Task 1

John Godber intentions with Bouncers was to change the way people see the theatre, he wanted to make a performances that would attract a bigger masses to the theatre. The idea of Bouncers was to create a performance that had characters and situations that you could relate to or understand; "I want to create theatre that connects with people's lives, not a piece of candy floss" this is John’s thought on Bouncers, he believes that this is the main reason Bouncers is successful as people watch it and relate with the characters as they are people you see every day or are a reflection of you. This show will entertain young and all as the young people will be going through these situations and the older lot will be able to reminisce about their adventures of the night life. John said "I think a joke only works if it's painfully true.  If you didn't laugh you'd cry" this is what he wanted Bouncers to show his audience, he wanted to high light the painful truth that we go through every day and ignore because we don’t want it to be true. This show makes you laugh because as a person it takes you to an awkward place that makes you laugh through the harsh pain because you don’t know what else to do as it explores normal but key things that can happen to you in life like getting in a fight, losing friends and even fertility. The play is about 4 Bouncers (Eric, Judd, Les and Ralph) who work the night life at a club in Yorkshire during the seventies. Bouncers was nominated for UK Comedy of the Year in 1985 and won seven Los Angeles Critics Circles awards and five awards in Chicago in 1987. The shows first performance was on 15 August 1977 Hill Place Centre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe; performed by drama students from Bretton Hall College. The show is performed with 4 actors playing the Bouncers and multi-role parts like a group of girls and Lads, a DJ, Liverpool teens and other characters people interact with when on a night out. The show is a challenge as there are no costume changes so when the actors multi role, there needs to be clear distinctions from the characters so the audiences can tell if they have changed characters. The show is a good idea for a workshop as there are a lot of potential in the source material and there have been many performances of the show over the past 37 years in big and small productions. The main thing with Bouncers is that we will be able to have a play around with the script as it’s set in seventies Yorkshire so some of the jokes may be hard for are audience to understand so we plan on modernising some of the parts of the play. For our audience we are hoping to get a mixture of age ranges coming to see the show as there is something for everyone to enjoy in Bouncers but as a group we think we may put an age rating on the show as there is a lot of adult humour and a young person may struggle to understand what is going on in the performances.

When we first read Bouncers we liked it a lot but we wanted to change some details about the play. We took a vote as a group and decided we didn’t want to do every scene or part of the play as we wanted it to be shorter to focus on the workshop. The first thing we cut from the play was the rap the bouncers do near the start and end of the show as we didn’t like the rap because it didn’t have the right flow with the performance we are planning on doing. We came up with our opening as a group after looking at the script inspired by this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMqZFXfaknA, I liked how they all came on to the stage 1 by 1 and danced but I want to change what happened next as I think it could be funnier if they see each other dancing then got embarrassed when a another bouncer saw what we were doing. Another thing we did to the script was cut out were 2 of Eric’s speeches as we didn’t want to make the show seem like it’s all about him. We also cut one of the girl’s scenes as it wasn’t essential to the story and it helped us focus on the workshop. Another scene we cut was the scene that followed the “Wak and Wak” scene as it was just about two punks trying to get in to the club which we felt was too similar to the “Wak and Wak” scene so we cut it out as well. The final part of the script we changed was the running order as the play as the show is meant to start with the girls in the hair dressers but we decided against this as the show is meant to be about the bouncers so we wanted our show to start with the bouncers. After our first bouncer’s scene we go back to the start with the girls at the hair dressers then follows the script through to the start of the lads scene at the barbers and keep going till the end of the pub scene. We follow the scene by skipping a big chunk of the play until another girl scene where there in the bath room and talk about Rosie’s cheating boyfriends which leads into the entrance of Wak and Wak who are trying to get in to the club which is meant to be followed by the punk scene that we cut so now it is followed by Baz and Terry trying to get in the club and leads to the Lads in the toilets which is the end of act 1 we decided. Another part of the script we change was the acts as we turned it into a 1 act play as we cut a lot out of the play that it wasn’t long enough to have an interval so we just carried on straight into act 2. Act 2 starts with Ralph as the DJ which goes into the bouncers outside talking about watching a “bluey” later tonight, we skip to Les and Judd now in the video store watching a “bluey”. This scene ends with the only speech we gave Eric, the script then skips 12 pages to when the customers are leaving the night club and les becomes a “Punter”. We then go to our last Lads scene were there trying to get a taxi to go home and we then end our version of the show with the bouncers looking over the club in a mess who then go out to a film which is meant to be followed by a music video of Michael Jacksons thriller video which then goes into the rap but we cut it out as the end of the scene we chose works as a good ending of the show. We decide our target audience would be people who go out on to night clubs, so our target age range would be 16 or older so they would understand and relate to the characters or situations in the show. Looking over the script we also discovered that a lot of the jokes are about old famous people or places from a couple of years ago so we had to modernise so people could understand the jokes. As we were performing it at our school I had an idea to set the audience up around tables and have a bar set up so people can buy drinks. Looking over the first girl scene at the hair dresser I think will be one of the better scenes as I imagine both Ralph and Eric sat on their chairs with the overhead hairdryers above them, I would like to them have Judd ranting about “Steve Wright” going franticly into her hair with scissors and then have Eric siting there worried about her hair, answering her question quickly with answers she wants to hear because she scared she may lose her hair if she says the wrong thing. I had another idea for the scene where the lads were at the pub, this is the scene where there ordering drinks and get faster in dialogue, I wanted to do the scene in a similar way to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMj3JVZUYZU from time 6:10 to 7:06. I like how they have done this part by using their bodies as the bar but I feel there is more that could be done with the creativity of the scene, I want to do the idea of what they have in standing in a line and bursting out from behind each other but I want to be bigger and more creative to get more laughs which will make more entertaining.