Development and understanding of text
For personal development I will have to look at the character’s movement in greater detail. Take on board the slightest of actions and think more about the walk and how to change it.
Social Themes
Exercises/Discussions covered in class
While reading through the text in the class we soon discovered that social status is one of the main themes in the piece. Keith and Vivian have just won £150,000 on the pools. The win has made a big change in them. They have gone from working class background to suddenly having all this money and they don’t really know how to cope with it. Vivian is striving to become a part of a higher society, but from the text it is clear that they are still working class despite having all this money. This is shown
HND Acting & Performance
when Vivian doesn’t pronounce “Dubonnet” correctly and when Keith sees the amount of stuff that she has bought he panics and says “Crikey! How much did that lot come to?” This again shows us that he isn’t used to having money.
Exercises/discussions purpose
The purpose of the exercise was to get a better understanding of Keith as it would help with the characterisation and overall performance.
Strengths and Weaknesses
I found it easier to relate to the character after finding out his social background and it gave me a better insight into how I was going to portray Keith I think that his social background shone through in the performance by the way in which I used some of his lines. What I feel did let me down was Keith’s accent, I was quite unsure of what a working class man from Yorkshire from the 60’s would have sounded like.
Development in the understanding of the text
I think that if we had more rehearsal time then our understanding of the piece would have been much greater. More time could have been spent on the characters and their social status enhancing the performance.
How text represents era
Exercises/Discussions covered in class
We had a discussion in class about how the text represents era. The text says that they won the pools, which is what it was in those days rather than the lottery. The first thing that Keith does is go out to get drunk, again showing his working class back ground in that era as there was nothing else to do. Vivian also is cleaning up as he comes back into the room showing what she would typically be doing in her everyday life. Vivian also refers to Sammy Davis in the line “you didn’t gawp at Sammy Davis like that….” This suggests that they went to see a stage performance of Sammy Davis which would probably have been between 1955 and 1970 during his singing career.
Exercises/discussions purpose
It was important to discuss this heading as it gives us a better understanding of the characters and social issues that were going on at that time. It also gives us Ideas about what to do with costume, styles and materials that could have been used.
Strengths and Weaknesses analysis
I think that we showed the era well in the performance with the costume used and the actions of Keith and Vivian at the start of the scene. The era could have been better illustrated with the use of set. Unfortunately we had very limited resources and there was minimal set used in the performance.
Development in the understanding of the text
In development of understanding I think that some more research could have been done on what was actually happening in Yorkshire at that time. This would have changed some of the ideas that we had towards the piece.
HND Acting & Performance
Dramatic Form
Exercises/Discussions covered in class
In class we discussed how the play had been originally written for television in the 70’s, a comedy piece that had been based on a true story.
Exercises/discussions purpose
The purpose of the exercise was to make us aware of what the writer was aiming for in writing the play. Thus giving us some idea as to how it should be performed.
Strengths and Weaknesses analysis
I felt that the performances that we produced were a good example of the dramatic form. All the performances had lots of little comic differences that varied from each groups’ interpretation of the piece. There were a lot of little differences that we could have been taken from the other groups performances and incorporated into our own.
Development in the understanding of the text
In this case our understanding of the play could have been greatly increased by actually watching the original televised version.