Devising Scenes

We got put into groups and given a topic by Emma to devise a short scene to. I was with Cassie, Cameron, Sacha, Tyler and Cory. We had to do ours about the courtship rituals of animals. We had the idea to set it as if we were humans in a bar, with the men trying to pick up the girls by using the animals techniques. It started with Sacha being a pregnant, male seahorse, coming up to talk to us about how his wife is at home resting, while he came out to this club before the children are born.

Cameron then came on and tried to pick me up at the bar like a peacock, by miming his tail feathers spreading out and introducing himself as Mr Peacock, so I went off and started dancing with him. The Cory came over to Cassie and pretended to be a hippo. He pretended to soil himself and fling it around with his tail, while Cassie pretended to enjoy the smell. Then Tyler came on and pretended to be a deer. He had his hands as antlers on his head and Cory came on, as a deer, to try and battle him. They locked their hands together, as if they were antlers and Tyler beat Cory to the ground, so Cassie left with Tyler.

This scene was meant to show all the different rituals animals use and by expressing them as humans, we managed to make it a lot less fake and even though it was still comical, it wasn't humans pretending to be animals, which doesn't always work. Other groups had to focus on human rituals, the importance of virginity etc. This exercise was one, effective way of trying to present to the audience many different things we have been exploring and gave us some insight into some of the scenes we could include in our final play.