BTEC Drama

Today we formulated a list of specific scenes that we wanted to include in this piece. We recreated the work scene, which we have established as the opening scene to our play. We explored ways in which we could create this office space, incorporating different parts of the new set to create desks. We looked at creating a conveyer belt of movement, having the workers move from one station to another, as we thought this would reflect that machine like quality of work, as well as the dull and monotonous repetition of work life. Furthermore, we wanted to establish jacks alcoholism with a scene that was fun and light hearted and would therefore contrast the later scenes. We decided that we would have Jack take a sip of a hidden drink and that this would introduce the music of the scene, Frank Sinatra’s Blue Moon. By having the other workers begin to dance to the music whilst they continued the conveyer belt, it created the sense that all the other workers seemed to be having a positi...

Based on a mind map we created from the last lot of work, we highlighted two things in particular that we wanted to explore further. These were: -Idea of being trapped -The “in-between space” of the mind We initially began with the idea of being trapped, looking at how we could represent this physically using parts of the set, but struggled to understand how we could present this in a non-literal sense. Instead the movement of the set inspired us to consider the two contrasting worlds we had created and how perhaps we could use the idea of being trapped as a way of interlinking the worlds through the mind. We decided to create a bigger set, including places where we thought we could explore better “trapped” as well as present this idea of the addicts mind bleeding into the real worlds around him. We therefore decided on a more chaotic set for the realistic worlds to be set in, so that the audience would be reminded that they are seeing this world through Jacks eye...

Using the mundane scene from last lesson, we decided to expand this by introducing the contrasting setting of night time. We experimented doing this using a split stage, looking at the character running in-between these two different worlds.   We created a nightlife scene within a tiny area, and this emphasised a sense of a crowded bar without the need for loads of people on stage. The two actors made a physical sequence which explored the different areas of the bar that you would use on a night out. The fast pace and close movement emphasised the heightened atmosphere of a night out and formed a really nice contrast with the repetition of the mundane scene. By creating this split staging, we began to think about this journey the main character made from one side of the stage to the other and this introduced the idea of this in-between place. We decided that rather than being a physical space, we wanted to link the two extremely contrasting worlds by this area where we could...

During this lesson we created scenes based on music as a stimulus. We first looked at a song by Artic Monkeys From the Ritz to the Rubble, followed by “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman. We then used these two songs in order to create a mind map of possible ideas for a piece. We found that Ritz to the Rubble was really useful for beginning to create a narrative and it introduced two opposing scenes we could create using a day time world and a night time world. It also gave us the idea of having a lack of control and we began to relate this to drinking and addiction. “This is Me” also allowed us to consider the kind of emotional journey of a character and introduced a discussion of whether we wanted a resolution for the story or whether we wanted to view more as documenting a characters experience. We then began to create some starting scenes, exploring the idea of the morning after first of all. We looked at this scene in two different ways in order to explore how to build r...

Today we began to explore ideas for our final mask piece. We first created a mind map in order to consider the stimulus for our piece. We decided to first look at the use of music as a stimulus, using the more complex trestle masks. We started by warming up with the masks, looking at the different facial expressions and creating ideas for the feeling behind the mask as well as its possible counter mask. Experimenting with technical aspects, we also looked at how tilting the masks up and down under lighting can change our thoughts of its expression. So for example, a happy mask tilted upwards expresses that happiness, but by tilting it down, the shadow of the lights makes it a more sinister smile. After this we took turns, choosing a particular mask and entering the stage to different kinds of music. It was interesting to see how the different styles of music, some of which were rhythmic and some of which were more ballads, impacted on the way we moved whilst wearing the masks...