Using “Too much punch for judy” as a stimulus

In the second lesson we had to act out ‘A night on the town’ in the form of still images, we did this in a group of four (myself, Luke, Reece and lee). Our stimulus for this task was our own visualisation from reading the script. In the first two scenes we had a split stage, showing two men and two women getting ready for their night out, in doing so we wanted to create juxtaposition; so the audience can clearly differentiate between the two groups of people in the still image. In the third scene we had to show a still image of the two men watching the two women in the bar we (me and Reece) had to enhance our facial expressions and body language to seem attracted to the women (Luke and Lee). What we did to show that we was interested in the two girls was have our line of sight directly on them, and our bodies had to be very ‘masculine’ and facial expressions were inquisitive, we made this possible by raising our eyebrows and having wide eyes, and our heads were leaned back at an angle, to show that we are ‘checking them out’. Lee and Luke had to close themselves from the audience, and have them facing the floor, to show shyness. We did this to show a typical night out in a bar, it was a convention. Towards the end of the lesson we had to develop the still images into a role play, using chat up lines and other explorative strategies. In the first scene we had both groups getting ready for their night out, at the same time, but this time we added movement, and speech. Myself and Reece playing the two men, was from east London, so we had a typical cockney accent , and slow and heavy movement, to create a sense of presence. To make the two women to start acting, we marked the moment by using the line ‘come on mate, it’s not like we’re ’gonna’ crash. After that line was said that was the cue for Luke and Lee to start their performance, they were two typical women from Essex; with their role play they enhanced the women by having feminine movements and doing typical gestures for example putting on make-up and asking ‘if this outfit looks nice? The next scene involved us in the bar, we stared with the men entering the bar before the women, and they’ve already settled with a drink. With our characterisation we had created two typical men looking for women to chat up to in a bar, we had a calm and smooth tone to our voices to signify this. Once the two women entered the bar, we froze with a still image that we used in the first exercise, to continue the performance I pretended to whisper in to Reece’s ear ‘I’m having the one on the left. We had a spilt stage where the two groups spoke between each other, while the other group mimed in the background. This was done so the audiences could understand what the men and women’s intentions were. Each group talked about their feelings for the person they want to ‘chat-up with, we did this engage the audience as we are revealing our purposes in this performance. To end our performance Reece walked up to Lee and used a ‘cheesy chat-up line’ so we can finish off with a bit of comedy; the line was ‘Hey babe, I’ve got the pencil; and you’ve got the sharpener! Just after that line we went straight into a still image, to show the shock on all our faces as if to say, that was the worst chat-up line used. In another lesson we had to watch a short advertisement about drink driving, and the effects on alcohol on people. We had to create a short awareness advert that shows the effects of drunk driving, and a way to stop driving while intoxicated with alcohol. Our group consisted of, me (driver), Brandon (passenger), Binte (passenger) and Tyrell (passenger). We came up with a basic outline for a performance. The story was the four of us went on a typical ‘night out’ and got drunk and decided to drive home, as soon as I put the key in the ignition we froze, symbolising that I was having a vision, but was unaware of it. We then used realism to imitate us driving along in a key, by doing standard protocols, or missing them and then realising what happened, we did to show the audience that drinking can slower your reaction and thinking process . Then suddenly Brandon announces that he has another drink in his pocket, this causes a brawl in the car as we fight for the drink, then Tyrell, who is the front seat passenger , reaches around and kicks the steering wheel, causing the car to go astray and collide into a tree, to portray the crash we threw our bodies in different directions as if we got thrown out, we did this as it was naturalism, as it’s natural to get throw about in car crash and go in a completely different direction . Then we re-wound the whole journey, including the crash, this was us using physical theatre and cross-cutting, we did this to enhance and engage the audience as it would be much more interesting to watch instead of simply just cutting back to the firs scene. When we got back to the first scene when I put the key in the ignition we stopped, and then we cut out all sound and I had a quick thought track, while the others were miming in the background, I talked about my vision and what is about to happen, we returned to the performance by Tyrell hitting me and saying ‘hurry up lets go’ like he did the first time, to show that this was the real world now. I suddenly said ‘No! We’re not driving’ then suddenly we pictured another car hitting a tree, which would have been us, this was the repellent from driving.