Our Day Out by Willy Russell Essay -- Special Needs Britain Our Day Ou

Our Day Out by Willy Russell For our second module, we looked at the study of the play ‘Our Day Out’ by Willy Russell. The play is about a special needs class from Liverpool going on a day out to Wales, and the different dilemmas they put their teachers Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Kay through (like stealing animals from a zoo). We had to choose three key moments that we thought were the most important sections from the play and where we thought drama was built around. For us, the key characters in the story are Mr. Briggs, a strict teacher Mrs. Kay, a gentler teacher, and Carol, a quiet pupil in the special needs class. We used different explorative strategies whilst developing and performing our drama. This essay is the response to the play. Our first key moment that we chose was a conversation between the headmistress and Mr. Briggs. We thought this was a key moment because it showed a drop in Mr. Briggs’ status. We got to this conclusion after a group discussion. We decided to hot seat the characters in order to develop them. We wanted to find out how Mr. Briggs really felt about not having the total authority. Mr. Briggs developed into a strict disciplinarian who disliked most people. However Mrs. Kay developed into a sweet motherly type teacher. Our second key moment was Mrs. Kay defending herself and answering back during a disagreement with Mr. Briggs. We decided this was a key moment because it let us show a completely different side to Mrs. Kay. We used thought-tracking so we could show the audience Mrs. Kay’s real anger. However the actor playing Mrs. Briggs found it difficult to adapt to the change in character. To help her and the drama out, we used the explorative strategy forum theatre so w... ...ned her status. Mr. Briggs responded by seeming to shrink so there was an apparent change in status. Our final key moment was marked by an aside by Mr. Briggs. The final key moment shows Mr. Briggs destroying the film after the day out. We showed him destroying the film as an aside so that the audience knew something that the characters didn’t: Dramatic Irony. There was no dialogue during the aside which made it much more effective. The aside also suggested that Mr. Briggs didn’t change at all and that it was all an act. It developed the audience’s dislike of Briggs even more. Mr. Briggs however, regained his status once again as he was the only character left on stage and he was centre stage so all eyes were on him. Overall I think our key moments were accurate and the explorative strategies we used helped us develop our characters and our drama.