New Characters: 'The Office Affair'- Jeffery & Margo

22/10/12
Due to us changing the style of our performance, it was necessary that we created a variety of contrasting characters for our series of 5-minute improvisations. Before we did this we looked at the research we completed on possible secrets people might have. From this we created two possible plots, the first being a secret affair, and the second a blind date. For the secret affair we created two characters. Jeffery, a man in his 70s that own his own pencil factory, who is having the affair with his secretary, a feisty women quite a few years younger than he is, potentially in her 30s. The person who discovers the affair is Jeffery’s 'girlfriend' Margo, a middle class 'posh' character roughly in her 50s who appears to think very highly of herself, creating an over the top persona. We decided that we would base the style of acting behind our lessons used to study Lysistrata for the other side of the course, in which we looked at the Carry-on films to understand the slapstick witty performance style and the humor used within it. This meant we were able to use sexual innuendos to create humor and well as exaggerate each characters' personality. For example, Elizabeth (Karen) uses very suggestive body language, fluttering her eyelashes and walking seductively to his desk to 'sharpen his pencil' before handcuffing Jeffery to the table.

4/12/12

Lysistrata & Carry-on

Furthermore, we found we were able to our work in the second area of our course to help develop the humor within the two performances. The play we are currently studying is a comedy originating form Ancient Greece that using the issue of woman stereotypically being an object of ‘sexual desire’ to their husband’s to prevent Greece from going to war. The woman, all of contrasting elaborate personalities go on strike, refusing to have sex with their husbands and taking charge of the Acropolis. Throughout the play there are both subtle and obvious sexual innuendos and references, combined with the use of exaggerated costumes such as phalluses to emphasize the issue of sexuality in the play and to enhance the visual comedy on stage. As a result, we decided to make sure we included lots of suggestive lines that highlight Jeffery’s high sex drive that contrasts the expectations of his elderly appearance. Within Lysistrata the woman often leave a lot to the audience’s imagination, hinting at underlying sexual desires etc. For example, Myrhinne asks if the subject behind the meeting is ‘big and meaty’ to which Lysistrata replies ‘yes, very big and meaty’ to which Myrinne questions, ‘then why on earth aren’t they here already’ to connotes to the audience that they are sexually motivated, the phrase ‘big and meaty’ possibly linking to a male’s ‘assets’. Similarly to this, we adapted the scrip as a group to come up with a mini monologue for Jeffery, in which he uses the metaphor of a journey and ‘flying a plane’ to subtly reference the closing f his affair with his secretary.