Roses of Eyam

After we had read the book Roses of Eyam by Don Taylor in drama class we did some practicals to help us with the understanding of the play and to work on our acting skills. Roses of Eyam is about The Plague and home it came to the small village of Eyam in Derbyshire. In the play The Plague killed many of the characters such as; all of the Sydall family, Edward Thornley and William Torre.

The first lesson of practicals consisted of us doing sound tracks and still images. We were placed into groups to do these. A sound track is when you put together sounds to do with a specific topic, this topic being Roses of Eyam, and create an ongoing sound until you reach the finish. A still image is what when you get given a subject to make a picture out of and you freeze into that picture and the audience have to guess what the still image is of. Some groups were better than others in doing the sound tracks. What worked well: the repetition of key facts, certain words were said altogether by the group, which gave it a more dramatic effect, the contrast some groups had between happy and sad with their emotions while speaking, the level of noise because as you increase the level of noise the more suspenseful and dramatic the sound gets. What didn’t work well: for sound tracks you must get the beat right for all of the words to it together and if not it just sounds jumbled up and it doesn’t work well. Still images are fairly easy to do so there was not anything wrong with the still images. What worked well: in some groups they had the different stages of death, how the plague killed people, height levels, with more people low and only a few high it shows the audience who has the authority and power in the still image, and lastly all groups had a clear understanding of what they were portraying in the still image.

In the second lesson of practicals we worked on role-playing. We were in groups of three because we were working on three specific characters: Mopessson, his