The main difference between ‘The trip’ and ‘Billy Liar’ was the setting. Our play was set in the 19th century whereas Billy Liar was set in the 1960s. This is a massive difference in culture and the customs of the people, yet the personalities of the victims are remarkably similar and while there are obvious differences in the personalities of Billy and the criminals in The Trip, there are also obvious similarities, despite the fact that Billy Liar is set in his comfortable 60’s home and our play was set in the harsh, rough winds of 19th century Alaska.
My contribution to our performance was as a 19th century, upper-class lady. I was the intruders’ amusement; they enjoyed manipulating me, even to the extent of making me believe that I killed my own brother. This is a major difference from our play to Billy Liar, more often than not, Billy lied because he had no choice, and he didn’t always take pleasure in it as our characters did. This once again brings up my previous point of the difference in personality; my ‘true’ purpose to the manipulators was to reunite them. My purpose as an actress was to demonstrate to the audience how easily deceived people can be, even today, and to convey across the themes of truth and lies.
The people who appear in our production are two upper class, polite people and two scheming, lower class convicts escaped from Australia in search of gold. In contrast, those in Billy Liar are middle classed people without the huge disparity of the characters in The Trip. In The Trip, we show our character’s position in society by their accents and the way they behave around each other. For example, the upper-class lady, Elizabeth, walks and talks completely differently to the two convicts. Even when they are pretending to be upper class, they still don’t sound quite like Elizabeth. In Billy Liar, it’s clear that the characters are middle-class because their house is a modern, small abode. The character of Billy also tends to hang around with people of a middle-class, who speak with a more colloquial voice than Elizabeth in The Trip.
To help me in my work, I looked for information in ‘The Hutchinson encyclopedia’ and on the Internet for information on 19th century conditions, society and the gold rush in Alaska. This research meant that I could work out what my character’s past would have been like, therefore meaning that I could build up her personality. For Billy Liar, I designed the set and to improve my original ideas, I researched 1960 interior design on the Internet and several library books. By doing this study, I could get a better grasp on the character’s life style, and understand the plot better.
The style of our play was not realistic; we achieved this style by not using elaborate lighting and not using much scenery. We chose this style because it made the audience think and use their own imagination to construct the scenery themselves. This is the complete opposite to Billy Liar, which is set in a proscenium arch to give an impression of a fourth-wall. Within this arch the set would be very much realistic, including 1960s furniture and furnishings. It would appear as a real 1960’s house. Billy Liar is performed in this set to engross the audience into the set therefore they believe they are looking through a fourth wall and the play seems and looks real to them.
Between these plays there is a huge gap of culture, time and well, pretty much everything, but have the people’s attitudes really changed that much? Has humanity itself changed all that much in its people’s abusive and susceptible ways, and the causes of these personalities? I think not, and if you compare two plays of completely different settings as I have here, the change is clearly scarce. Apart from the characters, a similarity is the central theme ‘truth and lies’; because of such a huge list of differences between these two plays it’s clear that this theme covers a wide range of plays.
