Workshop (25) - Deaths

In this lesson we workshopped all of the murders that Sweeney commits (apart from Pirelli and Lovett, as we had already done these). We felt that we wanted to go a bit more 'outside the box' with how we decide to show Sweeney killing people. The three main ideas we had previously were to use lighting, fake blood or a piece of material from out of the victims collar. We knew that we wouldn't be able to use lighting as this would be too difficult with the spacing and we thought that we could do more than just lighting. We initially discarded the idea of fabric and went with the intention of using fake blood, as we had wanted to be quite naturalistic for the majority of our show (apart from character's dream sequences and transitions). However, fake blood does have its down-sides - it is messy, can be risky to pull off and could become too repetitive. We therefore decided that we would spend this lesson workshopping what we could do instead.

We re-visited our idea of material and came up with the five following ideas:

1. Material from victim's neck:   We thought that the victim could have red material down the inside of their shirt, with just a tiny piece at the top of their collar, so Rob is able to pull it out. Rob could hold his blade by the victim's neck and, with the same hand, pinch on to the material and swipe it out whilst miming cutting their throat. This looked effective, though was a bit quick - however, this would be okay for kills that weren't as significant (i.e. Beadle, beggar woman and person in "God that's good").
2. Material in half from neck:   We liked the idea of pulling material from the victim's neck, but we wanted to slow it down somehow. Therefore, I thought that the material could be folded in half and tucked in the victim's shirt. Rob would hook his fingers into the small loop formed (by having the material in half) and slowly move both hands outwards, so the material came outwards to the sides with his hands - forming a sort of arch. Once the material is out, Rob could then put the material down on the victim, so the main part is round the front of their necks, with the ends over the back of their shoulders, thus symbolising how they have bled to death.
3. Material from Rob's sleeve:   Just for experimenting purposes, we tried doing the same as the first way, but instead of having the material come from the victims collar, we tried having the material start in Robs sleeve. This meant that Rob would have his hand resting lightly on the victims chin and use his hand, with the razor in, to take the material and pull whilst slicing outwards. This looked really effective and avoided the chance of the material being visible and potentially falling completely down the victim's top during the show. This would work well for the quick kills.
4. Material unravelled:   Another way we tried was having the victim holding the material scrunched up in their fist. When Rob then mimes slitting their throat, the victim would hold their throat and then let the material unravel slightly, to represent the blood coming from their neck and pouring down them. We wouldn't be able to use this idea for characters who have a full scene before this (i.e. Pirelli and Beadle), as they wouldn't be able to hold the cloth during the actual scene.
5. Full sheet as cover:   We practised with the plain red sheet, as we haven't got the sheet that we would need for this. We discussed having a sheet that's white on one side and red on the other. The white side would be shown to the audience as it is placed over the victim as a sheet (as if to protect their clothing from any hair). However to present Sweeney killing the victim, he would swing the sheet up and round to show the red side. The sheet would then land on them and Rob would turn the chair around for them to get off.

We spoke about having a motif. We thought that each of the main characters, when they are killed, could have a certain prop that they leave in the tonsorial parlour - i.e. Pirelli could leave his purse, Ollie his cane, and Lewis his gavil.

We realised that the deaths could all be slightly different. Obviously, Pirelli and Mrs Lovett's deaths are different as they are Todd's first and last kills. We wanted the significant people to have the bigger deaths, so we thought that Turpin should have a more dramatic death, so potentially us our second method. Whilst, the less significant characters, such as the random men he kills quickly, could just use number five. We debated whether we could put a plastic sheet down for when we use fake blood on Rob, that we could hear the dripping sound. However, this would be more appropriate for film than theatre, so we decided against trying to get the sound of dripping. However, we shall use fake blood for Todd as the audience won't be expecting this and it makes Todd's very significant.