Devising and Rehearsing process for the Christmas Play

September - October : plans and preparation to creating the script

For this unit we had to create a story that was based around Christmas. We wanted something gripping and would excite the audience and not perform an already written script because the language could be dated and we want the audience to understand what's going on. So we thought of a great idea to make the Christmas show family friendly with soft adult humour that the jokes would go over the kids heads if they were brought along to watch the evening performances; which would be to devise and perform a fantasy meets pantomime. We sat in a circle and each put forward our ideas. The popular idea was that it should be set in a dystopian future and either Christmas was whipped from existence, but only a select few characters would remember, images and visions of Christmas would appear to them as an epiphany; or that Christmas had simply been banned by an order in charge, and a group of people would try and stop it. We were then put into four groups and were told what ideas we had that revolved around the main body of the idea we already had as a class but to create four different versions and to perhaps merge them; in which we did.

My group's plan was  to use the black mirror inspired idea. A secret service performing experiments on random individuals  who've had their memory removed of Christmas. Yet one of the kids would still have memories of Christmas tucked away, and as the play would have gone on more and more memories would emerge until the child would have a revelation and they then would embark on a quest that would put a stop to the order and save Christmas. I thought that this was a pretty good idea that our group came up with as it had a stable story line and a smooth plot. But I do think that the final product was as good and incorporated our idea really well. The main idea of the play as it finally stood was that; There are five children who all go school together, their parents have been taken by the "Evil One's" soldiers as they all illegally celebrated Christmas - Christmas has been banned. The five kids track down the realm of the Evil One and discover a book that transports them to different points in time ( WW1 and Victorian era). When they finally reach present day again, The evil one plans to dress up as Santa Clause fooling the kids into thinking they have saved Christmas, Unbeknownst to them they were going to be blown to smithereens, however this plan was thwarted as the parents who were imprisoned and the kids all managed to deliver the real meaning of Christmas to him. It came to light that he Evil One's parents were killed in a car crash when he was 5 and he has hated Christmas ever since blaming the festive holiday on their death as they went out Christmas shopping.

October - November : Developing The main Body of the Script and Rehearsing.

After receiving our parts; we also received a working script written by Rob. It was a combination of all our ideas to best that he could and it was also made just so we could rehearse with something. I was given the Role of ,"Sam" sharing the role with my fellow class mate Chloe as we both insisted that wanted the role of one of the 5 kids in the play. The performance took place over two days and two nights so I performed one day and evening and so did Chloe. Sam was the typical misunderstood, a bit of a "nag" type of character. He was always trying to prove himself to his friends but always got shut down because what he did didn't coincide with their cool factor. He was a bit of a science geek and movie fanatic; category of sci-fi with a mixture of Bond too. This was especially evident when he created "operation Redhawk" which was the protocol of breaking into the premises of the Evil Leader who banned Christmas to retrieve the arrested parents and the irony that came when the clan came across some wire somewhere within the premises that blocked their way in proceeding further; same had thought it was laced with poisonous chemicals yet his kid brother Alex cut it and nothing happened. For me Sam is always one step ahead, it is clear when he enacted "Redhawk" that he had been planning this for a long time. He seems to use his knowledge of movie scenarios and Science to over estimate the real life circumstances that they tackled within the play. 

As the rehearsals went on the Body of the script took its full form. With more people adding ideas and putting in research. For example; the most research went into the time travelling scenes when the book transports the 5 children to different time periods. We had to tread carefully on writing for the Victorian period because certain books that could have gotten mentioned by the kids may not have been written yet, and it may not have perhaps caused a rupture in time like it does in the movies or tv shows, it would have been factually incorrect. We had set it in 1842; A Christmas Carol was yet to be published in December of 1843, so we came up with the idea that Dickens would have been writing it since the previous Christmas to get the Christmas based ideas. One of the kids makes a comment on the fact that they liked Oliver twist, which was written in 1838 so it was ok to put that line in the script. before the script took its final form; we had improvised the scene in rehearsals and kept most of the lines in baring one which was Great Expectations in the place of the Oliver twist comment. Great Expectations wasn't written until 9 years after the time period scene was set, so not until 1861, so it had to be corrected. With Chloe also playing the role of Sam I decided that while she was performing I would, in my own time, rehearse independently. I had all my lines learnt by the end of the week so I then had time to prepare characterisation and objectives for my character. For me, this needn't have been discussed with Chloe, even though we were playing the same character, because it was what we individually brought to the table with our own characterisation for the character. The super-objective I believed Sam had was that he wanted to be noticed. As I had said before he was always at the pointing end of the finger for cheap laughter; yet even if he did overthink the situations with his geeky and scientific brain; the majority of the time he actually came up with valid observations, especially when he realised that they were in the past, yet all the others brushed it off. His objectives for most of the scenes were either to be heard or to find the logical explanations to what caused the situations.


late November - December; piecing the final show together

With the final Rehearsals in gear, the piece started to come together smoothly. People were prepared with what they were doing and knew when and where they had to come on. We were performing it  in the theatre now so we all prepared; performing productions in the theatre in the lead up to the date is always fun because that's when it really starts to come to life because it feels like you are performing it for real rather than in a rehearsal space doing it in front of the exact same faces which is the off stage cast. Lighting and sound had been set so the meat was being put on the bones with the play as it started to feel like a professional show by this time. All props were given out and the use of set had been put up; so no longer having to mime it during rehearsals. Everything began to feel on a professional level.


The Day of the show

The atmosphere I wanted to create was hope. My character tried to figure the situation with his brother and friends alone rather than wait at home for the parents to arrive. I successfully came across that Sam had a sense of determination that he and the rest of the crew would find the parents and they did. My proxemics on the stage was fairly good as I wasn't ever too far back or too far to the side I thought I used the space of the stage quite effectively. What I wish I did better was stay in the light of the spotlight because I sort of was swallowed up by the darkness outside the light. I feel that we as a cast conveyed the play quite well as everyone understood what was happening and there weren't points in which the audience was loosing focus or the plot of the story. Most of the time when Sam felt underappreciated , I feel that the audience did feel sorry for him at times because all he was doing was trying to help so I know my goal for creating this mood in the first place was reached. My volume I thought was good; I had clarity and diction when I spoke so all my lines could be heard and understood by the audience members, even the ones sat at the back where they may be hard of hearing could understand what was going on. What I feel I could do better would be that even though Sam is very misunderstood, I always seemed to play him with anger where as I could have at some points played him a notch down and maybe embarrassment because he is at the centre of constant mockery from his "Friends". I thought the overall play worked well with the cast and production working together like clockwork to produce a really well thought-about play.


   My personal props were a reading book a map and phone. When I first enter the stage Sam is reading a book, which adds to his geeky persona. Whenever there is a time where Alex or his parents aren't communicating directly with him he has his head buried in the book, this shows that he would rather be left alone and study than be annoyed by his little brother and by his parents constant dragging on him about being nice to Alex. Also , to note, when the parents are taken and Alex and Sam are pacing in the spotlight I thought it would be a good idea to have Sam flick through the book for any possible answers for the current situation, because in his mind there is always a logical explanation for something and it adds comic effect because it could literally be a random book but he is sure that whether it was a science film or novel that he'd been reading something like this had happened before in the make belief scenario that he had read about or watched before. I thought that the idea came across well to the audience making it a successful idea.

When Sam called operation Redhawk which was essentially what Sam called the scenario  that if t ever the parents were captured, he would assemble his friends to break into the facility where the parents were taken. When devising we came up with a split screen scene with all of the friends on stage in the blacked out areas while Sam and Alex were onstage thinking of how to cope with the situation in hand ; when each friend was rung up , the spotlight would be placed on them. We wanted to come up with this comical scene as Sam rung up his friends repeatedly saying "Redhawk is a go!" enfusiasticsly like it was his greatest idea of code red scenario ,he clearly been working on for a long time because he even gave it a name ; but the comedy behind it was that he had explained his greatest invention to his friends but as per usual he was never listened to so none of his friends knew what he was going on about - the only one who understood what he meant by just the shear mention of the name "Redhawk" was the stereotypically dim witted character.
My final personal prop was the map that located the coordinates of the entrance of the facility for them to break in. The comedy behind this was that he acted very happy with coming up with this and bringing it along when the friends met up at the market but when he unraveled it and the friends held each end of the map - it displayed illustrations that could have easily been drama by a toddler - which came across quite successful as the audience understood the scene. 

"Is it nececarilly harder for working class actors to make it into the field of acting than those of a higher class?"

An issue I would like to raise of concern will be that, “Is it necessarily harder for working class citizens to make it in the field of acting than those of a higher class?” The working class have always been downtrodden in society when matched against their middle and higher classed opponents. The dictionary description of working class citizens is that,” [we] are a group of people in a society who do not own much property, have a low social status, and who do jobs that involve physical skills rather than intellectual skills” (Collins, 2007). It is very clear to see that working class people are viewed as nothing but unintelligent and simply just exist to perform manual labour. We shouldn’t be judged based on our income or whereabouts we live, but unfortunately, this happens to be the case. When it comes to the field of arts and theatre, which is already competitive, it adds a new form of competition when you are based solely on your; accent, income, social status. Personally, talent shouldn’t be labelled; regardless if you have wealth or you do not, anybody can perform well if you work hard enough for it. However, there are a few issues I will look into, that prove the hardship working class citizens face with ambitions to be actors.

Being part of the working class community, this topic really hits home because in this day and age that young adolescents live in today there doesn’t seem to be much support for them especially with the lack of community centres in the local areas we live in. My parents have told me of days back in the late 1970s to the early 1980s in which the local youth clubs were the go-to places of the day. In my area, there was the Harrow Club, the Rugby Club, Kensal youth club and the Seven Feathers; in which some my parents had attended, where they met the majority of their friends. Nowadays, there just doesn’t seem to be that sense of community anymore. There is a huge lack of drama clubs in my local area; in Central London, home to most of the middle class population, is where the majority of drama clubs/companies such as the Young Actors’ Theatre Islington are situated. In contrast to my parents’ youth, I can only name one drama/youth club in my area in which I have attended previously, but they tend to aim more at the younger children and teens. I do attend a drama youth club called the Camden Peoples’ Theatre, but I only found out about it through my college. Ironically in the world we live in where technology is vastly improving, there is a lack of advertising in my area; so people in my area, other than me, who are interested in the field of acting have to constantly have an ear and eye out for these opportunities and grab them as quickly as you can. On the subject matter of Drama youth clubs, in 1968 , Islington saw the addition of the Anna Scher in the area. Established as an aim to teach drama classes to working class children as a means of keeping them out of trouble and off the streets because Islington was a renowned rough area in the 60s and 70s (Hatterstone, 2018). Scher’s classes specialized in improvisation, which allowed the children who attended to be anything that they wanted to be and they were always supported no matter what. Improvisation can be tricky for some, because the ideas could naturally flow with people on the spot or it might not come so easy to others; but it’s the freedom of showing off what you can bring to the table in improvisation that is key. Having attended for a short period of time between February and mid-April due to other commitments at the time, it was a real eye opener as her mantra hasn’t changed in the past 50 years, so she has stayed true in what she preaches. “Don’t be late, don’t chew gum, be considerate of others,” These are very vital points, not only for drama but for life skills in general. Scher is obviously very passionate about the working class children, because she wants to teach them well manners within the industry as well as society. Many of the actors have had that mantra drummed into them that they are scared to be late to places, so she did a good job in what she teaches. Not many people would give working class children neither time nor day unlike Anna Scher, contrasting to today’s society, nothing has really changed in the last 50-30 years. Working class people, especially youths are seen as a burden or trouble makers, but nobody, For example; the local council or government don’t want to fund in youth centres anymore because on record 760 youth centres have been closed down (Booth, 2019). But it was somebody like Anna Scher, who would have tried to prevent the violence on the street by generating all that Teen angst and violent anger into performing and using improvisation as a means of expressing themselves.

The Anna Scher theatre is notable for quite a few career starters for some actors who made a name for themselves since attending the club. Susan Tully , born the 20^th October 1967, known for playing rebellious teenager Suzanne Ross in the hit children’s drama series Grange Hill from 1981-1984. It was in 1984 when she was only 16 when she landed the role of Michelle Fowler in EastEnders, and therefore became a household name and involved in the famous controversial storyline where she became pregnant by the Landlord of the Queen Vic and the Fowlers ex-close friend Den Watts. Since the late 1990s she has directed quite a lot of work, such as EastEnders, London’s Burning, The Bill (1999-2004), Secret Diary of a Call Girl (2007), Silent Witness (2010) and Truckers (2013). She grew up on a London council estate, and was educated in Barnsbury, Islington. Her father was a watch-case maker and her mother a housewife, so she has had a working class upbringing and with support of the Anna Scher theatre landing her the role on EastEnders which depicts life of working class people in a more serious way, was awe inspiring since they cast real life working class people in the roles made it even more so real and believable because to an extent the actors can identify with their characters. Kathy Burke was born 13^th June 1964, in Islington, London. She attended Anna Scher during the 1970s when she was 13. Some people didn’t know what to make of her, because of her working class lifestyle; she was an up and coming actress of the time. She didn’t wear make-up, attend red carpets or drink champagne; so she was never about the rich and lavish lifestyle. She describes herself as “a member of the non-pretty working class” (Marsh, 2017) in response to Helena Bonham-Carter’s statement that she’s not taken seriously because she is “middle Class and pretty”. Maxine Peak’s story is a factor supporting my argument entirely. She was questioned upon auditioning for a role, because the character had been to “University”, and Peak’s accent sounded too working class. Peak hit back with a response that she, “attended RADA and trained for three years”. At Rada, they provide elocution lessons to help you lose your accent; Peak also added that, “If [she] attended RADA and never lost her accent, then [she’s] pretty sure people at university will have an accent” (Sherwin, 2016).She also gave an insight that people, who happen to from up north, do receive education, can go to university and have electricity. I think that this is an appalling way to treat people from a different class to someone else, or even if you are educated make you feel uncomfortable from coming from an area where typical of a lower class.

George Wilson is an actor born in Liverpool, Merseyside. He had starred in Liverpool set soap opera Brookside and most famous for his role as “Ziggy” Greaves playing Robbie Wright’s (John Alford) best mate in Grange Hill as well as writing his own play material. I am in contact with him via social media and he kindly accepted to take part in the interview. He believes that working class actors are ”better”, that they have struggled a lot more than middle class actors and “appreciate it” a lot more when they get a break. I certainly agree with George here because a typical actor from a working class background doesn’t get handed roles as often as someone who has studied at drama school or if the casting director knows their social status. George continued to add that working class actors tend to grasp the naturalism to acting a lot easier because they haven’t been taught. For example the show “Grange Hill” was set in a state school, so someone of working class background acting in this school setting would already know what the certain setting feels like because they would have lived through it, just the situation the pupils get into may be different. He also feels that working class actors have an equal chance to anyone of a higher class once they get through the door of an audition; adding to my previous that talent shouldn’t be labelled with social caste. He agrees that the Anna Scher theatre and shows like grange hill encouraged working class actors into acting because they were natural actors from the streets, and many progressed because of Anna Scher. It’s a shame that shows like Grange Hill, which encouraged so many working class actors that they can do it, no matter what social class you belong to, have changed with the times and has faded with time. George says that you should’t “remake the actual show [Grange Hill] itself, but create similar shows set in a kids home or a council estate”, would work just as good. Having heard from a working class actor physically has really opened my eyes that I am not alone in my views. Even though my generation has since surpassed the times when Grange hill was at it’s height, I do personally enjoy watching episodes on YouTube, because that was the only time, other than shows like EastEnders, where the cast was made up entirely of working class actors.

To conclude, I have researched into valid points that back my argument up that is very hard for working class actors to enter the field of acting than those of a higher class. In Maxine Peak’s situation, she was judged by casting panellists before she even began the audition because her accent was very working class, yet it didn’t even cross their minds because they were to ignorant to realise that she may have attended higher education and got a degree. Due to cuts in the number of Youth centres being run, there is little hope for actors who live in an area where there is hardly anything for adolescents anymore, especially for acting. Yet my area is just a shell of what it used to be now, when there was a time when it was teaming with loads of people in common attending clubs. Our social class have even been defined as unintelligent; which I think is insulting when some of us could contribute a lot to society, one being acting, but sadly are hardly given a chance.

Works Cited

Booth, r., 2019. The Guardian. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/07/youth-club-closures-young-people-risk-violence-mps
[Accessed 25 November 2019].

Collins, W., 2007. www.collinsdictionary.com. [Online]
Available at: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/working-class
[Accessed 25 11 2019].

Hatternstone, S., 2nd of April 2018. The Guardian. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/apr/02/how-anna-schers-maverick-acting-school-created-so-many-working-class-stars
[Accessed 25 November 2019].

Hatterstone, S., 2018. The Guardian. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/apr/02/how-anna-schers-maverick-acting-school-created-so-many-working-class-stars
[Accessed 25 November 2019].

Marsh, S., 2017. The Guardian. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/oct/29/kathy-burke-interview-lifelong-member-of-the-non-pretty-working-classes
[Accessed 25 November 2019].

Sherwin, A., 2016. INews. [Online]
Available at: https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/maxine-peake-told-northern-play-barrister-silk-539505
[Accessed 25 November 2019].