Scene Revision, The Pillow Man Act One


Today we began a revisit of the scenes in order to add another layer of detail to each. This includes building in contextual references, looking at particular lines in more detail and gesture.

We started with Scene One, Act One. With Tupolski’s lines we picked out a few in order to add more meaning behind them, making sure we understood the characters motives for the lines. So for example we looked to differ the two lines of “It just looks stupid”. The first we decided should be kinder and have a more light hearted tone. However the casualness of Katurians response leads to a slightly harder and more definite tone which encourages Katurian to agree.

There is also a large section where only Katurian and Ariel speak, and so it is important that Tupolski remains active in the scene and doesn’t stop acting simply because he has no lines. We decided that in this section, in keeping with his character, we should have Tupolski analyse Katurian and his reactions to Ariel. I think this would help him to understand Katurians characteristics better, and so would make it easier to create a method of interrogation that work best on the writer.

Another section where this occurs is during Katurians mini-monologue where he tries to persuade the detectives that he hasn’t purposefully done anything wrong. In order to involve Tupolski in this we begin to define clear reactions to the speech.

As the speech is off the top of his head there are moments when Katurian has to course correct. One of these comes when he begins “The police are all this…” Here Ariel steps forward as a signal to Katurian that he needs to change his direction as he is in danger of offending. It also serves a purpose contextually as it hints at Ariel’s job as a policeman which is information specifically given later on in the play. Unfortunately his move to the government is another mistake that causes Tupolski’s reaction. This is because the play is set in a totalitarian state, which means that the police are also a part of the government.

Gesture
In a previous blog, I spoke about how it would be important to add gesture in order to combat the stagnant nature of the play. During this re-run we added in more gesture for Tupolski’s character including on “Racking” and “Single”. This also helps as a way of making lines easier to understand and emphasising them respectively.

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