The first section of this lesson was a research lesson. I decided to research the play "Burying your brother in the pavement". It is about grief and looking at someone that little bit more closely. Below is an overview from the website
https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/Book/1626/Burying-Your-Brother-in-the-Pavement.html :
Tom’s brother Luke is dead. This has upset a lot of
people but it hasn’t upset Tom. Or, rather, it has upset him, but in
ways he can’t explain and other people can't understand. You see, Tom
and Luke were never friends. In fact, Tom didn't really like Luke at
all.
So it’s an odd decision - to try and bury Luke in the pavement
of the Tunstall Estate where he was killed. But to Tom, it sort of makes
sense, in a stupid-weird kind of way. As he sleeps out on the pavement,
he comes across planning officials, tramps, undertakers, police
officers, sisters, mothers, estate agents, ghosts, pavement elephants,
sky dragons and a strange lad called Tight who wants to sell him a
Travelcard.
Moreover, I read the authors notes on the play. Below are some quotes and points from the author, Jack Thorne:
- (Speaking about grief) "I think that sort of distance, between what we want to feel, what we feel other people want us to feel, and what we actually do feel is really interesting"
- He played a game with his friend when he was little, but his friend fell and hit his head against some bricks and needed six butterfly stiches.
- He was a "very sensitive" child and his friend pretended to be okay even when he wasn't to try and look after him
The second (and smaller) part of the lesson, we began developing a small piece. As Ollie and I love physical theatre and Katya loves non-naturalistic drama (and Robert was absent this lesson) we decided to incorporate these two things. As we couldn't find enough details and the actual synopsis of "Burying your brother in the pavement" we decided to use the author's inspiration for the play (the incident in the playground with his friend). Therefore we began by pretending to be children playing the running game "IT" or "tag". As we wanted a non-naturalistic feel, I thought we could move about in a realistic way and then pause in a non-naturalistic freeze frame and then continue realisticly and repeat. However, I was unsure on how to make some bits non-naturalistic. Ollie then came up with the idea of cutting between children and war. We ran about playing as children and then froze facing each other as if in battle (Ollie and Kat aiming guns at me, whilst I mimed throwing a grenade at them). We then cut back to us as children eating our lunch and then froze with me on the floor being a soldier killed in battle whilst Ollie and Kat try to see if I'm alive.
This was all we had time for this lesson, but next lesson we shall catch Rob up on what he missed, and develop and polish our piece.
