This short film is a dramatization of the comedy subplot present in the late-medieval interlude, Fulgens and Lucres. This was part of our first-year Early Drama coursework and was really interesting to explore. We wanted to see if the comic plot would stand on its own and what constitutes a comic subplot in a medieval play. Firstly, we looked at the dialogue and had a few sessions where we sat down together and worked on what we could do to bring the script to life and to make it humorous to an audience of today. The love triangle between A, B and Lucres’ maid, Joan, we thought was similar to the scenario from a soap opera and this is why there is a soap opera-style title sequence and breaks from realism, such as the use of music. In addition, the title sequence ties the comic subplot to the actual play so there is still the direct connection between characters even if particular characters are not in the short film. We found the park bench location and this felt like a place where conceivably all the characters who appear would and could meet up. It was filmed on a Saturday morning and took about three hours; the physical comedy that we added to Medwall’s script made the experience highly enjoyable, as did the use of montage and the cutting of script to create snappier and faster moving dialogue between characters. The characters are intended to be larger than life and can be understood as adhering to the conventions of soap opera style writing. Overall, we had huge fun filming and creating this project and hope you enjoy it.
And the outtakes…