Wonderful World - Vocal Awareness and Characterisation

Exploration notes

Langage

In Little Sweet think we discussed how the language they used came from Jamaica and Nigeria during the slave trade which originated in black culture in London that spread to other nationalities and is now social and does not rely on the nationality of a person. When the Irish immigrants came over they were in the same area as the black community so it has merged into a slang that uses lots of accents and phrases that are not original to Jamaica and Nigeria. The language is youthful, colloquial and passionate. An example of this is 'Bwoi' meaning to be a friend or buddy. 'Yo' is an African term first used to call between large distances to get somebody's attention, the word is thrown from the diaphragm and chest to make a loud noise; this has travelled into our language and is now as greeting. We translated pages 57-59 into the way we would usually speak; it became more reserved and didn't use some of the abbreviation. We watched the film 'bullet boy' to enhance our understanding of the language used as it is very similar to how it is used in LST because they are both set in East London.

In wonderful World of Dissocia the language used is very specific; the theme of the play is mental illness so the vocabulary used tends to be in the same lexical field, for example; 'Queen Sarah' is word play from the drug Serotonin, The 'Insecurity Guards' are used to convey different anxiety's such as anorexia and paranoia that may be found within Lisa, this clearly shows the audience the different ways mental illnesses can manifest inside somebody's head. Neilson uses contrasting dialogue throughout act 1 to highlight how different it is meant to be from real life, for example the scapegoat scene uses harsh, aggressive language with simple sentences and immediately afterwards is the calm, flowing dialogue of the polar bear scene. The language that is used throughout the play is used to explore the psychological nature of Lisa's dissociative disorder. For example, Neilson uses short, abbreviated language in fast and rambling speeches when Lisa and Victor are talking at the end of act 2, this could be because of the distance Victor is feeling towards Lisa and because he maybe doesn't feel completely easy around her knowing he doesn't want to carry on the relationship.

Non-verbal communication

LST

In Wonderful World there are man parts of the play that could hold non-verbal subtext about how the characters surrounding Lisa react to her. We chose to explore the scene where she first arrives in Disocia and meets the insecurity guards, as we believe the hold a lot of subtext about her illnesses. The guards show signs of anorexia and paranoia which may be found in Lisa so we made these more pronounced and obvious through the facial expressions and movement of the guards. We displayed Lisa's emotions through the exagerated posture and quick change in body language as she went from one emotion to the next. Lisa in the 'real world' is torn between taking her pills and feeling at a constant or not taking them because, as she says in act two, ' because it's worth it, for the song', we decided that we would show this torment Lisa is feeling by the guards' fighting about Queen Sarah. The Oathtaker, we though, should be frail and confused to show how lisa feels when she is in dissocia as she doesnt understand what is going on, this is also true for the start of act 2 as she is at her worst at this time.

Vocal awareness and Characterisation

To understand more about the character in LST we were asked to find an extract of about two pages which have dialogue between Nathan and Tash, we then answered 10 questions about