Lighting and Sound - Leah Quinn

 

In my class’ production of Teechers we used lighting and sound a lot throughout. We began the play with a voiceover from the head teacher of the school (the very flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Parry, played my me). This was very loud and obvious to the audience to set the tone of the play which is also very over the top and comedic. The voiceover welcomed the audience or ‘the pupils of the Year Eleven Leavers’ Assembly’ into the hall and was then quickly followed by ‘Common People’ by Pulp which put the play into context as it is about a lot of working class people who aren’t very well off or well behaved. The intentions of this were to show the audience that Whitehall (the school in which Teechers is set) is a very rough school with working class pupils who are quite badly behaved. Throughout the play we kept the audience in the light of the stage and set out the chairs in a round so that the audience was completely surrounding the stage. This is so the audience feel they were really part of the play and they too are vulnerable to attacks from the pupils of Whitehall just as much as the actors playing the pupils on stage. Later on, during the scene at the Christmas disco when Gail is trying to get the attention of Mr Nixon her new drama teacher who she has a crush on, lighting and sound were used to create a very slow, romantic atmosphere. We did this by playing ‘Lady In Red’ which is very slow and romantic as well as spinning the disco ball very slowly so lots of little lights reflected off the walls while the rest of the room was really dark. We did this to build the tension in the room and make the audience believe that Gail had romantic intentions, as in this scene she attempts to kiss Nixon. I believe lighting and sound was used effectively throughout the play in many different ways.