I think our drama based on the painting ‘The Family’ was effective at putting across the aims we wanted because the audience were engaged with the drama we did and after we had finished many people from the audience came up and said that they understood what we were trying to put across. Most of our drama was successful apart from one scene change where the audience did not understand what was going on. The audience seemed to react well to our drama even with a few hiccups that happened. They seemed like they understand what was being put across and reacted well at the scary and funny bits. Knowing that the audience understood, what was going on made it easier to act out.
There was one group that stood out as they used the picture on the dresser and brought it forward and used it as a wind-up moving box. Every time someone went to wind up it represented a scene change. I thought this was an excellent and a very unusual way of showing a scene change. I think it was very effective as it is something that was completely different to anything in any of the other groups. They also did the same thing we did and showed that the painting does not have to have an evil or dark meaning. They did one scene where it was a group of kids just having a bit of a play fight. This was effective because it showed that when they were thinking about what to put in their drama they had a wider range and that they took a closer look at the painting and thought about the meanings behind it.
The story of John Tanner and Rachel McLean is such a horrible, sick and twisted story. To me this story is dark and very sinister. But at the same time John tanner was excellent and was very clever at trying to cover up that he killed Rachel by writing the letter on the train, back to Nottingham, shortly after murdering Rachel, and burring her under the floorboards, at her house. This story really shocked me when I first heard it and showed me how evil and twisted some people in this world really are!! The reason why this story really shocked me was because it involved Nottingham which is close to where I live and because it involves somewhere near to you it shocks you a lot more . I feel that John Tanner should not have been released from prison, as what he did was wrong and absolutely disgusting.
I wanted to get across how clever john was in what he did by showing, in our drama, both sides to him – his nice, sweet side and his angry murderous side. We achieved this by doing two separate dramas one when he was nice and the other where he killed Rachel. The murder scene was very successful, as we portrayed both side of John and the build up of angry inside him extremely well. The first piece of drama, showing his nice side, was not as successful as the second one because it was harder for the audience to sympathise with John which made it harder to play John. The most successful part of the two dramas was the murder scene as this really shocked the audience when it happened, as it was really unexpected. I feel that the audience reacted really well to out drama pieces. They did not react as well as they did with the drama based on ‘The Family’. The reason I think they didn’t react as well is that the John and Rachel dramas in all the groups were mainly the same and didn’t show different meanings like ‘The Family’. The audience did understand the pieces but I feel they understood them too well!!
There was a one group who instead of putting both sides to John in one scene they repeated the same scene twice but one with the evil John and one with the sweet John. I felt that this was extremely effective as no other group had thought of doing this and even though it was a very simple idea they carried it out so well. The group who did this idea was the same group that stood out for me in ‘The Family’ dramas too. Another effective idea was how the final scene, the murder scene, was done. One group, during the murder, used a strobe light this was really effective as it gave the scene a very eerie and dramatic feel and this kept the audience on the edge of their seats!!
