Single Drama - 21st and 23rd

This week we lost a rehearsal for reasons that are out of our control but as a company we worked on the scene where Christopher is looking for his book around the house. We use a heavy amount of physical theater to create the scene of which Christopher is looking in (e.g. the house, bins and the bed). I feel that as Siobam talks about each place, the use of physical theater really creates the scenes for the audience to see in a literal way. Especially compared to last weeks soundscape of the town, as the setting of the town wasn't specifically talked about in the script, we just knew, as a company, that we were there, so to convey that to the audience a simple soundscape could get that sense better than physical creating the street visually.

This week we ran through the lifts in the London train station scene and after some lifts going not as well, because either I'm not in full focus of the lift or other people were unintentionally being in the way, I have learnt that when preforming lifts it doesn't matter how many time you have done it, things still can go wrong so you can't get cocky and not pay full attention. Also, if you know a lift is being taken place, pay attention to what they are doing and where you are so you don't get in the way and also you might be there to help if things go wrong.

This week we managed to get all the way to page 15 off script and carry on without any major confusion as to whats happening, so as a company we are on the right tracks. We also managed to perform all the lifts in the London train sequence at least once (but we do need to work on timing everything right). My personal performance, I see Christopher as a naive almost innocent character and I feel I play that side of him well but I feel like I need to have another look through my script and tweak at where the strong autism isn't coming through in my performance and consciously change my acting accordingly. For the production, the scene where Judy reads her letter and I'm supposed to build a train track with everyone joining else, I thought we could have the stage covered in paper the entire performance but have them A2/3 size so we can pick up different parts of the "stage"(and draw the dog center stage and have props drawn on rather than physically there, the only physical prop is the book so everything else is paper from the book) and for this train track we simply draw the track straight onto the paper stage. We could incorporate this drawing on the stage idea to other parts of the play, for example when Christopher is trying to calm down he could wright the numbers as he says them or he could start writing the question in his exam (at the end of the play) and start to solve it throughout the play and at the end of the play could lift up each individual piece of paper and explain how he worked it out.