My practical work in October 2002 until April 2003 was for Option One. It was a piece of Devised work and was based on the theme of families. The family in our piece deals mainly with relationships between husband and wife.

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Jonathon McCauley

Part One Essay: Devised Option

        My practical work in October 2002 until April 2003 was for Option One. It was a piece of Devised work and was based on the theme of families. The family in our piece deals mainly with relationships between husband and wife.

        My contribution to the performance was as the husband “Henry Coppell”. I had to convey a range of emotions and mannerisms in dealing with a hysterical wife who is mentally unstable and who throws accusations and hurls abuse at him even though he is innocent of her accusations. To help me in my work I looked for information in books and read extracts from plays such as “Billy Liar” by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, “Blood Brothers” by Ken Whitmore. The most useful material I looked at was “Always in love with Amy” by Ken Whitmore as inspired our idea of having a hysterical, paranoid wife. Our piece was set in present day Manchester (2003) because it would be beneficial to study how landmarks in history such as the Suffragettes movement in the 19th century affect the society that we live in today for example the woman is able to argue and converse on an equal footing and neither is dominant in their modern 21st century culture. Contrasting this is the play “Blood Brothers”. On Tuesday 24th September 2002 I visited Manchester’s Palace theatre to view an emotional play “Blood Brothers” written by Willy Russell and directed by Bob Tomson and Bill Kenwright. The play was set in 1950’s Liverpool and progressed into 1980’s, this is illustrated through the costume of the characters; for example the cap worn by Eddie is typical of schools in that era and is also set in inner city like our piece. I also took information on relationships between a man and a woman from plays “Tony Kytes Arch Deceiver” and Maeve Binchy’s Telling Stories” these two pieces gave me an idea of different ways in which men and women can relate to each other. Comparisons can be made between the character of ‘Mrs Lyons’ from “Blood Brothers” and ‘Amy Coppell’ in our piece. The problems facing Mrs. Lyons in “Blood Brothers” in working class Liverpool puts her in an anxious state of mind similar to that of “Amy Coppell” although Mrs. Lyons doesn’t suffer from the paranoia and anxiety that Amy does in our piece. In our piece Amy’s anxiety is also due to the absence and problems with their sexual relationship. She makes the assumption that there is an implication that her husband doesn’t love her anymore. My character “Henry Coppell” is 46 years old and is lower middle class. We chose this status because his job as a manager of a car sales company would cause him to be lower middle class.

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        The main 4 characters in our production are the friend of the family, the husband, the secretary of the husband’s office and the wife. The character “Amy Coppell” is a middle-aged housewife. The husband Henry is a car sales manager who is calm and collected and would like to stay with his wife but the father in “Blood Brothers could not handle the responsibility of a child or family, and wanted to leave.

        Our group discussed the culture of the play and decided that it would be that of lower middle class Manchester. This was illustrated by the costume by ...

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