Devising (21) - My scene

Music:   The first decision we made this lesson was to have Rob speak the opening stage direction before playing the piano. We thought that Rob could have just written this stage direction and is now playing music to go with it - as if he is a composer for plays. This fits with our abstract style throughout our entire devised piece. We thought it was quite Brechtian for Rob to do this, before launching in to an abstract scene with naturalistic dialogue. Our devised piece as a whole is quite strange in the fact that our scenes are either completely abstract, or have abstract movements with naturalistic dialogue. We also decided against our idea of me pausing and playing the music by using the radio prop, as if the timing is wrong it would look dodgy and it wouldn't look realistic as we would need sound effects for the buzzing sound they make when you tune them - therefore, we shall just keep it on the table as part of the set, to help the audience understand our time setting of this scene.

Dialogue & Letters:   We are satisfied with our dialogue for this section as we have made it very naturalistic. The relationship between Harry (Ollie's character) and Stella (my character) is made clear through the dialogue. After Stella states that Charles hasn't written, Harry doesn't say anything and instead puts out his arms to let her fall in to them - we thought this was effective as it could suggest that Harry feels guilty but it could also show that he is devious. Meanwhile, Stella is just relieved to have someone there, but seems quite pleased that it is Harry - it is the first and only male attention she has had since her husband has left. We therefore thought that there could be a short section of intimacy, in which, Lewis could take the letters that he's been writing and place them on Ollie's person, as if he's trying to give them to me but Ollie keeps getting in the way. We then thought that we don't really need to have the intimacy section and instead Lewis could be placing the letter on Ollie during the dialogue section. We don't want to spoon-feed the audience what is happening, as it were, and instead let them work it out for themselves. By having Ollie receive the letters from Lewis during the dialogue, there is no need for the split screen, which we like as we didn't feel it was necessary as everything is implied during the dialogue (it also means that we can use a split screen elsewhere in this scene if we choose too. The letter passing is clever here as Lewis moves slowly (almost ghost-like) and tries to give the letters to me but Ollie manages to get them. I act as if I don't see the letters as it then shows that Ollie in fact stole the letters without me knowing even of their existence. For example, one point Lewis goes to pass the letter into my hands, but Ollie has gone to place his hand on my arm to show support, but takes the letter while taking his arm back.