BTEC Drama

Today we began to explore the play for our performance unit, the Pillowman. In two groups we staged the first five pages of act one- this is the scene where Katurian is first arrested and we meet the three main characters of Tupolski, Ariel, and Katurian. Before beginning to act the section we first recapped our current knowledge of the play. This is important as it brings context to the scene, and influences the intonation and our understanding of lines, how characters interact depending on their relationship and how proxemics are used on stage to show status.   The first thing we wanted to do was to create a moment of orientation (as in the theory of Stanislavski) in which we could convey these basic ideas: Katurian is unaware of what is happening, or why he has been brought here Ariel is a physically menacing character Tupolski is in charge of the investigation; his menace is still clear but layered with a calmer tone. Both Tupolski and Ariel are disgusted by K...

Recently we had the opportunity to work with a member of Frantic Assembly during a full day workshop. What I most enjoined about this experience was not just being opened up to a new style of theatre which I now really love, but also being able to experience the kind of atmosphere that the Frantic Member created. There was no negativity surrounding the process, and in fact the environment was such a comfortable place to work in. In the past, I think stress has really inhibited my ability to create, but this has shown me the importance of creating a positive and supportive space to work in as a group. After an intense warm up, we first worked on a slalom exercise. We had to run a course around sets of chairs, mirroring the person’s movements who ran beside us. At certain points our path would intersect either with that of our partner or with another group that was finishing or was about to set off. In order to manage this with the speed we had to maintain, it was important to be ac...

During N2C time, we worked with the Y13s in order to produce a piece of physical theatre. We had first begun to devise this during lesson time, when we built sequences in two groups. This was the sequence we came up with. We wanted to create this sense of separation between Nisha's character and the others. Her movements take influence from the nerve breaker exercise that we learnt during our Frantic Workshop. In comparison, Nasifa and I were constantly connected in our looped sequence. We built this from the idea of each movements having to be influenced by her. This gave the piece the sense that the only person who had any form of control was Nasifa, who used this control to keep my character from the one thing she was trying to reach over and over again. For me, this creates ideas of the care system, of a mother who loves her child but perhaps wasn't capable of taking care of her. The moments of reaching present her desire and struggle to return to a daughter who, from th...

Martin McDonagh is an Irish playwright, screenwriter, producer and director. His plays follow a darkly comic style which challenge the aesthetic surrounding modern theatre. The Pillowman was his first non-Irish play and is followed by works such as The Hangman and the screenplay Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. For our acting and performance unit we are studying The Pillowman alongside the theories of Stanislavski. In order to get a better understanding of the style, I did some research into some of McDonagh’s other work. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri shared the darkly comic style of the play. The story follows a mother deeply determined, and willing to do anything to get justice for her daughter. She comes into conflict with the police throughout most of the film, but in the final scene she sits side by side with the very person who we assumed was the worst of them- ready to do something terrible. The film is a great parallel to the play for underst...