Theatre in Education (12) - Opening Scene & The Argument

Opening Scene:   We ran this section today without scripts for as much as we could. We worked a bit more on proxemics today to make the relationships more clear for our audience. However, we also focused on our intentions and voice. We wanted to make the lovers realistic. We also thought that Lysander and Hermia could be very clingy and represent the typical young clingy couple, so that Helena is majorly "third-wheeling" - something that our specific audience will find comical and perhaps relatable for some. Meanwhile, we are making Demetrius quite geeky, very similar to the "Horrid Henry" character, Perfect Peter. This therefore makes Demetrius more similar to Helena, and Lysander and Hermia are similar, thus making the two pairs seem perfect for each other, and making it more obvious when things go wrong and who should be with who.

The tree...   James did some research on the scenes where Puck and Oberon watch the lovers, as they hide in the woods. James was inspired by this video of a company at the Globe Theatre, and thought that we could perhaps do something similar. This was really comical and something we could easily include. We tried to work out some lifts between James and Lewis, but Lewis didn't feel very confident lifting James on his own - he could manage having James on his back, but he wasn't high up enough to make the 'tree' idea work, so we have decided against having a lift between the two. We also wanted our version to be original, so instead the boys stand in between the two curtains at the back and watch forward and back in silence... this is then very comical when Lewis does a slow look at James and says "what hast thou done?". However, we have been original with pages 65 - 68, when Puck imitates Demetrius and Lysander's voices to each other to get them to end up in the same place. James moves places during this scene to get the lovers to move, but he only moves when they are not looking, and stands still for the rest of the time mimicking a tree. To show Puck impersonating the other lovers voice, we are making the most of the fact that only one of them are on stage during these scenes - the characters voice he is impersonating shall say their line off stage whilst James mimes saying the line (this will make it clear who he is supposed to be impersonating whilst adding to the comedy element).

The Argument:   We staged the first half of the argument. We worked a lot on proxemics and movement to ensure that this scene had movement throughout and didn't end up static at all. Our main struggle was to not end up in a line, but we worked on how close we were to what characters to reflect their current relationship and feelings at that time. We also worked out how the boys would fight - we didn't get to work on the girl's fight section, but we knew that we wanted the boys fight to be pathetic in comparison to the girls for added comedy! As Demetrius is big-headed but cowardly, we got him to mime hitting Lysander where it hurts to spark the fight on the line "quick, come!". If we were performing this play to a younger audience we wouldn't have included so much violence, but as it is an all-male audience and they are going into their GCSE's, we didn't think that we were over-stepping the mark and is still suitable for them. The fight then consists of them holding each other in a sort of head lock and struggling. We didn't want this fight to be realistic, as this would make it too violent, and we didn't want it to look impressive because we wanted to make this fight look weak and pathetic compared to the fighting girls.