'Bouncers' research and, developing and shaping ideas creatively for performance - working on the opening of the play

Video of 2012 National Tour of bouncers - Show real:  http://youtu.be/CMqZFXfaknA   (Watch til 1:51) 

Watching this opening of the 2012 National Tour of bouncers really sparked some ideas in our heads, on creating an audience-engaging, effective and comical opening to this comdet play written by John Godber. Traditionally, this play is opened by some sort of scripted comical rap kind of thing, done by the four bouncers to leer the audience into the performance and to initiate the characters throughout the play and the atmosphere of a nightclub from the perspective of the bouncers. Although we did like this idea, I thought that opening the play this way would give away a lot of the comedy evolved from the multi-rolling aspect of the play, especially when playing girls, which stereotypically is very funny to watch males play females. We thought, as a company, that the comedy - that comes from the playing of different roles throughout the performance and from the change in physicality, voice, and in one case, in gender - should come as a surprise to the audience so that it is an element they are least expecting, which I think will enable us to reach the aspect of engaging the audience as they will be totally oblivious in regards to what to expect. Also, finding different ways to open the play, strongly conveys the unit of Performance Workshop (one of our units covered within this assignment) as we will be trying out and developing lots of different ideas and approaches to create a very effective opening that an audience will enjoy very much so - drawing them into the performance from the start. 

We came across this video of the opening (from start to 1:51 of the video) of a version of the play which was the 2012 National Tour of bouncers We very much liked the idea, as a company, of how they opened their version because it was very comical in a way where it is unexpected as you could never picture bouncers, on duty, dancing and grooving to the music playing in the club, as the stereotypical reputation of bouncers; being big and muscular, bold, tough, intimidating and responsible, would all be lost. So we thought this would be a good way to engage the audience in from the start, as they would find it very enjoyable to watch.

We decided to go with this idea but in a our own way, where the bouncers, one by one, come on and initiate the fact that they are a bouncer by doing things like making eye contact with audience and threatening them not to cause any trouble in the club, glare at an audience member to give an intimidating kind of feeling, patrol around etc. to then break into a ridiculous and humerous dance, to almost, 'cancel out' the fact that we had each come on and initiated us as bouncers by carrying out lots of stereotypical bouncer gestures and actions. 

The song we chose for this opening, we agreed had to be a current club song with a good drop thatis always  danced to in nightclubs - so we chose Gecko 'Overdrive'.