About the book.

Our next unit of performing arts is creating a play based on the novel (converted to play) 'The Wolves of Willoughby Chase'. When reading the script, I knew straight away which character I would like to be, Bonnie. I really liked this character because her written personality sounded slightly like my real personality! "Bonnie is adventurous and confident, with a fiery temper." When reading this first line out to my mum she said to audition for this part straight away! It continues, "She is somewhat spoiled" (again, my mum thought that I should audition for this!) "...but a bright and good-natured girl, strongly built and full of energy." My favourite scene of 'Bonnie's' was defiantly when Miss Slighcarp wears her mothers dress and we see Bonnie first show her fiery side in the whole play!
  "Miss Slighcarp: You will attend to your own breakfasts from now on. There is much to do this morning, where did-
  Bonnie: What are you wearing?
  Miss Slighcarp: Are you speaking to me?
  Bonnie: Why are you wearing my mothers dress?"
From the start of the book, we have only really seen Bonnie as a sweet, good-natured little girl. We can tell that she is well looked after and has positive surroundings until Miss Slighcarp comes into her life and takes over. Miss Slighcarp has sort of turned Bonnie more nasty in my opinion as we do not see this side of her until she is provoked by the governess herself.

  I am excited to start this play, the final outcome should be very dark and gloomy, but with a fairy tale twist.

  On Tuesday we worked on our physicality movements with Justine creating a wolf like routine. In our big group, we all were in parallel lines and made big heavy like movements backwards and forwards (like a real wolf crawling and looking for its pray). The next move was to do a 'dart-look' towards the right of the stage, and then to our audience. This was very effective in my opinion because that is what a wolf would do and it makes it more daring and scary to watch. We then swooped round to the left, fell to the floor on one leg (this all being a very fast movement,) and throwing our arms backwards and lifting up our bodies to create a table like form. This to me represents the wolves freakiness and how they appeared to others in the book (being very gruesome and un-humanly.) To finish we simply crawled backwards in our table like form, still staring at the audience. When deciding how to make the introduction we wanted to put this is but alter it to make it our own for the show. We decided we would keep everything from the movements except when we usually would drop to the floor on one foot after 'swooping', we changed this to a quicker movement of just getting straight up and scattering away. I liked this idea better because it makes the whole routine faster (just like a wolfs speed), and it also to me says that you don't have enough time against the wolves. They are so fast moving if you are spotted they will get you straight away. This brings panic and will put the audience in the mindset of if the wolves were actually real.

  On Thursday with Jill we put together the intro of the play working in three small groups: the boys doing the 'Chorous', for their idea they all stood in a tight huddle and read their verse at the exact same time, creating small but important movements all at the same time and keeping a gloomy feel. Then it was me/Megan/Sian/Chloe building a structure out of stands and planks and being wolves, crawling all over them in strange and creepy ways, and finally Beth, Jess, Amy and Zoe creating a line from the chorus of-
                                          "Meanwhile, far away in London
                                          Another girl, a frail and timid mouse,
                                          Who hides behind her shadow,
                                          Boards a train for the perilous journey
                                          Across this famished frozen land."
  When the girls created this section they decided to show all of this from behind a show like a shadow show in which they would nominate one person to be the girl and the others would be stood like statues then the girl would hide behind each one individually. She would then come to a train conductor who would slowly wind their fingers and arms towards her then quickly grab her in and throw her onto the train. I thought that this was a great combination of ideas because it wasn't just doing what the line told them to do, it was thinking outside the box and working with their imagination and I really liked the whole idea.