LESSON TWO. 19|09|2012. - ‘Subtext’

Act I Scene 1

(A room painted yellow)

 BRIDEGROOM: (entering) Mother.

 MOTHER: What?

 BRIDEGROOM:I’m off.

 MOTHER: Where to?

 BRIDEGROOM:To the vineyard (He makes as if to leave)

 MOTHER: Wait.

 BRIDEGROOM:Do you want something?

 MOTHER: Son, your food.

 BRIDEGROOM:Leave it. I’ll eat grapes. Give me the knife.

 MOTHER: What for?

 BRIDEGROOM:To cut them

 MOTHER: (muttering) The knife… The knife.. Damn all of them and the scoundrel who invented them.

  BRIDEGROOM: Let’s change the subject.

 MOTHER: And shotguns, and pistols, even the tiniest knife… and mattocks and pitchforks

 BRIDEGROOM: Alright.

 MOTHER: Whatever can cut through a man’s body, a lovely man, in the flower of his life, who is off to the vines or the olives, because they are his, inherited….

BRIDEGROOM: (lowering his head) Be quiet. 

We were given this script by the famous spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca; to work on for half an hour in partners, and we were to try and interpret the subtext of knife crime within it. I was working with Chris, and we used my fear of a past family stabbing so I could bring that up when he seems so in a rush to leave the mother, and so when he asks for the knife, the outburst afterwards. We then performed them to the rest of the group, and seen where more emotion was put in. He then told us the plot of the story and how there was a history of knife crime as the mothers husband had been stabbed. Then, as a group, we went through each line and read into the subtext more and what they might be thinking. Then, me and Chris paired up with Emily and Matt and they were playing the subtext while me and Chris played the lines. We brought what the mother might of been thinking and used physical theatre to show that. Then we showed the burden that the mother was on her son, by letting Emily jump onto Chris and then hang on his neck. When the subtext goes because it’s being said, we made it so Emily and Matt were suddenly repeating everything we said but with more emotion, this echo gave a bigger effect. 

After performing each groups performances to each other we decided to pick out our favourite parts and develop them as one big group. We focused on ‘burden/death’ ‘knife issues’ and ‘echo’s’. To create the burden, we used Jake as the bridegroom, and Kelly as the mother. As she said “wait” she ran and jumped on his back, then as we were stood in a circle, Emily ran forward and Jake picked her up, Chris and Matt went in at both sides to help support Emily and Kelly and then me and Ciara ran to the legs, and the was to show how the bridegroom felt the mothers sadness and grief a burden. It was hard to get this so it looked effective and not messy. We had to practice it safely to make sure we knew when it was safe to reach our positions. As we ran in, we muttered another line from the script to emphasise the ‘knife issues’ we made this effective by using different speeds and pitches to show the fear of the past situation, this also brought in the ‘echo’s’ that we thought made an effect.