Choose a play that you have seen in your course in which the actors worked well together on stage. Discuss in detail the ways the performers played their roles and interacted in at least one scene. Include reference to voice, movement, characterisation and relationships.
My chosen play is ‘On the Waterfront’ which I went to see with my GCSE drama group on Tuesday …th April at Nottingham Playhouse. On the Waterfront is a play written by Budd Schulberg with Stan Silverman and for the performance that I went to see it was directed by Steven Berkoff. In 1950s New York, the dock workers’ unions are in the stranglehold of the Mob. If you’re on the inside then life is sweet – kickbacks, bribes and easy shifts are your rewards. Go against them and your life isn’t worth living.
The actors in this play worked well together in many ways. For example, in the scene where Johnny and Charlie are in the car together, many of the other actors were in the wings producing the noises of the car. They worked well together because they were all producing a slightly different sound but when they put them all together they sounded very realistic and this added effect to the scene. Another small touch to this scene was that the actor playing the driver of the car was miming having a column gear stick and this small touch added reality to the scene for the audience. Also, the actors playing Johnny and Charlie worked well in this scene because as the car was meant to be stopping both actors jerked forwards in their seats in perfect timing together and this added great effect for the audience as it made us really believe that they were in a car so it added reality to the scene and made the overall picture of the scene much more believable.
Another scene in which the actors worked particularly well in this play was the pigeon loft scene. In this scene the actors were being pigeons and were making cooing sounds on the back of chairs in rows like perches for pigeons. They were all using bird-like head and wing movements and made the audience believe that they were pigeons. Because all of the actors played this part very well and stayed in character till the very end it helped the audience to believe it as if they had moved before they were meant to it may have ruined the illusion of the birds and subsequently ruined the whole scene for the audience.
Another scene that I particularly liked was th scene with the two men and the baseball bats. This scene was particularly effective for me because all the men contributed equally to a domino effect created as the two mafia men beat them with baseball bats on the ground. All the characters worked well in this scene because they all contributed to the domino effect and it therefore made it much more effective for the audience because they did not see any faults in the casts’ acting. Overall the actors were very good in this play and worked very well on stage.
