Theatre Workshop 5

Today was the first time we put our entire piece together. Seeing the whole thing emphasised how the media has a lot of input in the political stakes with how they portray the politicians. The most obvious message in our piece is how beauty has a huge part in politics and how we all judge people from the way they look at first glance. This is very obviously shown in Blondie's final monologue when she states "You thought you were safe because I wasn't an under sexed, over paid, unattractive, privately educated, smug middle aged man. All you saw was my face." Our piece also emphasises how, as a nation, we need a major disaster to pull us all together. I hope when the audience walk away that they realise how we are influenced so easily by what others say or do, whether it's the media or whether it's just one person. They should want to change how they look at other people and I want them to go away thinking "I sometimes do exactly that, I need to change it". I want them to discuss and wonder whether Blondie was right or not to order that genocide and I want them to think what they would do in that situation, whether they would vote for her or not.

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I think the most powerful moment of the performance is when Gavin, A, states how when he received pictures "of the scene on my desk in front on me. A small girl in pyjamas had had her head beaten in." He goes on to say how her head was caved in. The way that the Gavin presents this and the words themselves really work together well to form an emotional response within the audience. The way he spits it out as if he can't bear to say the words, he very clearly shows his disgust with her and what she has done and it makes the audience sit back and realise the extent of what she has done. The way that the Katie reacts to this really contrasts and emphasises how terrible this women is. She keeps calm, collected and almost amused. Overall the most powerful scenes are the Blondie scenes as they convey our message clearly.

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My favourite moment is the social scenes and the songs. These are enjoyable to watch for the audience and clearly show how Brechtian theatre works. During these bits in the performance there is always something for the audience to look at, which in turn makes them concentrate harder on what we are saying. I like how both the social scenes and the songs involve the whole ensemble and challenge the audience by making them work harder to find the messages. We have embedded the work of Brecht in our piece through song, creating the scene with our bodies (for the social scenes) and talking to the audience throughout the play. All of these different things are Brechtian. They alienate the audience and it stops the audience from forming an emotional response to a character.

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I need to work on the physicality of my character, the voice of my character and overall the little details to make my character more vicious yet sexy. The thing that I most need to work on is how I present my lines as I will be saying my lines to the audience. I am excited to try this out as I have never really done this before.