9th October 2012 - Drama

Drama with Rachel Maddix


We started off the lesson with a written task and we spoke about the play we went to see the night before called 'Farm boy' which was performed at the Connaught theatre in Worthing, it was non-linear and directly addressed to the audience. The play was aimed at the older generation because the main context of  it was war and they mentioned such things as 'Agatha Christie', 'Sherlock Holmes' and 'TinTin'. It was two hander, performed by two men, one elderly man and one man in his 20's, because there was only 2 actors they had to play multiple characters in the story, The boy played himself, himself when he was younger, his grandad as a boy, his great grandma, the farmer and 'Harry', and the Grandad played his own dad and himself at various stages. They both had to use a west country voice and be able to work with minimal set which included a tractor, a chair, a board, toolbox and various smaller props. The lighting was also very simple, there was a singular light bulb hung over the tractor which was a yellowish light, there was over-head lighting, floor lighting and side lighting, blue gels were used to create certain moods and show when they were in the barn. They used lighting to show scene changes, by using spotlights, increasing/decreasing lights used etc. They also used minimal special effects like smoke machine and when they started the tractor at the end of the play smoke came out of the funnel. For music they used recorded piano under and between each scene, tractor sounds for when they started the tractor at the end and the acting and storytelling led and was supported by music.

To make changes between each character the 2 men had to change certain characteristics so that the audience could tell they had changed from one to another. For the boy to change to be himself as a younger boy he changed the pitch of his voice to be higher and also kept giggling, his movement was also different, he kept fidgeting, swaying his knees, craning his neck and kept staring at his grandad when he was telling him a story, and then when he was the grandma he spoke in a higher pitch and at a faster pace, he also used small flappy hand movements, kept crossing his arms and was abit sulky. Overall i think they did a very successful job at character changes, as i could clearly tell when they were each different person.

The second part of the lesson we went back to the drama studio and Rachel showed us the theatre company frantic assembly and one of their techniques that they frequently use called 'chair duets', and once we had watched one of the chair duets we got into two's to experiment with our own, i was with Abi, and we had to manipulate eachother by doing small moves in counts of three, for example in one count i could raise Abi's arm, second count i could place my arm around hers, third count i could push both our arms down etc. We then put all our separate chair duets together by thinking of suitable transitions and we were filmed. After this we were then asked to include elements of the technique into our 'Snow Queen' scenes we had worked on last lesson, our scene was the 'Finn-Woman' and we decided to involve the technique when 'Gerda', 'the reindeer' and the villagers are approaching the 'Finn-womans' house, we used it to convey that none of us wanted to go in first, so we used it to put other people infront of one another, trying to get them to go in front. We also used it in the 'Finn-womans' house when Max who was one of the villagers refused to eat her soup, so we used the technique to show her forcing him to eat it and him trying to escape, and we also used music to add mood to it, we were also filmed doing this as well.

I really enjoyed learning and trying the 'chair duets', i'd experienced the technique before in gcse drama, i think it's really effective in scenes where you don't want speech and it can convey context without narrative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC-dkYZOUVo
This was the video that Rachel showed us as an introduction to chair duets, i found this video very useful because it helped me get an idea of the type of movements that can be used in this dramatic technique.