16/11/10

Period 3

We read a play about a town who believed there was a goverment official coming to town, and when a poor traveller came to town, everybody assumed he was the official and began giving him bribes to sort something out for them in town (one of them paid him to get them a farm). The traveller took the bribes and did nothing, until he became bored of the bribes and left town with lots of money and the mayors daughter.

It was only when they recieved another letter, informing them the official was on his way, that they realised the mistake they had made.

Our task in this lesson was to create a 'bribe machine' which is a performance about how all the townspeople bribed him to do things for them, and how he eventually became bored of the bribes and left. We created a short performance all linking in to one another, for example, my character, paid the traveller money, because he wanted to start up a brothel, and the traveller offered to do so, another person came to him, requesting a job, and was then sent to the aforementioned brothel, another man was lonely, and also then sent to the brothel, a police officer then caught wind of there being some sort of trouble around that area and asked the 'offical' to sort it out, there was then a man requesting that a body was disposed of, suggesting the 'trouble' was sorted via murder. This carried on, with the owner requesting more workers, the workers requesting better pay, the clients requesting new workers, and the policeman becoming more concerned about that area, followed by more people being killed off. This continued until the traveller became bored of the stress and left, meaning the whole system fell apart.

The traveller sat in the center, with us scattered around in various poses, we froze whilst other people spoke, and when it was our turn to talk, used an exaggurated movement to get to the traveller.

We showed this to the group and were given the feedback that we used all the right techinques to create a bribe machine working and then falling apart, we may have needed to work on vocal projection and pace though, as we were a little slow.