Our Audio Ensemble Play

"People Snogging In Public Places" by Jack Thorne

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/scripts/people_snogging_in_public_places.pdf

"People Snogging" is a radio play that was first broadcasted in 2009.

This play is a bold and funny coming-of-age story that follows a young boy called James Mathews who's disabled uncle Patrick has moved in with his family. This play confronts the themes of cheating, bullying and the mental toll of a disability on family life. The play continually jumps through time of James' and his family's life and through this time jumping the plot and characters are slowly revealed.

I play the character Angela Matthews. She is the second of four children to Phyllis, sister to Uncle Patrick, wife to Tim and mother to James and Alice. During the play Angela is faced with main difficult choices and experience such as at the beginning of the play we learn that he husband Tim as cheated on her but she brushes that of. She was also knocked unconscious by her brother Patrick who was trying to hit Phyllis instead and she now has to take care of her brother and her son who may also have some kind of disability as well.

Personally I believe that When Angela was younger she was bold, clever, determined and had a life planned ready for herself. But when her mother died she was left to look after her brother Patrick and that completely stopped all of her dreams. Her life was put on hold and she began to lose herself within her family. In a scale of hierarchy I believe that Angela would probably be at the bottom to the whole family as she is suppressed by the disabilities that have stopped her life plans and her children have a higher priority over what she wants.

I think the most challenging part for me about playing this character is the time jumping. She is the only character that we see the whole timeline of her life from child to teenager to adult and I think this makes it a challenge to be able to show a lifetime span within a hour or so and to make it believable as well. In order to over come this challenge I have decided to change my voice to suit her age. As this is a radio performance I will not be able to show a change of age through her clothing so I have changed the pitch of her voice to show an ageing to her character. When she is her younger self at 13 I tried to used a high pitch voice and Angela's voice wouldn't have dropped yet and in the scene she is meant to be excited so I think it works quite well. Then when she is 17 I have used a middle range but I have also been more relaxed in the way I deliver the lines and she is complaining to her mother and so she isn't overly formal anyway. And finally for her present self I have tries to use a lower pitch in my voice to show age but also to she how the stress of life has got to her. I dialogue is also more formal I feel then when she was 13 and 17 so I think this also helps to age her character.

I also found it easier with this character in some scene to move my arms and act our the scenes in the space rather then just say the lines into the microphone. There is a scene near the end of the play where Angela and Tim have an argument about having Patrick stay with them. When doing this scene it seem that me and Pau both really act out the scene as if we were directing it to each other even though we are standing next to each other facing the same way. I think helped us both get into character better and it allowed us both to really feel the anger come through in our performance.