In order for all of us to try and develop a Liverpool accent we recorded our voices and then listened to them back to try and improve our accents. We as a group found this method very helpful as we all were playing young children and we had to try and develop Liverpool children’s accents for both the upper and lower class as Mickey and Sammy came from a lower class family whereas Edward came from an other class family. When we played our voices back we were able to hear how they sounded and the next time we could try and develop our accents further to try and make our performance sound even more realistic.
Mirror Work: I played some very important parts in the performance. My performance required a lot of facial expression and I had to try and develop it. An example of a line where my facial expression was very important was when I asked Edward for a sweet and he replied ‘yes’ and then offered me the bag. As you can imagine I had to be very shocked as Mickey was very poor and never really got any sweets before and if he did there was usually a catch. In order for me to try and create a child’s shocked face I tried my lines in front of a mirror noticing my facial expression.
I then was able to try and develop my facial expression and make it seem more like that of a shocked child. The rest of my group also found mirror work very helpful for the same reasons and I found that mirror work helped develop our facial expression dramatically and enhanced our final performance greatly. Research on the internet: As we were playing a scene set in Liverpool in the 1970’s we had to do some research to try and help us get an idea of Liverpool in the 1970’s, clothing etc. Before we preformed the play we took some time as a group to look up Liverpool and appropriate clothing on the Internet.
This gave us a very clear image of the surroundings and of the clothing worn in the 1970’s in Liverpool by both the upper and lower class. This then therefore enabled us to get clothing to match our characters and create a good picture the characters and of the times. Watched a film by Willie Russell also set in Liverpool: As a class we watched a film ‘Shirley Valentine’ by Willie Russell as well. It was also set in Liverpool in the 1970’s. We watched this film to try and create a better image in our head of Liverpool and the clothing worn and the way people acted in the 1970’s.
We also watched the film to try and develop our accent further by listening to fluent Liverpool speakers. The play helped us a lot to develop both our image and our accents around Liverpool. Along with recording after watching the film our group found that we had all definitely developed better Liverpool accents and we had all got a better idea of what clothes to wear and how people talked to each other in the 1970’s. We found that the film helped us get into character as we did not really have t worry much about accents after watching the film as our accents had improved greatly.
Therefore we had more time to concentrate on other factors of our performance such as facial expression. Trying to get into character: As a group we tried to use different ways to get into character. A useful way we found was to play childish games. We as a group found that playing games from our youth helped us greatly to get into the mind of a seven year old. We found that from playing games we were really in character and got a great feeling of being seven again. Playing games helped us to create an image of what it was like to be seven and this then helped us when we were performing our drama piece.
Hot Seating: When we all felt that we were in our characters we done some hot seating just to see how much we really were in character and to get us into more like of our characters. After doing a practice performance while we were still in character we chose to do the hot seating. The hot seating I found helped me to think more about the character I played and get a more in-depth view of him and what he was thinking. We were really put on the spot when we were hot seating and we had to make up an answer relating to our character very quickly.
Improvisation: We also used improvisation to try and help our performance. We found improvisation to be a bit like hot seating as we had to do thing in character on the spot. When we were finished our performance we had to carry it on making it up as we went along. We found this very helpful as it helped develop our performance of the character we were acting. The improvisation we found was one of the best ways to help develop our character and we spent most of our free group time doing improvisation.
