Mrs. Alexander Scene 8

Mrs. Alexander Scene 8

During our lesson with Shaun on Tuesday, Dan and I worked on our first scene where Christopher first talks to Mrs. Alexander. We wanted to work on this scene to discover better ways of introducing Mrs. Alexander and her relationship with Christopher. We started off by showing him what we had already done but we realized in order to make this scene more believable we both had to have a background story, for example Christopher is coming over to ask questions about the death of Mrs. Shears dog, Wellington. Whereas I did not have one, which for me, looking back on it made it harder to relate to the scene as I didn’t know what I was doing as my character before Christopher enters. I decided to be playing with my dog in my front garden, which I believe was her normal day to day life, as soon as Christopher enters, the order of her day has been displaced but she is happy that someone is talking to her no matter what the convocation is about as I feel she gets rather lonely. Christopher’s questions are quick and fast about the death of Wellington, but when he finishes his questions she immediately tries to create another convocation starting with her grandson (whom I am guessing she does not see a lot, because she forgets how old he is). She is taken back by the fact that Christopher answers back and in some way she is drawn to him as he is around the same age as her grandson. I feel she wants to connect with him better so she finds things that they have in common, that they both like and have pets, they both drink squash and like biscuits. She wastes no time asking him “Do you want to come in for tea?” (p.19), but when his reaction is “No”, she completely understands and finds a better way of making him stay with her by telling him “Well maybe I could bring some tea out here. Do you like lemon squash?” (p.20), she almost seems to be making such a huge effort for him to stay by trying to cater to his every need. She is shocked by the fact that he doesn’t know what Battenberg is, because its probably her favorite but is fascinated by the way he describes it in such an interesting way, I think she then realizes that this young boy is very intelligent.  

Next I shall be analyzing scene 11, where Mrs. Alexander tells Christopher about the affaire.