For our radio play, we were to perform the BBC play ‘People
snogging in public places’; which follows 13-year-old self-diagnosed autistic
James Matthews and his struggles with teenage life. James explains the
different aspects of being a teenager in 1992 to the listener, and how his
grandmother’s death acts as the catalyst for change in his household. Uncle
Patrick is the predominant change in James’s life, so much so that James
categorises his being into B.P and A.P (before Patrick and after Patrick). The
play mostly focuses on the weekend where James is left with Patrick, as his
mum, Angela, takes James’s older sister, Alice, on a shopping trip to reconnect
with her as she has become distant since the arrival of Patrick. James’s school
life takes a toll on him in addition to this, as his love for Lisa is proved to
be unrequited after saying that she would ‘rather be ‘plonkered’ by a Great
Dane with a shitty knob’ than sleep with him. Her boyfriend, Pete, collides
with James’s apparent schedule.
We were to analyse a form of radio programme that involved
dialogue and multiple characters; to ultimately set ourselves up for our radio
performance. I listened to Mike Bartlett’s play, ‘Cock’, that first involves
two gay men having relationship issues. Bartlett first came up with the idea
for the play when teaching in the ‘gay’ side of Mexico City, commonly referred
to as this, as Mexico have very religious connotations that consider
homosexuality unnatural. Additionally, cockfighting is still a sport enjoyed by
many in the region and involves two animals squaring up against one another,
battling out to be victorious; and this aspect he has included in the dialogue
as both John and his nameless boyfriend are wanting to come out successful in
their first argument that opens the play.
Bartlett says before he writes a play, that he simply starts
out writing a conversation between two people that have some sort of
relationship with each other, and goes from there. I think this is evident in
the radio performance of ‘Cock’, as it contains mass amounts of rapid dialogue
and the topic of conversation at most points can be related to a simple subject
or what problem person ‘A’ has with person ‘B’; in this case, it is John (read
by Ben Whishaw) that has the issue with his boyfriend (read by Andrew Scott).
However, as time goes on, a person ‘C’ is introduced into the equation as it is
revealed that John is having an ‘affair’ with a girl (read by Katherine
Parkinson), who also remains nameless.
The slight anonymity of John’s sexual partners makes it
obvious that Bartlett had meant for this to be the case when writing the play;
personally, I think that he has done this to imagine ourselves in John’s
position and observe the relationships he has with Scott’s and Parkinson’s
characters. It may also reflect his personality disorder and his confession
that he is two different people when he is with his two sexual partners, and
when caught in the middle he did not know how to act. This can relate to James
from our radio play as he too is confused and would not know how to react in
certain ‘everyday’ situations; his relationship with Pete as an example. The
major difference, however, is that James acts as the narrator in ‘PSIPP’ while
John acts as the protagonist; hence, we as the audience get a sense of
confidence from James as he acknowledges his apparent place in the social
hierarchy, whereas John is perplexed with not just everyone around him, but
himself too.
The overall quality of ‘Cock’ was sublime, as the script was
eligible to double-up as a theatre play as well as a radio play, and I think
this is evidence of its distinction. Minimal sound effects are prominent in the
programme, due to the script making obvious references to ones that had
occurred; for example, when John and his boyfriend are in their apartment, ‘M’
(Andrew Scott) points out that there was a knock on the door and that on the
other side of it was Katherine Parkinson’s character. Another example is when
she punches ‘M’’s dad (voiced by Paul Jesson – ‘F’) just after dinner, where
any sound is unnecessary due to remarkable reactions from characters.
Subsequently, ‘Cock’ has constant strong language and sexual
content that would make it inappropriate for children; however, its dramatic
brilliance would make it very suitable for a BBC programme if it were a picture
drama as it already licensed to BBC Radio 3. It created the right atmosphere
for its themes (sexuality, confrontation etc.) and built up the story with the
right amount of pace, as it splits itself into three stages: John’s time with
his boyfriend and how unsettled he becomes with their relationship, his
discovery of ‘W’ and his intimate time with her and then finally the choice
between the two.
During the build-up to my group’s performance of ‘People
Snogging in Public Places’, I rehearsed my three assigned roles; ‘Teacher 1’, ‘Operator’
and ‘Man’. Obviously due to lack of radio air time and multi roles, I practised
a variety of accents and vocal methods to differentiate my characters as much
as possible and to provide a big contrast between them. For my Teacher line, I start
a worsening chain of embarrassing questions asked by teachers to James; going
from ‘Did he hit you?’ to ‘Did he apply strawberry lipstick to your lips and
make you sing patty-cake patty-cake patty-cake?’. So, I thought a concerned
low-pitch and authoritative voice would do the trick as the questions get considerably
less serious as they go on.
Next, my only multi-liner character, the Operator, would
have a well-spoken, monotone sound to their voice based on what most telephone
workers are like in my experience in talking to them. Not only is a day at work
dull for Operators, but you’d also have the occasional person ringing up for a
laugh – so I’d imagine they’d be quite underwhelming and so I wanted to create
a caricature of this idea. This would be so my character would pretend as if
they are enthusiastic, but instead are doing an underwhelming job in doing so;
this would create a comedic aspect to the role, however, it may take away the
tone away from the scene after where James connects to Pete’s dad.
Finally, the ‘Man’ role involved James bumping into my
character as he runs down the street to the park to find Uncle Patrick.
Therefore, my line ‘Oi, you little prick!’ had to be aggressive; so, I succumbed
to stereotype and played the role with a cockney accent. This put more emphasis
on the ‘Oi!’ and gave it the urgency I felt it needed. Our substitute teacher,
Nadine, complimented me on my vocal diversity and my choice of accent. In our
lesson with Nadine, we experimented with recording noises around the room, and
bringing them back to see what everyday things they could be. For example, I
pinged a metal pillar in the class and recorded it, then feedback suggested it could
be the noise of train gates or a school bell. Then, Pau recorded the closing of
the class door and it was said that it could act as thunder. This workshop was
to suggest that radio performances can be low-budget productions as not
everything ids taken literally in terms of sound.
During the recording process, our loudest and quietest lines
had to be performed in various distances towards the microphone to get the best
quality from it. For instance, when I speak as the operator, I ensure that I
speak a bit closer to the microphone as an operator would usually have a
headset on, thus be very close to their speaking instrument. Contrasting to
this, my ‘Oi, you little prick!’ line toward the end of the play would have to
be greatly projected away from the mic, with my back turned. This was for
quality and to ensure there was no damage done to the recording equipment.
