One of our final tasks was to use the main basis of contrast between comedy and tragedy in the play within a montage format. I worked with one other student, on this assignment, which goes by the name of Timothy. He played the role of Eddie and I took up the role of Mickey. There are plenty of key moments in the play and to choose our first scene we had to decide on whether we were going to start with the initial first encounter that Mickey and Eddie have near the beginning of the play or the scene in which Mrs Johnstone gives Eddie to Mrs Lyons. We decided to begin with the primary scene of Mickey and Eddie becoming “Blood Brothers”. We used this in order to show the purity and innocence of the boys at the beginning of the play. To show their young age we used high voices, relatively quick speech and short sharp phrases. This, in addition to adding emphasis on their age, draws attention to how at this point in the play they are very unlike one another. I, Mickey, was stood on one side of the stage, very close and intimate with the audience. The dialogue begins by Eddie running over to Mickey and saying “Hello”, Mickey then replies with a jolted/distorted, “Hello?” This to begin the entire montage shows a huge divide of social groups already, as Mickey is extremely social as this is the environment he has grown up in. But, Eddie has not grown up within this environment so he does not know how to play with new children or just meet people in general. That is why we decided to use these two lines as the main basis for the beginning of the montage that we created. This scene ended with Eddie and Mickey holding hands in the middle of the stage representing the most iconic part of the play. We were both knelt on the floor centre stage, Eddie sat up straight and Mickey relatively slouched (in comparison). To help with this characterisation we used conscience alley and hot seating to understand how this segment especially should be staged (seeing what other characters say or think about the two characters was rather revealing also.) This symbolizes the forming of a bond or a friendship that we then expanded upon within the next two scenes.
Our second scene was a transition of the two boys holding hands into them running around, pretending to be planes. We used this to our advantage as we decided it would be a perfect opportunity to show the gradual change of the two protagonist’s character development. Whilst we are running around making “NEEEEOWN, VROOOOOM!” sounds as we amuse ourselves (both in role and out) pretending to be planes, we progressively brought in sounds of gunfire and ammunition. This showed a change within seconds, but we decided it worked more effectively at this pace as it showed how much of a change they have undergone. The use of gun sounds also and the rolling around on the floor laughing, due to the fact that we have just been shot down, shows an excessive amount of foreshadowing that helps people with a strong understanding of the text (such as Timothy and I) to see the negativity of their change before it gets too depressing. This shows the contrast in comedy and tragedy, because the beginning of this scene is extremely light hearted and happy, but as soon as we changed to guns, an almost sadistic ambience on stage was created.
To contrast this flash of bleakness that this scene showed, we then went on to show the two boys running at each other after both going to watch “Nymphomaniac Nights” in the cinema. This is effective as we both ran at each other straight after doing the gun scene and suddenly Mickey shouts, “TITS!” and Eddie confirming what they had both seen by repeating “TITS!” once more. Heads then swivel round to face the audience, the characters interacted with the audience at this point using their eyes for literally a few seconds and then they both shouted simultaneously “TITS, TITS, TITS!” This reminds the audience of the children’s
