Thursday, 20 October 2016

Q3

How did you and your group explore the possibilities of form, structure and performance style?

Character Synopsis: Emily is a victim of domestic abuse from her husband Harvey. Due to the greedy nature of her character, Emily first got involved with him due to his money and status, however she is now stuck in an unloving relationship in which she acts as Harvey's trophy wife. One day Emily decides to fight back, accidentally sending Harvey tumbling down the stairs. This resulted in Emily being sentenced to prison convicted of domestic violence. 

Tammy's Scene:
  • Chair duet to show the different sides of Harvey's personality - Controlling, violent and loving.
  • Tried to do the scene with 5 of us representing Harvey but this resulted in the piece being too complex and lengthy. Instead we decided to use 3 Harvey's with Des and I acting as transitions, moving Tammy from chair to chair. Whilst we moved we also became different characters depending in whats seat we sat on.
  • To emphasise Harveys controlling nature, we shown him pushing in various directions which controlled both of the chairs and us etc if he pushed forward we and the chair would move forwards. On first attempt, the scene looked very messy, however we fixed this by Rhys tapping 3 times before he performed his action; this ensured we were all in time resulting in the scene appearing more ascetically pleasing.
Character Synopsis: Sylvia is a 23 year old executioner who is forced to live with the guilt of killing hundreds. Unable to leave the job, due to having to support her poor family, she cracks under pressure and lets a prisoner escape instead of having to face the death penalty, this resulted in her being sent to prison for assisting an escape.

Julia's Scene:
  • We decided to use a narrative format within Julia's scene to highlight the professionalism that she needed for her job as an executioner.
  • To highlight the switch of characters to the audience, we will all change our costume to something more reflective of a typical prisoner in 1930's Mississippi. We also discussed the use of having a sign with '1930' on it, again just to ensure the audience understands the new time period we are in.
Character Synopsis: Mark is a 14 year old boy who has autism. Through this he gains an obsession with a girl called Jennifer and is unable to control his impulses towards her. After several times of following her home, she reports him to the police and he gets sentenced for stalking and sexual assault.

Rhys' Scene:
  • To portray his characters autistic traits, we focused on the stereotypical way people with special needs are treated, such as being isolated and bullied. This resulted in us devising 2 scenes, one showing a bunch of teenagers ganging up on him in dodge-ball and just targeting him, the other shows him in the playground as a group of girls, including Jennifer, talk about him in a demeaning manner.
  • We wanted to really emphasise on the stereotype of teenage girls, leading us to experiment with voice tones and exaggerated movements, as well as using choral speaking to sow the unity and gang-like state if the group.
  • We have included multiple scenes, however they are split in half: real-life and imaginary. To distinguish between the 2 "worlds" lighting would be a huge factor - perhaps a blue was to highlight his imagination and natural light for the real-life sequences.
The performance style that is evident throughout our drama piece is physical theatre as our group have been focusing on expressing symbolism and meaning through movement, for example, in Emily’s flashback scene we practically explored chair duets; through this will demonstrated her husband, Harvey’s, different sides to his personality – Loving, aggressive and controlling. By transferring Emily between each of the different personality traits represented by the rest of the group, it depicts the confusion that Emily has to go through day to day as she can never predict Harvey’s behaviour or what’s going to come next. Unpredictability is a reoccurring theme within our piece to ensure that the audience cannot guess what is next going to occur, keeping them constantly intrigued.

Q2

How effectively are you personally exploring and developing your role/s?

In order to create my character, I began researching real-life events centred on police corruption; recently this has become a reoccurring topic on the news which intrigued me to discover more about it. Through doing this, I found many news articles and clips detailing some form of corrupt police officers, each including components of either racism and sexism. As feminism has always been of great interest to me, I started searching the history of the suffragettes: women in the late 19th century and early 20th century who protested for the rights of women. From this I conjured an idea for a feminist character, perhaps who got wrongly arrested for her involvement in a peaceful protest as this combines both police corruption and sexism.  To get more of a historical insight onto suffragettes and police misconduct, I watched a documentary about a suffrage event called Black Friday which occurred on the 18th of November, 1910. Here the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), better known as the suffragettes, sent over 300 women to the House of Commons led by Emmeline Pankhurst. The protest was a reaction to parliamentary proceedings regarding the Conciliation Bill – only affluent, property-owning, middle-aged women could vote in Britain and Ireland. During the 6 hour onslaught, over 200 unarmed women were assaulted (physically and sexually) and manhandled by police officers as well as 119 being arrested and 2 dying from the abuse. This incident was one of the first examples of police violence and corruption. Learning about Emmeline Pankhurst’s involvement in the protest, spurred me to find out more about her.  In 1903 Pankhurst founded the WSPU, after experiencing numerous accounts of unfair treatment due to her gender throughout her life, and has often been referred to as one of the most important woman regarding women’s rights.  By exploring other famous women in history, I came across Ruth Ellis – the last woman to be hung in Britain on July the 13th, 1955. Through watching a documentary and a film named ‘Dance with a Stranger’ (a movie based on Ellis’ life), I was able to discover more about her background and the incident that got her sentenced to death. As a young child, she was parented by her depressed mum and a father who would often sexually abuse her. The constant assault that she experienced from her father led to her having multiple bad relationships with men who were physically abusive and mostly drunks that she met at the club she worked at, posing as a prostitute. Eventually here she met David Blakely. In their one and a half year relationship, Ellis was the victim of a domestically violent partner who consistently manipulated her feelings for him, resulting in Ellis feeling very confused and heartbroken from time and time again. When Ellis told Blakely that she was pregnant with his child, he pushed her down the stairs and left her alone to deal with the fact that she had a miscarriage. Sometime later, Ellis tracked down Blakely and shot him mercilessly five times with a revolver, claiming ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. This served as great inspiration for my character. My character is to be based in the time period of the 1950’s, a time rife with sexism and unfair treatment of females.  I decided that my character also was to have a miscarriage, like Ellis, but instead of being pushed down the stairs, I am to of been involved in a violent mugging (inspired by the forceful scenes that Emmeline Pankhurst experienced at the protest) in which the mugger turns to be my partner as he believes the child isn’t his. This shows how males were very domineering in the mid-20th century and were able to overpower women as it was seen as the norm. Representative of this is also the fact that my partner is abusive and not loyal to me because I know of his affairs with several other women.

Q1

How is the material being researched and developed at significant stages during the process of creating drama?



  • Main themes that interested the group: Abuse, police misconduct, mental illness and isolation.
  • The first stimulus we had was the play 'That Face' in which the diversity of the piece majorly intrigued I and the group.
  • Explored various aspects of mental illnesses and abandonment. 
  • I was interested in Mia's character as she was forced into a boarding school, this led to me thinking about slavery and how they also have no choice in the matter.
  • Many horrific instances of slavery.
  • Margaret Garner stabbed her two year old son to rescue him from slavery - emphasises the disgusting conditions of it.
  • 12 Years A Slave to understand the life of a slave better.
  • Sense of being trapped was also evident in Chicago: a prison full of women who all believe they are innocent but in actual fact are guilty.
  • Most of the women were in prison due to fighting back their abusive husbands, resulting in me researching more about abusive relationships.
  • 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will be a result of abuse in their lifetime.
  • 2 women each week murdered by their abusive partner.
  • Domestic violence is the leading reason for homelessness.


Collectively, at stage one in the process of creating drama, we began to devise a mind map illustrated with ideas and possible themes for our play: Abuse, police misconduct, mental illnesses and isolation were the main subject matters that intrigued the group and I, resulting in our focus to be that of imprisonment. Having a leading topic idea, we began to explore and read a script of a play titled ‘That Face’ which contained references to mental health, being an outcast of a family and having a large amount of responsibility at a young age: Henry, the oldest sibling, is left in charge of his mentally deranged mother who relies far too heavily on drink and drugs, in which they share an unnaturally close relationship. He also cares for his younger sister who is a troublemaker at a boarding school her mother sent her to. These are all accounts of metaphorical imprisonment as all of the issues single each character out and made them feel figuratively trapped in their head. The idea of metaphysical imprisonment triggered us as a group to think about whether or not our imprisonment will be literal or symbolic, whether our characters are actually trapped in a prison or just ensnared in themselves. All cases within this play are examples of being part of the minority which led me to explore other instances of this such as traumatic events. From this, I began researching more about slavery and survivor stories in order to enable me to understand the traumatising situations they were put through. By reading a variety of articles on slavery on the internet, I discovered Margaret Garner who killed her two year old daughter with a butcher knife; she would rather do that than see her child return to slavery. This emphasises how torturous slavery would have been. As I wanted to deepen my understanding of this, I watched ’12 Years a Slave’, a film about a once free man who was kidnapped in Washington in 1841 and then sold into slavery. The film depicts his struggle and the disastrous conditions for 12 years until he finally leaves. Taking a more modern approach, I looked at other examples that people could feel trapped, like a slave would have done. By exploring the sense of confinement, I watched ‘Chicago’ to get a more literal sense of being imprisoned. One particular scene that struck my interest was the cell block tango in which the tightly choreographed scene announces how each woman got put into prison in a highly stylised, symbolic manner. The majority of the women became guilty by murdering their abusive partners. This factor and slavery led me to exploring domestic abuse. At first I researched statistics to do with domestic abuse which revealed that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will experience it in their life time, that it leads to two women being murdered each week and 30 men per year and is the single more quoted reason for becoming homeless. By reading people’s own experiences, it became evident that domestic abuse caused long-term effects as well, mostly mentally, such as depression, paranoia and anxiety.