Dreams

YEAR 11 - GCSE DRAMA
(ON THE THEME OF DREAMS)
JORDAN CRAWFORD
MRS TAYLOR

Drama Assessment - Dreams

Week One – (Wednesday 15th December/Thursday 16th December)
We were told about our assessment and what would be involved and expected of our performance. The performance was set on the theme of ‘a dream which would then turn into a nightmare’. We got many handouts of poems on ‘dreams’ by a variety of poets and writers, we read over them together as a group, discussed what was happening in each one, and shared our opinions on each of them. I commented on how graceful these poems and readings were and how we should use this graceful effect on the ‘nice’ part of the dream, and to perhaps sharply change from this state to that of a more chilling and alarming one for the ‘nightmare’. We decided to start planning straight away, and firstly chose what three styles of drama we were going to include in our performance. We went through many of the different styles together deciding on the pros and cons of each and what best suited each member of the group; some of us finding improvisation a weaker skill compared to most of the others. Therefore our decision was pretty easy as we all seemed to agree on the same styles which were ‘dance’, ‘scripted’ and ‘monologue’.
We then suggested that over the two week Christmas holiday period that we should perhaps think up some ideas for the main storyline.

(2 week break – Christmas Holidays)

Week Two – (Wednesday 5th January/Thursday 6th January)
This week, each member of the group put forward their ideas for our main storyline, all of our ideas put together revolved around the same kind of thing. The ideas I expressed almost resembling a storybook from my childhood and the fairytales which I would read when I was younger. We moulded all of our inputs together and came up with two main tales;
Our first idea was of a little girl who was to fall asleep, then soon wake up in some kind of fantasy land where lots of strange creatures would appear and do extraordinary things, soon everything would turn frightening and all the creatures would become some type of scary monsters and the girl would become forever trapped in this nightmare.

Our second idea was of a girl who dreams of fame. All of these famous people would be featured in the dream leading a glamorous lifestyle, while the little girl would be in awe of this, until it all turns sour and everything in these people’s lives would go wrong and to the opposite of what they originally owned or what they originally looked like; they would soon lose everything.
After discussing the pros and cons of each, we finally decided to go with the second idea after feeling that the first was a bit typical and too similar to that of ‘Alice in Wonderland’.
Week Three – (Wednesday 12th January/Thursday 13th January)
We thought more about our storyline and developed the idea. Together we thought up what kind of famous characters we would be using in the performance. We all took a short break and a bit of time to ourselves for thinking up interesting characters to involve, before coming together again and sharing our own ideas with the rest of the group, I made many different suggestions such as; a theatrical performer, a professional dancer, famous writers, etc.

However we decided to go more along the lines of very well known and more obvious professions. Together we chose a WAG, a model, a singer and an actress. We were all pleased with these decisions as we agreed that with such big personalities we could really exaggerate each of the notorious characters.

We then decided who would play each part, some people chose a specific part, whereas others didn’t mind so much so we each chose a random number, mixed them all up in a hat and let fate choose each of our roles. I was extremely pleased to take on the role of the actress; I felt that I could really portray this role as I can become quite comical and melodramatic at times.