Drama – Preparation, Performance And Appraisal Notes.
Blood Brothers.
Preparation.
For our drama production on open day we preformed four scenes from “Blood Brothers” by Willy Russell. Firstly we discussed which scenes we would like do to and why. We eventually decided to act out the opening scenes of the play so that our audience could really get a feel for what the play was about and get to know the characters better as they would only be able to get a sample of the character. We then cut some of the lines and scenes that we didn’t think would be necessary for the message that we where trying to get across. Our main aim was get across the extreme difference in class and personality between Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. J, and to show how the Narrator shapes and controls everything that is going on within the play and also to add a sinister atmosphere to things.
After we had picked our scenes we tried to decide which characters we should play. Originally Rachel was going to play the part of Mrs. J but she was also very keen to play Mrs. Lyons as she had never played a role like it and I was equally keen to play the Narrator as I had never played that role either, and Eve was more than happy to play the part of Mrs. J as she was the best of all three of us at doing a Liverpool accent so it was very easy to pick our parts.
My character the narrator was particularly difficult to act, as I had to use a Liverpool accent but still get across the sinister aspects of the character through voice, movement, gesture and facial expression. I interpreted my character to be a very controlling character I felt it was almost as if the character was telling a story of what was going to happen through his speeches which linked all the scenes. After doing research on the narrator and reading reviews on the play in general I found that a lot of people viewed the narrator as no more than a man standing telling what is happening, many thought that he had nothing to do with the events unfolding before but I beg to differ. In the last scene when Mrs. Lyons makes Mrs. J swear on the bible about giving away her child the narrator interrupts the scene and say a small speech and then places a bible on the table between Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. J, I think that this is a very good example of how he controls the situations, and manipulates the outcome of each scene. To help me get into my role I used a series of strategies and rehearsal techniques such as hot seating. This is when the three people in my group got together and asked each other questions and we had to answer them in character. I found this very beneficial, as I was unsure of how my character would react to certain things; this helped me get into the mindset of the narrator a lot. I also did a lot of work by myself on accent and movement. I found the Liverpool accent quite difficult to grasp so I watched a lot of programs with these accents and tried to copy them, I also tried using my accent around the house with my parents to see if I was doing properly. I worked on my movement by standing in front of the mirror and watching myself as I moved, I also thought this helped me a lot because in the beginning when I first started acting as the narrator I was finding it very difficult to move and make the appropriate facial expressions, I felt as if I was just acting as myself but with an accent, however after practising in front of a mirror and with some help from my friends in the group I think I mastered how the narrator would be. I also found it very difficult to play as I had to break down the fourth wall and address the audience personally, this was a very new experience for me, one which I had never done before but I was quite happy with the way I preformed it, practising my movement and gesture helped me enormously there. We also wanted to get across a feeling of superstition and that perhaps some of these events happened because of superstition, this is presented through the use of the narrator talking of superstition when Mrs. Lyons places shoes on the table.
