Final rehearsal and what we are doing

Final rehearsals and what we are doing:

so the first scene will be the 'happy family' picture:

It starts of with Angel and Brotha standing in the centre of the space facing the audience and the rest of us standing around them, we will then start walking towards them while verbally abusing and saying things like "you're worthless", "you cant do anything right"

After that we will get into the family portrait position, we will do this first facing the audience so they can see our faces, then we will create the same picture with our backs facing the audience. In the picture from the font we will all be smiling but from the back we will be showing physical abuse for example, i will be grabbing Brotha's T-shirt, and Steve will be grabbing Angels arm and twisting it. We chose to do this scene because it shows the audience that everything is not what it seems, they may look like a happy family but there are deeper issues going on within the family that they might not be able to see. 

In the last picture Angel will leave the family portrait and hold a sign saying "help me" once we see that the rest of group will disperse, Angel would then come up to us separately and try to show the sign but we would use physical theatre to blatantly ignore and push her way, then we would go pretend we saw someone we haven't seen before. This shows how the family refuse to accept what is going on even though its right under the noise they cant handle the fact that their family isn't in fact perfect its far from it. 

After that scene Angel would stand on a box while saying her monologue trying to explain to the audience that abuse within our family is actually going on and nothing is being done about it, while that scene is going on the rest of us would run up to Angel on the box and while she is reciting her monologue we would be shouting at the audience trying to cover up what she's telling them, we would say things like "she's lying", "she doesn't know what she's talking about, don't believe her." Angel would then shout "it happened to me" she reaches out to the audience as if she's asking for help, our arms then reach up to pull hers down and she falls off the box. 

That then leads onto our scene we would sit on a zig zag pattern with Angel at the front, while saying our line depending on how much power it holds we would either move forwards, backwards or sit facing a different direction, we also do this if someone else's line effects us. For example, one of my lines are "a sack'a shit the lot a'ya" for this line i would move forward as it holds a lot of power and effects the people around, When angel says "alone" i face away from her because its clear that she wants to be left alone. 

For the last scene we would get into a line facing the audience while Angel is standing up its sort of like a quiz show. Angel would asks us questions like "why aren't you happy?" and we would answer with blunt statements so avoiding the questions such as "Oh..you know....we're family....we're happy.....happy is a family....We're fine" Another question is "Why do you abuse your daughter" our answers would all be similar to the one before "Oh....you know....We're family....We're happy....everything's fine" The last question Angel asks is "why aren't yo empathetic" we don't answer the question so everything goes silent. 

We chose this last question and us being silent because we don't actually know the answer to it and it also leaves the audience wondering why them, themselves are empathetic and don't help when someone is in trouble especially when its within the family walls.