Developing Characters:

This week we started off the lesson with an exercise that consisted of multiple things happening at once, this turned out to be a difficult task for the class at first but after a while it just became natural (I think the beginning problem was lack of understanding the task which then was clearly reflected. Sir was confidently dishing out negative comments which also didn't help put the class in a positive mood which I think was clearly shown through the next few lessons). This week I managed to develop my understanding of the play by focusing on certain scenes such as ‘Tale 6’ which we looked at in depth during the lesson. We were told to pick a character out of Tale 6 and write about what that character looked like on the in and outside.

By looking at the play in more detail we were able to notice the themes that were becoming more visible, for the play contains many dark and grim stories however it also contains hope. Hope that doesn’t get answered (e.g the hope of something happening however it never does) and then there are things such as the boy helping the old lady, it represents hope in society and humanity. Overall I think that ‘Hope’ is a key theme in the play, whether that hope is ignored or if they get lucky and what they wanted comes true, it depends on the tale, just as it would in real life.

We were given the marking criteria for DEVELOPING for this project. We completed the sheet, Here it is:

 

Task 2 (45/60 mins)

This week we did not:

    In groups you shared your homework. What had other people in your group done?

    You then created a response to the tale you were working on and including the research you had completed for your homework.

You were asked to continue to be guided by the style of the play – it should feel physical – you couldn't use any props/chairs etc.

·                     What did you develop and create? How?

·                     How did your homework help you develop the tale practically?

·                     Explain what you did as your character. Why did you make these choices? (Think about character- voice/physicality.)

Task 3

In new groups of 5/6 we re-read Tale 6. We had to underline all the people mentioned e.g brother, landlord, mother…

Here is what we underlined:

Individually we chose a character from the Tale and we used the underlined words to create a role – on – the – wall.

INTERIOR: Things the character thinks and feels.

EXTERIOR: Things that people say about them, what they look like.

As some of these characters only exist in a mention by another person we had lots of creative freedom to develop the roles. 

 Using the roles we developed and created some scenes that show how these characters exist outside the play. 

Our group developed a scene on the character that is waiting for his brother at the bar, we named him Barry and chose to create a line drama piece that contained the warm woman and her daughter having a phone conversation, sly man and his fight and my mini group was focusing on the boy waiting for his brother, this was mainly in the form of line drama. Whilst we were all still in freeze frames, one of the stories would come alive. The first two scenes were done in a realistic form whereas my mini groups section was a mixture of naturalistic and physical theatre, we started off the scene with a naturalistic monologue which then ended with words from our role-on-the-wall that described how the character was feel physically and mentally whether that be by taste, feel smell or sight.

Nina and myself both stood behind but either side of Danielle to form her conscience, this enabled us to be able to deliver the characters story and their feelings as well as things they would be unlikely to say. The use of freeze frames was also highly effective because we were able to start the scene off with happy expressions but end the scene with annoyed or saddened expressions. We made the decision to use freeze frames in order to get the message across that all the characters feel the same way, they share something.

We then SHARED the work with the class and reflected:

Roseby's monologue was very effective, it told the story of the pub owner, an older woman, it showed how she loved her pub and how she see' the stories of other people, how she gets the same lads in every night and how some just come to simply rot away. It was a nice twist from just picking one of the character, instead her group chose to create the pub owner even though they had nothing to work with about her from the text. The scene gave me an insight of the view of a character that has watched thousands of stories in one place, bad ones, sweet ones, powerful once, simply memories that she owns and shared with us. After the monologue the rest of the group performed some of the stories which was a perfect ending.