Five young people are involved in a violent incident during a Sunday stroll.
by Rosaline Goldring
Richard - Don Farr
Helen - Pam Ferris
Jimmy - John Reid
Andrea - Deryn Cooper
Alec - Frank Edwards
Irene -Cecily Polson
Mr Jackson - Pat Smyth
Jean - Ingrid Prosser
Produced for the NZBC by Chris Thomson
The play from the Christchurch workshop, Game for Five Players, has an interesting history. A script was commissioned for the series but when it arrived it was decided to enlarge it in scale and scope and produce it at a later date This left the group with no play and very little time to find one. The result is described by Mr Bell as “‘a quirky piece” composed by Rosaline Goldring, a research writer at CHTV-3. Game for Five Players is the outcome of an idea suggested by Mr Bell in which five strangely assorted young people in their early twenties become involved in an act of violence during a Sunday stroll in the park. According to the author, ‘’The most difficult part of writing this play was trying to visualize a scene which had no dialogue - such a scene in its proper context is more dramatic than one carrying a weight ok dialogue.
The restricted size of Christchurch’s present studio also presented certain difficulties Since there had to be an economy of sets, greater emphasis was placed on dialogue; restrictions in the actors’ movements meant that in the case ok ‘visual’ scenes these had to be correctly balanced for the maximum of dramatic impact. This is not Rosaline Goldring’s first original television work. She wrote a half-hour children’s story, Tale of a Kite, specially for a CHTV-3 mobile unit production. But she hasn’t written all of Game for Five Players. ln one of the key sequences the dialogue was left entirely to the ad-libbing of the players.
Filmed as part of the Actors Workshop Series this episode was withdrawn from screening at the last moment as the NZBC considered it a controversial piece, and it was to be shown later at a more appropriate time of night.
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