Now we decide was the time to cast the roles of the characters we knew who were in it. Rene would play the main character, Marco would play the psychiatrist, Bradly would play the good conscience and I would play the bad conscience. When developing my character I thought about what people see as being one of the most evil things in the world. When I thought of what it is I would base my character around that in some way.
After a bit of thinking I realised not only is he the most evil thing in the world but he usually plays a conscience in movies and t.v programmes. I then put it to my group that I play the devil and Bradly plays God. I thought rather than your usual God Vs lucifer/Good Vs Evil battle they could be like best friends but they just work for different companies. I felt this would bring originality to the play, as this isn't portrayed much.
We then went about devising our scenes. We did this by deciding on the situation, what we were aiming to happen by the end and any lines that we thought that someone should say. After doing this we improvised the scene, as this was a good way to get some humorous dialogue into the piece and to show how everybody interpreted the way in which the scene was to be done. Once we had run through it we sat down a discussed what we thought was good, what was bad, what should stay and what should be brought in. Then we did the scene again with the new pieces and repeated the discussion process. This happened until everybody was satisfied with the scene.
The scene that I felt that needed to be scripted was the opening because as I said I feel that you need an attention-grabbing opening. The group decided on what they thought the first scene should be and what should happen during it, so that night I typed it up, brought it in the next day and made sure that everybody was happy with it.
Once we had got every scene done, we went back to the beginning and scene by scene we worked out about our staging and the in which we were going to use the lights. We did this as we felt this could gain us a lot of marks, or lose us a lot if we did not do it properly. We would do this by each person individually would leave the play and sit where the audience would sit, they would then tell us what they thought. After we felt we had got it to a high standard we asked Miss Okbay to see our play and tell us not only what she thought but how we could improve it, as she knew what the examiner will be looking for.
I feel that the devising part of our play went well as we came up with an original idea that mixed the comedy and drama genres. We all contributed well, I feel that I came up with good ideas that furthered our piece, especially in the initial phase where I thought of most of the main themes and what the actual play would be about. I most enjoyed working with Bradly as we could come up with some hilarious lines in improvisation that would have never come about if it were scripted, I feel that this was his strongest point.
On the day of our performance people were nervous, when we were running through they were forgetting lines and when to freeze. This was the thing that made me nervous but we took a break and sat and talked about how hard we had worked and joked about all the things that could go wrong, for some reason this seemed to settle everyone's nerves.
In our performance there were three main mistakes, they were. When it came to our turn to perform everybody was a bit excited, this showed when some people said their lines, as they would slightly rush them. When we were doing a scene there was supposed to be music on in the background to show the personalities of God and lucifer, even though this did add to the scene it was not a necessity. The major mistake that we made was even though we had agreed to go behind the curtain if you were not on stage, sometimes group members would stand facing the curtain in neutral because other groups did. I feel this looked very messy, as there were different numbers of people in neutral every scene and people would change their mind half way through and start edging towards the curtain during the scene.
Overall I feel that the performance went well as everybody remembered his or her lines, the audience thought that we brought humour into serious play well and the humour that we did use was tasteful and still managed to be very amusing.
We were told that using drama techniques was a good way to gain marks, so we tried to use them wherever possible. If we were in the background of a scene we would mime to show that we are still our characters and to make it more realistic, in real life you don’t stop talking or moving because somebody else is having a conversation. When God and lucifer where about to fight, we made them run towards each other as this would build up the tension as you know what is about to happen but its just waiting for it to happen. As we had no props to distinguish our scenes, we had to make sure our freezes were very strong to show the beginnings and ends of our scenes. We made a stylised piece using music and repetition. In this scene Rene talks about how she can't stop hearing voices, then a song that is about consciences starts to play. Bradly comes on moving in an abstract way and starts to repeat his line, then I do the same. This added diversity to our piece as not many groups added an abstract piece to there play. This scene was very successful in doing its job, which was to make you feel sorry for Rene but at the same time be quite scared of her.
I feel that the piece was appreciated by everybody, which I personally think makes it a good play. There were a few mistakes that I have stated and we had a problem with people not being in lessons as this would limit the amount of work we could do. I think that my acting in the play was of a very high standard as I remembered all my lines and developed my character very well. If I could add one scene it would have been a scene to develop and show the relationship between God and lucifer as it could have brought some very comical situations into the play or it could have given me and Bradly a situation to show some different emotions. I enjoyed planning, developing and showing the play but the thing I enjoyed most was being able to do some directing. I liked deciding how the lights should be, how people should face and helping people to develop their characters because if the scene was effective or a character was portrayed well , you can say that, that’s your work and be proud of it.