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.