Les Miserable

RESPONSE PHASE

We were introduced to two different drama texts. Text one was a song called “Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Collins, a British singer, songwriter. The song was written at around 1985. Text two is an extract from the musical “Les Miserable.” The extract is called “Look Down” and is set on the streets of Paris in 1832. For text one we were asked to listen to the song and discuss the storyline, themes and characters. The fact that the song is about people that are in poverty and how other people feel towards them. The lyrics from the song are about two characters, a man who is a passer-by in the street and a homeless woman in the street. She asks him for help. “Sir can you help me? But he ignores her, “He pretends he can’t hear her”. The man represents ignorance and the woman represents poverty. Phil Collins directs the song at us by saying “Its another day for you and me in Paradise”. He means that we’re in paradise compared to the lives oh homeless people.

We were also asked to read the script from “Les Miserable”; the extract is called “Look Down”. We each picked a character and then we read the script. Les Miserable is about the life of poor people in Paris and they want to start a revolution against the French government and the monarchy. However, they all say that they need Lamarque but he is ill.

The similarities between the two texts are they both are about poverty and how higher class people feel towards them and they help the poor or not. Basically, the theme of the two texts are that they are set in Britain around 1985 – 1990, the same time it was written.

There are three levels of still-image; I played a poor woman on the street asking for money. There was another character sitting on the floor. There was also another character sitting in his shop watching from the window. I also did a thought track for my ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

We had to do a still image of a character from Les Miserable; I posed as Gavroche. I was standing, looking towards the ground and I looked miserable, then I had to speak aloud the thoughts of Gavroche. I said that I was just a child trying to survive from a terrible lifestyle and I wished that Lamarque were here to help me and other people like me. The characters still image (as Gavroche) was similar to the character I created for the song because they were both poor and miserable. The differences are that my still-image of Gavroche is standing and my pose was more childish them the character I created for the song.

We had four characters for our role-play. The poor man was lying on the floor and asking for spare change. A rich musician on the phone, walking past the poor man and being accompanied by a bodyguard who tells the poor man to move when the poor man asks him for any spare change that the rich man may have. This is observed by the fourth character, a shop owner watching from his shop window.

I played the poor old man who was begging for money, I played him with a sore throat as if he was ill, I showed this from the his voice. I was lying on the floor, which reflected that he was tired and my eyes were half open which reflected that he was sick, or a drug addict. I think that I played my character very well indeed; it also reflected the events, which happened in the song because the character looked terrible and compared to him other people are living in paradise. It worked well because it was quite similar to what happened in the song “Another Day in Paradise” when the woman calls out to the man on the street and he ignores pretending he can’t hear her.

T o help me prepare for my character as the poor old man I was hot seated. I preferred to play a young man that ran away from home, his parents were strict Muslims and disapproved of him having a girlfriend, he loved her, and she said that she loved him. His parents kicked him out of home to teach him a lesson, and then he went to live with his girlfriend, but she refused him and she didn’t really love him. When doing the hot-seating I was asked questions as my character such as, my name? My age? Why I’m living on the streets? What its like living on the streets? Has there been anyone to help me? …Etc

I’ve learnt that my character could be one of many young adults that are living on the streets. I’ve also learnt that people shouldn’t trust others so easily because it can cause problems. I think that it was an effective way of developing my character because it helped to bring out the problem that he was facing and ways of dealing with it. My answers to the questions as my character helped fit the story.

We were asked to crosscut two storylines based upon the extract from “Les Miserable”. We had two storylines; one was of two rich politicians discussing what was going to done with the poor and homeless during Christmas time, they were discussing this in a luxurious restaurant. The other storyline was about two poor homeless men getting drunk and criticising the French government. It is related to the extract that we read because they are both about starting a revolution. They were about starting a revolution. They were both also about looking down on people. We used freeze-frame to crosscut our scenes linked with a third, which had all the actors in the last scene where we acted as demonstrators trying to get the attention of members of the public so they can help by joining in the revolution.

All the skills that I have worked on have been aimed at helping me to explore the texts that I was given. The role-play really helped me to understand the first text; the hot-seating helped my performance in the role-play. For the second text, we worked on still-image and thought track, which helped with my face expressions and body language. The crosscutting helped with my acting performance and directing