Act 2 Scene 4 Explain and justify how you would direct the performer to highlight the characters feelings and playwrights’ intentions. Our Country’s Good Scene Synopsis/Context Here we see the Aborigine muse about the nature of dreams, this comes after the scene where Harry is hallucinating about the dead and Duckling tries to comfort him through sex (Act 2, Scene 3) I personally would interpret and direct the Aborigine to be an older member of the aborigine community, therefore giving the impression of being wise to the audience- and they would therefore have a slight bias to what he is saying and believe that as he is wise they should ponder on the meaning of the play and each line he says in the play. Explain and justify how you would direct the performer to highlight the characters feelings and playwrights’ intentions. Act 2, Scene 4 is performed by only the aborigine, it comes after the scene where Harry is seen having hallucinations, here the aborigine would have seen this and become disturbed and fearful of the british men and women, and so I would direct the actor to present this on stage. As a director I would research the context of the time, I would have the actor playing the Aborigine dressed in only a cloth and would have a large stick (used as a walking stick) to show his age, I would position him away from the stage in the box, where being immersed in the audience would feel more connected to his character-as well as showing the way he is being pushed out of his own land. The playwright’s intentions for this character is to have him as a voice of reason and to show the affects of colonialisation from the British, and therefore the disruption of lives. The playwright’s intentions for the play as a whole are to show the damage colonialisation causes and to show how disrupting an entire population for one country’s needs is selfish. I would do this by moving the aborigine’s stage position in each scene to represent the displacement. I would direct the actor to perform his lines from the box standing up with one leg raised on another chair to make it seem like he is watching from high up, the leg being raised would suggest a high status, but also as if he’s being pushed down by the British colonists and he no longer has this high status- and therefore showing him feeling concerned for his community and for his own country. I would direct the actor to say ‘Some dreams lose their way and wander over the earth’ whilst looking into the distance and outstretching one arm and sweeping it on the words ‘wander over’, whilst using his stick to wave across in front of him. This use of gesture would make the audience feel like they are being told a story- also by forcing the audience to look up they would see him as an overbearing figure- the figure we should focus on in order to achieve the playwright's intention. This would cast back to scene two in act one where he says ‘This is a dream that has lost its way’however the change in tone from pity towards with colonisers to anger and contempt and then fear towards what will happen to his own land. When saying the line ‘but this is a dream no one wants. It has stayed’, I would direct the actor to have a tone of frustration and a lower voice with a loud volume, to show his frustration of losing his home and his land to the strangers which have suddenly appeared and stolen what is not theirs. I would then direct the actor to have emphasis on ‘How’, ‘crowded’, ‘hungry’ and ‘disturbed’ in the next line by making them louder and punctuated by saying them slightly quicker and having a pause afterwards, and emphasising his own uneasiness. He will look into the audience as if pleading for help and an answer, as well as then looking to the sky to emphasise this need. By saying ‘how can we befriend this crowded, hungry and disturbed dream?’ this casts back to act 1 scene two again where he says it's ‘best to leave it alone’, now due to his fear of what's happening to his beloved land. He would want to preserve his land and would ‘muse’ on not only the ‘nature of dreams’ (as it says in the scene title) but also on how he- and his community- is going to survive. In conclusion, I would want the audience to listen and reflect on what the aborigine is saying. I would also want the audience to feel a strong sense of admiration and respect for this character- and to question the way in which his land is being invaded. I would also want the audience to understand that the musing of dreams is actually a metaphor for the british colonists and the destruction they are causing. EBI/WWW WWW: Band- 4 8/10 ● ● ● Breadth of play Placed emphasis was elaborated on, meaning of play came through God job done of something difficult ○ Did manage to find purpose of character in context of the play, in reference to colonisation, different perspective, view what audience are seeing EBI: ● ● ● Reference body paint Just say the research Don’t use the word selfish, don't use the word ‘chair’ say rostra.