Scripted: Day 10

Today, we continued discussing the personalities of the various characters and exploring their relationships with the others in the play. These can be seen below.

After that, we went onto performing the very first scene. This time, aware of how we used proxemics and how we had set out the distances between everyone. At first we have William and Lilly sitting face to face over a long table whilst he asks her questions. This was designed to show the awkwardness that Lilly feels as William slowly moves closer to her from around the table. By the time he gets there, Bennett and Cissy walk in and sit together in the corner of the room, indicating a slight divide between them and William, as Lilly becomes more uncomfortable she moves from William to sit with Bennett and Cissy leaving William on his own, to further reinforce how William is the weird, outcast member of the group. Eventually, Nicholas walks in and sits on the table by himself but still engages in conversation, showing that he is in the group and well respected, but keeps himself to himself. All the while William seems to crave attention. As soon as Cissy asks him a question he moves over to the group, almost invading their space. As Tristan walks in we decided to place him with the main group too, seeing as he is a slightly weaker character who would hang around in big groups to seemingly fit in. As my character, Chadwick walks in, everyone is sat, apart from William. Chadwick remains on his feet and doesn't sit down, instead he looks for some books on the shelves and doesn't make an attempt to talk to anyone. This creates a little distance from the outset between Chadwick and the rest of the group, although I move closer to Lilly when introduced, only in order to appear friendly, as he has no reason not to get on with Lilly. As Bennett begins to wind Chadwick up, he walks closer to him, but very slowly, building this tension between the two and showing that he has a threatening demeanour about him. I believe the use of proxemics will be very important in how we show the other characters feelings towards each other, which is why the posters we created will be important, especially as there is little subtext for us to go by. I think from now on, we need to keep running through the play, but focusing more in the proximity between the characters to ensure that we have set the scenes out in the best way we can and not leave any grey areas.