlling my laughter when I am acting, so I was very proud of myself for not laughing at all. I tried really hard to concentrate and to relax on stage but as the play progressed I found it easier to slip into character. I also panicked at one point because I thought I had forgotten my lines but fortunately they came back to me. Because I was playing an extremely emotional character I had to actually cry at the beginning of the play which was hard. But I achieved it and I thought that it was effective.
I think that the most dramatically effective moments included the opening scene when I sit on the stage on my own saying a poem that expresses fully my guilt and remorse of never knowing that my daughter was being tormented and bullied. I think that the music was extremely effective and added to the sombre mood. I also think that the other dramatically effective moment was when Vicki leaves her mother once more which was the end scene. The music played as Mother and Daughter were separated once more.
At the final performance I think that I played and expressed my character as fully as possible. I felt that I really touched on the true emotion that a parent must feel after losing a child. The complete silence from the audience and the peaceful atmosphere helped me to concentrate and focus on playing my character to the full. I think that our play was very realistic which made it a lot easier to play my character and express emotion.
Throughout the project things had not exactly run smoothly but I think that Vicki and I worked through them. The thing that we were not happy about was the ending to out play because although it was dramatically effective, it left the problem unsolved and looked as if we didn’t have time or could not be bothered to write a better ending. The problem was that we didn’t have enough time to end the play how we wanted to. So we decided on ending it simply and left the mothers intentions unclear otherwise the play would have gone on for too long and we only had 10 minutes. Vicki and I both discussed what improvements we could make and we decided that our play was to emotionally deep and depressing to repeat all over again and we decided that if we had the choice we would have somehow given it a lighter mood. We also decided that we could have improved the lighting and made it slightly more fascinating and complex. We could have done this by using equipment such as gobo’s to create different lighting effects. We also agreed that we could have improved by wearing a more attractive costume rather than the both of us mainly in all black. Maybe if we had accomplished this then we could have improved the overall standard of our play and given a more advanced standard of presentation.
After the final performance I felt proud of Vicki and myself for accomplishing a good play. I felt that me and my partner fully and successfully explored the themes of ‘Dysfunctional relation ships’ and ‘Failure to communicate’ by showing the stressful relationship that mother and daughter shared by arguing and adding irritation in our voices and by never telling the truth to the consequence of death. Although I could have done better I was glad that overall things ran smoothly and all of our hard work had paid off. It really showed that by understanding how hard it must be too lose a child, you could mirror it in your performance.