Single - Contemporary Theatre Unit (1984) - Blog 6 - 06/05/16

This lesson we decided to redirect and use 1984 as our contemporary text.

We wanted to produce another Prologue like we did with After Troy in order to give the audience a short glimpse into what the play is about. We did this by splitting off into two groups (James, Rhiannon, Kat, Ollie M, Rob/Ollie K, Charlie, Hope, Lorna, Lewis) and creating our own Prologues. We'd then perform them to each other and then work on combining the positives of each.

In my group, we discussed the themes brought across in 1984 and a main theme mentioned was the lack of freedom of the public and how controlling the new government were. We took note of how the governing body aren't shown to be physically controlling the public in 1984 and Charlie very much linked this to the current group of vigilante hackers, "Anonymous." This group have a great deal of power to do what they choose and they have shown this a frequent amount of times. We wanted to uses anonymous' image as the government in our piece and we were going to do so with a voiceover of one of their online speech videos. 

Below are our movements:

• The chairs are set out in a grid of 4x2, We are each sat on one with our legs on the chair across from it. Our heads are placed back to replicate sleeping.
• Once the speech begins, we sit up, one by one.
• We pull our opposite chairs towards us and use them as a sink and we brush our teeth.
• The people in the two center chairs, Lorna and Charlie, jump over their chairs in an attempt to escape from "Big Brother."
• Hope raises her hand and summons the people on the end chairs, Ollie K and I, and we walk to restrain the rebellious pair.
• The pair face each other and fall backwards into our arms, Charlie into mine, Lorna into Ollie's.
• Ollie drags Lorna behind the chairs and "cures" her while I hold Charlie facing the audience. Hope walks behind Charlie.
• Lorna and Ollie walk back on. Ollie stands to Charlie's left, I stand to his right, Lorna stands in front of him. He turns in an attempt to run, Ollie and I grab his arms and push him up from his chest, Lorna grabs his legs and rests them on her shoulders.
• Hope places one of the masks she's wearing (she's wearing two) on Charlie. This represents Charlie's transformation into another clone. Ollie, Lorna and I push Charlie up higher and Hope walks underneath him and fiddles with his stomach; this replicates a mechanic making changes to a car in order to "fix" it.
• Charlie gets lowered down and faces the audience to reveal his transformation to the audience as they can't see the mask until then. We all form a line to show our unity.

Next lesson, we will start looking at the script and get a better understanding of the plot of the play.