Friday 15th January 2016 - Finale

          In todays rehearsal we worked on the finale scene where Tony dies, this is important that this scene has a tense atmosphere as it is the end of the play, and therefore we have to make sure that the audience are fully engaged in what is happening. We worked on the entrance of everyone who comes in when the gun is fired, we decided to come from all different stage entrances to show that everyone had just dropped whatever they were doing to get to the crime scene to see what was going on. Because of this i came running from the steps near the scaffolding so that as well as this different levels are being used. In addition to this we run in at slightly different times, this allows the audience to believe that people had been coming from different locations around the area. When each person runs in they have to have a sudden stop when they first see Tony on the floor with a gunshot wound, in addition to this we all glance at each other as if we are all realising that the rivalry between the two gangs has caused this death as well as the death of Riff and Bernardo. In this scene everybody is on edge with a mixture of feelings of anger, regret and fear, this is because Maria has taken the gun off of Chino and is pacing around pointing the gun at people standing around. When the gun is pointed towards me, i backed away, a few other people were doing this too, in my opinion this shows the audience the fear that everybody is feeling as their lives may also be in danger. As Maria breaks down and drops the gun everybody standing around slightly becomes more relaxed as she is no longer threatning to kill anyone, we then gradually move in towards Tony, and all look down at him and then at each other before all picking him up on our shoulders. This is the representation of carrying him at a funeral as he has died and the tow gangs have made peace with each other because of the death of three crutial characters in the story. When doing this we all bow our heads down to show the dissapointment we have in ourselves as everyone had contributed to the gang rivalry that had got too out of hand, and we all have have something to be ashamed of, this shows the audience that our characters are feeling this.