Pygmalion and Forum theatre.

At the beginning of this lesson, we looked at this scene in Pygmalion. This scene is the opening section of the play and consist of a few characters trying to get away from the rain. The main character, the flower girl (Eliza), gets her flowers knocked over and because of this, argues with another character. She becomes increasingly aggravated with this gentleman and also argues with another man, who turns out to be friends with the first gentleman. In the end, she receives lots of money from the man and leaves in a taxi, however, she is still poor and her flowers are ruined.

We ran through this scene normally at first, then we took the scene and used forum theatre to explore how the outcome can change.
Firstly, James decided to see how the scene would change if Eliza never had her flowers knocked over by the man. This was actually not beneficial for Eliza as she gained a lot of money out of pity and not through selling her flowers. Therefore, if her flowers were not knocked over, she would not receive and more money, and her life will not change.

Then, we decided to work the scene if the bystanders and gentlemen were kinder to Eliza. We saw that the gentleman would offer Eliza a place to sleep straight away. However, Eliza was very wary about this prospect and decided not to go with the man. Therefore, nothing changed for her.

Overall, out of all of the changes we completed, the original scene actually appears to be the most beneficial to Eliza. However, it would have been interesting to observe how these slight changes would effect the entire play, and how this would effect Eliza and her life later on in the play.