02/03/2011 - 21:29

Today we completed our first read through of the play.

Me and Brad are playing the role of Piggy, a rather large person with glasses that is quite a loyal friend to Ralph. My first impressions of Piggy were quite mixed.

On the one hand, I was quite apprehensive about the idea of playing a boy initially because this can quite often make the play comical when it isn't intended. However, Stephanie then informed us that the characters aren't meant to be having any specific genders in her adaptation so should not be an obstacle for us.

On the other hand, when I read through Piggy's part in the play it seems like quite a difficult role for me, especially his style of speaking will be something I'd need to get used to.. I was quite excited about this as I feel like I'm going to have to really commit to this character to be able to portray the character correctly and welcome the challenge.

We started to discuss how we are going to be doing the show and some of the ideas that Steph had come up with for costumes, set etc.

Costumes
Balaclavas? Hoodies? Knives?
Nothing has been set in stone about the costumes yet but we are going to be gaining more and more clothing as the play continues to show the passing of time. I think that these are quite good ideas for the costumes as they will aid towards hiding the gender of each actor. Plus, it will make it clear to the audience that we are not basing it around the traditional concept of it taking place on a deserted island.

Set
Very minimal. Soil and wood chippings on the floor. Using the balcony in The Globe (Hay) as the "cliff" and building up a "cliff" using blocks in the Folly Arts Theatre.
The idea behind having a very minimal set is that we don't want it to be obvious to the audience where they are. Steph's idea was to make it a non-descript place so that the audience spend the play thinking "Where are they?" "How did they get here?" Leaving the audience in a similar position to the characters.
I think that it's a nice idea to make it an unrecognisable location but am a bit worried when it comes to the split scenes and how it will work showing the different locations of the tribes. Steph mentioned the fact that we can use lighting for this purpose but with the amount of movements from one location to the other I am slightly curious as to how this will look.

Audience
One idea for the audience seating in the Folly Arts Theatre was to, instead of using the bleachers styled seating, use normal chairs and have them placed in one corner to see as much of the space as possible. The same sort of layout for The Globe.

I look forward to learning more about my character and developing on it.
I also am curious to see how the dialogue cope with the new context it is in.

- Ebony.