During the upcoming week to the performance, due to the implications, we had to work on getting used to the voice overs that Chris had provided as it was confirmed that he was unable to perform. The way that this was done was that all of us had to adjust to looking around the stage more and to the audience to represent the Pillow man rather than looking at one part of the stage where he was originally blocked to be. We also had to work on the transitions of the scenes as one of the challenges that we were faced with during the technical and dress rehearsals was the curtain at the back. As the scene changes would take place in a blackout initially, especially at the point where the bed had to be taken off stage for the last scene, it always seemed to get caught on the curtain. To over come this problem, our group had suggested that there be a dim light on the stage to allow us the transition to be more efficient and easier. In addition, white tape was placed where the opening of the curtain would be to make it easier to know where to pull the curtains open for the transitions to be smoother.
The final bedroom idea was to have a neutral representation of all three characters that had a bedroom set in their scene. The way this was going to be portrayed was that there was going to be a white be sheet, covers and a pillow as the initial idea before was to have various different bed covers to represent another characters bedroom, however this resulted in the scene transition being too long. Other than that, all that was changed throughout each scene were props that represented each character. For me I had a Rubik's cube, cards and my phone to represent a typical life of my character with general hobbies, where as Stephanie had a wand to represent her Harry Potter part of her personality and Marion had a boxing glove to represent what his dad wanted him to become, someone who was supposed to be a strong person but kept failing his abusive father. Although having props and a neutral bed room setting, this created the safe environment for the character however this was contrasted by the emotions and thoughts of the characters expressing themselves exposing their feeling of isolation.
Drawing to the hanging process of the characters, we originally wanted to have rope as a prop for the hanging. However the rope seemed to typical in a hanging suicide. So instead to add to the sympathy of the character's death, we all thought that a prop that represented the character or that was part of the character's costume may have been more effective if they hung themselves with those props. Mine was a scarf which was part of my costume, Stephanie's one was a Harry Potter themed scarf and Marion's was his school tie all symbolising their personalities, even in the method of death.
One idea that was developed was the idea of the hanging bodies on the side with the duplicate clothes we had brought in to represent our hanging bodies. These bodies would have been hung on the four corners of stage to for one, balance the stage out and in addition created the isolated effect for the last scene as the Pillow man then felt isolated himself for helping end the lives of people when he himself was slowly breaking down throughout the course of the performance. This was portrayed clearly through the voice overs as he said the clues leading ton his suicide after the hanging took place in each scene. During the voice over, an 8-10 second count was added after the character hung themselves to give time for the body to drop and in addition gave the audience the scene that the hanging was as genuine as possible as we had in mind that some audience members may have pointed out the obvious say that the character was not dead as they were still walking on the stage to get off. Each body would have been dropped after each character had committed suicide as this would also benefit the scene transition in the way where the props could be changed and as the stage went to complete darkness during the hanging, the body would light up and give the audience something to look at and interpret the effect that the play could be trying to make as the bodies continued to fall after each scene.
Another problem that had to be addressed was the beginning of the performance. Originally it was supposed to be Chris as the Pillow man performing a range of movement to create a creepy atmosphere, however as he was unable to perform, the music that was in that range of movement remained but according to our peers, the beginning felt very empty and did not make any sense as it was just a pure black out. The song that was used for this scene was 'The Slender Man - No Friends '. This music was chosen as it helped fuel the either comforting Pillow man because of the bells in the song or the darkness of the Pillow man. due to the base of the soundtrack. The way that the beginning was then filled was that all three characters of the first three scenes were at the front of the stage doing our own movement of our theme that related to our character. The pieces of movement I was doing was a slow walk from college as I had my backpack on with a sad face. Where as Stephanie was crying for being compared to her sister and Marion was hurt holding his eye as he had got beaten up by Jonah and his gang. This was also accompanied by a series of lights that represents the Pillow man along with the soundtrack. We stood in our positions performing the movement until the first set of bells rung as we began to look up at the lights (the Pillow man) as the movement consisted with our heads facing down to suggest mystery. Then the second set of bells rung and we all began to walk to the back curtain and faded in to the transition to my first scene where the cue of the neutral lights to be up was me shouting and throwing my back pack on the bed. This resulted in the beginning allowing the performance to be set up with that eerie and creepy atmosphere with a sense of mystery. In addition to this, it also gave the chance for the audience to make their own interpretation.
This also may link to the end of the performance where the ending felt so empty as it was supposed to be for the Pillow man's monologue. We had the idea of someone else blocking his character just for the last scene with a mask and a cloak, however this idea was dropped as the performance lost the mysterious atmosphere to it as the Pillow man could have been seen as a voice in the head of the characters, an unknown entity or however the audience would have interpreted him to be. So in the end a spotlight was left in the middle of the stage along with the hanging bodies to create the effect of him being trapped and isolated in between the corpses of the victims he took the lives of through suicide. As the monologue was played the spotlight in the middle was initially going to shrink, however it was thought to be more effective if all the lights of the hanging bodies and the spotlights turned off at once to represent the death of the Pillow man.
As this was the week that drew up to the performance, Chris was still able to create the poster and the programme as we had discussed as a group that he wanted to still put a lasting effort in to his production. One implication that was still yet to be discussed was the name of the play. We originally put forward the idea of the play being named 'I'm Just Fine', however this felt ineffective as it could be seen too weak to correlate to what was being performed. So the final idea that was put forward was the name of the play to be called Thanatos, meaning death in Greek. This was more effective as the title as it was unique and added to the mystery on to what the performance was about. This can also be seen as a reason for the audience to have their own interpretation of what this word meant and how it correlated.
One other implication that had to be prevented was the fact that the fake blood was very difficult to remove as I had experienced this is the last dress runs. So I had to prevent the blood getting on to other pieces of clothing other than my last character of Jake as the blood would become very difficult to wash off if it got stained on another piece of clothing. To prevent this, a plastic bag was placed underneath where blood was being spilt with the assistance of another actor holding the bag.
One last development that was made was the help to transition each performance in to the other. Every actor who was due to perform on the same day all assisted in taking on and off props for one another's plays to allow the transitions to be more efficient and faster.
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