My improvisation is called ‘Bradley’ and I am comparing this to a play we have read in drama called ‘Billy Liar’. Billy Liar is written in around 1960 by Keith Waterhouse and is set in an industrial town. A difference between the two plays is that ‘Bradley is set in the present day and ‘Billy liar is set in the 1960, this tells us that people’s views have changed and also the social life has changed.
Our play is mainly about having different pressures, and we used different techniques to show these pressures. The play consisted of different scenes where Bradley meets his girlfriends. Also in ‘Billy liar’ there are many scenes where he meets his girlfriends. During ‘Billy Liar’ Billy lies to his girlfriends to get himself out of trouble, and also in ‘Bradley’ Bradley lies to get him self out of trouble, trouble that they got them self into. An example of Bradley’s lies is the time when he lies to one of his girlfriends about his sister getting cancer, this was to get sympathy and an excuse of why he didn’t meet his girlfriend. Billy and Bradley lie that often so when they get them self into trouble the lies just roll of their tongue, it’s as if they can’t help lying.
Our play used very little scenery to give a Brechtian style which is what we wanted as we didn’t want to be changing the set around and also we didn’t have much space to put the scenery in, but in Billy Liar they would have had more room and different sets to be changing the scenery around. In Billy liar it is different as they use a lot of scenery to make it seem real and that they are actually in the rooms. Also I think that both plays seem real and that they both do actually happen in real life. You could tell that Billy liar is set quite a lot of years ago as they were in a industrial town and didn’t have a lot of money, and also the way they just lazed about the house and making the wife do all the work just like people used to do in the 1960’s.
In Bradley you could tell it is set in the present day with having the coffee bar scene and also the night club scene. I would also say that more people in the present day would have cheated on their girlfriend or boyfriend, and also it is a lot more common for people to cheat on each, but in the 1960’s it was very rare for people to cheat on each other. In the more modern day it is more likely that people will cheat on each other. There are a lot more people that go to university and have to study a lot so don’t have enough time to have a long term relationship and don’t want to have the commitment so just have fun and that includes having more than one girlfriend.
In our play we joined all of our scenes together to the final scene where all the characters meet face to face. In the scenes they gradually built up to the final scene, the opening scenes were for the audience to get a picture of the characters and also so they could think about what is going to happen in the final scene.
In our play there were different pressures and they were all shown in different ways and using different techniques. In our play, Bradley is very similar to Billy as they both have many girlfriends and also they both lie. A difference between the two characters is that Billy quite often goes into his dream world whilst talking to his girlfriends, but Bradley doesn’t seem to go into a dream world. In Billy Liar the characters seem to want Billy a lot more than the characters in Bradley. This is shown because of how many times Billy gets into trouble and lie’s his way out of it, the girls always come back to him. But in Bradley it is always Bradley who does all the chasing and it shows at the end where all his girlfriends leave him that they aren’t too interested in him.
Another comparison between the two plays is that, both Billy and Bradley are greedy and always want more. In Bradley, he is greedy by having more than one girlfriend and in Billy Liar he also has more than one girlfriend, really Billy should just stay with one girlfriend. Our play has a different ending, because Bradley was so greedy in having more than one girlfriend it backfired at him as they all left him and he had no one, but in Billy Liar they don’t all leave him and it leaves you on the edge about whether he did or did not get on the train an leave his family.
