From the play, my group have been set to direct and act out the middle section of Act 3, from page 99 to page 103. Our section starts at the bottom of page 99, line 634 where Geoffrey says “what time of bloody night do you call this?” and finishes at the start of page 103, line 728 where Geoffrey says ” Don’t try and be funny with me, lad! Or you’ll laugh on the other side of your face!” Just before our assigned section of the play, Liz, Billy’s ex-lover who previously left town and has recently came back, and Billy plan to move to London.
They imagine running away together, having children, and being happy. The idea of Billy going to London came from a job offer as a script writer in London. We already know Billy is a fantasist, and therefore script writing would be perfect for him. Following on from our assigned section, Billy packs his belongings in to a suitcase and leaves home to go to London with Liz. The section is set in the living room of the fisher household, in 1959 at night time; ‘it’s only ten’. The living room consists of a dining table which is positioned upstage left, two single chairs which are positioned centre-stage right, the kitchen entrance and exit is upstage right and the hallway is upstage left.
The style of text in this text is very naturalistic as it is a conversation between parents and their son, emotions changing, anger, concern and so on. Geoffrey is furious as to what Billy is doing with “two hundred bloody calendars!” and why he has stolen money from work. He hasn’t sent off the letter which his mother wrote to send to ‘housewives choice’, a radio station, and has been out when Geoffrey specifically said not to go anywhere, and when he comes back Geoffrey tells Billy “who said you could go out?” Alice is more on the concerned side of why Billy didn’t send off her letter and why he had been stealing money. She feels useless because she wishes that he’d came to her instead of helping himself to what wasn’t his.
In my group’s assigned section, through the use of gesture, body language, tone of voice and arm movements, my group hope to put across the relationships between Billy and his parents to the audience. Alice is very close to herself and her arm movements are very minimal, her facial expressions show that she is trying to force her self to smile or stop her self crying, because she and Geoffrey need to deal with Billy and his lies in this particular section. Geoffrey’s anger levels increase from talking to Billy, this is put across by his tone of voice changing and his positioning, he towers over Billy and stands in a controlling position over him while Billy moves further back in his chair away from Geoffrey.
In our Group’s section Billy has been taking money; Geoffrey and Alice are trying to find out why he has taken the money, and what he has done with it. He has also not posted calendars, asked by his boss to post, and the letter his mum gave him to post. The mood right from the start of this section is quite tense, awkward and angry, but Alice brings a more soft and concerned atmosphere to the conversation, where as Geoffrey is just angry and wants to yell.
The relationship between Billy and Geoffrey is obviously a very uneasy one here as it is showed through tone of voice and the way they are positioned towards one another. Whereas, the relationship between Alice and Billy is much softer, you can see Billy tries to get him self out of trouble and pretend he doesn’t know what Geoffrey is talking about when Alice comes in to the room. She is more sympathetic towards Billy and doesn’t want to punish him, she just wonders why he couldn’t have come to her if he needed money or was in trouble.
Alice is quite upset as to why Billy felt he couldn’t have come to her for help. She is getting fed up with Billy lying, she is already feeling emotionally drained prior to this section, as her mother had just died, and not sending off her letter just gives her more to think about . He is always getting himself in to a mess. Alice is acting a bit like ‘oh it’s happening again, what did he do this time?’ this is shown through her facial expression and her hand gestures, brushing her hair back and looking down.
In this section there is not much to say about Alice’s relationship because they do not converse one on one, the only interaction they have is where Geoffrey says to Billy that hopefully his mother will get more sense out of him when she enters the room, and when Alice asks Billy what he has done with the money, Geoffrey says ‘he’s spent it. That’ what he’s bloody done with it.’ This slightly reminds me of siblings arguing and going to their mother to resolve the problem and it seems like Geoffrey is the one getting Billy in to trouble by telling their mother what he has done wrong.
In the rest of the play, overall, Alice is very calm and more concerned of every situation Billy comes home with throughout the whole play. More than shouting and trying to discipline Billy, she wants him to talk to her and sort it out. She tries to understand him and bring her self down to his personal level and find out what is happening on the inside, she wants to try and get Billy to stop lying, but her plan never seems to succeed.
