Punk Rock Description of Tristan

From Bennett's perspective:

Tristan is the close friend of my girlfriend Cissy. He is gay and annoyingly open about it. I have to be civil with him because he is too close to Cissy to do anything otherwise but he does make it hard to be nice to him. Like when I go for Chadwick, Tristan gets all protective over him and tries to call me out on it. The fairy can't handle me going after his crush. Of course Tristan has a crush on Chadwick, its so painfully obvious, the fucking gay can't get over him. Oh and he's fat did I mention, a right porker, if I was his size I'd jump of a bridge maybe I should tell him that. I mean there seems to be some tension between him and Cissy anyway, I don't know why and if I'm honest, I don't really care. But anyway Cissy wouldn't care if say something, so I might do that.

Punk Rock Play Research

Punk Rock is a play by the British playwright Simon Stephens which premiered at the Royal Exchange in 2009 and transferred to the Lyric Hammersmith directed by Sarah Frankcom. The play concerns a group of private school sixth formers during their A Level mocks exams.


Plot

Edgy and acute, Punk Rock is a slow-building story of violence at school, told with compelling depth and tension. The play introduces us to seven high-achieving teenagers at a fee-paying grammar school. They are holed up in the Upper School library, tucked away from supervision, revising — or not, as the case may be — for their mock A-Levels.

William, a bright Oxbridge-hopeful, falls for the enigmatic new girl Lilly, but she’s falling for someone else. Watched by his girlfriend Cissy, Bennett bullies the unconfident Tanya and the awkward prodigy Chadwick.

It is a recognizable stew of rivalries, desires and confusions, each character’s uncertainties carefully drawn. But as exam pressure builds, anxiety flares up into aggression, revealing a raw undercurrent of panic and hostility.

Critics

Critics say the whole premise of Punk Rock is similar to:
The History Boys,
Another Country,
Lord of the Flies,
If… 
Skins
They say these other plays/films have the similar theme of Private school students falling from grace and causing drama resulting in the death/demise of some characters. 

Images of private schools and the original play

I like the naturalistic style of the set in the original work and I also like that the set also never changes throughout the play. I wish to use a similar style of set (wooden furniture) and have the set to not change throughout the play, we stay in the same room anyway so there isn't much point in moving the set around.

I really like the grandness of the rooms (pillars, wooden banisters, the space, high ceiling) This is why I want to perform our piece in the hall and use wooden furniture to get that feeling of grandness for our piece.

Punk rock diary entry

Dear diary

The new girl started school today, the girl we had a letter about a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Lilly, she seems nice, well from the short time I spoke to her. I'll get back to her in a minute.

My day started off the same as any other day, I got up, ready for school then left to meet Cissy. On the way to Cissy's, she text me saying she has already left with Bennett. It's FINE, it's the third time this week but it's fine. So I walked to school on my own again. 

During form McFarland informed me of the new student and that it was my job to look after her. She listed off some information about her and I had to remember each fact just to prove I was listening. Of course I was listening, I always listen I just forget to do things sometimes. 

Anyway I went to look for the new girl, she was supposed to wait in the ... room for me but evidently McFarland didn't explain to her that she's supposed to wait for me because I found her in the library, after looking for her for more than five minutes. 

She seems nice though, not too weird. She was clearly freaked out by William, I wish her luck, it's a tough, boring school. I liked her hair, it's so light and styled so perfectly. It was like she stepped out of a Disney movie. 

Nicholas announced he was going to ask out Miss Copley and no one bats an eye but when I talk about Anderson everyone freaks out. But that's another complaint for another day so I'm signing off now . 

I'll write tomorrow, good night diary.

Punk Rock Day 8- Clap

Today we looked at subtext, we looked at the first scene where while performing the scene whenever our characters thinks something that they aren't saying we clap pause the scene and say what the character is thinking. This will get us all to better understand our own characters and each others. We chose to do the opening scene so we can look at everyone's  first impressions of each other and  get a good look at what we are all thinking.

Punk Rock Day 7 - Character relationships

We spent a couple of days discussing the relationships between every character and explaining what we think of each character (who they are, how they think, who they like/don't like) and put all of our finalized ideas in a mind map, one mind map for each character.

Punk Rock Day 6- Shooting scene

Today we set the the shooting scene, again we thought about proximity when blocking the scene. We had Nicholas and Bennett center stage at the big desk to start the scene with Bennett on the left and Nicholas on the right. When Cissy enters she comes in and sits next to Bennett on the same table to again show their relationship and when I enter I sit on the smaller table on my own away from the others but still kinda close to Cissy. I want to show that although I am angry with Cissy I still care about her. Chadwick doesn't get the chance to sit down, he enters heads to the book case gets a book and starts to head towards the table on the upper floor to show that he is distancing himself from us because of his speech from the previous scene about not caring about us anymore. William enters before he can sit down and fires the gun stopping us all in our tracks.

When we ran this scene for the first time we didn't really know how to react to a gun in a realistic way. So we had a discussion about the fight or flight concept of fear and how fear affects different people. This gave us a better understanding on how our characters would react to the fear and the death of our friends.

Punk rock day 5 -Stage

today we discussed how we are going to use the stage in our performance. We want to use the stage as well as the floor to create levels for our performance.

Since we've added another level and an extra table, we wanted to use it to give of an effect. So for Scene four we decided to move Nicholas from the table at the front the the upper level table on his own. We separated him because although he is our friend and he probably would sit with us, he doesn't react to the wasp with as much severity as the rest of us and so we wanted to put some distance between us and him so the contrast is presented better.

Punk Rock Day 4 - scene 4

Today we set scene four, we wanted the opening of this scene to be fast pace and over the top, to give a bit of excitement to the show. We start the scene with us all around the desks working and after a while of silence, I leap out of my chair and start screaming. I land on the floor and cower in fear of this wasp. We again thought about where each one of us would sit carefully, we had Lilly on the smaller table (presumably she sat there to be on her own) because she is new and doesn't know us very well, we also had William on the table with her, to show his obsession with her. I am sat on the end of the bigger table with Nicholas to my right, next to him is Cissy and next to her and on the other end of the table (opposite me) is Bennett. We sat together to show our friendship and we put as many people between Bennett and I as we could because I don't like him. Cissy is next to Bennett because they are dating.

We then wanted Chadwick's announcement to really slow down the scene and have a quiet and stunned moment, as this will majorly contrast to the fast pace that the wasp created. This will also allow the tension between William and Bennett to seem even more intense when that bubbles up later in the scene, creating a strong ebb and flow of the intensity/pace of this scene.

Punk rock - day 3 - constitution

Today we wrote a group Constitution. We wanted a set of rules to have in place so we can work efficiently and effectively.

After agreeing on a set of rules, we spent the rest of the lesson running our opening again paying close attention to the Proximity of our characters. We set Lilly (Freya) center stage on the left end of the desk and then set everyone else around her. When William (Tom) enters he initially sits on the other table, away from Lilly but he then moves to sit directly opposite her. We are trying to show how socially inept William is to the audience by having him move seat just to talk to Lilly. We then have Bennett and Cissy enter and sit together (to show their relationship) on the separate table also showing that they don't know Lilly and don't like William. Lilly then moves closer to Cissy after they have introduced themselves to show that Lilly wants to get away from William. William however moves closer to Lilly to show his start of obsession with her. We had Nicholas (Theo) enter the scene and sit at the big table, away from everyone but close enough to show that he is friends with the group. I entered and walked strait up to Lilly to show that she is who I need to see, I then move to sit next to her after William moves away and I take his seat to show my interest in Lilly. When I start talking to Cissy, Lilly moves away because I seem a bit weird and she finds Nicholas more normal so she moves over to him. I move closer to Cissy to show our close friendship. Chadwick enters and goes strait for the book shelf to show he is a character who does everything with a purpose. Chadwick never sits down and he stays away from Bennett until Bennett comes to him. 

Proximity is the placement of people/characters in regards to other characters/audience.

Punk Rock Day 2- Character research Tanya/Tristan + Opening

My character of Tristan (Tanya) first introduces himself to Lilly as he was assigned to look after her as she settles into the new school. He is an openly gay male in his late teens, he has slight ADD and therefor struggles to stay focused on school work or conversations. He is an intelligent boy from a wealthy background, his parents have been able to afford to send him to private school his whole life. During his private education he met a girl called Cissy and they were friends ever since. He likes Cissy but ever since she started dating Bennett, she has changed, he doesn't like that she is meaner whenever he is around and she is more self-conscious about her appearance. This change of character on her part puts a bit of a strain on the relationship. Tristan doesn't always see eye to eye with Bennett, he is civil towards him for Cissy's sake but he finds him pompous, arrogant and an all round bully. He hates the way Bennett treats Chadwick and only tries to stop him when the strain on his relationship with Cissy becomes too much. After Bennett spits on Tristan and Cissy excuses Bennett's actions, Cissy and Tristan have a falling out and Tristan is angry with Cissy during the final scene.

He has a crush on his teacher Mr Anderson and jokes with his friends that they are going to get married and have kids together but he knows it will never happen (still, its fun to pretend) He does have feelings for Chadwick, probably not a fully developed crush but he does respect how Chadwick holds himself, especially when being confronted by Bennett.


We spent today's lesson creating these character profiles and then setting the opening scene where we first introduce our characters. We really thought about how we talk to each other and treat each other in this environment.

Punk Rock Day 1 - Initial script

Today we had a read through the entire script without setting anything so we can get a sense of our characters and the story. My initial thoughts of the character Tanya is that she seems easily distracted, I feel like her mind moves faster than her mouth and so her friends think she can be a bit weird.
After we read through the script, we set the first scene so we could get a chance to play our characters in this rehearsal. We set our stage and decided to have the same set throughout the play as the entire thing is only set in the library of the characters school. We planned to have two desks, one bigger than the other on stage so we can split the group up a bit and show our characters relationships better.