Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter

This term we studied a play, originally written for television, called Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter. It is described as a deceptively simple tale, the reason for this is that although the plot appears to march the levelts of heptad West-Country seven year olds on a summertime afternoon during the Second World War it holds a completely different underlying meaning. Over the course of the play the children play and fight as seven year olds do. However Dennis Potter insisted that the seven year olds be played by adults. His reason for this was that he wanted his audience to realise the true realities of childhood are not transparent with innocence, which he said himself. He didnt want the audience to react to two girls vie with doll with an indulgent ah he did not want people to see the adorable and seemingly innocent side to childhood.From his own experiences he understood that he had some of the same detectings that he at one time had a child. He recalls that when wa lking al whiz in the wrong parts of New York he felt almost exactly the same fearfulness that I had felt four decades earlier when he had been waylaid by one particular bully in the high hedge lanes. He says that he did not want these, or any other, emotions to be distanced by the presence of young limbs, fresh eyes. And falsetto voices. He wanted his audience to be able to feel some sort of resemblance between their own feelings and those of the characters in the play and these emotions were not all innocent ones. Another reason he chose adults was because he wanted his audience to see how children really played, as they subtly alter their behaviour when they are being watched by adults.After reading the play carefully we then discussed the themes of Blue Remembered HillsDeath GamesWar Limitations ofChildhoodHappiness Loss of FearInnocenceBullyingFriendship Child AbuseWe then narrow these land into four main themesInnocenceGuiltBullyingWarWe then fulfilled a still image on eac h of these four themes. My group had to perform the themes bullying and guilt. Preparing and carrying out these still images helped us capture the emotions and reactions of the characters involved.BULLYING GUILTBULLYING Levels were very important in this still image as they helped show the different status of each character. With this in mind, we decided to have one character on a lower level than the others. This character was kneeling trim down curled up, whilst the other was standing in a tall and confident way towering over him/her. This made it obvious to the audience who was in understand of the situation. Also the positioning of the characters was important. We wanted to show how the one being bullied wanted to create distance but that the other wanted to dominate the situation. We did this by having the one being bullied shrinking away shielding their face. To show how the character in charge was bullying the other they were pointing and laughing whilst they had a slightly angry reflectivity on their face.GUILT I found this still image harder to create. We decided to have one character accusing another, whilst the accused character being the effect of attention so as to show they were guilty. Again we found levels very important. To emphasise who in the still image was guilty we had this character on a higher level whilst looking slightly scared and anxious. We did this by having this character biting their nails to show anxiety and standing with hunched shoulders as if to hide their guilt. The other character had an angry expression to show their mood. This character stood a good distance from the other as if they were trying to exclude the accused character.After having narrowed down the umpteen themes into four main themes, we were able to use the still images to understand the emotions of the characters. We were able to explore deeper into how children the age of seven would have reacted and behaved in these situations. This helped us greatly when we did work off text.Another way in which we explored the play was with role-play. During one of our first lessons our teacher told us to play tag, something that seven year olds would do. At first we felt awkward but soon we were all running around the room. When we stopped performing we discussed how we had felt.* Even though it had been a long since performing tag I found it very invigorating.* Whilst playing I never stopped to think about whether I was tired or not, but once I stopped playing I realised I was very out of breathe.* I was surprised at how much energy I had and how I continued to feel energised even after I had stopped playing.* I also noticed how whilst we were playing, there had been no boundaries between any of the students and that we didnt care if the psyche we were chasing or running away from was a boy or a girl or if they were our friend or not.We then discussed the similarities between our behaviour whilst playing tagand the behaviour of seven year o lds. I realised that without any preparation we had already imitated the behaviour of children. I realised how all the actions feelings I had whilst playing tag I had already had when I was seven years of age (this reminded me of Dennis Potters Quote which I included in the first paragraph). I noticed that many of the things I did when role playing, were things that a seven year old would do as well. For example, how I never stopped running or moving even when I was tired and out of breathe.