Oyster Boy

Oyster Boy is a devised piece which is based on the poem 'The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy' by Tim Burton.

Overall I really enjoyed the performance as the techniques they used such as the use of music was really effective in terms of setting the mood as well as making it seem as if the play is set at the beach. A ukulele was used to create this as well as the use of costume which added to the idea of it being set at the beach as they wore costume commonly wore at the beach. 

The use of puppet was really effective. The movement and voice of the puppet was created through someone physically moving it and his voice was also created by one of the actors creating that voice, the puppet didn't speak, the only sounds that it made were giggles and sounds that expressed emotion which was really effective in terms of humanising the puppet. Also, as long as the puppet could be seen on stage it was moving. 

They used minimal props however the props they used reflected setting of the play which was the beach. They used baskets, a blue sheet which was representative of the sea and thats what they used it for. The ukulele. Also, they used music when one of the actors when under the sea (blue sheet0 which was really effective in creating the idea of her being under water.

SWED Q1

My stimulus is about a group of friends who are all a part of the art industry and striving to be recognised and what happens when one of them becomes famous and how it effects the other friends and their feelings towards her fame and success.  Jealousy plays a large part in the story as it is the jealousy of her friends which cause them to make art out her recovery but also what leads them to hate her as they are jealous of her, her fame and money but also because they feel as if she left them behind because she became famous and essentially ridiculed them and their work in the 'bohemian quarter'. When editing the scrips we kept in mind the theme of jealousy and had this widely explored in the play whilst also portraying the theme of hatred towards their successful friend as much of their jealousy is portrayed through the hatred of their friend. The story, we believe is set in London during the 90's which led us to researching British art and the characters also take drugs so we researched the effects of drugs on the body including drugs of marijuana, cocaine, and speed which were popular drugs during this century which helped us to characterise our characters during certain parts of the play. My initial reaction to the play was that it was very interesting and our devising process would be very physical. Throughout the play there are no line assignments as the entire play is essentially a monologue with no stage directions at all which meant that we could experiment and basically do anything we wanted with the play. However, this would also make it more difficult to devise as we have nothing to inspire us a part from the line and the content of the lines, this also meant that we had to use out own interpretations to create things like movement sequences and maybe the death of a character. We felt as a group that the scene where she jumps into the empty swimming pool would be an interesting scene to work on, it's also a significant scene within the play so we decided to devise that scene before anything else.