We planned our piece by writing out the scenes that would be needed to the build up of the climax at the end. Before our final presentation we had performed it to only our class, from this we were able to gain constructive criticism, which told us the main areas of improvements. It also gave us an insight on what the audience thought. One thing that came up quite a few times is that the character of the lodger’s friend was not clear. To clarify that we added an extra scene.
We have a total of six characters. My perception is out of those six the lodger’s friend has the highest status. She does not have many scenes but still has the largest impact on our piece. The reason for having the highest status is because she has complete control over both Scot and the family. She conveys this by having a very clear objective. She mostly only has monologs with Scot, but through this she uses great verbal reassurance. She is uses formal language and keeps direct eye contact with Scot, clearly showing a high status. The lowest status I think is David, the reason being he was unaware of any of the happenings around him. But there is a big contrast at the end where his status level shoots up from being the lowest to the highest. The highest status is conveyed when he slowly walks in, having a blank expression on his face. He is so angry that he feels that he cannot find words to describe it therefore he does not speak, but using gestures tells the lodger and his fried to get out.
One positive point in our play was that all the character’s objectives were clear. For example Scot’s friend’s objective was to get revenge on David, by creating distress amongst the family. The mother’s was to conceal the fact that Scot was her ex-fiancé. Lucy’s was to impress the lodger and try to date him. Tracy’s was to find out about the happenings involving her sister, which would enable her to cause grief to Lucy. The objective of Scot was to follow instructions given by his friend. And David’s was to simply keep the family happy and be there for them. Actions played a major part in our piece. For example in the end scene when David enters the scene he uses a gesture to point to the door meaning for the Scot and his friend to get out! There is also a duologue between Scott and the mother; the mother uses a gesture for Scott to leave.
There are also many examples of subtext in our play. When Tracy finds out about Lucy and Scott, Lucy tries to use subtext and cover it up; at this point Dramatic Irony is also present because we as the audience know that there is a relationship between Scott and Lucy. Scott and the mother use the most subtext! Scott whenever he goes to see his friend, and the mother to cover up the fact that Scott was her ex-boyfriend.
Our piece of naturalism was successful because the plot was believable and the characters were well thought of. Having the objectives clear for each character helped for us to get into role. A character study was even done so that we used the right sort of vocabulary. All the characters were very contracting but were adapted to the same environment, hence making the piece more interesting. We felt though there were a lot of scenes and although they were all important to the play, found it hard to remember them all. We could have improved that by cutting out scenes that would not hinder the audience’s understanding but would make the piece short and sweet! We also had our back to the audience quite often, which meant that we were blocking their view., this was purely to do with staging. Staging was a problem because having had so many scenes; there were at least three different venues, which had to be kept separate. A lot of chairs were used, which took up a lot of space and made the stage look very clustered. By cutting out some scenes this would help, as the number of venues would also decrease resulting to not having that many chairs being used. Overall the piece was successful, the audience liked it and we managed to remember all the scenes!
