Theatre in Education (14) - Ending & Beginning

Pages 69 - 100:   

This was the first time we staged this scene. For the introduction to the characters Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed, we had them as puppets being poked out from behind the gap in the curtains voiced by Lewis, Rob and James. However, for this scene we realised it would work quite nicely if we had these puppets as Barbie dolls on sticks and the boys in black, so they could come on stage with them. After this scene we shall have a short blackout to get the sleeping Bottom off stage and Egeus and Theseus on stage for the next scene. We had done the next scene before a few times and were confident with our blocking.

The next scene is the mechanicals realising that Bottom is still missing. We worked a bit on intentions to ensure that we all knew exactly what was being said during this scene, to know what tone to speak with. We also worked on Bottom's return and how our characters would react - we have made it so Flute is very camp and clearly has a crush on Bottom so we got him to run over and give him a hug when he enters - everyone is just very excited to see him again.

We cut the next scene down a lot as they contain large stanzas of Shakespearean language and we feel that our audience will disconnect from our piece and also these lines aren't essential to our story. Apart from the end of my line, we cut the whole of pages 83 and 84. We then cut down to Theseus' line beginning "I will hear that play". However, we put Philostrate's line on page 86 before Theseus' line. We then cut to the beginning of the play: the prologue. James and I leave USL to behind the curtains as if about to watch the play, but instead shall be ready to come on as the mechanicals. The actual play section itself went really well today. For the section where the Wall curses, we adapted this slightly from the original. At this point the chink in the wall is supposed to be Snout giving two fingers to Bottom, but to make it more appropriate to our audience, the "curse" is me poking my tongue out at Bottom. To add more comedy again, as Pyramus says "No, in truth, sir, ..." I go to poke out my tongue but stop myself just before I do, allowing me to use very over-the-top facial expressions (something that the drama students in our audience will be looking out for).

Pages 4 - 14:   We run this scene without scripts for as much as we could. We knew our blocking and intention, so our main focus was characterisation in terms of body language, facial expressions and use of voice - as these are three drama techniques that our audience have been working on and will be looking out for.