My group and I are working on a play called the "Birthday Party" By Harold Pinter. The work is set in 1960's. The scene we doing is about a man, names Petey returning home from some sort of morning to job to a boarding house where his wife, who's called Meg and is the owner, fusses around him. We start to see that this routine is very basic and a sense of this what they do every day. As the scene goes on Stanley comes in and plays quite a grumpy teenager. I play the part of Petey. At the time of this plays setting, men had more of a dominant role in society and the women didn't work much and did more of the housework.
This could mean that the male characters in plays around this time were more dominate and women did more housework and just like Meg, fussed around their husband as he was the only source of income, this could influence Meg as being fussy and concerning over Petey. The war would have been less than two decades ago so that may influence the characters in plays. Meg maybe fussing around he husband because he was a war-hero influencing her to very proud and caring of husband, or maybe Petey only has a morning job because he is slightly injured, this could influence his physical expression.
This is different from the text that we have studied called Abigail's Party because was set in the 1970's where women had a more dominant role than in the 1950's. The women were more out-spoken and more free to work have more social activities. In Abigail's Party there was a lot more conflict and more fiery action between characters unlike in the Birthday Party it was Meg said a comment, which Petey may of thought was stupid, Petey just answered simply in a slow pace and showed no motivation to want to speak.
In Abigail's Party when a comment was made that one of the partners didn't like to hear they either fought about it or gave a sarcastic comment to show their annoyance whereas in the Birthday Party I, Petey, just gave short simple unmotivated answers to a persistent and fussing Meg. The two plays showed different ways of coping with situations as throughout the scene we performed Petey showed boredom and Meg carried on being quirky, fussy and questionable, in comparison to that in Abigail's Party they handled situations in a more sarcastic, and argumentative.
The two plays are humorous on different levels. The Birthday Party is funny because of we can see Peteys clear boredom of having this conversation and routine, which we can tell is a daily thing he goes through. Megs stupid comments just to speak and engage with Petey and in cases, to know out side life, is funny to us because the questions are stupid like when he's just got the corn flakes and she asks if they are nice and he hasn't even tasted them. However, the two plays have similarities. Pinter and Leigh are both known for naturalism.
The scene on Birthday Party I performed was very natural and realistic nothing out of the ordinary happened it was very simple and plain but it was easy to relate to which made it effective and the birthday party as too naturalistic and perhaps more modern and in the effect of couple arguing and women playing more dominate roles. However, the "Birthday Party" as it goes on turns out to be more absurd and super-natural. Both plays also have fussy and inquisitive women. Meg is very questionable to Petey and wanting to know things, Bev.
Tries to keep the gathering she's got alive and wanting people to pay attention to her likewise to Meg wanting Peteys attention. The historical and social setting is fairly similar as the man in Birthday Party does seem to have the dominant role as Meg does everything for him cooking, washing etc. Contrastingly to when Angie say's something against Tony, like he is argumentative or won't do something, he takes action by shouting or grabbing her hand. Angie stops and doesn't protest showing men still had some dominant role in the 70's.
We are presenting our play as the audience in a semi-circle in one end of the studio and us performing in the other half of the circle. This allows the audience to be the third wall, which is very in the style of Pinter and Leigh. This can give the audience more of a role and part, its very soap like, which is naturalistic, just as the plays studied, are intended to be. We are using different techniques and styles of performing such as giving each character more or less just one characteristic and not changing the pace much.
For example when I play Petey I kept the same tone and tired motivation to tell the audience that I've been doing this for a very long time. For Meg she kept her fussing and questionable ways and when Stanley comes down he was more mellow and got the attitude of I've got my wrapped round my little finger. We used symbolism in our play, for example my paper. When I played Petey, the paper was my only bit of something new for that day, everything else was the same predictable self but my paper, which I'm though out the scene reading or holding, gives me salivation from Meg and the predictable ways.
We are keeping the style very naturalistic. This is different from the other play as the characters pace changed very much through the play. At one time they would be talking and the next minute there would be an argument to change the pace and the mood in which all the characters felt. You never felt the characters would stay for long at one place whereas Petey stayed in the chair all the time and kept his pace the same except it did change sometimes. The other text (Abigail's party) influenced our performance by making Meg a little more dominate and persistent for Peteys attention.
