Project Concept

Concept for The Bronx Tale 

The Bronx Tale is the play that I have chosen to perform as my final production. The Bronx Tale is mainly focused on the Father and Son like relationship between two main protagonist , Calegero and the Italian Mob Boss Sonny.

Taking  place in the 1960's Bronx , written by Chazz Palminteri.

My Aim for this production is to create a piece of theatre that will be action packed with lights and sounds in order to convey a deep contextual meaning on the socially turbulent 1960s, as well as playing believable and contextually convincing characters in order to put together a roller coaster of traumatic experiences seen in the eyes of Calegero to make piece of drama that will be memorable to audiences. 

 I would like for the production to be both dramaticaly and contextually believable  focusing on the key themes like racial tension but yet be  slightly unrealistic.  I feel that ,since the play is essentially one large roller coaster of  traumatic experiences seen in the lenses of Calgero while growing up his neighbourhood, the audience would be slightly disconnected from the character and the performance, as I wanted  the  key themes of the play to stand out over everything but this needed  to be digestible for the audience, which is why  I felt it crucial to be slightly unrealistic by  breaking The 4th Wall in some scenes.  Furthermore The key themes I want will come from the play itself and will be entirely predicated on the historical context. The narrative dialogue will help dive the story forward dragging the audience a long through a roller coaster of dramatic and traumatic sequences witnessed in the perspective of Calegero. Another important thing to note would be the dialogue between Sonny and Calegero which will aid I their chemistry keeping the audience emotionally connected and entertained. 

 I wanted to keep the play concise and simple by cutting the play by a substantial amount from the original running time being 2hrs 10 minutes to an estimated run time of approximately 15 minutes. This short run time helps me to have a tunnel vision on the overall direction of the story and want are the most important themes and characters to include to move in that direction. Cuttin it down to such a short time frame helps to key themes to be shown through out the production and for them not to be forgotten . It also helps focus on the chemistry and relationship between Calegero and Sonny which I feel is the most important and prevalent part of the story . We want the piece to be naturalistic and have a base in Stanislavski. To do this I will need to research a number of topics relating to racial tension in the 1960s which I can use to process the text and convey a range of emotions in characters . This research will give me a greater understanding of the plays setting and atmosphere , character motivations and thought processes. I will gather research from as many historically accurate  sources  I possibly can , such as books, articles, archives and movie adaptations and so on. As my production Is very short and Ive got full creative direction ,I feel  will not need to attend many classes to rehearse , instead I can learn lines at home come up with ideas for the set , lighting ,costume, sounds , design, etc . I will also be able to watch movie adaptations gaining more ideas and rehearse and practice my production over the coming weeks at my own accord in my own private space and environment at home . I expect to have the  research and design elements finalised through the coming thirteen weeks and have my performance ready after my tech on May 9th . I will also need to at some point have  access to a technical theatre setup so that my performance can use tech to aid in its short time span and bring it to life more. 

Over the weeks I will be working with myself , ill come in to see my  classmates and help them with their performances and final projects by providing them with constructive feedback to help them finalise their performance. I will also be performing my production to them, where I hope to receive as much feedback as possible to help me self evaluate myself and performance  in order to successfully  accomplish  the  aims and goals I set out to achieve for this performance.