Devising- Tuesday 20th October

Today on the lesson we continued to work on our movement piece adding more contact improvisation and adding in quotes in the more quite bit to make it more detailed while being simple at the same time. This whole piece can be improved by firstly making sure that me and freya know our quotes we are saying and that we are in time when doing them. We also need to make sure that we are in time the whole thing so when certain things happen they are on the right beat.

Devising- character profile and writing in role- Human trafficking

Name	Alina Dumitru
Age	19
Nationality	Romanian
Current residence	Doesn’t know
Occupation	None (being human trafficked)
Talents/ skills	Speaks English and Romanian, she is great at cooking
Relationships in scene	Theo who is the human trafficker she believes she’s in love with him but she’s scared of what he is going to make her do.
Short term goals	She wants to escape the suffering she has to go through because the drugs she’s on and what she is being forced to do by her captors
Long term goals and why	She wants to have a stable home with being a chef because she has very little in Romania and wants to be safe again
Strengths	She has the will power to carry on through horrible times
Weaknesses	She falls in love to easily and unable to fight back
Introvert/ extrovert	Extrovert at the beginning then becomes an introvert

All I want to do is escape. Feel free. I want to be able to lay in a bed without as many men as possible touching me. I Just want to be alone not touched, used or mistreated be alone. I struggle to move some days. Sometimes I think my legs may not work anymore as I wont have moved off the bed in 3 or 4 days. Its scary. No one cares about me its as if i'm lost and no one will ever find me in a maze of of pain with so many creatures lurking in the darkness grabbing me when they can. I feel dirty and impure they are all animals and I have no control. They drug me so I cant move. I feel life less so I cant fight back or say no so I just have to go with the torture. I shut my eyes hoping that it would end and I would be home again but I never am. I don't even know where I am i'm in the same room of a house somewhere in France but Its fuzzy and I can't remember where it is. I just want to go home.

Devising - Monday 19th October

Today in the lesson we looked at a movement piece for human trafficking as we thought it would be the easiest to do as we were missing Kai. We started by discussing what song we wanted to choose and I thought we should use Radio active as it has a good rhythm with lots of drops in the music which would make it more effect. We then wanted to make the beginning obvious to the audience what the scene was about so we wanted to have me standing there while we decided Theo to be the leader of the trafficking to be saying things to encourage me to come to the UK as it is full of opportunities and each time another thing is said some one grabs hold of me. I then decided it would be good if we had a lift and then on the beat drop I would be dropped and caught. Freya suggested that we do a Crusafix lift so we decided to go get help from our teacher so we made sure it was the right way to do it without being dropped. We then carried on with tugging and contact improvisation.

We need to finish what were doing on this piece and I think it can be improved by everyone being rougher and there being more facial expression.

Devising- Thursday 15th October

Today in the lesson we started the lesson by sharing our ideas that we had looked at over the last couple of days and I looked in depth at different picture I could find to do with refugees that showed what a horrible situation it was.
These picture helped me to see how hard it is for people who try to find refugee. Once we had all shared our research we then discussed what we would like to do with the scenes we had done, how we could develop new ones. I then came up with the idea from the video I looked at from the last lesson and looking at the trafficking of humans and how we could develop this into a movement piece. which we could use ideas from the previous video i looked at about schizophrenia and use the robotic movements.
We then decided we wanted to keep the previous scenes we had done and link them into a new idea. We then said we could work on a main theme of womens rights and look at them from many different points of view. 
This helped to link to our original idea on elements, themes and issues as we wanted it to be hard to figure out and doing lots of different story lines makes it like the jigsaw we wanted.
our different story lines include: refugees, Human trafficking, soldiers, suffragettes/voting and arranged marriage. 
We then split into groups and began looking at the different ideas I was looking at human trafficking. I found a good website which gave many facts into Human trafficking which I thought could be used in media purposes such as power points being projected to help make the scene deeper.

Devising- Tuesday 13th October

Today in the lesson we decided to look at a different idea that Dan had come up with to do with refugees. We decided to talk about this idea and how we could use it in our piece. We started by looking at the young boy who washed up on a shore and how there parents were still denied refugee in Canada.

This got us thinking about the emotion we could bring into our piece. We then split of and started looking at different stories that we could include in our piece. I started looking at stories that involve refugee children as these can be the most emotive of them all. I found a story about a Nigerian girl.

This story really inspired me as it looked at it from a child who got taken advantage of this really caught my attention as it was emotive. It also looked at this from our original women rights idea.

Devising- Thursday 8th October

Today in the lesson we started to discuss working on the difference between women and wife and this could be shown in a creative way. We decided we were going to do cross cutting but I came up with the idea that we each did a scene one after the other like cross cutting but then moved around the traverse so each member of the audience get to see the scene at a different angle. So we stared looking at the little scenes that we could involve to show differences. We thought the first scene should be each of use going to put a coat on but I put it on my husband and Freya put it on hereself. We then went on to us getting ready to go out where I was sorting out the kids where as Freya was getting herself ready. Then we walk next to each other and I say forgot his wallet and at the same time Freya says forgot my wallet and we swap sides. We then begin walking into someone where im appologetic, Freya is slightly more angry. At the end we then go into a cross cutting scene between us talking to a friend about our life. In this part we needed to make sure we make it more like we are having a conversation with someone then speaking a monologue. I think this idea worked really well but it needs to be smooth and everyone needs to be in the right place at the right time. It also could include more little scenes involved in the cross cut.

Devising- Character profile and writing in role- Soldiers

Name	Major Judith Webb
Age	35
Nationality	English
Current residence	Somerset
Occupation	First female army officer and squadron commander
Talents/ skills	Debating skills, knowledgeable,
Relationships in scene	With Michael Fallon is disjointed and she doesn’t agree with his opinions
Short term goals	She want people to understand her point of view because it is a valid point but others don’t understand her as she is trying to bring about equality.
Long term goals and why	Never allow women to be able to serve as part of the front line because she believe that they are not as physically or mentally strong as men so she
Strengths	Good in combat, defends herself, strong willed
Weaknesses	Unable to look at other perspective and fears of causing children to be left motherless if the situation for women on the front line becomes unfavorable
Introvert/ extrovert	Extrovert

Michael Fallon is a let down in the army community expecting women to be put in roles where they are expected to carry out tasks that some men are unable to carry out. These women should be able to go into roles that they choose but the front line is not one of them. It is a place for men and that is it. Women can be anything they want apart from this and I am proof of that. However as soon as we let them have this right they want more. I would much rather be in my position then on the front line as I know that at the end of the day I will see my family. I know that I will be safe but I'm still doing my bit for my country and fighting for what is right. I understand equality is an issue but it is a fact the most not all men are physically and mentally stronger then women so I believe that women would not be able to cope with the stress that this role brings along with it. Women are vulnerable to these anarchy such as the Taliban because they are women. In countries we fight in there women rights are different and they are seen as objects so they will get treated like them. They would have no chance of defending themselves if they were to be kidnapped. They just need to understand.

Devising- Tuesday 6th October

In today's lesson Tom and I  began reading through our script for the boardroom scene while the rest of the group tried to make a movement piece for the traverse. Kai then suggested the idea that we have music over the top and there be a contrast to what we are showing so we wanted soft music to violent action. So the rest of our group began working on this while I began writing up the script.
To improve this scene I think that when we are listening to the person who is not really there we use a longer pause and make our looks longer. I also feel I need to be more angry when it get to the end and in my monologue otherwise the tension is lost.

Devising- Monday 5th October

Today in the lesson we watch more of the black watch to gain some ideas on what we should do on the piece. We looked at how it is set out traverse. Our group decided we liked how they used this as we were able to connect the audience by them seeing our face as there are angle with no audience. We also looked at how they sang a song into changing a scene. I though of an idea of how we could use this to start and scene. They also liked how they told history by a monologue but he changed his outfit to fit each war he was talking about. This helped me to think about costume and how I think our costume should be basic blacks but we should be adding bit of clothing to suit our character. We then moved on to working on our scene again but decided to work on it in traverse. We made sure that me and Tom where sitting on opposite ends so that we were as far apart as possible, We then started to go through our piece and add in a bit when I said ' we just don't have this killer instinct' but we decided this didn't work as it showed us getting closer in our argument. We then decided to change it so that the rest of the cast would do it after I said the line in a pause. Where Dan and Dom start where Dom carries it our and then Freya goes to but cant. This showed how women could not be strong enough. We then got given the note that we need to make our dialogue more natural as it sounds like we are in an interview so we decided we would read through it and make adaptions.

Devising- Thursday 1st October

Today in the lesson we decided we were going to work on the boardroom scene again but look at the staging in which we wanted to use. We decided that today we were gonna start of by doing it in the round with us sitting within the audience. We staged it so mine and Toms sets were on opposite sides due to us 2 being the ones having the debate and everyone else filling in the gaps between. Theo then had his idea for the movement piece which was to include showing what was being said in a violent but stylised way. However this is what we struggled to do in the round as stage combat it very hard as you are being watch from all angles. This made it hard for us as this is what we wanted to do for our monologue movement piece so it made it hard to create the piece we wanted too.  We also didn't like how the round had backs to some parts of the audience all the time which may make the audience feel excluded from the piece and not feel as connected with the character which we need if we aim for the serious piece that we were looking to do. However the round would work better with a comedy as you don't need to connect as much.