Devising - Week 1

Ode to Billy Joe Initial Response

Texas Bar doors.

The Stimulus given to us for this devising unit was Bobbie Gentry's song 'Ode to Billy Joe'. We listened to the song about 3 times, my initial response was that it would be set in a Texas bar specially with the stereotypical doors, as shown.

I also had the idea that the family run a farm and the news of their son passing doesn't mean that much to them, 'well Billie Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits please'. This shows how even Billie's father wasn't shocked about his death and is shows that it isn't important as he would rather have the 'biscuits' then talk about his sons suicide. This also shows how their life goes on, this is ironically shown as of the repetition of the song and beat. 

Another response I had is that the lady singing the song Bobbie Gentry had a love relationship with Billie Joe and that they had a child. The relationship was hidden by Bobbie and Billie, because they would have been disowned by Bobbie's parents as they hated Billie. Bobbie soon became pregnant with Billie's kid. They managed to keep the pregnancy secret but it would have been impossible to keep the baby a secret, so once Bobbie had given birth, her and Billie decided to throw the baby of the Tallahatchie bridge. 'She and Billie Joe were throwing something off the Tallahatchie Bridge'. This is also the reason Bobbie has lost her appetite. 

Grouping

After everyone had thought about their initial responses we were told to get into groups with who we would be devising with. The class was told to get into 3 groups of 6. Our group quickly formed and I was happy with the outcome. I felt I was in a group of people that I was good friends with but also that I wouldn't get distracted. In my group was Donna, Phoebe, Kennedy, Joe, Lewis and myself. After the group got together we sat down and started drawing a spider diagram of different ideas for our devising performance. I felt Kennedy, Phoebe and myself contributed to the diagram the most. In this diagram we highlighted different thoughts like, covering up a murder as something is thrown off the bridge, to the idea that the Dad has a grudge. We also discussed how he could live with the guilt.

After looking into the story of Billie Joe, I remembered a song that I like called 'Take the Money and Run' by Steve Miller Band. The song mentions Billie Joe and Bobbie. However I think Steve Miller band's song is an interpretation as Billie Joe is said to rob a castle.

First Devising Idea

We then decided to look into making our first scene but before we did we did an exercise to get warmed up and also helped to produce ideas. The warm up we did was a piggback race between 3 groups of 2. This warm up was great because it enabled us to be connected with each other and also we used it as one of our ideas to open the play. In this we had three couples to show the different stages of Billie Joe and Bobbie. We had the young love portrayed between Phoebe and Lewis, then the careful and secret love between Donna and Joe and the nostalgic love in Kennedy as at this point in the couples life Billie has committed suicide. We also thought about the couples dancing and Kennedy dancing by herself to show her sadness.

A New Idea

We felt and made the decision that as a group we all wanted to portray different characters to make our piece more memorable we said how we felt that all boys portraying Billie and all girls portraying Bobbie wasn't what we wanted, and so we scraped the idea. However the idea was not all bad as we kept the element of three couples. We decided to portray Bobbie's family, which we decided consisted of the father played by Lewis the mother portrayed by Kennedy and the younger sister who is Phoebe. We gave different themes to the three couples, for the parents we had the theme of abuse and the Father abusing the mother. We have the loving relationship of Bobbie and Billie almost like Romeo and Juliet as they are keeping the love a secret. For the last couple the limited time, Brother Taylor my character is in love with Phoebe's character Sister Betty, but is getting married to Bobbie. Betty is however under age and so this relationship cannot be known.

Overall, I think the new idea is good and we have made sufficient progress. I also think are new idea is good and we can build on it.