4.3

I went to see a play called 'Blacks Comedy' at the Chichester Festival Theatre by Peter Shaffer. This is a one act play about a power cut in the 1960's. Shaun Evens plays the part of the husband (Harold Gorringe). This characters objective throughout the play is to get all of the stolen furniture before his house full of party guests realise where it has come from when the light come back on. The part is full of comical moments which need an actor with good comical timings. The audience could see the actors on stage as the lights were on yet the actors made the audience believe that they were not through their physicality. The actor would hold his arm out in front of him as he moved around the space. Keeping his arm locked at the elbow and his knees bent, whilst using short, jumpy footsteps, made the audience really believe that his character really un-able to see his surroundings. Shaffer used very close proxemics to all of the other actors, which is unusual to normal actors which tend to use the space more, yet this brought more comedy to the piece as the other actors did not realise that they were so close to each other. Peter Shaffer used very plain facial expression throughout as he is acting as if no one can see him, yet when in reaction to others comments he really over exaggerates his facial expressions by really using his features like, opening his mouth really wide and cocking his next at a faster pace. Shaffer did this to really emphasize to the audience how he felt on the other actor’s opinions of what they should do about the power cut. Throughout the play the actors used very loud volume with their voice, as their characters did not anywhere they were in respect to others in the room. To make this even clearer about the spacing they spoke really clear with good dialect, by them over-exaggerating their word not just made it clear to the audience what they were saying also gave others characters on stage an idea of where everyone else is. Peter Shaffer used great comic timing in his performance, he responded well to others on stage; in one scene another character found some matches and lit them, his character then ran straight over to blow it out before other characters could see what he was doing. This worked really well as it had all of the audience in laughter throughout the play.