Caleen Sinnette Jennings is a student of William Shakespeare, August Wilson, Sam Shepard and Lorraine Hansberry. In the early 1970s who, after years of speech and drama and Shakespeare, sounded 'too white' to be cast in the roles available for black women at the time decided that she had had enough rejection and bruising to her ego which motivated her to start writing her own plays. As she walked away from a New York theatre, after what was to be her last audition, in early spring 1975, decided she had to write plays for herself (African American women.)
If I was to play the part of Ray I would act quite stressed throughout the play as Ray as a character has a pretty hard life compared to the other two, trying to do the best for her two toddlers which alone is hard, let alone trying to support her unemployed husband and being pregnant. I would be closer to Nat rather than Charl throughout the play as she is a more mature character and is willing to help me out by lending me money whereas Charl is a more selfish character and would prefer that money spent on her nights out. I would show this by everytime Charl has a go at Nat I would give her a reasuring look telling her not to worry or put my hand on her shoulder to show I'm there for her. I would wear a clean shirt or blouse with tell-tale traces of wear and tear so show her status in life.
Blood Brothers is also a modern play set in liverpool in the eighties. It is the hugely popular play by the well-known author of Educating Rita, Willy Russell. It is fast-moving and perceptive, entertaining and thought-provoking, funny yet ultimately tragic. It tells the tale of twin brothers, Eddie Lyons and Mickey Johnstone, who are born into a large working-class family and what happens when their mother decides to have one of them adopted. Blood Brothers looks at the differences and conflicts of their upbringings, their relationships with each other and with their real and adopted mothers.
Blood brothers is quite similar in a way to Sunday Dinner as they are both modern plays written in the last twenty years and both have upper-class characters in them. In Sunday Dinner the Morgan girls live in a upper-class neighbourhood and the Johnstones in Blood Brothers are also upper-class. The main characters in both plays (Ray, Nat, Charl, Eddie, Mickey) are people that we can relate to, we feel pathos with them as they face the trials and tribulations of life. Russell uses pathos to involve the readers so they feel pity when Mickey loses his job, fear at the end of the play when the shooting scene takes place, and experience childhood joy when Eddie and Mickey share jokes. Humour, in its various forms, plays a large part in bothn Blood Brothers and Sunday Dinner. It keeps the readers interested and balances out the conflict and sadness in the play. Also both plays are composed of fairly simple storylines. There is nothing too difficult to understand which helps the audience to stay focused and feel more involved with the play.
