8/9/2019 Drama Diary for GCSE writing

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Lessons 1/2:  In our frst lesson, we read through our scripts and ound out more about

the plot and that our play was mainly a tragedy with gritty realism and was quite

ritualistic. In this lesson we ound out that our play was set in the 19th Century and it is

during this time, when the legislation was changed and witchcrat became a criminal

oence, tried in a court o law and was punishable by death. We also wored out that this

play had an adult target audience and had quite dar themes o death, horror and some!iolence, with quite a sombre and gloomy mood. In our second lesson, we hot"seated our

characters to de!elop them and to mae them seem more realistic by getting to now

them better. #his also helped us to be more spontaneous and helped us mae our

characters more belie!able. We also did some research on the play and our characters to

help us with our hot"seating beorehand, so it would help us de!elop our characters

urther.

Lessons 3/4: In the third lesson, we tried some role"play, so that we could be more

in!ol!ed with our characters and try to eel as they would ha!e elt during that time and

we also used some impro!isation to see how our characters would beha!e on stage. In

our ourth lesson, we began blocing on the stage area, to see how our characters would

mo!e about on stage during the perormance. We used our stage directions during this

lesson, to help us determine how to bloc a ew scenes rom our play. It was also ey that

we bloced our scenes in a way that applied composition and picturi$ation, to see what

eects our possible placements on stage could ha!e on the audiences% understanding o

our piece.

Lessons 5/6: &uring these lessons, we started acting some scenes, using space on

stage, still with our scripts. We tried to run ully through the scripts a couple o times

each lesson, with some mo!ement on stage and with a general idea o how our character

would sound and react in each o the scenes within our play. &uring this time, we also

decided to do an 'merican accent, but later abandoned this idea, since through some

more research, we elt that a (ritish accent would be more suitable.

Lessons 7/8: In these lessons, our group came together to go o!er props, costumes and

lighting. We decided to go naturalistic and a!oid ha!ing to many props on stage, as the

setting or our play was a prison cell. In the end, we decided that all we should ha!e on

stage was a door rame, bench and bible. We also decided that we should go or quite old

ashioned costumes which were rele!ant to the time period, setting and our characters.

In these lessons, we also decided that the main lighting in our piece would mostly be

general co!er, but with some coloured spotlights or the clima) and high tension scenes.

 #he colours used were mainly red and blue spotlights. 'lso, in the *th lesson, we had to

perorm some o our piece to +iss edges and we then used some o the eedbac to

impro!e our acting on stage.

Lessons 9/10: In these lessons, we began to fnalise our piece and began woring on

some o the criticism that we were pro!ided with. -or e)ample, I began to wor on my

acial e)pressions, by eeping a f)ed rightened loo on my ace throughout the whole

play. I also wored on my mo!ement across the stage, by mo!ing closer to unny%s

character and also waling around on stage during some o my lines. We also ran through

our piece during the 1/th lesson with our costumes and with some o the lighting.

Lessons 11/12: &uring our fnal lessons, we began to run through the entire piece

without stopping and we really wored on increasing our mo!ement on stage, since our

play was quite limited with mo!ement. We also tried our piece with ull costume and

props and we also made sure that we new the routine or the ritual dance and started toperect the high tension and most dramatic ending scene.