Topic 1

The piece lasts for approximately 16 minutes.

The devised piece with four performers is an ensemble in the style of Steven Berkoff, titled "Meet the Hastings", focused on a physical satirical representation of a wealthy family. There are echoes of Berkoff's Decadence in the subject matter; and the centre acknowledges in the marking that that their candidates pursued Berkoff's social preoccupations. The piece begins with the family in a stacked position using typically minimal staging, in this case two desks stacked on top of one another; a stage and a floor area, providing two levels for performance, and a screen for projection. All other furniture is created by use of the actors' bodies, as is typical of Berkoff's Total Theatre. The family stack position represents a hierarchy, father at top, mother below and the two daughters below; this is the default position to which they return between episodes. They begin by asking what the father has been doing, then shift to a physical representation of his car sales business and a poor family seeking to buy a car. This is followed by the representation of a family car trip to Devon, (a holiday area). The representation of a car evokes the motorcycle scene in Berkoff's  East but is sufficiently different to be considered original devising. This is followed by another family scene, discussing the daughters' complaints about their privileged school, which becomes an ensemble chant and a dance. The return to the family stack positioning gives rise to a scene which plays out a scene of one of the daughters at ballet class, in which a poor ballet student is introduced and physically humiliated by the frightening ballet teacher and the class; culminating in the shock and outrage played out when the poor girl is drinking from the wealthy girl's water bottle.

Returning to the family stack position, the next scene introduced is the mother's plastic surgery, conducted in physical theatre behind a white sheet. There is projection of a representation of the mother's face behind the group action. As film, this is not assessed and is something of an additional element to the essential action. The group represent her being both brought in for surgery and being wheeled out with a grotesque face after 'the procedure' and no longer able to speak normally and unable to close her mouth, with a face now somewhat reminiscent of Munch's The Scream. The restaurant scene which follows is perhaps somewhat reminiscent of dining scenes in Berkoff's own work, and is a representation of excess, typical of Berkoff's work. The final scene, after the family return home after over-eating at the restaurant only to be horrified to discover the poor girl is now a neighbour, is a series of describing waking moments for the girl and the father character, clearly an overtly intended reference to the opening of Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis. The piece ends with an ensemble representation of greed personified as an all-consuming monster.