In the “after” role-play, we wanted to show the changes in the social status and the relationship changes between the characters. Again we set the scene in the schoolyard and the situation was again similar. I decided to do this so that the contrast between the scenes would be very pronounced and obvious. In this scene, it was very important that we showed Natasha and Carol’s individuality and Russell to be less arrogant. At first we found it very challenging to show this especially without the use of costume and props. We tried to do this by making Jake as popular and arrogant as Russell once was however it didn’t work as it was too much of a character change. In the end we resorted to making Carol and Natasha have different opinions and more importantly instead of Carol copying Natasha’s words we had Carol speaking first. Russell’s stage presence influenced his original character quite prominently so it was important that we used the same technique in the “after” scene. We did this by having him “take a back seat” so he wasn’t stage centre and the most influential character on the stage. It was necessary to show a change in Jake, however that change we felt was quite hard to show, we decided to make him more confident within the group but we didn’t want his overall personality to change. It was also critical to get the right balance of change in the way in which the characters treated each other, it was quite easy to show this by removing the aggression that Russell had towards Jake, but at the same time, Jake had previously been bullied by Russell so there was still a certain degree of awkwardness between the two characters so we had to keep tension in the scene. It was also important that the characters were played by the same people, so that the audience could focus on the change, rather than try and work out the confusion a different cast would cause. So, I again played Polly. She is the one character that didn’t change in the play, although because the group had warmed to Jake, she didn’t have to stick up for him. I kept her personality the same, by repeating my actions from before. During the scene the group were again planning to smoke however Jake was invited. Carol decided not to tag along and went somewhere else with Polly, but Natasha went with the boys. This showed the audience that Carol now felt confident enough to do what she wanted and that Jake is now accepted in the group. The role-play activity gave me a deeper insight into the play, in the terms that I had to look in detail at the characters to suggest how they would have acted before the play and then look at the transformation of the character during the play, to suggest the behaviour change for after the play. Overall I think our role-plays worked effectively as planned, however I think they could have been executed more clearly and fluently with a little more practise and with our group having more confidence in the role they were playing.
Hot Seating
Another technique we used was hot seating. We were asked to hot-seat one character from the play and then use the information to individually write a monologue. We then used these monologues to collectively write a monologue, which I, as the chosen member of the group, performed.
Some of our questions:
- Why is it that you don’t really contribute when your friends are talking?
I just don’t want to talk; really, I don’t see the point in putting myself out.
- Do you feel you are above that?
I never said that, it’s just well, erm….. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to sound as pig-headed as Russell does but I like the respect I get from the group.
- You say Russell is Pig-headed, yet he seems to think you like him, why are you giving him mixed messages?
Well, I do like the guy that is when he is the Russell I met. But now, I dunno, he can be ok til there is an audience. He didn’t used to be like that. I don’t know what changed. Yes he can be Pig-headed but all the girls seemed to like him for that, I tried the same with Natasha but that doesn’t matter.
- Yes it does matter. Can you expand on what you said about Natasha?
It’s just, well, I really like Tasha but after a few weeks of going out with me, she got bored. I’m not what they all expect me to be! So to hold onto her I sort of mimicked Russell’s behaviour. It was stupid I know, a girl like her, would never like to go out with an insensitive sod!
Our hot seating was very effective because the questions became very detailed and then the group seemed to keep digging further to make me give highly detailed answers. It was rather strange to think in the character at that level, especially considering that I didn’t really have much to go from, from the text. I made Shane become rather envious of Russell and very sensitive over subjects like Natasha and his home life. His immediate reservations made it quite intriguing to find out more. I decided to look deeper than the text and interpret it differently yet it was still important not to stray to far from the main themes. I gained new insight into the characters predicament, because I found a way to understand and explain Shane’s quiet authority in the group and the whole situation of Natasha let me develop an emotional side for him, because boys feel just as bad as girls do when involved in a break-up. When saying the answers I sort of improvised to act the answers out, when I was trying to avoid particular subjects I would become hesitant and more nervous when speaking, I had to remember this was the first time that Shane had told anyone all of these secrets.
Directors use this technique in the rehearsal room so that the actors can get an insight into the character, but also so they can find a comfortable way to interpret the character. After gathering our answers from the hot seating, we each went home and wrote a monologue for Shane. Because I had came up with the answers for the questions I found it easier than expected to write the monologue. In our next lesson we showed each other the monologues and pieced them together to collectively write a monologue. All three of us had included some strong and effective points so we used quite a lot of everyone’s work.
Our Monologue;
Russell the bloody love muscle! Ha! I’ve had it up to the back teeth with him. Full of himself, pushing his weight around, then looking, over his shoulder, as if to impress me! Ha! The daft git, does my bloody head in it does! Who’s he kidding; he was a weedy geek when I first met him. All spots, glasses and extra homework. Ha! Look at him now, in every girl’s dreams! I still can’t believe the way he goes on with Jake, poor kid, bullying him all the time. I remember when he was being bullied; we stopped it, me and me mates, so Russell built up this false sense of security and took a few anabolic steroids on the way. Now look at him prince bloody charming. I just wish someone would stand up to him, tell them the truth, a few punches would do him the world of good. I would, but who will I hang round with then. I like his company when he isn’t being bolshy, and plus all the skirt comes our way when I’m with him, like flies around shit! Mind you I think Natasha is a bit fed up with me. I don’t know why like, it must be that time of the month or something, I’ve done nothing wrong! We went out Saturday night, had a laugh. She was happy enough then, so why get all moody with me. You know what, I sound daft but I thought we had something, maybe I was wrong. I did make a mistake though trying to be like Russell I should have known that wouldn’t impress her. In fact she is fun to be around. When you wipe away that bravado and all the make-up, she has a great smile; in fact she is dead canny. You know all this red alert crap, I think it’s just for attention. She is never like that when it’s just me and her. I thought we were made for each other, you know. What can I do, she must have a decent reason, or is it the “it’s not you, it’s me” or maybe she wants us to just be friends, how can I tell her I want it to be more? I never know what to say without sounding stupid, c’mon how do you tell a girl like Natasha James that you love her?
After producing the monologue, one of us had to perform it to the class, I volunteered. I decided that if I wanted to perform it effectively and as if Shane was actually saying it, I would have to do it without a script. To enhance my performance I thought that my use of stage and facial expressions would engage the audience and I also thought that performances with movement and different levels were more exciting so I incorporated these points into my piece. The other members of my group directed me which gave me some good points, which I alone wouldn’t have thought of. During my performance I made eye contact with my audience and used pauses and silences to my advantage. Within the monologue there is an array of emotions so it was important to emphasise these with my actions and tone. I was pleased with my performance however it could have been improved if I added more depth to my voice and varied the pace in correspondence to the words, but overall I got a lot of positive feedback.
Still Image and Thoughts Aloud
To explore the play further and to show our understanding we had to develop a still-image and thoughts aloud, taken from a key moment in the play. I decided to pick a moment which isn’t so much physical-theatre, because then our facial expressions and body language would have to very well thought-out to show the characters to the audience. For the still-image to work effectively we firstly decided to put each character into the frame, separately whilst the rest of the group directed their position and expression. After putting everyone in position, we acted out the small scene before the freeze, so that we could understand what was happening in the frame. The moment we decided to show was the beginning of the story telling, when Polly, Natasha and Carol are trying to get the boys interested in the story and take their minds off Jake. This part of the play is significant to the play, because it shows the audience the social status and relationships between the characters before there is any major change. Also our frame is just after a part which I felt was important; Shane had just overruled Russell’s idea to dangle Jake over the edge, and instead had asked to hear the story. This shows the audience that although Russell has the strong façade, Shane has the final say. It also shows that Shane cares more than Russell and doesn’t want to hurt Jake. I was Russell, so I had to show a still arrogant, but defeatist attitude because I have just been overruled in front of a group of a group of girls I was previously showing off too. At the time I am dangling Jake with one arm and looking back and trying to persuade Shane to change his mind. I did this by having a disappointed yet surprised facial expression, with wide eyes a slightly open, but down turning mouth. I showed defeat by slightly hunching over and looking to the floor. I was slightly more uncomfortable because I had just been humiliated, so I used my body language and turned my torso from full view of the group, yet at the same time Russell wouldn’t have shown his discomfort to the group and he would have maintained quite high status so we used levels to show the status and Russell was centre stage on a table, dangling Jake over it, which showed that Russell had major influence and status over the other characters. We thought it best not to rehearse the thought aloud, because that is critical of the major idea, to look further into the character. When I had to improvise my thoughts aloud I decided to just focus on what is happening on stage, why, and how my character would feel. Russell had just been overruled by someone he has respect for and his fun has been spoiled, but because he is so arrogant and full of self-importance he wouldn’t want the group to know that it bothers him. So I said “Whatever, but it’s gonna take more than some crappy story to save his ass?” The thoughts aloud and still-image conveyed the relationship issue within the play, to the audience. The particular part we chose showed the variety in status and the attitude that the characters have towards each other.
All of these strategies were useful in helping us develop our understanding further and come up with material and techniques that we could use in our performance. Some were more effective than others and I personally felt that the hot-seating was the most useful because not only did it make the person in the seat think more and look deeper into the play, it made the questioners think about what they didn’t quite know or understand and ask the question to find a possible solution. It also developed my improvisational skills, because I had to come up with an answer in character, with no real preparation time. It also tested how much attention we had made to the play, and you could tell we had focused because relevant questions were being answered with appropriate answers. All of the activities tested and improved our understanding in different ways. For the role-play we had to understand the language and themes so that our role-plays were relevant and supported Philip Ridley’s ideas. However for the still-image and thoughts aloud we looked more at the use of expression and movement to show characters, emotion and events. After and during the response phase my ideas and thought of confusion from my first response changed as I began to understand and interpret the ideas and themes that Philip Ridley was expressing to the audience and the once “cheesy” dialogue became more relevant to show the characters personalities and also different words were used by younger people at the time that the play was written.
DEVELOPMENT PHASE
We used rehearsals to create a piece of theatre, using a scripted extract from the piece of youth theatre, ‘Sparkleshark’ by Philip Ridley. For our performance we decided to pick a scene that was about twelve pages long. We wanted our piece to be substantial enough so that each character had an important part in the scene, however we did not want our piece to be overly long. Our audience was made up of our classmates, who were also doing the same process on an extract from the same play, so we knew that our audience already understood the play and they didn’t need it to include too much background although we did need enough main events to show how we interpreted the piece.
We all picked one part of the play which we though was significant and then worked it around our parts. A very important part of the process was when we each carried out a detailed textual analysis of our own character and then gave feedback to the group. Our extract began when Russell enters the scene and then he notices Jake, this part is important, because it shows the relationships between the characters. The extract then ends near the end of the storytelling, when all the reactions to the story and its tellers have changed.
Using the section we had chosen, we wished to communicate the change in the characters relationships and status due to the storytelling within the piece. The extract was taken from what we felt was the most significant event in the play; the storytelling. The main events in our piece included: the entrance of Russell, Shane, Buzz and Speed, because this is when the audience notices that there is a main theme of social status; the discovery of Jake, because the audience understands the relationship between the characters and because this part is physical theatre and action-fuelled and therefore grasps the audience’s attention. Also this is when the audience starts to feel sorry for Jake and angry at Russell, more so this event stimulates and triggers the story.
I played Polly who is a very influential character within the play. Polly is the peacemaker within the group, she is a strong willed and determined character who looks at everyone with optimism and sees the best in people she likes Jake despite his rudeness and she is very impressed by his stories. She is fairly new to the group and is Natasha’s recent “project”. She isn’t quite comfortable within the group, but she is not scared to stick up for Jake. Polly is the one who starts the story to save Jake and then takes on a role as the main storyteller.
Unintentionally, I took the role of director within the group. I hadn’t planned on doing this because some members of the group had previously built up a dependency to my ideas and direction and I wanted them to try and take charge. However I did have to resort to leading the group because there was a lack of focus and the group was making no obvious progress. I do think I managed the group well, however if I had been met with cooperation the preparation, and most likely the performance itself, would have been improved and, could have ran more smoothly. I personally was disheartened because I felt like all of the pressure and problems were left to me, but next time I will choose my group more wisely. Otherwise our rehearsals ran productively and resulted in an effective, well-thought our performance.
We worked together experimenting with voice, movement, tone and expression until we were happy with the outcome. We firstly tried the use of broad east-end accent however the stamina and ability to keep it up fluctuated so we didn’t use a particular accent. We spent time discussing and experimenting saying the same things, however with a different tone of voice and movement to show our characters’ personalities. This made us stop and think about how to express our characters.
My line, “And what’s that? There look in the lake, dolphins splashing and playing together! Oh yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” was really annoying me because I couldn’t say it effectively and it sounded either flat or over exaggerated. I tried shouting it but it sounded manic, and then I got the idea to actually go with it and really “camp it up”, after all I was telling a story and at that point my character was playing a character, so I made it sound deliberate and it worked. I also struggled to make, “Look! I’m going to wear it in my hair”, sound effective because it sounded childish and out of context however I said it. So I decided to play around with the words and changed it to “Wow! It looks so good in my hair”, that way it worked well in context to the play, however I felt more confident saying it.
It was important to use rehearsal time efficiently and plan things out, so that we could polish our performance and also develop our initial ideas. To improve our performance and connection to the characters we looked at some of Stanislavski’s points on method acting and used them in a lesson to stay in role and think as we perceived our character would. I understood that reacting is a very important part of acting, so to incorporate reacting into my performance I reacted as if it was the first time that I had heard any of the lines, and to make this convincing, when an immediate reaction was needed I would start my line as the person before me was saying their last word. However this idea wasn’t relevant to every line because sometimes a hesitant reaction was required.
Although Sparkleshark is a contemporary piece, it was still written twelve years ago, so we decided to make it more relevant to today by using modern costume. Basically we decided that Russell and his gang should be dressed in tracksuit bottoms and Rockport shoes, to compare them to “Chavs”. They wore well regognised labels and styles that are associller’s wife, we showed this by dressing her in orange make-up, designer makes etc. In the play Carol tries to be like Natasha, we dressed her in a similar short skirt to Natasha, however made her look less-presentable by making her slightly gothic. Polly and Jake’s costumes deliberately contrasted those of the other group members. They were dressed in the average uniform; however Jake’s geek-like personality is shown, with heavy rimmed glasses and perfect uniform. I was wearing; a white cotton open-neck blouse; black, polyester school jumper with embossed school logo; tailored black trousers; flat, black, leather sandals and I was carrying a plain, black satchel. My costume showed the audience that I was presentable however I wasn’t rebellious. The costumes helped the audience to identify the characters and also made the play more relevant to now.
I think our rehearsal time could have been used more efficiently, firstly by learning the lines straight away. We spent a few lessons just reading through the play, when I think we could have added movement to see how different techniques could enhance different scenes. I voiced my opinion to the group and they agreed to try it out. Although we added movement people weren’t yet familiar with the lines, which gave us a handicap because we couldn’t explore and understand the characters and themes further. Once lines had been learned it was a lot easier to run through and get a feel of how it would look.
The night before our performance I was watching a film on TV about an eccentric, rather mad woman. It inspired me to make Polly appear slightly mad when telling the story. I had previously been struggling to understand and perform the “flower” scene and I felt silly when I had been rehearsing it. However with this sudden inspiration I decided to go over top with the character at that point and really exaggerate the slight madness. I took in a bunch of flowers as a prop for the scene, and we took to our final rehearsal.
About a quarter of the way into the rehearsal our classmates sat down and began to watch us, and our rehearsal was forced to turn into performance. At first we were all slightly bewildered at our audience’s arrival, but soon we pulled it together and really reacted to the acquired audience.
I must say I was a bit nervous of exaggerating my part for the first time, especially in front of an audience, however I picked up the flowers and threw them around, and got laughs from the audience as I added unexpected humour at great comic-timing to our performance. This encouraged the rest of my group to up the performance and we achieved the maximum effect we had aimed for. I was however slightly disheartened that the audience hadn’t seen the whole performance and so we got the opportunity to perform again and we grasped it. This time we were prepared to perform so there wasn’t that slight hesitation that we had first experienced. This performance ran smoother, however because our audience had watched it before the humour was expected and didn’t receive as strong a reaction as it had done previously.
My group seemed a little unsure of the stage directions and sometimes the audience couldn’t see people because they were behind others. At one point I felt that there wasn’t enough movement or different levels so when I threw the flowers I span and pranced around to make use of the space. I then sat on the front of the stage, and my team followed suit.
We had planned to just pretend Shane was there, however we felt a little silly talking to mid-air in the rehearsal, so we asked one of our classmates to fill the place for the performance. This seemed to work well, although it would have been better had we planned it and put him a costume to match the others. The decision to make Buzz and Speed one character didn’t work very well. The audience looked confused and because some lines had, had to be changed it didn’t run as smoothly as the initial text. Although the audience still seemed to understand clearly as to what was going on.
We found it hard to use effective ways of enticing the audience, because usually we would have started in the middle of quite a bold physical scene, which would make the audience ask questions and watch further, to look for the answers. However our audience already knew the answers, so we just used humour and tried to bring a different perspective to the play, which they had never seen before. Overall our performance worked quite effectively because it grasped the audience attention and showed we had strong understanding of what the play was trying to achieve. Although looking back, I think our progress during the response phase, should have led to a stronger final product.
EVALUATING PERFORMANCE
I am evaluating an extract from “Sparkleshark” by Philip Ridley, performed by other year ten drama students. It is a contemporary piece of youth theatre aimed at a teenage audience. In the performed extract Russell is entering the scene entertaining and flirting with the on looking girls, Carol, Natasha and Polly. The Russell’s cohorts Buzz and Speed enter, less confidently than Russell and finally Shane enters, without the show Russell had put on, but with similar impact. Then the boys find Jake who is cowering from his bullies, behind the girls, and they attempt to dangle him off the inner-city tower block. It is the first moment that the audience encounters the boys in the whole play and it is also the point when the audience begin to empathise and emotions are triggered towards the characters.
The major themes being explored are status, bullying and teenage emotions. The bullying theme is shown well in this extract, because it is physical theatre and there is a real violent climax between the characters. The play made me think about the different levels at which people are bullied, the pathetic reasons they are bullied for and the attitude that Russell has. I felt that the person who played Russell was particularly effective, because he understood the character really well and when he was bragging his expressions, voice and movement made quite an unlikely scene seem really believable and realistic. For example when he was asking questions, although they were rhetorical and addressed to the girls on stage, the audience felt obliged to think of the answer because of his open body language and heightened pitch at the end of the sentence. Also he added the extra boyish masculinity, which emphasised Russell’s egotistical attitude, by deliberately deepening his voice too much, his wide legged stance, puffed chest and seriousness of what he was saying. This showed the audience that he takes himself overly seriously. On his entrance he stood centre stage, on a raised platform, which showed the audience his importance and he posed in correspondence to what he was saying.
Other characters which I felt were played really well were Buzz and Speed. The two people that were playing them really understood the humour that those particular characters can add to the play. They didn’t add too much comedy which worked well as the comic timing was effective. Also they portrayed the characters as slightly dumb, and if they were spoken to you could see that it took them a while to understand because they lowered their eyebrows and looked inquisitively at each other. The most effective part was probably when Buzz and Speed lifted Jake, because they did it with ease and it showed Jake’s vulnerability to the audience. The costume in this performance worked quite well. They were all wearing different versions of the same uniform, which effectively showed the contrast in the social periods and aspects of the character, however if it was on costume alone, I doubt that I could have identified the character, mainly because the girls’ outfits were too similar.
They used physical theatre to engage the audience, and humour to keep the audience entertained. They showed a good understanding of the play and suggested a new element of humour that worked well in the performance. It communicated to the audience the main themes of bullying and social status and although different to our performance, they were both equally effective.
