3. How did group skills contribute to the development of the drama?

 Nicola was very efficient at finding research on Australian brides and on mail order brides. Nicola usually brought the creativeness for the group to act but wasn’t always confident that our play was going the right direction. She was always ready to improvise scenes and enthusiastic about writing rough scene scripts off the top of her head. One of our scenes is mostly based on a dream she had, which is the scene with the showman and showgirls. Nicola made a slideshow of a mail order bride website that we used in our play and also put together the director’s notes for the programme.

 Catherine was always open to any character, and used a wide range of vocals for her characters. Catherine played a doll and an answering machine during the play and was really successful creating the vocals for these characters. Sometimes she lacked confidence in her characters but as a group we helped by using different drama games and techniques, this also benefited us to explore our characters. Catherine organised props for the group to use, she brought in the box which was a vital part of our set and also helped with script writing and the programme. Catherine gave the group a relaxing atmosphere to work in

 I enjoyed working as a group and think I stayed most positive out of all of us throughout the rehearsal process. I think my patience made me more willing to see the play develop into something good rather than the rest of the group who would often panic in times of doubt. I designed some of the posters we used in our play and also the front cover of our programme. I was able to find the music that we needed in our play, and put it on a CD, we used the song ‘Living Doll’ by Cliff Richards and a few other bits of music. Whilst researching I started to read ‘The ship of brides’ which I found, helped me become more aware of the brides feelings, which helped with character building.

 As a group we all found costume, we rehearsed together in our spare time and made our props together. We made the doll box together and the Brecht style banners. During the play we would all help making sure everything was in place and we could rely on each other for everything to run smoothly. The only technical faults we had during the play were due to the people who were doing the lighting and sound, but as a group we built our confidence up and tried to overcome the mistake. We all thought about the set together and it just built up over the rehearsal period. I was really pleased with the group I was put in and felt that the growth of our relationship over the rehearsal period really helped our performance in the end.