Road: Week 2

Today we dived into our second week of being casted in Road.
Our first task of the session was to go through the script and editing out scenes throughout the play. We ended up cutting a lot of sections but these were all parts that had no obvious effect to the stories that they told. We are aware that more cuts will be made such as in my ending scene with Eddie, Brink and Carol but these haven't been confirmed yet.

The most exciting thing of today's session was that we officially started the blocking process of Road. Louise and her brother open the play so this scene was blocked today.
Louise and her brother have a very different sibling relationship to what you would normally expect. The brother is creepy and angry as well as extremely intimidating towards Louise and I get the impression that he is older than her. The brother pays little interest towards his sister so this scene is set with him watching tv and Louise applying make-up in the imaginary mirror i.e. the audience. Louise asks a lot of questions and I get the impression that she does this purely to fill the painful silence that would exist otherwise. "Lets dance" provokes Jake to tip his chair over and stands. This line is meant to be delivered sexually and intimidating which it does because as Jake stands he towers over me (naturally) but it gives off the right image to the audience. "Don't run the immersion..." is the final line for this particular scene which theoretically pushes the brother over the edge and it really winds him up. He then comes up close to me and wipes his oily hands over my face. I could tell, when blocking this scene today, that Jake felt awkward seeing as this was the first time we had both 'performed' this scene and those lines and also that he had to rub his hands all over my face; but I think as soon as he (and me)crosses this awkward stage of this scene then it will be a really creepy and intimidating and the audience will get an immediate insight to how Road and our sibling relationship is messed up.

The next few blocking of scenes went smoothly and it was interesting for me to watch how it will slowly come together. As the other scenes were being blocked I made notes about my character in the first scene. I originally imagined her as though she wasnt intimidated by her brother but now practically performing this scene I can so clearly see that Louise is intimidated by her brother and that he does scare her. She is trying hard to get him out the house to perhaps show the world what this man is really like. But at the same time she continues to act in a motherly way for example questioning why he doesn't go out and that he shouldn't go back to bed etc.

The first couple of scenes are beginning to look really good and I am beginning to see Road take shape which is very exciting. I thoroughly enjoyed playing Louise for the first time and I know that I have a lot to work on to build her up.
Which leads me to- this evening I began looking into the Northern accent. Accents in general aren't my strong point but I am determined to learn a decent accent for Road/Louise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sumStCchdn8 I found this video on youtube which taught me points to remember to learn the Northern accent. Words such as brother are extended from the 'er' sound to a 'broth''a'' sound. These little tips are something I tried working on this evening and I also watched my mouth in the mirror to see how my mouth moves when producing these different sounds.
Even this was quite tricky for me but it is something I will be working on and it's definitely my aim for Road- especially as I am aware that I, naturally, don't have a strong voice on stage so this accent needs to be strong enough for me to project well and also to be understood. I am also looking forward to this challenge of learning the accent as accents in general have been something I have been dying to experiment with in the world of theatre.

Class notes made in these sessions.

Wednesdays session began with recapping the assignment brief, ensuring that we meet all the criteria in order to gain a distinction. We then began blocking more scenes of Road. The scenes we blocked today were scenes that I do not feature in so I knew that it was my responsibility to make the most of my time seeing as we all had to remain in the room (and not go off and rehearse already blocked scenes.)
During this session we began with a scene including Skullery, Dor and Lane. For a minority of the time I was reading through my lines as a memory line learner method that I use in order to learn my lines (repetition.)
But for the rest of the session I observed the blocking process and made notes: For this scene Skullery (played by Matt) was stood on a table to make-do the fact that he will be on a high piece of staging to represent a building rooftop. I really liked how this scene was stage balanced; at the beginning of the scene Dor and Lane are on floor level and Skullery towering over them. This really caught my attention because of the status work we had done the week before.
         Status is often very prominent due to use of levels. It is clear to me, after reading the script and having done bits of research already, that Skullery is the only character whom sits at the very bottom of the status 'chart.' He is alone (no family or friends mentioned) it is assumed that he is homeless and jobless also. The Road is all that he has which makes him hugely proud of it. Returning back to the scene, Skullery being on a higher level than Dor and Lane mixes up Skullery as a character, which I personally thought was very interesting and effective. Dor and Lane then meet Skullery at the top of the building and immediately the status levels are evened out.

SkinLad then runs past and presents a monologue. SkinLad is a character in which Louise does not come across nor mentions but to use my time efficiently in today's session I noted down my first impressions of this "nutter" of a character. As a class we briefly discussed that SkinLad is classed as the nutter because he isn't into the pubbing and clubbing like all the other characters in the play. Because he is different he is classed as a nutter. In this particular monologue (Act 1 Page 21)  he talks about how he was into "fights on Saturday nights" and he talks about how he "came out of the disco" and he explains how he saw the SkinHeads outside. He goes on to explain how he knocked out them all with his magnificent fighting skills he so likes to brag about. But the point I am meaning to make is a few lines on, during this same after-pub fight, he sees a figure and this figure speaks out to him saying "Over to you Buddha." Which made me piece up the puzzle to how he got to how he is in Road now. This figure reminded him of his past life or his spirituality and how his fighting wasn't what he was born for which has lead him to 'read the Dharma. He evens states that he refuses the pornography passed to him at work and is happy continuing with the Dharma.

Dharma: The Dharma is an Indian religion and is known as the "teachings of Buddism." ~Buddha by Jon Ortner.
SkinLad tells us how he refuses things that go against the Dharma such as ' eggs,bacon and chips' and "when the guy on the bus pushes" he reminds himself of the Dharma which acts as his main guideline to living life as a Buddha.

SkinLad, for me, was originally a character that I didn't understand nor did I understand his effect on the play- however after really listening to Nathan recite this piece in today's blocking and after my research I now really like the character; he acts as light relief to the play and because he is so different to all the other characters he has now become my favourite character in the play, so far!!

We then went onto a scene between Brenda and Skullery; and as soon as Brenda enters (played by Hannah) it is apparent that Skullery is only interested in her 'juicy daughter.' It is also apparent that these two characters, before the play, had some sort of connection or was it just meaningless sex...? But I read into it that this wasn't meaningless for Brenda and was to Skullery as he so quickly brushes it off. Although, contrasting from what I have just said, Brenda gets closer and closer to Skullery (in the scene, as she climbs the side of the building) as soon as she gets close enough she asks "lend us a fiver."
This scene showed Brenda in full view, how she uses herself as a way to get money. Again, as a class we discussed how Brenda might just want to be her daughters age again, pubbing and clubbing and enjoying life, hence all the questions in her first scene (Act One Page 7, with Carol.)
"Skullery, that night I felt I'd been shot" Deborah asked us what this line meant and the first response was how it was a sexual reference. Although as we later discussed my first thought was that Brenda felt strongly about Skullery at the time, so the reference to being shot was how hard the love hit her back in the day. This was to a similar conclusion, as a class, that we settled on. Being shot was giving us another reference to how powerful love was and how it made Brenda feel at the time etc.

There, in Road, is a burglary scene, at Mr and Mrs Baulds house. They catch Skullery burguling them and I noted some questions for them to think about, and am meaning to explain my thoughts to Jake and Donna (whom play these two characters.)
I fully understand that this was their first viewing of this scene etc however I wanted to assist them on their reactions and emotions to this.
My house was burgled back in November and it massively effected me, and it's still something that constantly plays on my mind when I'm home alone today. My house was the last place I wanted to go to after college/work and it really did take along time to rebuild the relaxed state in being home alone.
Which made me think that Jakes reaction needs to be a lot more prominent: angry (a manly response) scared etc etc. Although as soon as I had made my point I contradicted myself because was this a thing that people living on Road were used to? Had this happened before to them all? Or did it really bother them, seeing as noone of them have any possessions to be proud of or treasure... So, in the end, the only reason I noted this all down was to give these questions for Jake to think about- in order to help him decide on a reaction, which I think should be the latter; not really being bothered about Skullery. I thought this an interesting suggestion for them both and although I, now, don't think any of this is hugely relevant to this scene because the characters of Road are most probably used to things like being burgled all the time hence why Cartwright was written the dialogue this way; but it was simply something that grabbed my attention.

Asphalt factory: mentioned by a character named Jerry (played by Frank) a old man, lonely who is reminiscing his younger days.He reminises about the good ol' days in which men governed women- 'the men would go to the pub while the women waited in the dance halls until we returned.' This explains the unequality between men and women which was normal in that time and now, in the 80's, it is clear that Jerry would prefer life to have stayed how it was and not for women to grow with more rights (equal).  The ashphalt factory was a factory for creating the substance used for constructing roads/car parks etc. This is what ashphalt is.

Marj Proops: mentioned by Joey (played by Brandon) a young teenager on a starvation protest. Rebecca Marjorie Proops OBE was known as an 'agony aunt' (advice columnist.) She was a well-known column writer, the writer of Dear Marje in the years of 1939 onwards until her death 1996.

Also in Joey's scene Clare mentions that 'she also has no job'. Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister at the time, "destroyed Britain's manufacturing industry and her policies led to mass unemployment".This wasn't her aim, for 'mass unemployment' but the consequences to her actions whilst in parliament led to this. "Britain was struggling with rising unemployment, up from 5,000 to 1,500,000 and repeated strikes did not help the matter.
Clare, again in this scene, mentions how she hears her mother crying. I immediately reminded myself that Clare is a 16 year old character. So I noted down that hearing your mum cry at the age of 16 is a big deal. Yes it may have happened a lot of times before but it genuinely does effect you as a child when you hear your mum cry because they have been this strong figure head for you etc. I pointed this out to Frankie (who plays Clare) and she agreed with my suggestion and was pleased that I had mentioned this because she said "I was struggling to decide on how I would act and what emotion I would portray in this scene." So I am pleased that I identified this and hopefully helped out Frankie.

Today's session was really interesting for me because I was able to delve into Road more as I wasn't part of any scenes. I really enjoyed making my own notes of the scenes and characters and this has really helped me to understand the story in more detail which is beneficial when it comes to playing Louise and acting and reacting to other characters in scene or mentioned for example.


Before Thursdays Road session with Kirsty and Laura I was doing some more research into Road itself online. After a while I discovered that Road was created into a television series. It was directed by Alan Clarke and was a popular tv series in 1988 when it was produced.
I began with watching the first series of 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFGZPaUknRA
This short minute clip proved a really, really good watch. Louise and her brother (played by Jane Horrocks and Andrew Wilde) open the series. The accent was the first thing I picked up and this tv series, I know already, will help me a lot in learning both my lines and the accent. Louise is preparing for a night out with Carol and it is clear that she is in a rush but also wants to look perfect. You can tell, when she enters the second room with her brother in, that she is frustrated with him due to her running around the motorbike to get to the mirror. The brother is immediately portrayed as a stereotypical grumpy man, and when he asks "do you wanna dance?" his entire personality changes into this almost psychotic mannerism. He never takes his eyes off Louise and  intimidatingly walks over to her. As Jake is a lot taller than me, if he recites the line just as the actor in this clip does and then walks towards me; the sibling relationship will shine through and the audience will then be totally aware of what the relationship is between them. The wiping of the oil on Louise's face is a lot more violent than how we had blocked it. He physically pushes her against the wall to do this; but I think that our version is a lot more effective. The movements Jake does are slow and drawn out to build the tension and then when his hands reach my face he slowly drags them down my cheeks. Making the movements this slow makes the brother a lot more intimidating.
Louise's only reaction to having oil on her face is that she's going to be late. She confronts him when she delivers the line "you pigging bastard" but because the line is so weak the brother has no need to retaliate. The relationship portrayed in this clip is highly intimidating to watch as an audience member and this is something both me and Jake need to portray in our version in order to give off the same effect. We open the show so it has to be a dominant scene which plunges the audience straight into the wonderful and weird world of Road.

The music in the clip is Im In The Mood For Dancing by The Nolans and because of it's upbeat tune I think it would fit well with the pub scenes; as it would both fit the era and the play.

Road, literally

The houses are empty and dull and generally don't look like nice places to live in. The décor in both Eddies, Carol's and Louise's house clashes such as the floor pattern with the settee design and colours. And at the beginning we get to see the outside of the houses. All identical in straight roads, some with graffiti on them etc. I think this image would provide us with a good road backdrop if we were to create a everlasting effect of council estate houses: similar to the image left. So the houses get smaller as the road goes on. All the houses were brick, and looked fairly run down and dull so this is how we would present the houses if we were going to create a backdrop.
All the male characters were suits, shirts, smart trousers, ties and trouser braces; and this was very much the smart look the men were into in the 80's. I had portrayed the men in our version of Road as more scruffy and definitely not wearing suits and ties because they were poor. But this is a debate that will be discussed nearer the time and when we know more and more about our characters real lives. The young women, Louise, Carol and Clare all wear fairly dull colours. Louise wears a tight, black leather jacket (which had been included in my brief ideas of my costume ideas) she wears a tight leather, pencil skirt and white high heels. The outfit is simple but looks classy and looks as though she is going out on the town. Carol wears a black vest top and a dull-ish red pencil skirt. Both outfits look very rock'n'roll/punk to me but they both suit their characters well- slutty but classy with men.
 Joey is, so far, the only exclusion to the tie look but then again he is not mentally well in this scene due to him starving himself so I can only imagine that his appearance is past him now. Clare is also one with the brightest colours with a blue, long jacket and a blue skirt. Again the colours all match as did the all black outfit Louise wore. All the costumes in this series are inspiration however me and Phoebe have already discussed some of our costume ideas (tbc).

Jim Cartwright was brought up on a northern council estate; which can only lead me onto say that it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the characters we meet on 'Road' are over exaggerated characteurs of people he met or knew when living on the council estate. "So I know what its like to have no money,, Making yourself get out of bed in the morning, the rejections, no work-" This is all the characters in one. Joey is suffering from this, deeply and he sees no point to make the effort to live now that he has no job. And so Joey is Cartwright at times, but then so is Louise, Carol, Eddie and Brink whom are all young and wanting to change the world- but not knowing how to- "somehow a somehow might escape".
In a very interesting interview published online: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/may/04/jim-cartwright-ancient-secret-of-youth-and-the-five-tibetans-little-voice Cartwright talks about his home town and how there used to be large lion statues, in Bolton this is, which he used to ride when little. "It's a shame...its like a symbol of being young and thinking we were going to change the world" this quote could pretty much sum up Road. All the characters we meet are desperate to change the world in some way or another. Louise talks about how 'theres nothing left but profit and loss' and she believes that if 'magic and miracles' occurred and a 'Jesus to come along and change things again' the world would start to become a better place. Brink mentions how he 'wants to be a cowboy' which sounds a bit childish on the subject of changing the world, but he says 'I'm just cattle, herded, helpless' he has a real strong insight to the fact that he and the others have no power to change the world. Like the young Cartwright riding those lions, they had all these amazing fantasies about changing the world and their lives but they were all just 'herded cattle, helpless and waiting' for someone to change it for them ~ 'Somehow a somehow might escape'. The older generations whom feature in Road such as Brenda, Valerie and Jerry all talk about how they 'can't forget the past' and they question why 'can we not have before again?' They want the change which changes the world to what they did know it as, whereas the youngsters want a complete new and fresh change where they can 'be cleaned' and 'sweat or something' and by that last quote from Joey I put 'sweat' in the context of letting out all of this fears and negativity about his life and also to let out why he really is starving himself as I don't think we are let onto the full story.
The whole prospect of changing the world, as I said earlier is almost impossible and they are all aware of this. Which leads them to the possibility of 'escaping' is much more reasonable. So its all good that these characters are listing their fantasies of 'escaping' however Cartwright believes that in the 80's, the time of the play, "Thatcher had a hold of everyone" so escaping nor changing the world was a complete waste of a fantasy- hence the very relevant line of "you can't escape".
As teenagers him and friends went on missions to extend their youths as this was something of a popular command then which is where SkinLad's yogic features appear from.
It seems to me that all of the plays Cartwright has written all have very strong links to his life. For example when he moved away from Bolton and to London instead he shared a flat with "skint Bohemians" which then turned out to be 'Road' itself.

Now at the age of 56, Cartwright has set up weekly acting classes in the less well off places near his home to allow the children of this generation to have a better childhood and to have something in life, an "alternative route for those unable to afford the fees of a regular drama school or dramatics club" He also believes that there is no good reason to make acting for those 'Gorblimey' people by that he means the posh actors and the only ones whom could afford the fees for drama schools- and Road is a perfect example of the breaching away process from the 'gorblimey' acting.

Some song lyrics reminded me of 'Road' and its characters. The song is called Read All About It, by Emeli Sande'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaAVByGaON0 The song lyrics read: "you've got the words to change a nation but your'e biting your tongue" I feel like this is extremely relevant to the characters on 'Road' however. They all have the power to change the world or escape but they are 'biting their tongues'. Like Clare, she says how she took a 'honey quiz, and got full marks' but she believes that 'she has nowhere to drive this'. The mentality on Road is very negative. People there don't fully believe that they can change or escape so it just doesn't happen and it stays as this impossible fantasy. So these lyrics are summing up all the characters and how they all want something more, a 'change', 'magic and miracles', the 'before' and to be a 'cowboy' but they are all 'biting their tongues', they've spent all their lives in silence and even though there might be glimmers of hope they don't do anything about it.


Returning back to another of Louise' scenes in this clip, her one line being "me shoulder pads slipped". In this clip she isn't reacting to this happening because I have come to the conclusion that the reason her shoulder pad has slipped is because of her brother pushing her up against the wall in the earlier scene. She makes no fuss about this happening which could be because she is a quiet character but its more likely that she doesn't want to mention what happens between her and her brother so she keeps it quiet. The shoulder isn't mentioned again which could mean that she tries to forget the things that her brother says or does to her... This point I found really interesting however I then looked in our version of the script and there are no specific stage directions saying that he pushed her against a wall, so the shoulder slipping isn't directly caused by the brother doing this but it is an interesting point made and it could well be the case of another physical abusive action because Carol mentions that "there's always summat with you" which tells us something like the 'shoulder pad slipping' has happened before...

This clip was extremely helpful and it will continue to be throughout this project. It has already given me some important notes for the two scenes in which Louise features in and it has given me a really clear idea of the two relationships i.e. Carol and her brother. The accent used by Horrocks will massively assist me for my accent as I can take the entire line and how she says them to work on how I say them.
I am really pleased with my find of this useful bit of secondary research, and it will be my own task to continue watching the series and find more helpful hints for our version of Road and my version of Louise.


Thursday's session began with continuing blocking Road. Again, like yesterday's session, I have no scenes until the end of the play so I took it upon me to continue making notes on Road and the scenes blocked in this session:

Script notes 1

This began with a bit of fun dance choreography as Hannah, Kennedy and Donna volunteered to play the short part of the live dance entertainers that go wrong at Bisco's Disco. The sequence is short but very humourus so it acts as a nice bit of comic relief into our play. 

After the dance piece Bisto goes onto a second monologue about it being the last song etc, and I identified that his character, in this monologue, really changes from when we first meet him and before the awful dance. "I love you, we love you, so you love you too, you're worth it, people" is all said softly and slowly which is a massive contrast to how Bisto (played by Luke) opens this very scene. Luke suggested that he softens down the tone and slows the pace because perhaps he loved someone once and wanted those at his disco to be with the people that they lived because perhaps he couldn't do this to the one that he loved. 

       Bisto is an extremely lively character and this, I think, is a front that is put on by him. I think that he is incredibly lonely. And that his disco means the world to him as much as everyone who attends his disco does. The soft tone to which appears in the final section of this scene makes this loneliness more apparent because all he wants is for his disco 'customers' to be happy and to "love theme selves" etc. This is a very interesting contrast that Cartwright has used and its well hidden behind a loud, boisterous, sexual, well-liked Dj. 

Script notes 2

Curt (played by Nyakeh) is a really interesting character; he tells us little about himself which left me guessing. In his monologue (Act Two Page 48) he mentions that he shouldn't be drinking with "what he's on". This is obviously a reference to him being on medication perhaps anti-depressant drugs? He says that 'he doesn't bother now' which makes me think that he has been on this medication a long time and that now he simply isn't bothered if he takes them or not. He goes on to describe, in detail, the smells of the Road. I came to the conclusion that the drugs that he is or was taking either made him very aware to the things that surround him or that he was taking them due to this (I am unsure of which) but it striked me odd that Cartwright has made this character so observant of Road whereas the other characters just live life on Road without a passing thought of what Road is really like. Curt is written to see Road as a very negative place-completely contrasting to other characters such as Scullery who lives and breathes 'his' Road. He, Curt, says how Road is "where things slide to but don't drop off" by this I read it as Road is where all the crap in the world literally and theoretically goes to and stays- 'doesn't drop off'. This includes the bad people as well as the literal sense of rubbish dumped around etc.
A second reasoning to why I have linked Curt with anti-depressant drugs is because at the end of his monologue he gets quite angry with himself; "aw I'm sick of moaning" and he suddenly changes his 'tune' and stops the moaning and finishes on a positive; perhaps this was him taking the advice given to him by a doctor consultant...?

At this point in the session, we were all split up. So the scenes that needed to be blocked would be done in the training studio with Kirsty and the rest of us were taken into another room with Laura to work on our Northern accents.

Accent work

      Laura got us to repeat after the words in the picture (above). For each line she got us to identify the sounds that would be changed in order to create the northern accent. So for example, 'Task, last and dance' we would remove the 'ar' sound and change it i.e. Taarsk to tAsk- so emphasis on the 'a' sound instead. The second line, we changed the 'eugh' sound to a 'ur' sound so 'girl' changes to 'gurl'. The third line was changed to an 'or' sound so it went from 'law' to 'lor' by dragging out the final 'r' sound. Fourth line the 'u' sound changed to an 'o' sound so 'under' became 'onder.' And finally the fifth line, these words are split in half when said in the accent; so 'clear' becomes 'cle' 'ar' you don't take a breath in this split just simply pause momentarily and emphasise the second half of the word.

We then, one by one, had to repeat the two sentences at the top of the board making sure we changed the sounds of the 'werds' we pronounced.
And our final task was to rehearse a couple of lines from Road in the accent. I chose the line "you can't dance with your brother" as this includes three strong words that would be prominent in the accent. The three being 'carn't' to 'can't', 'darnce' to 'dance'. Brother being the final word, which is said with more of a roll of the 'r' sound to change it to 'brewther'.
Matt, being from Middlesborough, has the natural northern accent and he helped me a lot in today's session. He would say one of my lines and I would repeat it. The notes he gave me was that I would say the words to cheerfully whereas they needed to be delivered at a slightly lower pitch, so instead of going up (in pitch) at the end of brother, I need to stay at the same pitch.
The point of this final exercise was to present this line to the class and get feedback but unfortunately I was pulled away to do my final scene with Eddie, Brink and Carol. However, I found this exercise extremely useful! I know have a set line which will act as my line to set into the accent and also have clear instructions set by Matt to watch out for when I say my lines in the accent. I also have the image of the whole exercise process so I will aim to do this daily to really master the art of the northern accent. 

As disappointing as it was to miss the rest of the accent 'class', I got to block my last scene. The scene begins with Eddie entering with an armful of wine, then Brink enters and then Carol and I enter giggling. We identified that Louise, in this scene, acts as Carol's tag-along. But Carol has taken the role of protecting Louise and caring for her because this is perhaps something her mum (Brenda) never did for her.
Carol is very dominant and will never let any man walk over her (which so happens to be both mine and Phoebes 'motto' in life and if we were playing ourselves, we would never let this happen) Carol is very sarcastic and she is very much my humour- "lovely place you got 'ere" "thought it were the Ritz for a second" and poor Eddie is oblivious to this sarcastic remark(s). For the majority of the begining scene Louise sits very quietly and just laughs along to what Carol says and 'splutters her drink' every now and again; which led me to the fact that Louise is actually quite polite. She refuses the offer of Brink's glass due to the fact that he won't have one so she is considerate and even though she doesn't know these two boys she still keeps it up. This is the opposite for Carol and I think she plays this more dominant role in this scene as a way to mark where she stands with boys and one night stands as this scene could end up as.
When Brink and Eddie leave the room we get an insight to what the girls actually think of the boys; Louise seems quite keen but Carol (as expected) is a bit more stubborn but she also continues to mention 'how long it takes them to get a cloth' etc as though speeding them up in this process.
There's one bit of this scene that we all laugh together and although we didn't attempt this in lesson, later that evening (at work) I suddenly had a thought that this was the only time that we have a connection. Us all laughing together represents us being quite close, friends even and enjoying one another's company. This connection doesn't last long but I think it is an immensely important that we have this in our scene because it shines a light on this 'friendship'. Unfortunately we only got half of this scene blocked but I think it's starting to look really good. The stage balance is effective as only Carol gets up and moves, I, Louise stays in the same place the whole time, Eddie and Brink sit close to us but then don't move again until Brink goes in to kiss Carol.
The relationships between the four characters is shown strongly through our version of Road and the two dominant characters (Carol and Eddie) couldn't be less alike and in actual fact its the quiet Brink who goes in 'for the first move' and begins the more loved up ending to the scene.
This scene was really beneficial for me to identify the relationship that me and Carol have; it is clear that I am happy in Carol's company and am perhaps used to her sarcastic and dominant ways. We are close friends and stick with each other but also know where we can have the friendly banter- "I'm saying nowt."

Whilst walking home, I had my headphones in (bear with me!) listening to a Ben Howard song called Promise. The introduction to the song is the sound of rain hitting some sort of tin roofing etc. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjg0Ip7TzzM 

The link above is the song including the introduction. As the song isnt an 80's tune we would stop the song before the music really begins however this introduction, I felt would fit Road well. The rain, to me, sounded like it was hitting glass bottles; this would fit with Road because I can imagine lots of beer bottles left out on the street after the dramatic nights out all the characters seem to have, with the exceptions. The introduction could be played at the beginning of our piece; to expand, I think at the begining would set a very peaceful outlook on Road and then as soon as we begining the audience will be quick to understand that Road is nothing like what they have just heard. The rain closely links with the season in which I think that Road is set in-dismissing the fact that it is set in Northern Britian where it, unsurprisingly, rains alot- I got the inclining of the season one because my imagery imagination brought me to the fact that whenever I picture the scenery that surrounds Road it is dull, both sky and land, so it being stormy, cloudy or rainy is something I have always pictured. Secondly, because the proffessor (played by Joe) mentions "an episode occurred in winter" 'in 1982.' This reference to a season is the only one that features in the dialogue so it has only given me this to pull thoughts from. But linking it with the fact that I can only picture this Road as a dull place with rain or storms the proffessors line fits itself in with this statement perfectly. Which leads me to conclude that this Ben Howard introduction could fit our version of Road well. 

 So to conclude, I really enjoyed this whole week of blocking and even though it included a lot of scenes which I didn't feature in I used this time wisely and I can now say that it was really beneficial for me as I now know more about Road and the characters inside it.