For the assessment, I am going to be looking at the play Birdland by Simon Stephens with Emma, Ryan and Edward. When I was asked to be a part of this piece, I had not heard of the play or Stephens which was something I wanted because of the experience I had at the rehearsed reading with Gundog and with Chris Savery’s play. After reading the play I realised how much I would really like to explore the different elements of the play, particularly the themes of alcohol and drug abuse, suicide and friendships, which really stood out to me in the first instance. Sierz, A (2011:445) states that Stephen’s is “part of the post-millennial and post-in-yer-face generation of playwrights…” which is a genre I have not explored much during my degree. This excited me as I was looking forward to explore something new.

In Birdland, I will be playing the role of Marnie, a very complicated and in my opinion confused girl who just wants to be loved and cared for. Marnie is Johnny’s (Edward) girlfriend, however quite early on in the piece we see her cheat with his best friend and the central character in the piece Paul (Ryan). The guilt from this drives Marnie to kill herself and the rest of the play shows a downwards spiral for the two men. I am excited to get into the role and to play a character like Marnie. In my opinion, Marnie’s guilt is just one element of her suicide and I would like to explore the reasons people have which ultimately lead to killing themselves as I am someone who has lost a close relative due to this. I also would like to explore the reasons behind why Marnie cheats as there is not much detail about this in the play.  Although I think it will be hard for me, I am ready for the challenge to embrace Marnie and hopefully come out with more of an understanding of her and also of myself as an artist.

In terms of research I looked at the original Royal Court version of the play and how it was performed there. I found the production trailer really useful to give me an idea of how dark and heavy the play is and how this needs to be shown by every character in the piece. This is the link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyD4cUWXRSY. I think that the trailer is really interesting as it does not give away too much about the play, which I find fascinating, as if I were to have seen this and then go and see the performance I would not have had a preconceived idea about the piece. I really look forward to doing more research, particularly into Marnie and meeting with the group to discuss how we plan to put this piece together.

Royal Court Theatre. (2014). Video Trailer for Birdland by Simon Stephens at Royal Court Theatre [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyD4cUWXRSY

Sierz, A. (2011). The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights (p. 445). London: Bloomsbury Publishing.