Response Phase
Throughout the second Drama course, we have been studying a play called ‘East is east’. We used a variety of different medium and elements of drama as well as explorative strategies in order to gain an understanding of the play in full depth. In addition, we used these strategies in order to appreciate the play. During the course we improvised and prepared performances using some of the themes: Arranged marriages, Religion, Sexuality, Honor, Respect and Patriarchy Muslim culture. Furthermore such themes as Inter-racial relationships and Circumcision were used to perform abstract pieces for the audience to visualize the surroundings of our play and to create their own image of the occurrences from each person’s perspectives.
When preparing the arranged marriage performance, we studied arranged marriages through the text ‘east is east’ as a mixed family of both English and Indian members residing in England have a clash of culture. The father’s side of the family believes in Muslim culture as the mothers English side is more modern and don’t believe in any sort of traditional culture. The arranged marriage is a part of the historical Muslim tradition which has run down through generations. My group and I used four individual scenes to represent the stages of the marriage. At the end of each scene we would use the exploitive strategy, still image, then a transition into the next scene. This helped create an image in the minds of the audience that allowed the play to be simpler and more creative. Each audience member could visualize their own interpretation of what was to occur next and why. Mediums and elements used such as levels, created the effect of authority and minorities in the play. Moreover, the characters could be seen as ‘respected’ who were higher up and minorities who would be lower to the ground. This helps the audience picture which characters had the most authority, respect and power in the play as opposed to those who could be younger and less important towards the plot. Body language is used to show characters feelings through the use of their body. I personally used low levels and crawled, to show that I was of less importance to the play as I was a young boy. The use of looking insignificant can show the audience that I was not yet respected as an adult. Furthermore, it shows my loss of intimacy towards others in the play as I was separate from other characters. The use of proxemics, meaning the spacing was used well as characters who were lovers would be closer together. In addition, the spacing of the stage was effectively used as the scenes were spaced out with each character being at least 2 meters away. Any tools used such as stage elevations for levels, would be separated.