Translating 21 grammes from screen to stage: Audience response

After we had created a basis for working and incorporated these themes slightly and a few storylines had developed, we were asked to show the other groups what we had done so far, after doing this it changed the groups perspective on what we thought we could achieve because as we had shown what we thought to be quite serious and powerful scenes the audience had found these slightly amusing.  Some of us realised we had potentially quite a funny group and after taking the audience members comments on board we decided to elaborate on this theme of humour. We thought that if we were getting laughs from the audience when we’re not trying to be funny, what sort of reaction would we get when we’re deliberately trying to be funny.

Another conclusion that we made was that if a majority of the piece was funny then the non-humorous, serious scenes would be more powerful.

Some of the other ways in which we used key techniques to set a reaction from the audience were music and lighting.  I don’t think we quite realised at the beginning of the devising process how much of a powerful tool music and lighting could be and it was only towards the end of the rehearsal process and nearing the performance that we started developing this dramatically.  A great example of a mood setting and response provoking scene was our rape scene with the Vicar and young girl, we had all of the stage dimmed and in darkness with only myself holding a torch down onto jess’ face with the other three girl standing by the microphone singing silent night.  This scene in turn got the exact intended response of awkwardness from the audience.