Pride:
Loving your self or seeing yourself to be more important than others.
Covetousness:
This is where you want something that someone else has in terms of material item, for instance shoes, houses or televisions.
These sins could be personified as objects or we could base a character on one of these sins.
Still Images
A still image is a snapshot of a scene that best represents that scene. One person can act as a sculptor to position individuals in the group to improve the still image.
As a class, we used still images as our first explorative strategy and our first task was to use a still image to represent a sin of our choice. My group consisted of Karimah, Anjelah and myself and we chose our image to be based on the sin pride. We chose pride because we thought that it could be interpreted in many different ways and we wanted to show all aspects of this sin.
In the first still image I looked into a mirror showing vanity whilst Karimah and Anjelah were pulling at another mirror, also trying to look into it. We used the stage well by spacing out from each other and we sat on chairs. Our facial expressions showed that we were happy with what we saw in the mirror.
For the second still image we were told show it in an abstract way. As we only showed the vanity side to the pride sin we decided to add in the other part of the definition, thinking that you are more important than others around you. I stood in the front with my arms out showing that I was more important than the other two characters. Karimah, sitting down, looked at me with her facial expression showing that she thinks that she is better than me and Anjelah still looked in her mirror, sitting down, to show vanity. When I became the sculptor for this still image I found that the audience might no be able to distinguish what character Karimah was performing as, so I told her to stand up and put her hand on her hip to enhance her typical character traits.
These still images helped me to understand that every moment in a play counts and every gesture and expression needs to be performed accurately to show different sins. It showed me that if you don’t put emphasise into your gestures then the traits of the sinful characters can get lost and the audience could mistake sins for each other.
Thought tracking is when a piece of drama stops and an individual reveals their inner thoughts and feelings of that moment.
Normally in drama I am used to doing a verbal piece of drama and then everything freezes whilst a character gives a speech about their inner feelings. However, this time our task was have the whole piece of drama revolve around a character’s mind being swayed by a devil conscience and an angel conscience and the two consciences arguing to win the right to choose what the character does. Rachel was the character deciding whether to steal some feather bowers, Sophie was the angel persuading her to go home and telling her that she didn’t need it and I was the devil persuading her to take it because her mum was poor. Rachel didn’t speak and let her facial expressions lead her through the drama piece whilst Sophie spoke posh and I spoke in a high, devilish tone.
We chose to make the main character mute to add more effect and to show that the drama was happening in her head and any speech from her would interfere with this effect. Once we had made our storyline and were part-way through rehearsing, I thought it would best if Sophie stood on her chair to symbolise that she took the higher ground and I crouched and moved low to show that I was closer to “hell”. When I successfully persuaded Rachel to steal, I thought that I should push Sophie off the chair to show that I had won and to break from the thought-track. This strategy helped me to understand that a thought-track can be a powerful moment in the play, deepen the audience’s knowledge of the play and tell much more than a plain piece of drama.
Narrating
Narration is where one or many individuals provide a spoken commentary that accompanies the drama or a story being related by a character.
For the second lesson, we were told to bring in various objects which we thought best described one of the sins. I brought in two objects; a money calculator to represent greed or envy and a television remote control to represent sloth. I had to talk about each item for one minute. I explained that the calculator could be interpreted as more than one sin.
