Theatre in Education (4) - Pages 37 to 47

The first thing we did this lesson was a physical / character warm-up. This play requires a lot of energy anyway as it is a comedy, but more so for our version as it is aimed at a younger audience. We did some walking exercises at different levels of ourselves. We then applied this to how one of our characters would move - to make them all so different. We learned how to implement our own traits into our characters, and how exaggerating one of our own traits for each character can make them completely different.

This scene is the second mechanicals scene; they are deciding where to rehearse and beginning rehearsals. There are lots of comedic opportunities in this scene - we want to make it as funny as possible, as the more funny we make it, the more likely the kids are to remember the play and learn something. We worked a lot on our movement and characterisation in this scene. Our individual movements and proxemics can add comedy to a scene - for example, Quince (Lewis) often tries to get away from Bottom (Ollie) because he is so annoying. I have to do a lot of multi-rolling in this scene as my characters talk to each other - I shall put on a flat cap for when I'm Starveling, but completely change my body language and take the cap of for Snout. As Snout, I make myself have a double chin and a higher pitched 'lispy' voice, whilst Starveling leads from his pelvis and has a deeper voice. To make it more comical, when I swap back to my other character I assume their body language and voice as quick as possible. On page 37, my last line is as Starveling, but I swap straight back to Quince ready for my next line.

Lewis and I enter again (as Quince and Snout) when Ollie (Bottom) is on stage. In the script, it states that Quince and Snout enter and exit at different times, but we decided to get them to enter at the same time as we could add in more comedy here. Lewis and I run on as if we are running away from Bottom - I enter first and Lewis is following me. When I stop in fright at seeing Bottom, Lewis doesn't notice that I have stopped so he runs in to the back of me.

The next section of this scene is between Bottom, Titania and Titania's fairies. As Ollie and I are both on stage for this point, we only have three people off stage, but Titania has four named fairies: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed. We did initially think of just cutting one of them, but then we thought that they don't have to be on stage and instead we could just hear their voices. This then lead us to the idea of them using puppets from behind the flats. To add more comedy into this, we have given them all ridiculously high voices, apart from Mustardseed, who shall speak with a really deep voice. In Titania's monologue starting "be kind and courteous", we have added in some sound effects from the fairies. We added a giggle, a gasp and a yawn to make it very cheesy and entertaining.

After working on this scene all lesson, we quickly ran pages 31 to 36 too as we didn't spend that much time on this scene, in comparison to today's scene.