Marking the moment
We tuck some scenes and marked the moment to show important points in the play. We took one piece of script from the play and it was the point when Mrs Lyons was persuading Mrs Johnson to give up her child, we took three important moments and marked them by using a freeze frame and adding a thought track.
Role play
We created a role play for Mrs Johnson this was to show what had gone on in the past, example, her husband leaving her, and how these could persuade her to give up her child to Mrs Lyons. This helped me understand the play more because I could see into Mrs Johnson’s past and see what sort of life she leads.
Hot seating
For this we each chose a character and played that character as people interviewed them, this is so we could get a better idea of how the character is thinking what he is thinking and what he thinks of the outer characters.
I developed many different extracts from the play ‘Blood Brothers’. One of the extracts was the first scene in the play and this was about the mother telling the audience about life and herself, she is basically introducing herself. We developed this scene by adding narration, characters different levels and the movement we also added more text as we took the original text from the song and added the different text to it. The layout was like this:
Kr = Kristy
K = Katie
F = Fabien
M = Mark
H = Hollie
H comes in stage right and Kr comes in stage left they meet in the middle, at this time K, F and m are off stage. Kr and H are both elderly people and are gossiping they have a conversation about the two twins and open the play up. They are both the narrators at the beginning of the play but it is split between them. As they are talking they both go to sit on the chairs that are on the blocks this creates height and this represents the narrator looking over onto the action as narrators always know what is going to happen. The last line is ‘Bring in the mother, let the story begin’ at this point F and M enter the stage left and K enters stage right. Then the song is spoken as if they are lines in the play some of the lines are cut out as there is a lot of repetition because it is a song. Some of the lines are spoken by K as the mother and also F as the mother outer are said by Kr and H as if they are still gossiping on the park bench. The scene ends when M goes off with Kr stage right.
Initially I was aiming for a comical character, if we had used costume, music and would have had more space we could have developed this scene more. Then we could have a longer and more detailed lay compared to the script as this scene was mostly song. At the moment when the story was introduced and the mother came in the mood of the play changed the past of the mother was introduced and this was all so we could understand her past. Perhaps we could have added more text into the script or even some monologs and more mime instead of using scrip I would of liked to of spent more time developing the extract of the play. We should have used more height, and marking the moment as there were lots of important points in the extract. Before we started to develop the scene we should have used hot seating to develop are characters more.
How I developed my character
My character in this scene was Mrs Johnston she was very emotionally upset as her husband left her with seven children and two on the way. She wants her and her family to lead a good life and find wealth my characters function throughout the play is to give birth to the twins and tell the twins that they are brothers. The fact that Mrs Johnston’s husband left her and she does not make that much money as she has no job and she is starting a new makes the character stronger and in this scene Mrs Johnston tell the audience this.
The other scene that me and my grouped developed is the final scene in the play this is about Mickey (one of the twins) going round to see Eddie (the other twin) they still do not know if they are brothers. Mickey thinks that Eddie is having an affair with his wife Linda. This is the final scene this was from the original script and was the scene when the twins (Eddie and Mickey) both find out they are both brothers and this is also the scene when they both get killed by Mrs Lyons. In this scene there are 5 people involved Mrs Lyons, Mrs Johnston, Eddie, Mickey and the narrator.
We looked at the scrip of this scene and read it between us. Even tough there is 5 people involved in this scene there was only 3 people in my group so we had to split characters and lines so that we could include all the characters. As we read the script we took important lines and highlighted them, we had to make sure all these lines were in the performance. For the characters I was Mickey, Fabien was Eddie and Natalie was Mrs Lyons and Mrs Johnston. We all split the important narrators’ lines. The performance was set up like this:
K = Katie
N = Natalie
F = Fabien
K stands on one side of the stage and say the narrators lines then K walks in to F’s office (the block) there is a thought-track of what K wants to happen then it goes back to that is really happening and they have an argument N walks in and tells the twins they are brothers then N turns around and as she turns back she is a different character the contrast changes and her mood as a different person is the opposite to what she was the twins both end up on the floor and N speaks the narrators lines and the brothers get up and repeat the past in a previous scene that had happened earlier in the play.
We used still-imagery as the narrator was talking, we would come out of character and say the lines in neutral as there in no view from the narrator this would be done with neutral face expression. The thought-tracking we used was with Mickey (K) imagining what he is going to do when he moves into the office of Eddie (F). We made sure that when a character changed roles that the audience new about it with the change of tone and the different mood that changed when the character changed. We tried to create height with the block we used but also we created heights with our characters as one person would be at one height another person would be at a different one. We changed the tone of voice and accent when the character changed roles. When the narrator was talking at the end of the scene there was the miming of a scene that was earlier in the play. We also had music at the end to signify the end and to show what the play was about and this was the innocence of children and how they do not stereotype and distinguish classes of people.
Evaluation
I believe that I have learnt a grate deal about the play and the playwright I now understand a lot more about how to uses different drama techniques and use them together to crate different moods and styles.
As we watched another groups performance of a scene in which they had developed we evaluated it and took these points into consideration:
- Gesture
- Posture
- Audience impact
- Techniques
- Styles
- Links with the written text
- How they developed the text
With the group I watched they created height by using to blocks placed like this:
I believe this was to signify the distance between the two characters as in this scene they are having an argument. Ant the beginning of the scene there was mime I believe this worked well as this built up tension and created the mood as if we knew what was going to happen. Thai used a lot of the scrip in this scene but they added and developed a lot of text into it as this helped the audience understand more. There was a lot of different drama conventions used in this scene there was a few minuets in the middle of the scene when the two characters were having a fight and this was done so that the characters were not touching each other and the were both stood on different blocks there was music played in this section and it was really effective towards me, as the audience. Also there was a monologue done in this scene I liked this as it helped me to understand what was going on and how the character was felling at the time. I believe that more costume and props could have been used in this scene to help the characters develop more gestures. The use of space and height was very good in this play and because of this it was nice to watch and I enjoyed it.
In all of the performances they could have been improved with time as we only had a short time to develop and rehearse the scenes we were still using scrip’s and this put the audience off what is actually happening. More costume and make up would of helped use create are characters more and also if we would of been able to use a stage it would of helped with the blocking and how the scene looked.
I believe that the message of the play was that you cannot separate different classes of people as we are all the same inside also that the play had a very suppositious side to it and that fate cannot be controlled. Religion plays an important part in the play as the bible is used many times and signifies if something is said on the bible it will happen. The main context of the play is twins should not be separated and that the innocents of children should not be overlooked as they do not see different colours of skin and a difference of people with money and without money is not significant to them.
The play was set in the early 1970 an example of an extract taken from the scrip is this
‘Then of course I found that I was six weeks overdue
We got married at the registry and then we had a do
We all had curly salmon sandwiches and how the ale did flow;
They said the bride was lovelier than Marilyn Monroe
And we went dancing’
Marilyn Monroe was very big in the 1970’s and it was also very looked down on if you had a child out of wed lock at this time.
I enjoyed developing from this play as I have very strong views about the stereotypical view of people who have wealth. I believe that I began to understand more about the play now that I have preformed the different scenes and developed them with my own ideas. I believe that Billy Russell is a very talented writer and I would be interested in using or watching another one of his play as I believe that he writes most of it from experience and that it has a strong belief in all of the historical contexts his plays are about. I have learnt a lot about new drama techniques and how to use them together I believe that blood brothers was a very good play to use on paper 1 unit 2 as there was a lot to develop from the script and there was a lot to come out in between the lines!
W did these brainstorms so that we could understand Mrs Lyons more as she was a completed character.
