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.