Hannah Williams

Discuss the intensions of your character. How were they shown?

During our class production ‘Teechers’, I was involved in the first scene which was when I was Mrs. parry, It was the part where Jordan was explaining about Mrs. Parry coming up on stage in school assemblies talking about educational matters when really she would like to say ‘Knackers school’. For this part I was only on stage for a few moments, as I had to walk across stage and mime. When I walked across the stage, I lead with my arm out in front of me, to lead the way, in the direction that I was walking. I then moved my arms around me in very big circular motions, to show that I was explaining something. Then I put my hands together at the end and said ‘Knackers School’. The reasons for doing these actions instead of just simply walking across the stage, is because Mrs. parry is a very large framed woman, with big over the top actions, with a loud opera voice to match. So by exaggerating my actions, it showed that I was playing a big over the top character. My next scene was playing Gail performing with Grace (who played Oggy). During this scene I was talking about Oggy and saying what he was like. Gail is quite a flirty girl, but she is also quite slutty, and chavvy, so as you can imagine she can be quite mean to the people she doesn’t like. Gail doesn’t really like oggy, so I had to show this, which I did by backing away, although Gail always has to look quite flirty. I showed this by twiddling my hair and standing with my arm resting on my waist, this also showed that I had a bit of an attitude. For my last scene I was playing Maureen Witham who is quite the opposite to Gail, she is a hopeless old teacher who doesn’t really know how to teach properly, but she is also quite quiet with a high pitched voice. I played the small part where I go over to Jeff and talk to him about the times Ed. I spoke in quite a high pitched voice, to show that I am a nice lady, and then when Jeff said ‘No I’m not into that’ I said ‘Oh’ then sat down next to him. I began to feel sorry for him at this point, and by sitting down next to him, it showed that I was there for him, when I was giving him advice. I also toned down my voice to show that I wasn’t trying to bug him, by having quite a high – pitched voice and being quite jolly, when he was clearly upset, with his face buried in his hands.

 

Dicuss the use of lighting and sound in Teechers. How did it add to the plays intensions?

During the production the Lighting and music had to be thought of carefully because it was constantly changing. At the beginning of the production when the audience was entering the auditorium, we had a Pink Floyd song being played; it was being played quite loudly, this showed that immediately the audience would have an opinion of what they were about to experience. The loud music makes you think that the school is going to be quite loud and disruptive, making it not a very good school! Compared to if it was a production about a private school, the music choice would be very different. Throughout most of the production, the lighting was very bright, this was because we didn’t want the audience to be in darkness, instead we wanted them to always feel involved and engaged, and we wanted them to feel like they were in the school with us, like they were a part of it. There were quite a few big monologues that people had to perform, so the lighting was changed for this, instead of bright lighting we changed it to a spotlight, so that the audience was only focusing on that one person in the middle of the stage, doing this also meant that the person speaking and performing could give direct eye contact to each member of the audience.