Devising- Monday 30th November

In today's lesson we started of by discussing how we were going to put the refugee scene together so we thought about looking at refugees today but before looking at them through time through a series of pictures going thought the holocaust all the way to our scene which we wanted to base on the refugee camp which is on the edge of Calais at the moment. So we decided to look at ideas and how to put them into a scene while others started looking at stuff to include in the presentation at the beginning i started looking at women living in these camps. Once I got this information I printed it off and started to pick out things that I thought was relevant and how we could use this in our piece. This was such as the camps being refereed to as the jungle so I saw our lighting at being a green colour. It also refereed to women showing signs which fought for their rights so I thought this would be a great way to start our scene to introduce our characters. There was also lots of references to fear and how it not being safe for them anywhere. So I thought the best way to get across to the audience what is going in here is in a conversation between people in the camp but we needed to do this in an interesting way.

Devising- Thursday 26th November

In today's lesson we started working on regaining trust in the group by going over the suffragettes lifts from last lesson after I was dropped. I was really nervous when we did this as i didn't want to fall again so we did it a lot slower this allowed me to get used to being lifted again and start to regain out trust. We also spoke about how we need to prevent this happening again such as making sure we communicate more which involves making sure that we have one person counting for everyone. This is good that we managed to talk it through as this otherwise could cause a big impact as it would have been harder for me to become confident with being lifted again. Next time i also think we need to have a mat for safety so if dropping occurs again then we are able to prevent it from hurting to much.
In the next lesson we plan on trying to complete the suffragettes scene and putting the drop behind us as a group.
This is all we got done for the lesson as we had trouble getting some of the group to understand what had been done wrong and how to prevent it without them think it was there fault so we needed to go over it several times.

Devising- Tuesday 24th November

In todays lesson we started by watch the Video of Emily Davidson when she got hit by the horse to get to grips with what happened on the day she died.

Once we had done this we decided that to recreate this we needed to do a series of lifts so we began improvising and decided we were going to do a crusurfix kind of lift where I was risen up and down. When I was lowered to the ground I tried to run however they grabbed me and pulled me back swinging me back and forth. When I was put down they then shot me into the air straight as if im rising into heaven then im slowly lower to the floor and left to rest. I like how each of the lifts we used symbolised something and had a meaning. 
Once we had done this we needed to create the horse so decided to do this in the style of war house so we watched a video of how it was created.

Looking at this we tried to recreate 2 horses as Emily Davidson was hit by more then one horse and it was hard to create on horse as there was so many legs. We made sure the legs where looking like a horse and they had a clear rhythm. We then added this in before the lifts and this happens by them charging with the commentary over the top then the horses engulf me and lift.
In this lesson at the end I was dropped due to one of the lifts going wrong causing me to fall onto my head. This was due to people miss counting and causing others to let go at different times. This needed to be avoided at all cost so we now need to work on building trust again in our next lesson.

Devising- Monday 23rd November

In todays lesson we started by showing Tom what we have done on the opening and what he has to do to join in to the movement piece . Once we had done this we showed it to our teacher and then we began to perfect it by getting detailed feedback on very precise things such as pointing our toes and leaning into movements more. We then had to go away and continue to make it better by including everything and making sure that everyone was doing the movements correctly. We then showed it to the other group and they liked what we did with it but thought the boys should have more facial expressions with what they are doing.
We decided that in the next lesson that we would start working on the suffragettes scene and looking at ways that we could recreate the point when Emily Davidson as we want to include it making it as effective as we could.

Devising- Thursday 19th November

In today's lesson we worked on finishing the opening scene. In this scene we wanted to make sure that it is not similar to our human trafficking scene. Me and Freya began improvising and adding and removing things we liked and didn't liked and work shopped out ideas to make it look how it should. 

To like that we made this a movement piece as it is a calm opening to our shocking piece. It is also was to make the audience think about what our piece is about before it begins to develop. This leaves a greater impact as you are able to show lots of different points without have a specific topic within womens rights. We also had decided at the beginning that we wanted to make our audience to walk away wondering if they actually understand the piece so this is a perfect way of not giving the theme away at the beginning. 

Devising- Tuesday 17th November

In today's lesson we managed to get a lots done by splitting into 2 groups within our group to get on with different things, We started the lesson by discussing how we were going to open the performance to allow people to understand what was going on and we spoke about what we should wear to help identify each character so we suggested that each main character should have a watch as there is a lot of change in time but i said this may not be obvious to the audience that this is being used to symbolis something. I then suggested that maybe insted of this we should protect a clock on the floor to show the time that has past then it was suggested that someone turns there watch to the time change. We also spoke about the suffragette movement and how we could look at it so we looked at the video and decided that it should be on a projection on the floor.
Tom then began working on the monologue for the suffragettes as we wanted this to be a quality diolouge piece. He did this by using research he had found before. We then decided to look at doing an opening movement piece. We looked at many different song and one suggested was 'take me to church' and 'the sound of silence' however we settled it 'I need' by Maverick Sabre as it fitted better with what we were doing. For this we wanted to make sure that the women were made to be worthless and alone so we added this to our scene. For the next lesson we wanted to make sure that we could finish our movement piece.
What I liked most about what we did today was how each other our movements were fluid and had meaning behind them making them direct to the theme.

Devising- Monday 16th November

In today's lesson we started by looking at Augusto Boal who is a practitioner we learnt about his different techniques. He helped to develope the theatre of the oppressed. Boal had 3 main techniques we learnt about the first was invisible theater which is where a scene takes place in front of an audience that is unaware that it is acting and believe it is real therefore any audience member who joins in become part of the scene. I like this idea as it would be very good to see the audiences reacting however in devising this will be extremely hard as our audience has been invited to watch. however if we did use this it could seem to the audience that were coming out of the character. Image theatre is showing short scenes of images which the audience to understand and it is a way of condensing it but expressing a specific image quickly. This would be a good idea in a scene to produce lots of small images so that to condense our point in one scene for example we could do this in our suffragettes scene as there were many issues back then that we could show in short images to get the point across. Forum theatre is another that he created and this is a type of theatrical game where a problem is shown in an unresolved form the audience can then suggest a solution. this is then continued until a solution is found.
We then decided that we were going to do some forum theatre to find the weaknesses in each of our scenes that we had recently produced from either group. So we performed our arranged marriage piece. Our first point we were given was that Dan needs to be more serious as he is acting like it is a joke however he needs to make it seem more like a business transaction. We then got the comment that Dom needed better posture when sitting in the chair and when we walk of Dom needs to make his glare at me bigger so the audience notices and I take a bigger step back.  When Kai had his scene with Freya he needed to turn his chair so his body language is open to her as they are friends and making the scene change obvious by them both crossing their legs at the same time. We also got the comment of when Dom is being horrible to Freya he needs to be more patronising and horrible to her making what he says very disjointed and spelling it out to her. Tom in the final scene needs to be more aggressive as he is angry that Freya has disrespected her son. Dans character also has to be very controlling as he is pushing Freya into this.
We then got into pairs with someone from the other group I got with Dan. We then told each other positvie and negatives about our performance. Dan told me that my performance really showed a controlled women who had little power. This is because my posture is low and my arms are crossed.
I think that next time we do this scene we need to work on these things to enable the scene to have the best effect it can on the audience.

Devising- Tuesday 10th November

Today in the lesson we started by showing Theo our forced marriage piece. Then we had pictures taken for the prospectus and we did this by doing lifts from our human trafficking piece which gave us change to practice them and perfect them. We then went of to discuss costume and decidied that we were going to wear all blacks as we had multiple scenes which would have really different topics so have a neutral colour like black and adding items to represent the character would be better. It also gives the chance for the audience to focus on whats going on in the acting rather then what we are wearing. We then spoke about lighting and i suggested it being very suttel with just change in colour for different scenes. This was also to show a difference between the scenes and to not distact away from what we are doing.
We can work on this be deciding what colours and costumes we can uses so we are able to start putting our set together.

Devising- Monday 9th November

In today's lesson we began looking at our forced marriage scene again. We started by looking through our ideas and decided that we were no longer going to have it holiday based as it seemed to complicated and harder to understand for the audience so we looked at doing it at home. We then decided to not have the funeral of Freya's mother as it is irrelevant to the story and we want it to be direct and to the point. We therefore started with both parent making the final arrangements will we walk towards the drench up the traverse while they sit next to each other facing forwards but very spread apart so show they don't want this. While the men walk up I follow behind saying very little as if i'm being controlled. The scene then continues trying to get each other to talk to each other however Freya is very defiant. When we leave Dan set Freya into place and then it goes into Freya confiding i Kai her friend where he doesn't know what to do to support her. The next scene then included Dom taking control over Freya by being assertive. This was to show how words could hurt just as much as physical abuse. The next part included a scene without Dom and Tom putting of the wedding for a year to enable Freya to be controlled. At the end Freya talk to Dom on the phone saying she cooked his dinner and his sons in bed showing the audience he got exactly what they wanted.

Devising- Thursday 5th November

In today's lesson we carried on looking at arranged marriage and how we wanted to put it into a scene. We decided we wanted it to be like a similar idea that we had come up before when we were originally doing the soldier idea so we took the idea of cross cutting and changing scenes. So this is when I suggested that we started writing a 2 sided lift to look at the male scenes and female scenes. From the females point of view we women we wanted her to be harrowed, confide in a friend, defend what she wants, being tricked into going on holiday and then the day of the wedding. We wanted it to be abroad as a lot of stories spoke about being tricked into going on a holiday. From the males side we wanted him to show how he wanted it to happen and he was happy for it but for the right reasons and we also wanted to show the parents talking to him. Showing it from the side of the man and how forceful he would be and how much he wants it but he doesn't. We then decided on the who would play each character. Freya would be the girl with Dan.s being her dad, Dom being the boy with Tom and  I being his parents and Kai being the friend to confide in. We thought Freya should be the one who doesn't have a mum because of our limit of girls because she would feel more pressured if her mum memory would be used as a means to do something. We then continued on to put the scenes into order. Deciding to start with Freyas mums funeral, then the fathers discussing what was going on, then we wanted the the boy being told, then confiding in a friend followed by the going away. This was the rough basis on which we wanted it to go but we need to finish it next lesson.

Devising- Tuesday 3rd November

Today in the lesson we started by discussing what we did from the last lesson on our human trafficking piece and Theo had found a trailer of a film that he suggests we watch to be able to understand the feeling and the emotion behind this. It would also help with the hard facts of what human trafficking is. 

After we did this we started looking at arranged marriage from different points of view and we found an arranged marriage hand book

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/149854/FM_Survivors6.pdf

This helped to understand how bad arranged marriage could be. We then decided as a group that it would no longer be an arranged marriage piece but it would be force as there is a clear difference between having a choice and being made to do something. Our piece being about womens rights we decided that forced would be more appropriate and we should show the pressure put on the women and how hard it is for them. We also discussed how we could make it more emotive and get the audience to understand what arranged marriage is about as a lot of people do not understand the reasons behind it and the suffering it causes after. The hand book helped me to understand how impossible it is to escape when you have been forced into something that you don't want to be in. 

We also spoke about a story of a women who was practicing to become a doctor at university when here parents forced her into marriage and she was sent to Afghanistan where she could not practice what she had learnt and was hardly even allowed to the leave the house. She went from being independent to completely isolated and unable to have a life. This made it clear to me this was a good topic to chose to show what we want to and show how women are still not equal to men.

Devising- Monday 2nd November

Today in the lesson we started by going over our movement piece from before half term as we all had forgotten some of it. We then showed it to our teacher and began to get feedback on what we were doing. He first said that on the bit where the boys are using contact improvisation to touch me that it doesn't look violent or abusive enough so they need to physically touch me. We also needed to change the timing for some of our scenes to make the lift where Theo is strangling me to be slower so seem as if I am rising to heaven. We also decided that everything needed to more aggressive to make you feel sorry for the girls.
In the next part of the lesson we worked on these parts until this looked better. Today I feel I really helped to develop my in terms of my facial expressions as they really help to make the audience understand what i'm going through.
For the next lesson we said we were going to look at suffragettes so we needed to do some research.