In my first drama lesson focusing on Blood Brothers we initially began by looking at the different themes and issues of the text.
The main issues were, class, poverty, separation and superstition. We started by having a class discussion about these, and airing our views and feelings towards the topics. After the class discussion we got into groups of around four to five people and looked at a preferred issue (mine was separation). From this we brainstormed the chosen issue and how it was linked with the play.
We were then asked to create a still image from the text using different drama techniques showing this issue.Me and my group chose to do a freeze frame with me and a class mate acting out the twins being separated from birth, we did this by being pulled in difference directions hence showing the separation. We then held up a placard with a quote from the text saying "from birth they did depart", not just making the freeze frame more effective but also giving a better understanding about the still image. We then used physical theatre to move into our next freeze frame, which showed how the mothers kept them separated throughout most of their lives, by not letting either twin get to each other.Once again we used physical theatre to move into our final freeze frame which showed both twins dead by their own mother's side, whilst holding up one more placard with the key words "until death did they part".
By acting out and watching the other freeze frames I could see how Willy Russell wanted to communicate with the audience through these issues and it helped to give a better understanding of the play. I can now see how superstition played a big role in peoples lives back in the times of blood brothers and how there was a lot of poverty around.Later on in the lesson we studied an examined a particular scene in the play which we nicknamed the Marilyn Monroe scene, as it compares one of the mothers (Mrs Johnston) to Marilyn Monroe in a song. The scene is based around her life so far and lets us know more about her character. We start learning about her character through a song explaining her life story and how she has become what she is today.
We gather the information through the lyrics in the song. Whilst the song is playing there are several dramatic techniques used on stage in the background.There is mine and physical theatre used together, to act out things that have happened in the past of Mrs Johnston's life. Also marking the moment is used to show the main things that have happened from Mrs Johnston's past, and of course role-play was used as everyone in the play was taking on the role of someone else besides themselves.
For our lesson we were put in different groups from the previous ones, and were asked to make up our own devised performance to go with the song. In our performance we used as many different drama techniques to convey the message informing people of Mrs Johnston's past.My group followed the song words and devised different acts to go with them, these acts used mine throughout the whole of the song, so as people could pay more attention to the song lyrics. We used focus-in and moved everyone out of the scene apart from Mrs Johnston to make her the centre of attention when we only wanted people to focus on her. We used still images to spotlight some parts of the recital, which we wanted to show our audience and make clear, and lastly we used role-play throughout all of the performance to make our play much more realistic.Once we combined it all together (the song with the acting and the different techniques) our play all pulled together.
We showed most of the events that had taken place at some stage in Mrs Johnston's life through a many altered drama techniques. We managed to highlight many of the events that had taken places in Miss Johnston's life, like marriage, birth, divorce, excitement and boredom all through many altered drama techniques. At the end of the lesson we were set homework to put the reasons for and against Mrs Johnston giving away one of her twins.In my next drama lesson we were split into groups of four and were asked to write down some of the ideas we come up with. We then had to split up into pairs, and take on the role of either Mrs Johnston, who was pregnant and may not have been able to cope with another child both caring-wise and money-wise.
Or we could have played the role of Mrs Lyons who could not have children of her own and desperately wanted a child, but her husband would not like to adopt as he said "he would not fill the same way about a child that is not his own".At first I took on the role of Mrs Lyons, literally begging for a child, I then used role-reversal to swap places with a classmate. I found that role-reversal helped to give me a much better and clearer understanding of the play. I could see just how desperate Mrs Lyons was for a baby and that she would give anything to have one, but I can now also see how Mrs Johnston loves all of her children and how she would love to have them all. If I was in either of their situations I would not have a clue what I would do they are both tight situations.
