To begin at the beginning:
It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.
Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.
And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before- dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.
Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.
Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, suckling mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.
Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding though the Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed; tumbling by the Sailors Arms.
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now.
First lesson- in today's lesson we was given a poem called under milk wood. We sat in a circle reading the poem line by line to its full stops so each of us in the class would have a understanding of the play, and how each of us would read it in a different tone allowing us to see what atmosphere for the poem was best. Most of us read the poem in a soft, suttled textured approach but this was wrong, oh so wrong. After reading the poem I then began to wonder who the person was watching the village as the person speaking was awake whilst everyone is silent asleep. Who was this person? Were they spiteful or nice? What was their motive? After this we discussed as a class what we thought about the poem, the opinions ranged and I was excited to start devising!
Getting to grips with the characters of the poem- fisherman, policeman, priest and 'lady of the night' was the characters mostly spoke about in the poem. We started the lesson of with a traditional warm up done by most professional actors "walking in the space" this exercise is to gain focus in the room and within ourselves allowing our bodies and mind to take on any characterisation about to happen. Sharon then exclaimed that each character called out in the space had to be demonstrated; "policeman" my posture instantly changed into a head high straight body figure with my hands firmly placed behind my back inspecting the area, a stereo typical point of view most people would think of when portraying a police man. Sharon then said that we was allowed to use short phrases when showing our characters in the space, I then called out "allo allo allo" another stereotypical phrase of a police man. I began to wonder why this exercise allowed us to instantly be so stereotypical, was it because we didn't know the characters in depth enough or due to the fact that in an audiences eyes this would be most obvious for them to understand? As the lesson went on we went through each character; my favourite character would have to be the fisherman as this was a challenging charCter that wasn't as stereotypical as the others, this character allowed me to think of my own interpretation. I imagined this character to be old a fisherman who has been in the job for generations I also imagined the fisherman to be hunched backed and foul smelled making him outcasted from the village.
After this exercise Sharon then asked us to line up equally in two lines across the room making the centre space empty, she then asked us to choose a character each then step into the centre two by two allowing the two characters to greet. My partner for this activity was Sam, Sam had chosen the character 'priest' and walked into the space with a soft stroll with his hands folded In front of him and a small smile with the phrase "God bless you", I then walked into the space quickly but struggled with a hunched back and a doubtful face at Sam, grunting and wincing i then ignored Sam and started exiting the stage with the phrase "I don't believe in God". I believe this instantly gave the class something to talk about with this character and already delevoped some hate and allowed the character to become outcaststed just as I imagined him to be in the poem by the villagers.
Devising- in today's lesson we started the lesson by re'reading the poem to remind us and also to allow us to think about how we was going to create this into our own. After reading we was then put into groups of four, I was working with Sharney, Hangela, Elliot and Francis I was excited to work with these class peers as I like working with different people and seeing how each idea would create an explosion in our devising. We got given a short paragraph "Young girls lie bedded soft or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux, bridesmaided by glow-worms down the aisles of the organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrogered sea. And the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields, and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wet-nosed yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly, streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs" I already had some ideas to input. Sharon then said to each group we had 20 minutes to interpret the poem however we wanted putting movement into the piece but each group must read the paragraph given to them.
I had the idea of this paragraph being a dream sequence. Hangela beginning the scene with herself pretending to be a little girl walking down the isle, something every young girl would relate too; whilst everyone else layed still on the floor awaiting their turn to speak their line it then lead into Francis and myself jumping up as two young boys sword fighting, rolling on the floor and coming back up quickly to show movement and to keep the poem active and lively, I imagined in my head the Classic Disney film "Peter pan" and how the young boy and goon the evil pirate would have sword fights on the Pirates boat this instantly gave me a child like feel allowing me to get into depth of a young boy dreaming in this poem. As each of us spoke our lines with movement all of us ended back in the same position showing that we was still asleep dreaming away in this silent village . I think the class enjoyed our piece as it was a lot more outspoken then some others, I think we had great energy as a group and really become the characters inside this poem our ownly feedback was to slow down when doing the movement as we wouldn't want the audience to loose distraction from what the words are saying by the movement but not only that but to emphasis the childlike movements. We could improve this by doing the movements in a slower pace maybe so slow that it could freeze to create more impact in the scene and even in the poems words. I really enjoyed Mihahlis group as I loved the way even though their chosen paragraph was quite harsh they spoke and moved in a suttle tone moving as if they were the night wind each person standing behind each other in a single filed line moving their arms and then moving to the back when they had read their line. Ending the piece with them all fluttering to the floor like autumn leaves. I think they could improve by not all speaking in the same tone as it had a monotone approach although it allowed them to be one instead of individuals this may have been what they were aiming for as a group.
Devising part two- in today's lesson we continued to learn about under milk wood poem and its was time to start creating from a different point of view "stereo type" we was told to create a short scene to perform in front of level 2 performing arts acting students using the characters police man, priest, lady of the night and the fisherman. This was a challenge as all characters would have to enter the scene at least once and I was beginning to think how this was going to work realistically. My group was Eliott, Danielle and Sam we decided that the scene would intale the lady of the night having a affair with the police officer later to discover that the fisherman was also paying her for her duties the police officer outraged kicks off a fight with the fisherman only to leave the priest to deal with the violence with calls and praises from the bible later to be arrested by the police officer when the priest turns mad and curses the lady of the night. I had a genius idea of Eliot playing.. The lady of the night! I thought this would not only challenge him but allow there to be humour in this performance. I played the police officer approached by Elliott with rolled up trouser legs and top standing in a deductive position, "allo allo allo" was a great sentence to include in this specific moment as not only does it relate to being a police officer but has two meanings one being slightly cheeky. We had great support from the level 2s with a lot of giggles and Claps however I still think there was a lot of work on this scene I felt as if the time we had to put it together was a little bit rushed and this gave us a bit of confusion and nervousness on stage making the scene slightly overwhelmed and unorganised however even though we had a few difficulties the scene overall went well with lots of energy and a great responsive audience.
Conclusion- overall I really enjoyed working on this poem as there isn't one overall explanation for this poem on how it should be read and what is really going on.. I loved making this poem my own and allowing my own imagination to discover its own interpretation of the nights in the cobbled village. It was fascinating to see how each of us has our own stereo types on characters even though most of us exclaim to not have any, discovering our inner stereo types to ourselves. Even though many questions are unanswered about the poem I feel as though I have learnt valuable knowledge in devising but the poems speaker will forever be a mystery..
