Formulating Specfic Scenes


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 positive experience at work, in contrast to jJck who doesn’t move. I think this needs to be developed further however, as our focus was supposed to be more on this idea that alcohol makes his job easier for him to do. Perhaps the workers shouldn’t really be dancing, but as jack is drinking, from his point of view everyone seems to be having a good time.
We began to also block out the night club scene, which would introduce the two other major characters, Jack's best friend Dan and his girlfriend Emily. We started by establishing the entrance to the club, creating a queue for getting into the club that then switched to a queue for drinks. One of the issues I think with this is that it places the characters backs to audience. This creates a problem with mask work as it turns the mask away from the audience and effectively makes the character disappear, since the mask is such a defining feature. The conversation Dan has with Jack about approaching Emily is important here because it helps to solidify the relationship between the two. It shows that their relationship is more than just nights out and they rely on each other for support.
 
Finally we explored the ending of the relationship between Emily and Jack. We simplified it at first, in order to create building blocks. I think this is an effective way to work that we should use in the future, as it will allow us to create complex scenes without blocking creativity in the early stages. We created a scene where each character had one line only, and this allowed us to overcome the problem of not being able to use words, as we used the intonation of the lines to get a feel for how we would show it physically and the sort of story we wanted to tell.

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