From Grandma...to...Grandpa

As we were retelling the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” a character we could not forget was Grandma. As with most grandmas when portrayed on stage or in film we looked at the possibility of having our grandma as being a doddering, little old lady who is as blind as a bat.
 

The creation process began by looking at how we first wanted to introduce her and we settled on the idea of having Grandma come across the Wolf after Scarlett runs away from. Sam took on the role of the Grandma and as a group we threw about possible ideas of how Grandma would act. In the first improvisation that we devised Grandma would:

·         Shuffle her feet

·         Hunched shoulders, crouched posture

·         Blind as a bat (squinting)

·         High, croaky voice

Initially we decided against Grandma interacting with the Wolf and instead we wanted her to move about the space as if she didn’t know he was there and then mistake him for tree, which would show how “blind” Grandma is, playing on the stereotype of elderly people having poor eyesight.

When we showed this scene we found that people didn’t think the scene worked and that it didn’t make sense. So we went back to the drawing board and looked at new ideas for Grandma.

We began by making Grandma much bigger in her character and included interaction between her and the wolf. The intention of this scene was to show the kindness of the Wolf and that when given the chance he is good. We decided to use Grandma in this scene because as she is elderly she would not clearly see or recognise the Wolf and so wouldn’t judge him immediately as the “Big Bad Wolf” and wouldn’t run away screaming like Scarlett. We tried the scene so that the Wolf offers to help Grandma with her bags but she refuses is help and sends him on his way and then speaks to herself about how it couldn’t have possibly been the “Big Bad Wolf” because he was too nice. However when we showed this scene again it was found again to be not working and that this scene was bringing down the energy of the earlier scenes.

We tried a new approach after one of the other groups split up and we were given the opportunity to take on a new member. After discussion we decided as a group to invite Tenda to join our group as we felt he may be able to bring something new to the role of Grandma which may improve the scene.

We started with writing out a script of the new scene. A note we had received was that there was a lack of dialogue that was highlighting the misunderstanding of the Wolf and so we looked at using this scene to show a language barrier between Grandma and the Wolf. Some lines we included were:

·         Wolf: “I was just going to carry your shopping”

·         Grandma: “I ain’t right for no choppin’”

·         Wolf: “Haven’t you already been?”

·         Grandma: “What do you mean, I’d look good with a plate of greens?”

Once we had created some dialogue we experimented with the movement of Grandma and settled on the idea of having her in a hunched posture and taking small but quick steps to travel. This allowed her to move quickly from one side of the stage to another and would walk circles around the Wolf as he gets irritated at her constantly mishearing her.

We felt much better with this approach to Grandma and so looked at devising the scene where Mr Pig comes to her house and dresses up in her clothing. As we wanted our Grandma to be slightly “frazzled” we devised a moment where Grandma comes across Mr Pig dressed in Grandma clothing and mistakes him for her mirror reflection and then proceeds to do the Macarena and is impressed at her moves. She talks to herself saying how she’s still “got the moves” and Mr Pig, forgetting where he is says “Piggy’s still got it!” When we performed this scene this moment was found to be received really well and people commented that Grandma was much more effective since Tenda had taken on the role.  

 

 

However it was pointed out that our Grandma resembled the character of Mammy Two Shoes in the “Tom and Jerry” show and it was felt that the character of Grandma needed to be more relatable to our audience. It was suggested that Grandma was Jamaican or stereotypically English rather than the African American we had originally settled for.

 

 

Tenda then experimented with Grandma having a Jamaican accent and although the accent was funny we found that Tenda’s diction got worse and we were losing dialogue as a result of the accent. We took  some time to speak to our peers to get their opinions and found that they thought the original African American worked better and that it was just the energy of Grandma that needed changing.

 

On the Thursday before we went out on tour we were told that Grandma needed to be seriously looked at because her scenes were not working. We began by cutting her scene with the Wolf as it wasn’t adding anything to the story and was more of a filler that was draining energy from the piece. We then spent time racking our brains at how we were going to make Grandma work because she was a vital character to the story and that is when Tenda suggested what if instead of Grandma it was Grandpa!

Tenda and Matt then went away and reworked the scene when Mr Pig dresses up as a Grandma. The plot of the scene changed so that Mr Pig dresses up as “Peppa Pig” and is from a dating agency and has come to take Grandpa on a date and instead locks him away. After performing we found that Grandpa was much more effective than Grandma and it highlighted to me that despite spending four weeks trying to make Grandma work sometimes it can take only a couple of hours to rework something to make it work effectively.

Our notes for Grandpa were just that he needed to be bigger on stage and Tenda had to embody a typical, grumpy Grandpa that is always in a “bad” mood. I suggested to Tenda to research the animated film “Father Christmas” which portrays Father Christmas as the kind of “typically moody” elderly man we wanted to achieve with Grandpa.