In 'Blood Brothers' we discussed how the narrator affects the play and how the narrator can change the plays direction, place and time. We used the narrator in a scene from the play to act out what we thought the narrator would do.

Authors Avatar

Francis Runcieman         Mr. Markey

11.8         

Blood Brothers, Paper 1b

‘Blood Brothers’ is about a poor lower class mother who sells one of her twin sons. She sells her child to a rich upper class family and you see the two brothers become blood brothers. Unaware that they are brothers they go through their lives with emphasis on being 7, a teenager, at university and then in their adult life. The superstition is, is that if they find out they both will die.

Narration

In ‘Blood Brothers’ we discussed how the narrator affects the play and how the narrator can change the plays direction, place and time. We used the narrator in a scene from the play to act out what we thought the narrator would do.

Prejudice

Whilst studying ‘Blood Brothers’ we discussed different forms of prejudice, racism, ageism, sexism, facial disfigurement and disability and class are the different forms of prejudice we discussed. We discussed why people take a dislike without even knowing the person their taking a dislike to.  

Exploring the character’s attitudes and intentions

We discussed what the motives of the characters were, why they carried out their actions etc. The discussion included why Mrs Johnstone sold one of her twins, how Mickey’s life got in such a bad state and why Edward’s and Mickey’s life got separated.

The monologue  

The monologue is a technique for a character within the play to perform a dialogue to tell the audience what their state of mind is and what they think about other people. To explore this technique we either wrote our own monologue or performed (to our liking) the previously written monologue of ‘Our Sammy’.

   

The Narrator

A narrator is a means of showing the audience what they can’t see. The narrator can link different scenes; can flash forward or backwards in time and can fix its self to a specific emotion or motive i.e. in blood brothers when the narrator is on the stage he brings in superstitious, and tells the audience that if Mickey and Edward find out that they are real bothers they will die so the audience relates themselves to this whenever he is on stage; so when the children are playing when they are 7 the Narrator comes on (the balcony) and we are reminded of the superstition that they are going to die, which is immensely sad at the time especially seeing that Mickey and Edward have a brilliant relationship with each other, and that because of Mrs Johnstone’s action their life’s will fail. So the Narrator can be used to constantly remind the audience that the superstition will not go away and if they know, they will die.

In order to apply this idea to practical work and to use a narrator, we were given four scenarios to work with. These scenarios were:

  • A father and mother with a child who is late home from a social event.
  • Two sisters, one borrows her sisters dress ruins it or spills something on it and the other sister is angry so there is a conflict.
  • Two brothers, one brother borrows car damages it and the other brother is angry with this.
  • A teacher is angry over a student who has no completed their homework.

The narrator enters when it is at the two most dramatic moments (one for each person) and speaks aloud the real thoughts of the characters. The two characters have a conflict over the scenarios above.

In our group we did the scene with a late child coming back from a party and the two parents are angry with this because they specifically told him not to go out. The narrator enters when we are at the high point of the argument, and the late child speaks his thoughts out loud and the mother speaking her thoughts of what she thinks.

Evaluation

  • The stage position needs to be changed; instead of sitting in a chair at a 90-degree angle to the audience turn it to a 45-degree, so that you are showing more of your body and more of your face. This is an advantage because the audience see more of you so you can show more to them.
  •  Apart from Scott the voice projection of the group was fine, not too rushed and at the right volume for the audience to hear. If Scott projected more and slowed his delivery down he would greatly improve because the audience will be able to hear him and understand him more.
  • Although there were some bits in the play that were rushed too quickly so the audience didn’t fully understand.
  • In some incidents people vocally masked each other, which are two or more people speaking at the same time. This is a minor criticism but it negatively affects the play because the audience misses a part of the script.  
  • Tony came across very irate when he wanted to be and showed this to the audience by raising his voice and speaking in a fast angry manner.
  • I used the wrong arm, when pointing to someone always use the arm furthest away from you because it doesn’t cover up your body; if you lean across with your arm which is the closest to the audience you cover up your body and your face so the audience cant see the acting which you are doing.
  • Good effort in keeping my position in the tableau, on one leg I still kept still.
Join now!

   

Evaluation of other group

Ben, Jack and George

This group did the same as us with a late child coming back from a party and the parents finding out are angry with this.

  • The lecture about going out to parties from Ben to Jack was convincingly real. The words said felt as though Ben was a real parent, and the way he said it was good as well, his voice gave him power over Jack because it was louder and he didn’t stop to let Jack say anything. This and the use of levels (Ben was ...

This is a preview of the whole essay