Thursday 22nd October 2015 - Act 1 Scene 9

In todays lesson we worked on the fight scene at the end of act 1, this is where Bernardo and Riff die. We start the scene by all standing at the side of the stage, we are all acting as if we are preparing for something big to happen, this means we have to be alert and ready for anything that may happen. We gradually all walk on stage crowding around Bernardo and Riff, I walk on after Jess, who nods at me as if a signal to come into the scene. When we are all standing around the guys, the atmosphere is tense and everybody is at a stance meaning they are focused on what is happening and ready to react.

When Tony enters in to the scene, him and Bernardo are arguing which results in Bernardo pushing hi to the floor. After this happens some of the Shark boys surround Tony, this is to intimidate him, this shows the audience who has the power at that present time. When Riff and Bernardo are getting ready to fight each other, we all have to keep moving around as the gang leaders do, this is to represent the atmosphere of the situation but also so the audience gets a good view of the scene.In this section we all have to be encouraging our gang leaders on. There is a lot of background sound that keeps the energy of the scene up, this is important so that the audience do not get bored and are engaged in what is happening.Tis is especially important so as our staging is a form of theatre in the round where the audience is all around us rather than having the audience front on. When Bernardo gets pushed to the floor, he loses his knife, I then have to kick it towards him which then allows him to get back up and kill Riff. When this happens the whole atmosphere of the scene changes, everything goes silent as if we have all hit reality, now it is more than just two gangs fighting and hatting each other, it has escalated so much that it has resulted in a death. Tony then bets built up with and anger and kills Bernardo, this is even more of a shock and we are all just looking at each other unable to move. We then hear police sirens this is when we run off, however, instead of just running in a linear pathway, we all change directions and run into each other and eventually find our way off stage. This suggests that we are in too much shock to know what is happening or where we are going.