GCSE Drama Coursework - Billy Liar Section One: The Response PhaseFor the response phase we worked on three sections of the play to discover and understand

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Karys Webber

GCSE Drama Coursework – Billy Liar

Section One: The Response Phase

For the response phase we worked on three sections of the play to discover and understand the family relationships in particular the development and changes of Geoff and Billy’s complex relationship. We looked at firstly at the opening scene, then at act two and finally act three, the end of the play. In the response phase we used various explorative strategies in order to widen our understanding of the play and help us analyse themes and relationships in greater depth.

1. The opening scene.  Role play – A typical family are seated around the breakfast table; a mum, dad, grandparent and two teenagers. Each has their own agenda and are focused on talking about their own topic, not really noticing or listening to each other.

Our role play demonstrated something that all the audience, to an extent, should be able to relate to: the basic set up of a stereotypical family; the moody teenagers; staying out late, always after money, arguing and rebelling against parents, school and work. The elderly grandparent; constantly mumbling endless and boring stories about ‘back in their day’. The father; the man of the house, the money earner, providing for the family. Finally we have the mother; the housewife, constantly fussing, cooking and cleaning and doing all the household chores with no help and no thanks.

    Performing the role play; each character was so wound up in themselves and their personal thoughts that they were very much talking at each other or at times to themselves rather than to each other, conveying an obvious lack of communication, confusion, frustration and a tense atmosphere. None of the characters payed a great deal of attention to each other; the overlapping speech and unrelated dialogue helped to convey the frustration and tense atmosphere. This role play was used really to get the mood across to the audience and provide some insight to each character rather than the meaning of the conversation or develop a plot.

   As well as demonstrating a still very stereotypical family, the role play does contain circumstances that point towards a slightly old fashioned family. Firstly, the fact that the family all had breakfast together is maybe not such a widely done thing nowadays due to busy schedules and varying work hours. The roles of the mother and father also indicate a old fashioned family set up, the father out working while the mother stays home and cooks and cleans, although often still present today, things are beginning to change and you get a lot of working mothers nowadays. Another factor is the grandparent living with them which also is not so common in modern society.

   The role play demonstrated the changes and development of society of the typical family but also highlighted the differences, for instance the moody teenagers who will always be moody teenagers. A lot of the focus in the role play was centred around the teenager similarly to Billy in the play.

   Of course, this role play mirrors the opening scene of Billy Liar and was done as a preliminary exercise to introduce us to the play. The technique helped us to understand the atmosphere of the scene, as well as the roles and set up of a typical 1950’s family and how it is different from today. It also gave us a platform to start exploring the characters.

Still Imaging – following on from the role play, we created still images to show the frustrations of the family members when no-one was listening to each other.

We arranged each character so that their positioning, body language and facial expression reflected or provided insight into their feelings and the overall arrangement conveyed the atmosphere of the scene. For instance the teenagers were facing outward from the table showing division, they were slumped in their chairs, and had a lazy, bored and moody expression; they also had their arms folded, building barriers between themselves and their parents and showing how they really didn’t want to be there.

   The parents were much more forward and focused on the teenagers as though interrogating them, they generally presented quite a united front although it was the mother that seemed to be the more dominant one whereas the father seemed less keen to get involved. They both looked angry and frustrated at the teenagers who clearly looked exasperated and uninterested conveying a feeling that it was a regular occurrence and that they were just ‘nagging again’. The grandparent had a less dominant part in the still image and looked a lot less involved in the conversation and more in their own world talking to themselves, quite unaffected by the tension. This strategy provides us with some insight into the relationship between the parents and children; you can tell that the relationship is not great and they are arguing which by the exasperated expressions happens a lot. This of course is much like Billy’s relationship with his parents in the play; he feels like they constantly nag him.

   The still image also sort of shows the status of the family members and the difference in generation, the older generation, especially the parents, have the power demonstrated by their body language and the discipline they seem to be inflicting in the still image. The teenagers are at the bottom of the hierarchy.          

    The fact that the family are all still seated at the breakfast table however does show some family respect and strong family values in that the teenagers haven’t just walked away from the situation. This point also provides us with insight into a family of the 1950’s and the family values and levels of respect they had for each other.

Thought tracking – using the same still image, each character spoke out loud their thoughts and feelings at that particular moment.

This strategy is very helpful because you can really start to delve into each characters feelings and begin to understand them and their relationships. The teenager spoke about how they are always being nagged at over the same old things, wishing they would leave them alone, how they don’t understand. The mother spoke about how the children were so lazy, should help her more round the house, has told them time and time again to do things, and feels underappreciated. The fathers agreed with the mother and talked about how the teenagers should work harder and stop going out so late. The grandparent was just saying how things were different in their day and kind of giving a running commentary. This exercise told us the same sort of thing as the still imaging but in greater detail. It again highlighted the difficulties in the relationship between the parents and teenagers; the constant nagging about the same old things, work, school, laziness, late nights and not helping around the house; common arguments that occur in most family environments, nowadays and in the 1950’s, arguments similar to the ones Billy has with his parents. Again it also shows the traditional family set up.

Role play – This role play focused on the first fifteen pages of Billy Liar.

For this role play the dad was focused on doing his paperwork whilst the mum was preparing breakfast and trying to get the teenager out of bed. The grandparent provided the background noise with a running commentary of events and occasional bits of advice providing an element of humour. When the teenager got out of bed they were interrogated and lectured about their whereabouts last night, just as Billy is in the play. The teenager is defensive and tries to avoid the questions just like Billy does. The father in the role play is very stern about the late nights and numerous love interests and is clearly unimpressed by their irresponsible and immature attitude and thinks he is a bit of a waste of space. Just as Billy’s Dad seems to think in this part of the play.  The mother however is more concerned about the practicalities like washing, etc. and is very motherly in that sense, similar to Billy’s Mum, she also seems exasperated by Billy’s poor attitude but not as much as Geoffrey who seems to find it very hard to understand Billy’s attitude probably due to his own upbringing. The teenager is called lazy a number of times just like in the play and this seems to prompt him to prove himself as this is when he chooses to announce that he has a job and is leaving. The parents are shocked and suspicious as are Billy’s parents. They ask a lot of questions and Billy’s Dad in particular is particularly untrusting and doesn’t really believe him knowing what Billy is like. This tells us more about Billy’s relationship with his father, Geoffrey has little faith in his son and shows him no support, or praise, there is clearly little trust in their relationship and Geoff seems to think very lowly of Billy. He doesn’t believe that anyone would give him a job. Also Geoff is probably very aware of Billy’s tendency to lie giving him reason to doubt him. Billy’s mother also is slightly suspicious but again reacts in a motherly manner and worries about the practicalities.

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Hot seating – In this technique three performers took on a role of one of Billy’s family members and were questioned by the other members in the group.

This strategy was used to better our understanding of the individual relationships Billy has with each family member.  It provided different views of Billy from each family member who all seem to see him in a different light.

Examples of questions

  • Why does Billy lie so much?
  • What are your feelings towards him going to London?
  • Do you think he needs stricter discipline?

Both Billy’s parents ...

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