Blocking

With Jill, we began to block the play. Blocking is the precise movement and positioning of actors on a stage in order to facilitate the performance of a play, ballet, film or opera.

So we thought for the first part, we would first try and create a table using ourselves. So six of us knelt down either side of each other, resembling the shape of the table. I then found a creepy piece of music called 'running wolf' and also incorporated some wolf sounds into the piece and played them together. In the line "A girl stands by a great window" we found a really old fashioned dress for Jess to wear, and then Jess walked 'through' the table, when she touches the table, the pairs separated then linked together quickly once she had gone through them. We were also going to use Ryan and Amy in this specific part playing Mr & Mrs Willoughby and we tried Ryan carrying Amy on as Mrs Willoughby is supposed to be really sick, then he lay her down on the table. After trying this many times in different ways, we decided this part wouldn't work as we wanted quick snappy movements to emphasise the eerie atmosphere we wanted to create. We then decided to add wolves into the table scene, as we thought it would make the scene creepier and even a little scary. As Megan is the most flexible in the group, we thought she would have the right movement to play as a wolf. When we tried it, we thought this worked really well and the wolf contrasted well with the 'little girl' on stage. Although we did think it would be more powerful having around 3 wolves to make them a pack. Of course none of this was for definite and we were just experimenting with different ideas as at this point no one was cast yet, but we all did really like this idea.

A few weeks later, we decided to scrap this idea as Justine came up with a small routine for the wolves and some characters to do at this point in the play which we went on to do instead. The routine included the whole cast, minus myself and Dan who play Sir & Lady Willoughby and are sat at the top of the stage. The routine starts by the group stood together as if they are a pack of wolves, then one by one walk forward, pushing and shoving through each other, as if they were fighting for power, they then gather in a pack again and hold on to each others shoulders run around the stage then the characters run off then the wolves stay on and begin another routine which is a dance this time. The dance is a really good part of the play, but I know that the cast of the wolves were struggling with certain moves and could always do it, so for the weeks the routine kept changing until everyone felt comfortable with it and could perform everything correctly and in the end worked our really well.

When blocking the performance we had to bare in mind Russ's section in the playbook 'ideas for staging' where he suggests ideas for staging. He mentions the dark snowy woods and the struggle to portray where we are in a scene and the wolves eating the driver etc. He advises we use minimal staging, which we did and sound effects that the audience can believe, which we did by Daniel bringing in a fake gun that sounded exactly like a real gun and using sound effects of smashing glass and wolves howling with were really effective. Russ also writes about the ice skating scene, and how he portrayed it with movement and gesture which is exactly what we did. We had Bonnie and Sylvia centre stage mime skating but not moving. We incorporated wolves in the background climbing all over the staging staring at the girls. We did this to contrast the differences and so the audience wouldn't get bored watching the girls not move and stay centre stage, so they would be watching the wolves approaching the girls and feel a bit on edge. Although Russ is unable to make our performance I think we have adapted his play very well and took the advice he had written.