Challenges and Solutions

We had a few of challenges during rehearsals such as;

- Me having problems with Articulation - mainly when i'd say the address

- Chris being sick (Creating other mannequin in case Chris does not show up

- Joseph being in pain because his leg injury

- Performance day, lights did not work properly

- Voice Over (Chris)

- Fixing the copied clothes the day before our performance, not working properly

- Facing the audience on my own, not moving at all, just saying lines with emotions

- Looking at the audience

- Use of space

- Practicing

Every time I would perform my monologue, I would get feedback from my friends as well as my teacher. The main note was to work on articulation and articulate the last letters of words. The main one was, when I would say something important or something that would stand out, like when I would talk about how I was getting bullied and how my dad would beat me up for no reason. When I was talking about it, my feedback was to articulate and project better because i'm saying important things, also so the audience knows how I ended up in the position that I am right now. Overtime, as we would rehears I would try my best to slow down and articulate every word better and to try to perform it as good as I can. My main line was when I would say the address "Why would anyone care about a kid that lives down at 45 Miller Way" I was explaining my address, but my teacher and friends said that they didn't understand the words properly therefore I was working on it a lot. When it came to the last couple performances, I managed to articulate as well as I could and I impressed my teacher and she was really happy.

Chris couldn't attend the last month or last couple of weeks due to his asthmatic injury. He would always give us a objective for each week to complete and we would always be in touch with him and tell him what we done and what not. For the last week we were working on our background story to create a little scenery for our character. This helped us build sort of emotions for our character to know how it feels to be in their position. Personally this helped me a lot because we done a full 5-10 minute little play about my character. Joseph helped me with my little play, as he acted two different characters. The bully (Jonah) and the Dad. He first acted as the bully in school, when he barged me I almost drop and I still said sorry because I didn't want any trouble with him. After that scene I slowly turned around to go to my house and Joseph quickly swapped into the Father. He held a bottle in his hand just the way I was explaining him in my monologue. As he saw my walk in the house, he straight away started shouting and me and the he slapped me for no reason. I then ran upstairs in my room to the way it was written in my monologue. This helped me more than enough because it gave me a sense of how it feels to be bullied for no reason. This was a bit of a challenge to us because it was improvised all the way through, we didn't think about it just straight acting without any time put into it - for the background story.

When Joseph would miss a lesson, he would let us know and give us a reason to why he wouldn't make it. Joseph missing a lesson wouldn't really affect my time learning my monologue, because I didn't have any scenes or anything with him. Our play was all own monologues. Joseph really helped me with the background scenes of our characters.

On the performance day, we were doing a run through of our play in the morning, as we were changing scenes from Stephanie to mine, the lights stopped working, and I was waiting for the lights to change orange and then lights on which that's the time when I walk in on stage to perform my monologue. The lights didn't turn on for a good 10 minute, the technicians team told us that there was something wrong with the lights. At this point I was getting worried because I was thinking in 2/3 hours I'm doing the real play and imagine this happens, what would I do? How would I react? Do I still walk in on stage even though the lights don't work?. At the end  they fixed the lights and I was really happy and the technicians apologized for the problem. During the real performance, at the first performance at 2:00PM , the lights were a little bit faster than usual, and there were moment where Joseph was on stage clearing out what was not meant to be there for the next scene - while the lights were off (black out) and before he exit the lights turned on while he was still clearing out. At the second performance at 7:00PM, the technician team were perfect, there was nothing wrong with the lights or the sound or even the voice over from Chris (The Pillowman...Thanatos). The second performance run really smooth and I enjoyed performing a play that contained a story that included depression and suicide rather than a comedic show. I was always in comedic plays, I had never experienced bullies or depression, therefore the play Pillowman - Thanatos gave me an idea of how it feels to be depressed and how easy it is to lose your life when you are feeling lonely and isolated.

We were hoping that Chris would be able to come back from his injury, but he couldn't. We had about three different plans about our play. How things would go if Chris was here, how things would go if Chris wasn't here, how things would go if we placed a mannequin instead of Chris. We run through all of them, but the best one, of course its if Chris was there but sadly, he couldn't attend due to his injury. Therefore, we had to perform our play without Chris, but all his lines were recorded and played through the speakers at the right time. I was really impressed of how well it turned our with the voice over because it gave the audience an idea that Chris has some sort of superpower, they can only hear him in his head and hes giving them directions to end their life's. Personally, using the voice over instead of the mannequin turned out really well and I was really excited to the way it went.

When we were working with costume, we all had to pick school looking blazers or trousers because we were students. We needed to have two similar blazers, two similar shirts, two similar trousers and two similar ties because, one I'd wear in the performance while performing and the second on hangs down from the lights when I die at the end of my scene to show that I died. The double clothing, we working on it on the day before the performance and we set it up. The next day in the morning there was some trouble with it when they would go down in the stage attached to a rope to represent our death. We had couple of problems with it when the clothes would go down, sometimes it would fall down, or hang on something else and it wouldn't look professional. In the morning the technician team worked on it and they fixed it really well, by the time we done our run through, the clothing - dropped without any problem and it looked really well and organised. We was all happy about it because that was really important to show the death of us. Also, it was our first idea we suggested when we were going through the lines and when were were talking about our death, and the way it should end.

What I found kind of difficult was, when I was on stage by myself, it felt as if I had the whole power in the room. I did. Everyone had their eyes and mind on me, everything that was said was by me, and I never had that experience on stage in my life. Being there on my own. Expressing my character the best I could, trying to impress the audience and make them feel the way I feel about my character, put them in my position. My scene was extremely depressing because I was getting bullied by a group of people in school, and when i'd come home i'd get hit by my dad for no reason and make me bleed. I was really impressed with the way it turned out because I had never performed a scene where it included, anger, depression, bullying, suicide, etc. I was always in a comedic sort of play. While I would be saying my lines and acting as my character, I would look at the audience and be impressed by everyone because all their eyes were on me. As I would act, I would think of articulation and slowing down - for me to be able to perform to my best ability. My confidence grew, when I would act it in front of my friends or when we would have a run through, because then, even if you mess up or forget a line, you still can get on track or a friend that's helping you line run would be able to help you in case you fail.