Week 2 - Devising

Characters:
Billy Joe: Joseph
Bobby: Me
Father: Lewis
Mother: Kennedy
Brother Taylor: Luke
Sister Betty: Phoebe

After speaking about what we've already discussed for our play we all agreed that it was probably best if we didn't all play Billy Joe and Bobby as the audience might get confused since we were confusing ourselves. Before we began deciding on what we're going to do instead of what we originally planned we decided on our characters. Then we started linking everyone and thinking about their relationships between each other which is when we decided that Bobby was going to have an arranged marriage with brother Taylor the priest even though she is secretly dating Billy Joe who her father doesn't approve of. Bobby doesn't get on well with her father as he is very aggressive and violent to her mother who she does get a long with. Bobby is close to her sister  Betty. Betty and brother Taylor love each other but Betty is too young to be with him and he is suppose to be marrying Bobby.

There is a lot that we want to happen throughout this play but we have to see what works and what doesn't and we can't have it too complicated. We do have a lot of ideas like having the mother poison the father but then with everything else we need to happen we realized that was too much. I think we need a scene to show everyone's relationships and feeling towards each other. For example we was thinking about having a scene with Bobby and Betty to show that they are close sisters and during this scene have Betty confess to Bobby that she love's brother Taylor. Then we thought it would be a great idea to have a scene with brother Taylor and Bobby to show how they don't love each other and the awkwardness between them. We thought it would also be a good idea to have a wedding scene with them getting married but then I suggested why doesn't Billy Joe come in, even though we all thought he was dead. I also was thinking because we decided to not have the mother kill of the father maybe we should just have her leaving him as in a divorce. Our group has a lot of ideas we just have to play around with them and figure out which ones will work the best.

We then discussed our first scene and agreed that it would be good to do our last scene as our first scene and then do a flash back and then do it again as our last scene. This scene was going to be Bobby, Betty and their mother and father having dinner at the table. Even though you don't see it, Bobby had just been told that Billy Joe has died so she isn't eating her dinner and her father get's mad because she doesn't. During this scene we put a lot of  Berkoff movements in it to keep it physical. We don't want this scene to show too much because we want our play to be mysterious and secretive. Our second scene is going to be very physical, the mother and father are going to show the father abusing the mother. Brother Taylor and Betty will show they love each other but they can't be together. Billy Joe's and Bobby's are kinda the same as he's asked her to run away but they can't so they're also showing their love for each other.

Joe and I tried to make our physical little dance as cute and romantic as we could by having him rest his head on my shoulder and holding me close. We also added in a lift that Kirsty had showed us and had one or two moments where we're really close and looking into each other's eyes. We want it to show so much without saying anything as we don't want to give too much of it away.

During Kirsty's class on Wednesday she asked ask to do three freeze frames to show the story-line of our play. We decided to also do these at the beginning of our play to show a bit of mystery but also give a little bit away. I see our play a lot like a love story, like Romeo and Juliet where they want to be together but they can't due to their families feud.

This freeze frames shows the love between Billy Joe and Bobby as they're kissing here and then brother Taylor is on one knee with his arm reaching out for her because he's suppose to be marrying her. Betty is also reaching out but she's reaching more for brother Taylor. On the opposite side it's showing how violent the father is towards the mother because he is punching her belly.

This freeze frame is showing how they don't want Billy Joe and Bobby being together so they're both being pulled apart. We have come up with quite a few reason's why they don't want them being together. One because Bobby is having an arranged marriage with brother Taylor and the second is that her father doesn't approve of Billy Joe.

This one shows the father strangling the mother, brother Taylor with his arm around Bobby as they are too be married but Bobby is still thinking of Billy Joe which is why we put him on the floor and holding her hand. Sister Betty is holding brother Taylor's hand because she loves him but she's looking down because she knows she's too young to be with him.

Week 1 - Devising

This week we have been given some tools to help us get started with our devising pieces. We played quite a few games to help us get active and get our brains working. Deborah also said that we should make sure we stretch before we do anything and don't just walk into the class room and sit down. If we play a game it will get our energy pumping and could help us come up with some idea for our devising piece. Deborah introduced this stalking game to us which was where you pick someone in the room and stalk them without them knowing and then we gradually got closer until we got as close as we possibly could. Then she had us write for 4 minutes about how it made us feel and then we had to start cutting it down to we had 3 words. With these 3 words we made up 3 movements and then 3 sound effects to go with it. Deborah numbered us after and then called us up and made us walk to the performance area using our 3 movements and then freeze on our last movement. She then got 3 of us at a time to do it and move around in the space whilst making the sounds and then we all did it. Whilst doing this we all started to become face to face with each other as we moved around the space and then it started to tell all these different stories.

On Thursday Kirsty gave us our stimulus which was a song that's called 'Ode to Billy Joe'. We all listened to the song first and wrote down our first responses. At first all that came to my mind was that this sounded like a country song and brought cowboys and farmers to my mind. I then began to listen to the lyrics and a heard the date which was '3rd of June' which made me think maybe something actually happened on this day which is why it's in the song.  It also speaks about a boy called Billy Joe who jumped off Tallahatchie bridge and how this girl is being told this by her mother. From the song I could tell that this girl was upset, almost as if she had a relationship with this boy but her family doesn't seem to care so I got the feeling it was a secret relationship.

After we came up with our own responses and listened to the song a few times and looked at the lyrics we went into our devising groups which are three groups of six to see what their responses are and come up with some ideas on what we're going to do. I'm in a group with Phoebe, Kennedy, Joseph, Lewis and Luke. We had quite a few responses which we're mostly all the same and then with that we came up with some ideas. We decided to focus our play more on the relationships between the characters instead of the death of Billy Joe. Our first decision was to have all three of us girls as Bobby and all three boys as Billy Joe and then show the relationship between Billy Joe and Bobby in three ways. The first one was how they were in love, second one was after they had killed someone and the last one was after Billy Joe had died. We decided to make this our prologue scene in order for the audience to see into their relationship and we're going to have Luke as the narrator to explain the different couples. I'm interested to see how this scene goes and how we develop our play even more next week. I think it's going to be very interesting and that it's going to turn out really well.