The Devil in Drag is a comedy set in the Renaissance period (Italy). The idea of the play followed ideas from Commedia De L'arte which helped us produce different costume ideas, ways each character walked and spoke and all things physical about them. The aim of the performance to create a very fake, tricked play which humoured the audience. We did this by doing lines such as "We're not in a theatre... Or are we?".
Throughout the performance rehearsals, there was a doubt in my mind that we wouldn't be able to pull together such a difficult performance. However despite all the worry, the play had eventually come together to leave an audience laughing at each and everyone one of our outgoing characters.
During the day of the performance we managed to do a full dress rehearsal which ensured that we knew what we was doing, when, and how to do our costume changes all in full view of the audience. The Devil in Drag is a very crazy, outgoing comedy where all characters are required to be on stage the entire time. This meant it was very important that we never lost focus and kept within each scene as there were parts of the play where we had to jump up and do certain things. For example, the unscripted characters were told to jump up and sing 'it's getting hot in here, so take of all your clothes'.
The layout for the play was very simple. We had seats in a semi circle where each character would sit whilst there scene wasn't being done. In the centre stage was a wooden box and a bed shaped object. On stage right there was a table figure with flowers and a tray of drinks (this added to the effect of a more old fashioned scenery). As each scene changed areas the boxes were moved and adapted to fit into that scene. For example from a home to a court room the boxes were pushed aside by the Devils. The lighting was varied, the majority of the time every scene was performed with a scattered light effect where characters had to ensure that the light was above them. However in only a couple of scenes there were short blackouts. For example in my scene when i had to trick the audience that i was up Pizoccas bum and instead I was running back to my seat.
Costume for this performance was one of the aspects that created a lot of comedy. For example the balloons or blow up breasts often worn by boys. In this performance boys played female characters and visa versa. The boys playing female characters would wear dresses and pink scarves ect.. to show there femininity. The devils would be in cloaks, horns and red waist coats. The judge would be in a royal looking jacket to show his authority. Pillows were placed where the stomach is of the cardinal. All of the above costumes would ensure that our audience would find it funny how each character was extremely over exaggerated as this was the aim of the entire performance.
Despite the little time that we had to work on the play together as a class, we proved that we knew our characters wants and needs of each scene. This was done by when a character had forgotten a line they would improvise what they thought would fit in at that point. It was easy to do this because we all knew our characters so well and the aims of each scene. Although that wasn't our exact lines, the performance still made sense in a whole because of the amount of character work we had done in previous lessons.
Each character was required to prove who they are by the way they walk, talk and look. This was all simply done and perfected very early on in the performance rehearsal period because we had done a lot of work on this. For example, Pizocca walked very slouched with a nasal tone voice. The devils scurried about looking mischievous and spoke very excitedly. To help us with perfecting all of our characters actions we did many tasks within our lessons and also looked at Commedia De L'arte videos of people doing what we aimed to do.
Overall, I believe in the short amount of time we had and the difficulty of the play its self it all came together very well. We all have a week to perfect our lines and make sure that by Thursday our performance is top notch and enjoyed by the other class being our audience. There is still room for improvement within this play such as: clearer costume and set changes, perfecting of lines and more outgoing loud gestures to perform our characters as comedic within the play.
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