Context
The Dumb Waiter was first presented at the Hampstead Theatre Club on 21 January 1960. It transferred to the Royal Court Theatre on 8 March 1960, with the same cast and produced for television by the BBC on 23 July 1985. It is a one-act comedy drama play by Harold Pinter written in 1957.
The Dumb Waiter was first presented at the Hampstead Theatre Club on 21 January 1960. It transferred to the Royal Court Theatre on 8 March 1960, with the same cast and produced for television by the BBC on 23 July 1985. It is a one-act comedy drama play by Harold Pinter written in 1957.
"The Dumb Waiter is Pinter distilled – the very essence of a writer who tapped into our desire to seek out meaning, confront injustice and assert our individuality.”
This well-known play by playright Harold Pinter it is set in a safe house. The scene starts in a basement room: two beds flat against the back wall, a serving hatch- closed- between the beds, a door to the kitchen and lavatory to the left and a door to a passage on the right. This project involved the other creative departments and I assisted the creative media department. The production was recorded.
The silent movie that was performed by me and Altin was based on the Dumb Waiter.
As I would go around the house doing chores I would be a nuisance to him and while I did the chores Altin would do aggressive movements in a comedic manner. I acted as if I was oblivious to his movements. There is more than one way to create entertainment. In order to act without using words I had to over emphasize my actions and capture the audience. We were told to always face the camera as the production was being recorded.
The performance went better for me because I was performing in front of a camera rather than an audience, but we were asked not to look down the lens or notice the camera.
The second production was the actual Dumb Waiter.The performance went very well. We had rehearsed well and remembered our lines.
During the week we worked further on the Dumb Waiter.
We focused on the themes such as physical theater and a range of different skills.
We analysed which were the different qualities of the characters throughout the lesson. I began to incorporate the different qualities of my character Gus into my own onstage personalities. This helped me and although I don’t have full understanding at this point I am making constant progress.
The character Ben is condescending, sarcastic, lazy and very passive aggressive whereas Gus on the other hand is submissive, annoying, dopey and socially awkward therefore making it easy for Ben to manipulate him.
This makes for a good contrast and at the fore front of this production is Ben's manipulative hold on Gus. I have come to acquire skills I need to fulfill the role, such as shaking constantly to suggest I am nervous.
Rehearsals
During rehearsals of the play we used actioning. I had to be annoying. There were transitive verbs such as energetic, talking quickly, understanding, dopey, annoying towards Ben and the performance was much more serious because it entailed having two hit men that lived in the basement of a restaurant.which gave them a sense of security but their job was on the contrary as they had to risk their lives to kill other people. This helped massively in getting into a scared restless character mixed in wit the character traits dopey and annoying i had to make my character unbearable to live with added on by the pressure of living in a confined space did not help the situation.
We were given pointers:
- Stand still when I deliver my lines
- To be more enthusiastic
- To be fearful.
Research
Rob showed us silent movies on YouTube he showed us examples of silent movies such as the famous Charlie Chaplin he got me and Altin to do a performance without speech using props such as a mop and and a gun based in a front room. I felt that it was quite challenging and my acting partner found it quite frustrating. The second part of the module was the dumb waiter. Rob showed us the dumb waiter on YouTube therefore we had a good understanding of what we had to do I enjoyed the dumb waiter a lot and found that it was also quite challenging. Harold Pinter uses pauses in his plays I found this very challenging. The different props we had were 4 chairs and for our costume we wore suits because we were hit men. For my part I had to play the part of someone who was energetic dopey and annoying. I was upright and stiff due to living in such a cramped place. I used gestures to show my characteristics such as poking Ben constantly to show I was annoying my facial expressions were very dopey I came across very stupid by putting on a very draining voice sounding like I was tired and restless. The type of set was very basic no spotlights and because this play kept changing actors we used a lot of blackouts.