Devising- Tuesday 29th September

Today I wasn't in the lesson due to being on a trip with Biology but I returned in the last 10 minutes to discuss with my group what they had got up to while I was away. They told me how they completed the boardroom scene and how it was very effective. They also told me how they really liked the idea and wanted to work on it further with me playing the wife and Judith and Freya playing the women.

Devising- Monday 28th September

In today's lesson we started by watching the black watch which is about Scottish soldiers in the army. We watched it to look at voice and how people acted while at war. This was to help gain a better understanding of dialogue in a different situation, place and time. Once we had watched half hour we watched half an hour and then we did a focus exercise so we could get into the feeling of a character in the war.

once we did this we had to write a letter home about our experience in the war:

Dear mum

I saw Sammy the other day. I saw him get sent other the top everyone in the platoon from our town sent other the top. I was him get shot and his limp body fall back into the trench and I couldn't do anything to help him. If they had come back over they would have been shot there no escaping the death around me. The sound of rusty saws wont leave my mind as I have to cut through my patients legs to get rid of the trench foot. The break of the bone and the screams ring in my ears all day long.  The screams give me nightmare. Every night I wake up picturing the horrific sights in my head from the things I've seen. The mustard gas is the worst. The way it burns the skin whe the solidiers cant to get to their masks on time and I can't do anything to help them. There is not much more I can deal with I just want to come home.

Ellie

Devising- Deciding on staging

When we were deciding on staging we wanted it to be different to normal performances like being on a stage and the audience in front as we wanted the audience to be involved in the action. So we first decided we wanted to try performing it in the round.

 We did this so the audience was on all sides so they felt like they were looking on in the action like a pedestrian walking past. When we tried this we tried it in the conference scene with Judith and Micheal. Doing this we created the scene to fit the round and we decided that it was really hard to make sure that the audience could see all the action and in the round there is no point where we can leave the stage easily. 
We then watch a video of the black watch in one of our lessons and we saw how they used traverse and decided we were going to try that with the same scene but change the ending of the scene to make it more suitable to traverse in our movement piece with narration. When we had created this we decided that this would suit our piece better and we were able to have as much room as we needed as we didn't need to confine our self into the round. We also decided it would be good at we have 2 strong point a its either end so it would be good to have important events happening at these so then they are more memorable where as in the round where you stand only has significant to which part of the audience you are facing so in the traverse at these points everyone can see your face. We also liked it at in the travese we can have places where we can exit and stand without blocking the audiences view to what is going on where as in the round this is harder and can become confusing.

Devising- Thursday 24th Septemeber

In Today lesson we Started by looking at the elements, Style and media we wanted to use in our piece so then when we use ideas we can began to include everything we want in it. We created a mind made of this.
We then had do decide one of our elements, styles or media we wanted to work on so we decided on working on quality dialogue and work on our idea of women rights which tom had come up with. Which was about the difference between an individual women who wants to join the army and a wife who does what her husband says. We decided to look up on line in depth about allowing women on the front line and we found an article on Michael Fallen saying his approach on the situation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30539111

We used this article and started to create a board room scene by picking our phrases that suited the situation. We done this by beginning to highlighting these quotes. We then needed to go on and finish this in the next lesson.

Future conditional

Today we went to see future conditional at the old vic which is about British schooling. I found it was very interesting and love the way they used traverse for staging so they had audience on both sides. They made this work  as they constantly moved positions so at different points everyone could see them. They also talked to people who weren't there which i though worked really well as it added to the comedy as you had to guess what was being replied to. For this to work it meant that the audience need to have a broad imagination. The way they changed the scenes were also interesting as they changed them as if they were a on a play ground and the kids were mucking around this was a very smooth transition. Future conditionals disjointed play with the different mix of scenes make it very interesting to watch and made me want to use this idea of the play being disjointed and wanting the audience to guess what is going on and try and work it out as this would make it more interesting.

Its interesting to look at what Rob Brydon thought about the play and his character as his view on it is different to mine and others so it is good to listen to it from others points of view.

Devising- Tuesday 22nd September

In today's lesson we had a quick discussion on our school trip and uniform roles for drama then moved on to looking at our ideas and which ones we thought were best. We discussed our idea of the mental hospital and how we could work on this to create a more in depth piece leading towards this then Freya came up with the idea of schizophrenia so we all began looking at ideas that we thought would work for this. I began looking on You tube for ideas on movement piece we could do while the others looked at angles that we could work with this idea. I found a video that I found interesting because of the robotic movements and how sometimes they are in unison then other times they use cannon. These different effects helps to build on the idea of schizophrenia and how sometimes there is someone normal then other times there are multiple personalities doing different things. This could also be used in different pieces depending on what idea we settle with. After we had looked into this as a group we started to discuss what we wanted in our piece We decided that we wanted our audience too be confused and how they would have to solve the problem to understand. We also wanted a fragmented story line like a puzzle with lots of cross cutting.

Devising- Monday 21st September

Today in the lesson we looked again at voice and specifically for me working on emotion in my voice and focusing myself into the zone where I could channel my emotion to the audience. Our topic for today was just for us 3 girls and it was women in the war and Mr Webb wanted me to play a middle class women whose husband was in the war. He wanted me to play the character as an emotional, scared women whose husband was the love of her life and they had been together since a young age. Meg played a lower class women who had little feeling for her husband and was forced into marriage and Freya played an upper class women who was married through money but really she does have some feeling for her husband. Freya played her character with very dark humor. sarcastic and she opened her mouth without thinking which caused me to get upset. Through out the scene each of us expressed our character in different ways so you could tell the classes they were from. Mr Webb then stopped the performance and handed each of us a letter. Mine read that my husband was missing in action and that they will return his body when they find him. I began to sob while Meg laughed as her husband had been shot in the bottom. This was really hard as we had to be spontaneous and think how our character would react and show this to our audience in the right way. I found this really hard but managed to show my character in the correct way and I asked the audience if they felt my pain and they agreed.

Devising- looking at idea

This was one of our plans when we started looking at world war 2. We decided to look at it from a post traumatic stress point of view and including lots of individual stories which shows his past. We also wanted to show their response to the Jews, disability and different soldiers looking at everything going on around them.

Devising- Thursday 17th September

Today in the lesson we looked at dialogue and how effective it is when it is used correctly. We got put into groups and were given a director. My group consisted of Dan, Carl and I then Kai as our director and we were given the script 'hes talking' which is about terrorists in South Africa who finally get caught. Each scene is set in the same flat in London but has different people in each scene due to the original character Luke who got caught giving his story different and how it causes different people to get caught. In the scene we have Luke who is let free because he gave up the names of everyone else and Tanya and Miles are there because they managed to leave as they had British passports. In the scene Luke is trying to make the other 2 get angry at him for what he has done. In the scene I played Tanya, Carl played Luke and Dan played Miles. Firstly we read through the script and worked out how each line should be said and what emotion each of the characters was feeling at that moment in the script. We then set it on stage where we decided to have random chairs on the stage and each time we discussed the next person who was given up to the police then a chair would go down. This was to symbolise each of them being sent down for what they had done. I feel that doing this helped us to understand quality dialogue and how if we develop it in the right way it will have a greater effect on the audience and cause them to connect more with the action. This helped me to think of the idea of using scripts within devising or real life conversations which are going on. This would help to make our piece realistic.

Devising- Tuesday 15th september

Today we started the lesson by finishing of our contact improvisation pieces which was about slavery.

 Once we had finished that we moved onto working on our voice so we got into our groups and choose one of our other ideas and decided to choose our idea which was based on a mental asylum. As a group we decided we wanted to make it creepy and said to make sure it was completely focused on voice. We wanted to make a sound scape to build the atmosphere with just phrases and sounds. I decided that i was gonna do loud screams to show someone who was mentally insane. We included crying, laughing beeping and shouting. All these different noises with Freya talking over the top like a nurse caused the tension to build and this was proved by how we made people jump by moving about in the dark. 
I think this idea was clever and using sound scape can be effective if put in the right place and in the correct scene. It really help to build an atmosphere at an important moment of time and set a scene at the beginning of it. I believe that the idea we decided to use was interesting but it would be hard to create a story line and I don't think that it links to humanity in crisis and I don't believe the scenario is a crisis so we couldn't show much reaction of how humanity acts in a big situation.

Devising- Monday 14th september

Today in the lesson we started by reading the poem the next was by wilfred owen:
Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death,-
Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,-
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,-
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets and he's coughed
Shrapnel. We chorused when he sang aloft,
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags. 
We were then put into a group of four which consisted of Carl, Kai, Tom and I and began to discuss ideas. When planning we also got told we had to make it about waiting for the whistle to go over the trench and had to focus it on voice. We decided to start our performance by having a rewind section where we started by lying on the floor dead and rewinding back into the trench. When we were in the trench we were all waiting for our little bit of alcohol before going over the top however my character was suffering from shell shock and was muttering to myself which cause the general , who was Tom, to start questioning my character. Once we had done ths small scene we went back over the trench. We were then given notes and Tom was told to be meaner and that he should be more fierce with what he was saying. One thing we need to work on as a class is our choice of words and making sure it fits the theme and style correctly so the piece works better and becomes more believable for the audience.

Devising- Ideas

By doing research I put into google humanities in crisis and the picture of the scream came up by Edvard Munch which lead me into looking into his back ground and found that most his life he lived with trauma around him and how he suffered with this through his life. Another big issue was that his love one were dying of tuberculosis. This made me think about the crisis in humanity of death and how it is a major crisis to someone individually. I thought this idea could be developed into something bigger and become very interesting. 
I thought we could base a story on someone who is filled with loss and how they have to deal with this in everyday life. This could be very meaning full to the audience as many people can relate to it. I thought this could be extended to including how the deal with this leading into illnesses such as depression and how it can spiral your life out of control. This could be done using many different elements but would be hard to handle in a sensitive way that wouldn't offend anyone but it could be good in being emotive and connecting as everyone has lost someone.

Devising- Frantic assembly

As we were going to look at movement in our next lesson I decided to look up frantic assembly whose unique physical style combines movement, design, music and text. This gave me inspiration for creating a good movement piece. In the piece i looked at by them they are very contemporary and use so many different elements to make their performance meaningful. This included contact improvisation, unison, canon and lifts to make it interesting to watch but show meanings. One bit I liked was when someone had died and they showed the persons spirit pass through them by rippling their body in unison. This helped to show how the lose effected them all without them speaking. They helped me to understand how using physical elements can show the audience what they need to know without speaking and this could be more visually appealing and people may want to watch this more then a long performance with just hard hitting dialogue especially if the subject is very emotive. This is why movement would be good to use in our devising piece as humanity in crisis can be emotional depending on the view point so this could cause a break for the audience.

 

Devising- Thursday 10th september

Today in the lesson we looked at contact improvisation and how it could bring a scene of unity to our devised piece and improve our focus and trust in each other because of what you need to do. We started by watching a contemporary dance piece from so you think you can dance. This helped us with understanding how you need to keep a point of connection with each other most the time. Even though contact improvisation is similar to contemporary it is also different as in contact improvisation there is always a point of contact. This point could be physical or static depending on the style you are going for.

We then got into pair and pick of theme for what we wanted our contact improvisation to be on and me and meg decided that we were going to create it on a car crash. We then had to put a sequence of 8 movements together keeping a point of contact all the time. We then performed the piece then had to add balancing of weight and taking each others weight. Then we got into our devising groups and picked another one of our ideas to work on for this lesson and we decided to go with slavery. We didn't get to finish the piece by the end of the lesson so we were continuing on in the next lesson we have miss Cordell.

Devising- Ideas

This picture inspires me in humanity and crisis as it shows how in the crisis of war people will give their life so the crisis will stop and how people are willing to sacrifice everything for the greater good. This then gave me the idea that  we could look at war from the view of looking back on what has happen and the issues that it supports today such as it supports the bonds between Allie countries such as the UK and USA and how they are still helping each other today. I also like this how the people on top are oblivious to what is supporting the world today and how many people in the world done see whats going on outside of there like. This would be good to show as it would make people understand that there is suffering in the world not only in the past but in current times as well. This is what gave me the idea to make our piece hard hitting as this is what will help people to understand what is going on.

Devising: My initial response to the stimulus

When I first found out the stimulus was humanity in crisis I thought is was going to be hard as their are so many crises going on now and over the course of history. So I thought it would be hard to choose which one that would be best suited to the stimulus and picking one that would be shown effectively without showing offence to anyone who is watch it. However I also was full of different idea to do with lots of different themes including the wall street crash although we had done from a different aspect in our last devising piece so I didn't want it to be so similar. I also thought of the idea of 11/11 as it is a hard situation to deal with so it would be a challenge to work with. I also was inspired with the idea as crisis can be shown nicely in movement pieces so I liked the stimulus as in this scene we could be very creative with our piece. 

Devising- Tuesday 8th september

We started the lesson today by finding out the stimulus for our devising piece which was 'humanity in crisis' and we were shown different pictures to give us ideas for the stimulus. Which included different refugee pictures and picture which showed the war and kinder transport which was what got jewish children out of Germany in the second world war.

We then got put into our groups which were selected by drawing names out of a hat. My group then consisted of Tom, Freya, Dan.s, Kai, Theo, Dom and myself. After we began brain storming ideas what we could base our performance on.

We came up with lots of ideas including human trafficking, slaves, war, human rights/womens rights and mental hospital and many of the ideas we were able to look at different angles to work off to make our piece individual.
Once we had brain stormed ideas we picked one idea and had to create a small performance on it. We decided to pick the idea of war and look at it from the angle of post traumatic stress disorder. We all became members of a family and were all having a peaceful afternoon then there's a knock at the door where Tom instantly reacts and stands up as he turns his back to us we all form a pose which symbolises something he remembers about the war for example I stretched my arm out like I was reaching for him to help me. He walked through the freeze frame getting worked up about what he had done until he got to the end where I stood and bought him back to reality by placing my hand on his shoulder. I really liked how we used the freeze frame to show and memory then returning to normal life as it gave quick bits of information to the audience and helped them to understand some more about whats going on in someones head. I think we could have improved it more by adding something more the the scene like a sound scape to show how what the character could hear in the war and not just see.

Devising- Monday 7th september

The lesson began by us being told that we would being devising for our next unit which was going to involve work shopping our ideas and doing a great deal of research into the different ideas we get from the stimulus and how we would make these ideas most effective. Today's lesson was working on our voices skills as they are weaker then our physical acting skill and working on focusing and in turn helping us improve characterisation and staying in character. 
We began with playing a game of freeze tag which was letting a scene develop then freezing it and stepping in and changing the situation. We had to make sure that every scene that we did was serious and had no sense of comedy to it. When I stepped in I changed the situation so Dan.s  and I where a father and daughter in an argument about why I wasn't allowed out and we continued from there. Then Theo froze Dan out where he then turned the scene into a romantic scene and he came towards me straight away for a hug and I lost focus as I was really confused on what he was doing so I began laughing nervously. Then we started the scene and Theo took it in another direction and began getting angry at me as he wanted money for drugs and while i was trying to help him he was getting more upset. Then I got froze out. 
Once we finished this exercise we moved onto a focus exercise where we began laying on the floor with calming music playing and started to make our breaths deeper. Mr Webb then spoke us through a serious of places in our minds to help us feel heavier and more focused then he started to add a situation to our exercise of us being in thick mud with a pain in our shoulder and how we are struggling to stand up. One we had stood he told us to get into pairs then we had to go straight into a scene where one person had be left shot in a trench and you had come back to help them. Meg was glad to see me when I came to help her and we went for a helping hand approach where as other pairs were more aggressive with each other. 
Over all in the lesson it helped us to gain more focus as actors and how to control ourselves more. This will help with getting into character more and finding deeper meaning to your character too.