Hey Blog! Last Saturday I had a drama performance, which I mentioned in my last post. In this one, I’ll tell you what happened with it!
This is probably my third big drama performance, and was the first for which I wrote the script. Or rather, I should say, we, my drama group, wrote the script, as it was a bit of practiced lines and a bit of complete improvisation. We had been planning it in drama for a few months, but the bulk of fully forming it was done in the last three weeks. Our drama teacher had had the idea of a ‘gallery ghosts’ performance, where various paintings from different time periods came to life, and so we all picked the paintings we would come from. Eventually, the final set were: Lady with Ermine (DaVinci); Girl with a Pearl Earring (Vermeer); Self Portrait (Van Gogh – for more on this artist see my previous post An Art Experience); The Card Players (Cezanne); Lady with Hat (Matisse); American Gothic (Grant Wood): and Son of Man (Magritte). These seven paintings were portrayed by nine performers, of which I was the dark-suited man in The Card Players.
If you look up the paintings, you will see what we had to try to copy, which is not all that easy! I think we managed all right, however. The props were possible to sort out, but the costumes less so – unless you have a massive wardrobe containing everything from polystyrene apples to Elizabethan costumes in the middle of the building where you practise. Luckily, our drama teacher has just that, so costumes weren’t a trouble. We had planned two performances outside, for the Belper Arts Trail, an annual event showcasing art and local talent. We had rehearsed a lot, and as it wasn’t my first performance, I found it not too difficult. As I was one of the card players, I was looking at my cards, not at the audience, so I wasn’t unnerved by the growing number of people watching until it was time to actually do the performance, which decreased trepidation.
The one thing I had to provide myself for the costume was the pipe. I said, perhaps foolishly, that I would whittle one. This took up most of Saturday afternoon, though I hadn’t started it till Friday. It looks absolutely amazing though, so if you happened to be looking out of your window in Belper on Sunday morning and saw a tall man (my Dad) and a boy in a black suit, old-fashioned hat, and white cravat waving in the wind with an odd-looking pipe sticking out of his mouth – yep, it was me! We wandered around town for a bit, and then went into the building for a last practice.
Both times we performed were brilliant, as the play we did was funny and poignant, because there were funny lines like “knock yourself out” to Van Gogh, when he asked for something to eat and there was a bottle of wine on the table; and the best in all time with this group – “God won’t pay my mortgage” in response to the American missionaries saying where God had got the man with the apple. The Lady with the Ermine got annoyed because everyone was more interested in “this beastly creature” (the ermine) than herself! Because we were all from different times, everyone had different ideas, and therefore some people had more in common than others! The end was Van Gogh slowly starting to die, as no one offered him any food. The missionaries did notice him, but had nothing themselves. The last words were from Van Gogh – “Please, preserve my paintings!” which was an amazing cue to all freeze, being preserved in time. The whole performance was super, and I would like a chance to write a script for something like that again!