DEVISING DRAMA PIECE: 1ST WEEK BACK AFTER HALF-TERM

WEEK 1: FEBRUARY 24-28 2014

During this week we were given a task to do which was to create our own Drama piece, since we asked for this, claiming that we were not Acting/Performing enough because of the pitches and creating our own advertisements which most of us found really pointless. For this task we had to find our partners. I Originally wanted to work with Sean but since everyone was taken, I chose to work with Prince. Whilst we were creating our Drama piece there were certain things that all of us (the whole class) had to think about such as the theme/social theme, setting and moral behind this, since we are performing to the first years. There were also certain things that we had to avoid such as making our piece's cliché, slapping our audience with the wet fish (Making it too simple), and for us to stop explaining ourselves and just act. All we had to do is just think out the box a little bit. LANGUAGE is VITAL to us, the reason being  is that the audience have to be able to engage with the whole piece and understand what we are saying and how it connects with our whole piece. Another important notice to us is to 'stick with our original ideas, don't change the whole script/theme!', if we changed the whole idea we wouldn't really have time to get things done quickly and most likely it would take a while to shape things and getting things together and sorted out & plus we only have one week to do this, there's not much time left. I had a variety of ideas to do for my piece since Prince wasn't in the first day this was announced. The ideas that I had for me & Prince's piece was to have to mates who are completely different to each other one is a soft/reserved hard worker and gymnast, the other is a laid back, party person, drinks heavily, smokes, but his mate doesn't know that he does drugs (sniffs Cocaine). The names of these two guys are Nathan & Austin, I named Nathan as the laid back, party person, drinks heavily and smokes, Austin as the soft/reserved hard worker and gymnast there was a slight problem over here which was the names and they didn't really match characters, this is what Prince spotted and was aware of so what he suggested was to swap the names around Nathan is Austin and Austin is Nathan. We did so that as we're rehearsing/performing at any point when we mention each others names there is a strong representation of both these characters. By Wednesday all of us had to have a finished draft of our scripts when Marlon (Ex-Student of the College) came to do a workshop with us, helping us with our scripts giving us hints & ideas. 

ROUGH BRAINSTORM FOR MY IDEAS

Second Idea (Backup plan if all else fails)

Another idea I had was instead of making Austin & Nathan young dudes I wanted to make them adults so that I can at least avoid doing something that's it is a bit cliché and changing the ages of the characters instead of making them teenagers all the time, something what most people do. With this idea I wanted to have Nathan as a Lawyer and Austin as a criminal/ex-convict. Here was how I planned it.............

SCENE 1

A living room decorated and cleaned up as always with a sofa and a table which has a wine/drink bottle and a cigarette. Austin is sitting on his sofa thinking to himself about the crimes he has committed and how it has affected him now.

Austin: drinks beer, then puffs cigarette

A pause, Goes into monologue 

Austin: As a youngster I was quite resentful of the Police because of the way I'd been stopped and searched. I always dreamed of joining the Police Force. 1982, my dad was badly beaten up by officers after a stop and search, I was only 8 at the time since then I haven't seen my father............ (takes another puff)

Knock on the door, Austin opens

Austin: You again?

Nathan: Need a word with you Austin, may I come in ?

Nathan enters

Austin: What do you want now? 

--------------------- WHERE  I GOT UP TO 

This is where I stopped at and what I was trying to do was to make this a crime drama something like you see on these BBC one, ITV or Channel 4 TV drama series such as Luther, Inside Men and Top Boy and so on, but I wanted to do something completely different and outside the box with more suspense to this piece. When I stopped at this bit I was struggling trying to add in what Nathan wild say next whether he would talk about the murder of someone he knows or crime he has committed. I had a lot of ideas in mind but when I was practising these lines it all sounded too cliché and something the audience would easily understand. Also I was thinking of how me & Prince are going to surprise the audience with a Drama piece like this. I knew doing a piece based on crime drama would be quite difficult and it would take a lot of time to piece things together. I only I had a week to do this and again I had to remind myself to stop over thinking things and stick with our original idea.

STUFF FROM FILM & TV THAT HELPED SHAPE MY IDEA









Here's my first rough draft of my script  ---------- THINGS THAT NEEDED CHANGING

SCENE 1

A living room with a sofa and a table which has a wine/drink bottle and a cigarette. Austin is sitting on his sofa smoking and watching Nathan working out.

Austin: Another drink now, is it?

Nathan: Yes……..

Austin:  Don’t you ever get tired of drinking that?

Nathan: Nope

Austin: Any ways, You coming to the party tonight?

Nathan: Errrrm…….. Maybe, not sure

Austin: Bruv, you always say this man, you’re hardly at any parties

Nathan: I know, it’s just that I've got things to do

Austin: Things to do? Alright let me ask you this, do you have a job?

Nathan: No

Austin: Got a girl?

Nathan: I'm single

Austin: So what is it that you’re always busy with?

Nathan: Listen, hopefully if there’s time I’ll probably come to the party

Austin: Wicked!

Nathan: But I am not drinking any alcohol tonight

Austin: You sure about that (Smiles)

Nathan: After what happened last time

Austin: laughs

Nathan: That’s not even funny

Austin: Take a draw (Offers Nathan Cigarette) ------------------NEEDS CHANGING  

Nathan: Nah I'm fine

Austin: You sure?

Nathan: Yeah

Austin: Come on, all you have to do is this (smokes puff), simple

Nathan: Nah I'm not doing it

Austin: Just come on man! (In anger)

Long Pause............

Nathan: Alright (takes puff)    ---------------- NEEDS CHANGING 

Austin: See, weren't bad was it? 

Long Pause.......

Austin: Was it? (In Aggression)

Nathan: Nah

(Blackout) ---------------- NOT LONG ENOUGH 

Before Marlon came and looked at me & Prince were up to, Prince had a quick read of this and saw what needs changing. As you can see with my first draft above there's quite a lot of things that are wrong which had to be changed such as the Language, it's not up to 3 mins, it's not making sense and its to basic. Also there's no Drama. These are 5 things Prince picked up on so we had a lot to think about. Instead of a cigarette being the main issue for these characters we decided to bring in the idea of Austin sniffing Cocaine and encouraging Nathan to join him, with Cocaine being the drug Austin reveals as his secret, me and Prince believe that it would build a stronger conflict within the scene and between these two characters. By doing this I feel that it would surprise the audience a bit because it would be unexpected that Austin sniffs Cocaine which show that the audience will be as shocked as Nathan as he brings out the drug. Once we came up with this idea Prince made a few corrections and we extended it a bit more and changed up the Language. The feedback we got from Alex is that there has to be more slang in our piece so it can relate well to the audience since were performing this in front of first years. The beginning bit was fine it's when it gets to the middle bit that is when things get a bit eggy. Again we had to remind ourselves not to change the whole script and stick with our original idea. After Prince highlighted the errors in this, I went off to the hub to rewrite this up whilst Prince was thinking of other things that we could possibly include in our scene. 

REDRAFT OF THE SCRIPT

Here there is a massive difference compared to my first script and a lot of things have been changed such as the Language, time duration and essence of our scene. Also we jotted down some ideas on actions, things our characters could possibly do as we start blocking our scene properly (Unit of Action). More or less me & Prince have blocked most of of this already. It may look boring on script but when it comes to us blocking this it would be much more understandable to whoever sees what we have done so far.

SCENE 1

A living room with a sofa and a table which has a wine/drink bottle and a cigarette. Austin is sitting on his sofa smoking and watching Nathan working out.

Austin:  Another drink now, is it?

Nathan:  Yes……..

Austin:  Don’t you ever get tired of drinking that?

Nathan: Nope

Austin: Anyways, You coming Debbie’s tonight?

Nathan: Errrrm…….. Maybe, not sure

Austin: Bruv, you always say this man, you’re hardly at any parties

Nathan:  I know, it’s just that I’ve got things to do

Austin: Things to do? Alright let me ask you this, do you have a job?

Nathan: No

Austin: Got a girl?

Nathan: I’m single

Austin: So what is it that you’re always busy with?

A Pause.............

Nathan: Listen, hopefully if there’s time I’ll probably come to the party

Austin: Wicked!

Nathan: But I am not drinking any alcohol tonight

Austin: You sure about that (Smiles)

Nathan: After what happened last time

Austin: laughs

Nathan: That’s not even funny, I ended up dialling numbers that night, didn't know what I was doing and somehow I don’t know how I ended up at Bermondsey, that is how pissed I was, if only you…………. (Turns around) 

Austin: laughs again

Nathan: (Finds Austin sniffing Cocaine and he’s in shock), what the fuck? What are you doing? , this is my mum’s table you can’t be doing this here!

Austin: ‘Nothing like a bit of snow’, (mumbles to himself)………..Arrgghhh it’s just Cocaine

Nathan: I always knew you were a party animal but a fiend crack head?!.....

Austin: Yo Nathan man just chill out man fuck sake!, why you so uptight all the time?!

Nathan: I am not uptight!, there’s chilling out and there’s just plain straight insanity, but sniffing snow are you mad ?

Austin: You’re so on the defence about everything, what are you scared of?, when you ain’t even tried it?

Nathan: Nothing………….

Austin: Then if you’re not scared of anything, I don’t see why you shouldn't take a draw

(Long pause………)

Nathan: Takes Cocaine and looks at it

Austin: Go on have a draw

Nathan: Alright (Pretends to sniff it)

Austin: Continues sniffing drug

Nathan:  Austin, I think there’s something in this you know

Austin: Let me see

Nathan: dashes cocaine in his eyes

Austin: What the fuck are you doing, what was that about?!!

Nathan: Told you, you can’t be doing this here!, my mums only down the road

Austin: You fool look what you've done, I spent hours trying to get this!! 

(Goes on the floor trying to get his Cocaine)

Nathan: Well tough!

Austin: You don’t know who you’re fucking with!!

Nathan: Get out of my house (says in disgust)

Austin: Fine……… (Smashes Nathan’s mothers Vas of flowers/table or Picture Frame)

Nathan: Watches him go out

(Blackout)

There would be more to this obviously but what we've got now is fine and we can build on this more from the ending and see what else me & Prince could include but right the time duration for this is roughly at 2 mins max meaning that a bit more has to be added in. What I think is that we should keep letting the argument/little conflict build a bit more between Nathan & Austin in order for Austin to do something really bad or crazy which would be unexpected. Also I still think that we should do something to surprise the audience a bit more which can lead to a very dramatic part something that would just make the audience go 'Wow!'. Again this might take a while once me & Prince discuss things like this next week we would keep on experimenting, seeing what works & what doesn't. 

This shows how I was struggling to piece things together (Mistakes & Errors), trying to see what would and would not work.

PROPS NEEDED FOR  OUR SCENE 

* Icing Sugar or Powder for Cocaine

* Cigarette, Drinks

* Powerade drink

* Gym Weights

This week's been fine.........