Context

This post will contain everything that I discuss and do to do with  my final major project performance.  The play we are doing is called 'Waiting For Godot'. We've picked this play after going through a number of other plays and ideas changing because of  either opinions on the play or the play  not  fitting us as a group. Here are the plays we looked at. I will be explaining the pros and cons of picking that play and why we didn't pick it but also why we picked the play we eventually picked.

The first play we looked at was Torn. Torn was written by Nathaniel Martello-White. It's a play about generations of secrets in a family and how the secrets broke them apart. The play shows a very disfunctional family and very hectic throughout, spotlighting their problems and also showing how hard it is for them to find a resolution. Themes that are contained in the play are; Family, Growing up, Abuse and Loss. I liked this play because the unique way it is staged and how nobody goes off stage at no point in time and because of the structure of the play it was very intense and enjoyable. The reason we didn't pick this play is because we were restricted by the fact that the play had to be type cast for it to make sense and be effective. Another reason why we didn't pick this play is because of the fact that we had some people that had to play a certain role and were not reliable in terms of attendance we couldn't pick this one.

 The next play we looked at was 'Our Country's Good' written by Timberlake Wertenbaker.  The play is a highly rated play and had the interesting story of convicts putting on a  play for the guards and other convicts with the theme of redemption. In my opinion Our Country's Good was the best play out of all the options but the reason we couldn't  do it is because of how big the cast is. For us to do this play as a class we need every single student to be in all the time and have a very high attendance, even then it would still be a massive challenge as an ensemble so we definitely couldn't do it.  

The next play we looked at was 'Noise' by Alex Jones. This story of this play is that a pair of teenage newly weds that are pregnant move in to their new housing association flat. Their neighbour plays loud pounding techno music constantly and the audience sees how they deal with this new challenge.  The reason I didn't want to do this play is because of the character that I had been cast as. In my opinion it was a character very similar to my previous roles. He was a character who was very balanced in terms of not having much conflict or always being the peacekeeper. I personally wanted to play the weird character, who was the neighbour as it would've been a role I would've been more interested in working on as an actor.

The last play we looked at before we finally picked our play was Baggage Claim. Baggage Claim was  a production set in an apocalyptic era. The plot of the production was that unknown people were placing duffel bags around the country. They would place 50 duffel bags, 25 of them would contain 100 thousand pounds in cash and the other 25 would contain lethal bombs. One of the characters found one of these bags and brought one home to his best friend and his girlfriend. They then have to decide whether they want to open it and risk their lives along with the baby that they're expecting. Themes that are featured in the play are; Family, Sacrifice and Relationships. The reason we didn't do this play is because of how there wasn't many in depth research points that we could explore. It helps for our play to have detailed points to talk about when researching it so that these research points can help us when it comes to the context of the play helping us understand our characters more.

The play we picked to do was 'Waiting for Godot'. The reason we picked this play is because unlike any other play we looked at the play had a very weird and unique concept which was two old men waiting for nothing. When looking at this play we found it very entertaining and intriguing that helped make the choice to perform it easier. The play is written by Samuel Beckett.

After picking our play we had to read through it and realise which characters we were playing after reading through it once and discussing it to make sure we all had an understanding of what the play was about we chose our characters. I chose Estragon because I felt that out of the two main characters him and Vladimir Estragon is less dominating of the conversation and I feel it will be widening my range of character when playing this character. He is more of a character that sits back and goes with the flow of whatever happens. Then we read through the play but as our characters. realising it was too long we took a few days to cut it down to a suitable length and also making sure that the story wasn't lost or not piecing together otherwise it would make no sense.

Cutting it down and then reading it through we made sure it made sense and then went onto learning lines while simultaneously staging and just line reading over the course of 3-4 weeks. We had to perform to our peers to show our progress and also see what we could improve on in terms of the performance value. While performing our peers had informed to us that they lost touch with the piece as we were missing a character that we hadn't cast yet and it made that section of the play a bit weird. Apart from that they said that the chemistry between the two main characters and their relationship was very clear but they thought that we could make that relationship clear consistently throughout.

So now we were faced with a problem of not having a Lucky which is the character we were missing, if he was not there then the play would like the person we were addressing isn't there. So we had to find a Lucky and quickly get to rehearsing with them so that those scenes were as good as the others as they weren't rehearsed with a Lucky before. Luckily a student in another acting class volunteered to help us and we now had filled the role of that character. After getting the role filled we quickly started rehearsing with them letting them now specific cues and trying to make sure that they knew where they had to be and who they were. The role was easy for the student as Lucky didn't have much lines because of how out of the ordinary he was he didn't speak at all throughout the production.

We were mostly ready for performance apart from a few scenes that were slightly slacking in terms of smoothness in delivery of lines and the stage awareness when it comes to those parts. So while rehearsing those parts we were coming up to the technical rehearsal where we would have to implement our ideas onto our stage production and make sure that the stage looked aesthetically pleasing and also fit with the play's context. We decided that we should have rocks and boulders all over the stage to show that this place isn't elegant or clean or somewhere very nice. We also had a little bench towards the front corner of the stage which came from inspiration from the official production of the play where they had a small mound where Estragon sat at points during the performance. Also making sure that a main talking point in the play, a tree, was involved by making sure that two projections were made on the back wall to show clearly to the audience the tree we were referencing.

Whilst going through the technical rehearsal we were picking the light colours to help depict the mood of the play or even the time of day during that moment. We decided that during the first 30-35 minutes of the play we should have a early morning kind of feel so we had a orange/white kind of colour to create that feel. Something to improve on next time would be to add sound effects to help immerse the audience even more into the story and the production. Next lighting cue we added was at a time during the play there was a sense of night time falling upon us so we decided to add a kind blue midnight look to add to the feeling of that scene. For the audience entry and bowing we chose the song 'You've Got A Friend in Me' by Randy Newman. The reason we chose this is because I was familiar with the song and knew that the lyrics had contained content about friendship which I feel is one of the main themes of this play because of how important Vladimir and Estragon are to each other.

Finally before the performance I was choosing my costume keeping in mind the inspiration i used which was from the 2001 production of Waiting For Godot, I decided that I should go with a more rough and poor. I tried to find a raggedy kind of jacket that he had and managed to find one quiet similar. I think this is what helped me fully embody the character as initially I wasn't comfortable in it but as I rehearsed with it I could see it on my character and that very much helped. After all of these rehearsals we had done our performance.