| Details for The Pantomime - The Script |
| Summary: | The Script of 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune' is gone over after Beery has selected who's playing what. |
| Date: | December 5th, 1939 |
| Location: | Hogwarts - Auditorium |
| Plot: | The Pantomime |
| Related: | — |
| Characters |
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Beery gathers the Art Club around within the Auditorium. Up on stage bits and pieces of the set are being constructed. Everything being built here will be moved into the Great Hall for the performance. The Auditorium is simply a rehearsal space for the Arts Club to practice and construct this very first Pantomime for Hogwarts.
"Thank you my fellow thespians and art lovers for showing such a wonderful interest. What I would like to do today is go over the Script and get a feel for your characters and try a bit of staging and interaction. So please, take a Script, open to page one, Act One, Scene One, The Festival!"
Act One, Scene One, The Festival!
Narrator - Beery: [A spotlight slowly brightens on the Narrator who stands center far stage on a raised small hill where a fountain burbles behind him.]
"Up high on a hill covered in an enchanted garden, protected by strong magic and high secure walls, flowed the Fountain of Fair Fortune. Every year on the longest day, droves of people come from all over the land. Male and female, rich and poor, young and old, of magical means and without, they gather in the darkness before dawn, everyone hoping that they would gain entrance to the Garden. Because only a single unfortunate was given the chance to fight their way to the Fountain, bathe in its waters, and receive Fair Fortune forevermore."
[The Narrator then gestures and applauds guiding the audience who fill the Great Hall Tables to cheer and make merry and applaud to act like those gathered as the enchanted ceiling slowly goes through the colors of dawn and bit by bit illuminates the Great Hall and the stage.]
[This is when the three maids stand from their seats at their house table. First comes Madeline, playing Asha. She looks terribly unwell, as if suffering from spattergrout and dragon pox and every other sickness and disease all wrapped into one. Coughing and wheezing she stands and begins to shuffle towards the stage, introducing herself. She is Asha, and she laments to the audience that she is very sick, and there is no cure. But she hopes that the Fountain can cure her and make her better and give her a long and happy life.]
[Then rises Josie from the Gryffindor table, playing Altheda. She is in threadbare rags and seems rather skittish. After introducing herself she explains apologetically to the crowd that she's been robbed blind, no gold, no finery, not even her wand! They took her wand too! She joins Asha at the edge of the stage. There they quietly murmur and get to know each other while focus shifts to the third maid…]
[Next attention is drawn to Melody who has gone from sniffling to out and out bawling. In her hand is a letter that she's scrawled broken hearts all over the crumpled paper. She bitterly gripes out loud things like, "Amata, It's not you, It's me." "Amata, I just don't feel the same way you do." "Amata, I see you more like a sister." "Amata, I hope that we can still be friends." etc. Each lament a bitter mimicking of what's in the letter she continuously tortures and crumples and then smoothes out to only mash it up again. Her eyes are streaked with drippy make-up and while she's a beauty, she's disheveled and distraught as she moves to join Josie and Madie at the edge of the stage.]
[Once all three maids are at the edge of the stage they comfort each other and help each other up the steps and up onto the stage.]
[Insert Improv Dialogue/Song between the Maids discussing a plan to unite and help each other get to the Fountain together. In this bustling Amata's clothing becomes caught up on Felix who plays Sir Luckless' armor and things but that remains unnoticed until the next segment.]
[A spotlight shines on a section of wall at stage front-right where the maids have reached and have yet to notice the knight on his sickly swaybacked horse. A large crack spot lighted on the wall becomes larger when creeper vines burst out of the crack that's now a hole. The vines snare Asha and drag her towards the wall and through the hole. Asha was clasping Altheda's wrist when it happened so Altheda is also dragged into the hole. In the act Altheda grabbed Amata's robes and yanks her along with. The earlier unnoticed catch of Amata's robes on Sir Luckless' armor only now gets realized, one moment before the knight is yanked from his horse and pulled along with through the hole.]
[The Narrator lifts his hand calling for another uproar from the crowd.] "The furious screams of the disappointed throng thundered and darkened the first rays of morning. But then they fell silent…" [Another gesture is made like and conductor silencing his musicians comes from the Narrator.] "… as the garden walls sealed once more."
[As the creepers slink back within the wall and the bricks re-seal the Maids and the knight come from stage right and begin to walk along the front of the stage. Asha and Altheda are angry with Amata, whom accidentally brought along the knight, ruining their previous laid plans of the three of them working together to get to the fountain.[
[Points to cover within the Improv Dialogue/Song: Only one can bathe in the Fountain. It was hard enough to pick which one would with three, but now there's 4.]
[During the argument Sir Luckless introduces himself to the maids and to the audience as well. Cue much trouble with the visor of the helm. A pauldron that always comes loose. Just lots of physical comedy in the misfortune of Sir Luckless. He also presents that he is, in fact, a muggle with no skill in magic, jousting, dueling, or swords or really no skill in much of anything he is very unlikely to be much competition at all for the three witches. He even announces intent of just trying to climb back over the wall and leaving.]
[This surrender angers Amata and she chides him with lines such as, "Faint Heart! Draw your sword, Knight, and help us reach our goal!" The other two witches join in the chiding and inviting and so, all four of them proceed into the enchanted Garden.]
Act 1, Scene 2, The Worm!
[The set is enchanted to move along as the actors walk so it looks like the hill is getting closer and closer as they go. Fill this time with some Improv Dialogue/Song with a bit each of interacting amongst each other and becoming friends.]
[At the base of the hill Kettleburn will provide some creature, an engorgio'd earth worm or the like to stand in as a 'monstous white worm, bloated and blind. At their approach it will turn a foul face upon them, and utter the following words:]
Narrator - Beery (Affecting a scary voice): "Pay me the proof of your pain."
((The above is a rough script for those in the play, and in the audience to glean a bit of a play by play. It is the actual scripted part of the +Event. From this point on, STUFF(tm) happens which is very unscripted. Very very unscripted…this can include combat and other bad stuff so please make a note on the plot page if you're okay or not okay with: Drama, Combat(and the injuries/death that come with it), and such.))
((What the actors should do is before the 19th is get together and use the script to lay out some lines and dialogue and poses. This should be pasted within The Rehearsal Log. The Rehearsal log is for the most part so that poses can be emitted during the event from the log if an actor goes idle or can't make it to the actual event.)