Unit 9

Christmas Project Part 2:

After we had separately performed our ideas, we all came together and started to try and fuse all our ideas. We ended up coming up with the idea that five kids and a dog who are looking for their arrested parents, stumble across a giant book only to then fall into the pages and travel to different times. It just so happens that an evil character called the Evil One is behind it and was the one who banned Christmas.

We made a decision early on that we wanted the play to be lighthearted and comedic therefore we came up with the idea that the villain becomes good in the end. From this point we started to pinpoint scenes and block them. First scene we blocked was a line of soldiers which the Evil One goes along the line observing the soldiers. Then the soldiers march forward and aim their guns at the audience.

Second scene is two parents illegally bringing presents home for their kids, which they then get arrested for. The kids then call their friends to ask if their parents had been taken, which when they find out realise they need to meet up. Next scene the kids meet up at a busy market where they discuss how their is a government facility where they think their parents are being held. In the background who have several fruit sellers, a pipe seller, a few couples shopping and a beggar.

Next scene is a split scene between the police, and the Acolytes and the Evil One. PO1 and Marley are eating lunch when suddenly the alarm goes off and they have to go. On the other side of the stage, the Acolytes interrupt my character's- the Evil One's- phone call to tell them that children have broken into the facility. I demand angrily an answer to how they let kids break in, to which one of the acolytes tell me how to put up an enter sign on the front door. I then tell them to go find them.

The next scene the kids wander on to the stage where they end bumping into the police who then proceeds to chase them. From here Taylor created a Scooby Doo themed chase. After this the kids find the book, read the first line and then are thrown into the book. Then the police do the same. Then we had a short comedy skit between the Acolytes where they decided to get lunch instead of finding the kids. The acolytes then bring the Evil One to the book, where he cunningly decides to send the Acolytes into the book.

The next scene is the Victorian scene where the kids, police and Acolytes take turns to ask Charles Dickens questions in a market. The set up is almost identical to the modern market from earlier. After this is the WW1 scene where the children are in No Man's land. They then end up being a part of the football scene.

We then had to decide on an ending, so we all slit up into three groups and came up with three different ideas. One group wanted to a slow motion thought tracking as the evil one is about the press the bomb, and he explains that the reason he hates Christmas is because his parents died at Christmas time.

Another group went for an ending where he hates Christmas because it brings up memories of his step-dad and the abuse he put him through. This wasn't very pg, so this wouldn't have worked with the rest of the play, so we decided not to incorporate any of that idea into it.

My group wanted it to be that the Evil One doesn't become good, but just hesitates to press a bomb, while the kids are giving him a load of reasons why he shouldn't press it. What we ended up doing was having the Evil One become good in the end because he secretly loves Christmas and keeps a secret stock of presents. In my opinion I wouldn't have gone with this route, I didn't think he needed to turn out good, and could have just been evil because he loves it.

I approached my character as the very typical panto villain. He is very arrogant and always thinks he is one step ahead of everyone else, he looks down on everyone and can make very patronising and sarcastic remarks at times. He has a lot of hate for Christmas that stems from his childhood from when his parents went out to get presents and died in a car crash. But the combination of the memories of Christmas with his parents, with the fact he really misses it, causes him to love it in a way as well.

In order to sustain a arrogant and patronising aura, I needed to make sure I had a tall posture, and I walked as if I was the king of the world. I pulled facial expressions that made it look like I was looking down on everyone, and at times was disgusted by the stupidity of everyone. I used very sarcastic, and over-confident tones in order to portray a very arrogant and ignorant feel to the character. I throughout the play also added moments where he would lose this and seem slightly nostalgic towards Christmas, which I would do through sinking my body language, and having a very melancholy tone.

Overall I think the performances went really well. We added a pantomime element by getting the audience to boo the Evil One. I used the energy the audience was giving me, in order to fuel my character's hate, and would even add lines sometimes towards the audience such as "Do you not have anything better to do?". However I think the last performance wasn't as good because we had a very small audience and they didn't really co-operate with the boos, which made the last performance have less energy than the others.

Personally next time, I would like to add more of a balance in my acting, I feel as if I didn't find the right balance between evil and nostalgic, and at times I felt as if the nostalgic part was almost forced on to the character just for the sake of advancing the plot. This was partly to do with how poorly the character's development throughout the play was, but I felt like I could have done more in my acting in order to portray that he's not truly evil.