PDF file: Drama - Higher - Lovers - Education Scotland

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46 DIRECTORY OF ACTING PIECES (This helps to explain her awkwardness and diffident relationship with Andy near the beginning of Losers.) In all this time she has been ‘forced’ to look after her invalid mother. Having met Andy she has grabbed what is possibly her last chance of romance. She is the one who takes the initiative in the courting sequences. She is desperate for love and affection. She is eager to escape her life of loneliness and daily drudgery. When we first see Hannah she sides with Andy against her mother. We see her attend her mother ‘with an ungracious vigour and obvious ill-will’. The actress playing this role has to create a believable character. This is not a two-dimensional comedy part. Hannah is of course integral to the comic action. It is the ferocity of her passionate embraces with Andy, coupled with the comic device of reciting the poem, that fuels a large chunk of the comedy in Losers. The actress must also deliver Hannah’s anger and frustration at being forced to look after her mother. Towards the end of Losers we see that passionate relationship with Andy has vanished and that ‘her coldness to him is withering’. Hannah should have an Irish accent. The exchanges between Andy and Hannah need a careful balance of timing for maximum comic effect. Mrs Wilson A very dominant female character part. She is a heightened caricature. She has an Irish accent. We start to get an impression of Mrs Wilson before we even see her. She is manipulative and has managed to have things her own way until Andy arrives on the scene and threatens her comfortable position. She uses her ‘illness’ as a weapon against Andy. The actress has to be able to portray the transparency of Mrs Wilson’s ‘suffering’ as well as her steely determination to continue to have things her own way. Mrs Wilson uses religion to assert her position and dominance. She represents Mother Church. Friel paints a negative picture of Mrs Wilson, as she does with Cissy. ‘Like Cissy, she is a tiny woman, with a sweet, patient, invalid’s smile’. She is a stereotypical old widow who is frightened of being left on her own. She is in her early seventies and bedridden. She is harsh and unfeeling. Like Cissy she offers no benevolence to Andy and Hannah. This is a very good part offering humorous opportunities. Cissy A highly comic female character part. Cissy is a heightened caricature. She is a blatantly false character who exudes false piousness. Friel paints a very negative picture of Cissy. She is the symbolic representation of the straightlaced society that Andy and Hannah live in. Cissy also personifies a certain type of religious person who shows no benevolence towards her fellow men and women, especially in the case of Andy and DRAMA
DIRECTORY OF ACTING PIECES Hannah. This is a gift of a role to an actress who can get across Cissy’s waspish, interfering nature. Cissy is a stereotypical old spinster, ‘a small, frail wisp of a woman’. She has an Irish accent. We sense that she is afraid of men and doesn’t like being in their company. She is a woman in her late sixties, close to Mrs Wilson, her chief ally. There is plenty of opportunity in this role for comic interaction with the other characters in the play. The audience relishes her reaction to Andy’s verbal attack in the drunken climax to Losers. DRAMA 47
Page 1 and 2: INTRODUCTION In 1993 Scottish CCC p
Page 3 and 4: OVERALL DIRECTORIAL INTERPRETATION
Page 45: DIRECTORY OF ACTING PIECES Mag. The
Page 49 and 50: Winners, Episode One Page reference
Page 51 and 52: Losers, Extracts Two and Three Page

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