We have been studying Blood Brothers by Willy

We have been studying Blood Brothers by Willy Russell. Our first task was to perform a
small persuasion scene from the play where Mrs Lyons asks Mrs Johnstone to give her one
of her babies. When we first did the scene I noticed that all the performances lacked
emotion and feeling. So we did a hot seating task which consisted of a member of our class
playing Mrs Johnstone and having questions fired at her e.g. how you choose which baby to
give away? Would you let them meet each other years later?
Because of this task we learnt more about the character of Mrs Johnstone. We observed
just how much she loved her kids and it gave us an idea of how hard it would be to give
away a child. This then assisted us to improve our performance and deepened our
understanding because we had a better idea of the struggle to give away a baby. The way
we improved our performance we included physicality; this was us maybe putting a hand on
a shoulder for comfort or persuasion. We also added inflections on our tone to maybe give
the illusion of hiding tears.
Our next task was to explore the role of the narrator. During this task we read through a
scene and directed it and use a floor plan. The scene was when Mrs Lyons puts the shoes on
Mrs Johnstone’s table; this scene is building up to the persuasion scene. One of the
performances we saw had the narrator on almost the entire performance. When Mrs Lyons
was rummaging through the bag they had the narrator pass her the shoes and then sit down
with Mrs Lyons and Johnstone. I think they did this because with the narrator on stage it
reminds you of the impending doom.
Next we had to a tableau with 6 images from age 7, 14, 15, 16/17, 18 and 19. The age 7
scene was Edward standing in front of Linda and Mickey who were beckoning him to come
with them. Age 14 was Mickey, Linda and Edward playing catch with a coconut with Linda in
the middle to show how she’s stuck between Mickey and Eddie. The next tableau was ages
15/16 Eddie and Mickey fighting for Linda’s attention. Mickey and Eddie were standing
masculine poses to impress her. We did this because it’s around the age that they were
becoming interested in girls but we made Edward’s pose is a little more timid and Mickey’s
was more ostentatious. The third image was when they were 17. It consisted of Mickey,
Edward and Linda standing shoulder to shoulder all smoking but, we had Eddie looking away
from them to show how he is still not as close as Mickey and Linda. The next image was age
18 which was Eddie taking a picture of Mickey and Linda. We had Linda pulling Mickey’s arm
over his shoulder to show that she has feelings for Mickey. We also had Eddie taking the
picture but looking away. This was to establish the fact that he was developing feelings
Linda and it was painful for him to see them together. Our final tableau was age 19 when
Mickey had finally asked out Linda. We had Linda and Mickey hugging but Mickey had his
back to Eddie and Linda was facing Eddie who was walking away. We had Linda facing
Mickey so that it shows she has slight feelings for him. We had Mickey turning away from
Eddie to show that he is ready to start his new life with Linda. We also had Eddie walking
away to show that he was always on the outside and that he is unable to be with her. We
included a thought track. Eddie’s was “I wish I told her how I felt, it’s too late now.”