Single Drama-Week 1

We have started to explore "The Curious Incident of the Dog n the Nighttime". I will be playing the roles of "Number 40" who is a neighbor of Christopher's, "Man on Street" who meets Christopher when going to London and "Drunk One" who is a drunk person going to a football match who Christopher meets on  the train to London. The roles of "Number 40" and "Man on Street" is normally played by a woman but due to the lack of girls in our drama class, we had to change some of the female roles to male roles. We read through the first part of the script together and started to block the first couple of scenes together. We got to the part where Christopher finds out about his mother. At the end of the lesson, we then got the time to go into small groups to practice our parts and suggest how to stage them. I went through the Number 40 sequence with another neighbor and we went through his sequence to see how we could stage them. We thought that for mine that we could be that I have just opened my door to Christopher.

Next lesson, we went over the previous scene's learnt and then went into small groups so that we could stage our own scenes and suggest them to the class to see how we could perform them. I was in a group of three and we did the scene where Rhodri and Ed are talking and Christopher walks in. We dd it so that Ed and Rhodri was watching TV. As there is three sides to the audience, we thought that they should sit near the back on two blocks so it looks like they are sitting on the sofa. We thought that they should also look like that they are watching TV. The problem we have with this is that the stage could look empty as we made sure that everybody could see. We could move it forward and maybe make it that people may not see much of the scene.

By staging the scene, it helped me think about that you always have to think about the audience at all times. They may have to miss some scenes but we have to make sure that they see most scene and if they do miss a scene, we have to make sure that they are not bored during this and it can't be a majour scene. We also have to make sure that if they do miss a small scene, they still know what is going on so that they don't get too confused later on.

I decided to research what "Number 40" was like in London. As she was a female in the actual production, it means that I can change aspects of the character as they portrayed her a typical female. When Christopher comes to meet her, she is holding a cleaning bottle and looks like she is cleaning the house when the football match is on. This is portraying her as a stereotypical woman as most woman clean the house. I decided to change it so that it's a man who is just come from the house. I treat it like he see's Christopher around but never speaks to him. I also thought that I should come across helpful even though I can't actually help him at all.

Next week, I hope that I could do this with the rest of my characters so that I understand what they are meant to be like and see what aspects that I have to keep the same as it's part of the character and what I can change so I can put my own spin on the character without losing the purpose of the character and why they are in the story.