Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 8 - 21/01/16

Today we continued devising our scene representing Hope being in a restricting relationship. Carrying on from what we got, this is our new outline:

• During the chorus Charlie pulls Hope up using non-contact puppetry.
• Lewis enters and Charlie shakes his hand. Charlie forces Hope to shake Lewis' hand. Lewis sits on the right chair.
• Charlie pushes Hope to the floor shouting at her.
• Charlie feels up Hope's side seductively and pushes her down.
• Charlie sits where he previously was seated in Lewis' interview. Hope exits. Music fades out.

After this scene we devised the next scene which was Lewis' interrogation followed by Lewis coming out to Charlie. We decided that we didn't want our characters to share the same names as us so we decided to change them. Charlie's character is called Hunter, Hope's character is called Shanice and my character is called Clive. We chose to change the character names as we didn't want our associate our characters with ourselves too much.

We wanted my coming out to be very mime based with narration as, typically, when someone "comes out" they narrate what happened and the other person would then imagine the scenario. With this scene it would fully immerse the audience into Clive's experience. Below is an outline of how we're performing this scene:

• DI Sanderson asked Clive when things changed between him and Hunter. Clive asks what he means but soon realises that Sanderson knows everything.
• Charlie transitions from DI Sanderson to Hunter by sitting on the seat. Meanwhile Clive would narrate part of the scene.
• The narration starts with Clive explaining how him and Hunter started losing touch after leaving sixth form. During the intro of the narration Charlie changes from DI Sanderson to Hunter by putting on Hunter's hat and moving from sitting on the table to sitting on the chair behind it.
• I narrate how Clive and Hunter get back in touch whilst Charlie and I get our phones out and mime texting each other.
• I then detail about how Clive and Hunter meet in a bar and have a few drinks. During this, Charlie and I both stand, shake hands, sit back down and mime taking shots.
• The narration details about Clive and Hunter going outside for a cigarette and Clive discusses with himself whether now was the right time to tell Hunter how he felt. Meanwhile, Charlie and I walk away from the table (Upstage Left) and smoke.
• To represent how drunk we are, we decided to use Round-By-Through to show the pair dancing drunkenly around the alleyway.
• While I narrate about telling Hunter that I love him, Clive's actions link up. We thought it would be clever to integrate the narration with the speech so that whilst I'm narrating, it flows fluently.
• We finish the scene with Clive holding Hunter's head close to his own and narrating saying, "But he didn't know how serious I was." We then have a blackout to suggest that Clive and Hunter kissed. When the lights come back on, we're sat back in our original interrogation positions: Clive on the right chair, DI Sanderson on the table.
• DI Sanderson asks what happened after that night and Clive says that they just went home and spoke again the next day.

To the right is the recording of our performance:

Ways to improve this scene:

• My narration needs to be better planned and scripted as it was improvised and that was easily recognisable.
• My speech needs to much clearer as a lot of it was slurred and lisp.
• When Charlie sits down after the blackout, he needs to remember to sit on the table rather than the chair.