Ideas on Performance and Production

Our Production Ideas

We watched the play Dead Dog In A Suitcase and now we have to come up with a production ourselves in related to the production we saw.

The first thing we did was discussing what we could produce in link with Dead Dog In A Suitcase which were:

-A High School where we explore the teachers lives.
-Having 3 Polly's (Dead one, Ghost one, Evil one).
-The Peachum's own a Circus and have money problems.
-As a fairytale.
-Having it as a soap.

Circus

After having many discussions on what to focus on, we decided we liked the Circus idea. Here are a few ideas we had came up with:

-The Peachum's own a circus and use the acts (Polly, Machealth, Lucy etc) for their money as they spent the money on themselves and end up having financial problems.

-Characters; 
Mrs Peachum= Ringmaster
Mr Peachum= Clown
Filch= Monkey- Ringmasters Assistant
Machealth= Knife Thrower, Tightrope Walker.
Polly= Acrobat, Knife Thrower's Assistant.
Lucy= Fire Breather.
Lockit= Magician, Animal Keeper.

Corruption

After the Circus idea, we thought that our main purpose of the play would be to show corruption e.g. the financial problem that Mr and Mrs Peachum have. Our influences on corruption was Dead Dog In A Suitcase as they involved crime within the play. 

Corruption is one of the biggest worldwide issues, including the UK. Statistics show that:

- 71% of UK citizens think corruption is a major problem in the UK 
-64% of people think corruption is part of the UK's business culture

So by showing this in our performance, it will teach and educate our audience in how much corruption happens in different places.

Asylum

As we had a corruption idea in our heads, more and more ideas were said and we came up with an Asylum idea. This Asylum idea was influenced by 'Artaud' as it work was quite mysterious and dark and so we tried out his structure and was very interested in it. We then explored the characters of the government, the owners, the doctors and head nurses and the patients/society. We sat around as a group discussing what the different characters had in them:

Government

-3 altogether

-One is head of the government, the other two is the good and bad side of the head man

-Is mental himself

-Maybe 2?

Owners:

-2 owners 

- Business partners; not husband or wife

-Only want the money

-Don' like the patients or employees

Head Nurse:

-Was once in an asylum 

-Mad/crazy woman

-Has many secrets 

-Addicted to drugs so she takes the patients pill as she has access to them

-Doesn't like her patients 

Doctors;

-Dislike the head nurse as they think there is something mysterious about her

-One doctor has no common sense/is dumb- the comedy side to it

-Doctors could be suspicious throughout the performance

Patients:

-The sane patients (ones who have no good reason to be in the asylum) have normal names

-The insane patients have the names of the sins that they portray

At the end of the discussion, we put the main ideas on the board to show what we had come up with: