How did you plan for a range of responses from the audience?

          With simple choreography in the opening scene- The pillow dance- where the entire cast play children who are trying to get the best pillow to sleep on so keep tricking each other to nick their pillows. This contrasts with the harsh abusive naturalism of the anger scene where a mother hits her child to show her anger towards her husband. We wanted to use a wide range of styles and explore a range of emotions through our play, taking the audience on a dramatic and emotional roller coaster ride.

        What we wanted to do was to make sure that the themes and ideas were communicated to the audience so that they understood what we were doing, but we didn’t want to make it too obvious to give the audience credit for their knowledge. We used devices that were fairly abstract and un-naturalistic to make real-life situations seem a lot more interesting and made the audience look at the issues in an amplified way. This enabled the audience to be able to relate to these issues and be able to think about what was and what wasn’t relevant to them, for example- The greed scene- we wanted to make the audience think of a time in their lives when they have taken the importance of materialistic things too far, (Charlie looses all his money in a casino.

           We decided not to end the piece with a strict conclusion because we felt that each sin would be more personal to different members of the audience and that they would have to make up their own conclusion, leaving them with a thought in their heads as they walked out of the theatre, which was one of our main aims. We wanted the audience to look within themselves and try and realize how the sins effect everyone one to a level, whether it is suppression of the sins, or a struggle to cope with a particular one. We also wanted to show the audience how external factors can change an individuals mind in a matter of seconds- for example the gluttony scene, After the audience had stuffed themselves with our chocolate, Vicky was suddenly sick- we heard several members of the audience make noises of disgust and most people stopped eating.

     Overall, I feel that we got a much better reception from the audience in general than we had originally thought, and we met all of our aims, and after speaking to some of the audience afterward our message was clear and they all made up their own conclusions afterwards.