In the Woman in Black as the actor approaches the house a gobo is shown to show Eel marsh house in the background. The house seems large and foreboding. This helps create an air of suspense with the audience who already have heard about the woman in black. This happens again when the actor approaches the door to the playroom whilst the music plays. Similarly, the actors in The Fear of the unknown create tension whilst approaching the house by talking quietly and discuss the house in their ‘ghost story’.
The curse of the Woman in Black is similar to the curse placed on the house where a girl died many years ago. Many other people tell the story of the woman in black. The actor isn’t superstitious so ignores them. He is lucky to escape with his life. In the fear of the unknown Stacey warns Sadie about the curse in the house where the girl died, Sadie believes the story but then still goes in the house, and doesn’t return. This could also be compared to in the Crucible where the suspicion of witchcraft underlies everything. In the beginning of the play many people didn’t even have suspicion of witches. Though the idea there were witches living within a community ate away at the people until people died. Many innocent people ended up hanging for witchcraft.
The imagination of characters in the play we performed added to the tension created. This occurred frequently during the piece, for example when Charlie and Sadie appear at the door to Stacey’s party Stacey looks Sadie up and down. Sadie is instantly terrified of Stacey even though this is normal behaviour in her characters case.
The same thing happens in Blue Remembered Hills when the siren goes to signal that a prisoner of war has escaped. Every noise sounds like the war prisoner approaching them and all the children believe the prisoner of war would kill them. You can also compare it to the Crucible where everyone suspects everyone else to be witches, and everyone turns on everybody else causing more havoc. To some extent this also happens in The Woman in Black as the actor is met by suspicious and hostile reactions when he attends the ladies funeral. Also everybody in the village believes in The Woman in Black and her terrible curse, this means all the characters would be on edge.
In conclusion, I think our drama performance went well, our preparation could have been better but we all had different school activities on, which made it hard to rehearse. Near to the end of our rehearsals we threw one member of our cast out. This put us at a disadvantage but meant we worked better as a group in the end as we were all striving for a common goal. Our original ideas included; Bullying and the consequences of bullying, Relationships, and problems that could never be solved.
We decided to work on the events leading up to an unnecessary death.
