SWED 1

The research as a group that we have covered for our devised piece of Pool (no water) are:

• The physical effects of drugs - to help with the characterisation of our characters and the habits of our characters
• Mark Ravenhill - To get a background of the writer of this play and see if his life experiences contribute to the development and writing of this play.
• 90's British act YBAs - Probably the characters in this play are from this group, so by researching this we could understand more about society at the time the play was written and how our characters may be.
• 90's clothing trends - To help with the costume of our performance

The themes of our performance:

• Loss
• Drugs
• Pool
• Friendship
• Jealousy
• Spitefulness
• Daring
• Hatred
• Death
• Effects
• Aftermath

To make a start of our performance we edited the script down and then focused on scenes that we agreed were key moments of the performance. We decided we wanted to incorporate a lot of physical movement in these key moments so we wanted to focus on lifts. (calypo)

pool (no water) rehearsals

Three rehearsals which consisted of devising lifts that would take place at the beginning and end of our performance, involving a calypso and a backwards flying lift?
Other than that we focused on re-reading the script and assigning lines that we believe would fit our characters best. Our roles allows us to put some of our own characteristics into building our characters personality, which made it easier to assign roles to each other.

'Ten tips for a truly creative collaboration' article

At the beginning of John Walton's article, he expresses how theatre can hold good dramatists but the creative team is also highlighted as just important especially with devising, where everyone in the creative team is involved. Walton gives a ten segmented breakdown on things he had learnt from devising his own plays.

"Be passionate about your source material" Walton makes it clear that if you pick a piece/stimulus that you are very passionate about you will have the drive to create something great and open different possibilities.

"Do your research" It's best to know your chosen material in depth, to allow yourself to provide 'authenticity' to the final performance and to not leave the audience question your performance in ways you cannot answer or did not answer, otherwise they would not be completely drawn into the performance.

"Get your material out there as soon as possible" Just to show pieces of your work to people as often as you can to test things out and create excitement for your upcoming show.

"Unite the whole company around a common purpose" Make sure that the goal for the show meets everyone's personal objectives, providing a guide that can be changed along the way if felt necessary. 

"Keep an open mind" also listening to the people in your team as well, every comment is important big or small.

"The importance of story is relative" The story behind your performance is important but not the most important as the show itself can bring the story to life and tie everything together.

"Always look for counterpoints" 'movement, music, design, sound and lighting is just as important as words.'

"Everyone works differently" Everyone works best in their own way and in their own preferred places.

"Don't be precious" Alter things to where you and your team thinks its necessary.

"Stay optimistic and enjoy yourselves"If you have inspiration and enjoy the moments whilst devising your mind will be at its most creative place.  

10/10/16 Lesson review

Right at the beginning of this lesson we looked at a new practitioner called Antonin Artaud 1896-1948. First watching videos from his work and concluding as a class that his work is quite disturbing, crazy and uncomfortable to watch. From these reactions to the video we looked at a quote from Banksy that best describes Artauds goal in theatre which was " To disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." The theories we gathered that can further describe Artauds goal was that he wanted his audience to see the negatives in order to see the positives, to produce and show the audience violent, physical images to pulverize and mesmerize them.

Generalizing this type of theatre it would be known as Cruelty Theatre which removes barriers between the actors and audiences and bombard their senses. The cruelty is for the actors to completely strip away their masks and the cruelty of showing an audience a truth that they don't want to see. To do the opposite than expected to the audience. Artaudian performances mainly consisted of screams, weird noises and physical rough movement. Also by throwing yourself into the performance using these qualities you reject natural conventional reforms.

Further along the lesson we did activities to reveal the double, we were given a poem in pairs where we had to create a performance using the text without saying the poem but using Artaudian techniques to tell the poem with screams, physical movements and universal language- sounds and sound scapes. Then we were in groups of four and we did a similar activity but with another poem where we made it as Artaudian as possible and performed it to the rest of the class. At the end after watching everyone's performances we talked about Artaudian performances again and how it can be challenging but once its pulled together its effective when telling a story or a poem.

6/10/16 Lesson overview

First thing in this lesson, as a group we talked about the empty space text and talked about the ideas behind the text, which was roughly about deadly theatre and what it is to Peter Brook. We then talked about what the text thought about good theatre and what we think good theatre is.
The next activity linked in with the text of Deadly Theatre, as these were quotes from the text scattered across the room. We were in pairs and we walked around the room reading the quotes and interpreting them, a couple of the texts were:
"Theatre is a self-destructive art, and it is written in the wind" I interpreted this quote by thinking that theatre evolves in time and something new is introduced as time goes by, either having a strong impact or small.
"Theatre has no exact space in society" In my pair we thought that there is no distinct group in society that all theatre fits with as in theatre different parts suit different people in small or big ways.

Based from this activity we all concluded that the texts point is that theatre would always be different due to the audience and theatre should be made to fit the or any audience.

We then watched other devised performances from groups that performed last year and another that was from an original divised theatre company which was Wooster and another ones from Burges which revolved its performances around books. Another video of a performance was one where a man was in a bath tub filled with cracked glass to the brim, where he would slowly remove the glass from the tub with his  hands over  course of an hour. From this performance we discussed whether we thought it was deadly theatre and personally I did not think so as this performance was new and original from anything I've seen before.

Lastly in lesson there were titles of members of group workers, that Alison Oddey noticed in every group, scattered around the room, again we were in pairs and we went around the room placing our partner where we thought a title of a group member best suited them. The variations of titles of members in a group were, for example the chair, the shaper, the plant, the objective, the practical organizer, the finisher and the team worker which was where my partner placed me by. The team worker has the qualities of making my group working together but they don't recognize me when I'm there till I'm gone.

03/10/16 Lesson overview

In this lesson we were put into groups, I was in a group of three and in these groups we had to think of four signs to describe another person's features without speaking. We each assigned a person to use gestures to best explain them, for example a group member made a downwards quick swirl with both hands to show others she's showing my feature of curly hair. After we came up with four signs we shared them with each other in our groups, remembering each sign for each person, then combining all signs into a sequence. My groups sequence rotated, where the person being described is in the middle and a step forward than the other members, then when it was another person's turn we'd rotate and repeat.

Then we moved onto another activity called 'shift, around and by' where we were in pairs creating a sequence. In pairs we created a sequence by basing every move deciding whether we were going to shift a part of their body away or towards us or move around our partner or walk by them. Once we created a sequence we used an emotion to see how we could change it, for example if both of us in our pairs hated each other the sequence would be more rough and paced. We then used music to see how it would affect our sequence, in my pair we added a theme song from a vampire based film so I changed my physique to make it look like I wanted to kill my partner, making my movements sharp and quick in my sequence. We then saw other pairs sequences and chose different songs to see how it affected their sequence, which resulted in the same sequences giving off different moods and impressions each time.

29/09/2016 Lesson overview

The night before this lesson we went to watch the new show 'Things that are known to be true' by and Australian theatre company, 'State Theatre Company', with collaboration with Frantic Assembly at the lyric Hammersmith. This started off our lesson with a discussion about what we thought about the show and what areas of the show we liked and disliked. The reason for this was because of the collaboration with Frantic Assembly, which we would be able to use some of the techniques this organisation uses in our Unit 3 exam, which leads to activities that we carried out in rest of the lesson.

First activity being 'Slalom' where in pairs we started off running to chairs that were in front of us, all in the same pace as our partners and swerving around the chairs at the same time too. Once this first level was done we started off the same but as when we came back we would need to link arms with our partners with a gap between us and run in time. Then to take it up a notch in the next round we had to shout 'go!' at the same time by the time we reached to our chairs, so that the next pair can run. However on our way back we would remain linked but the pair that was next after shouting go would need to run under the gap of our pairs linked arms and start the cycle from there. This activity showed and proved team work and ensemble even in pairs.

The next activity was called bodyguards, where we were in groups of three and two members of the group would walk behind a member until that member stopped and made it clear which direction they would lean so that the bodyguards can catch them. We then made a routine for each member with three leans and catches each, next adding a form of travel and different ways of positioning to make the routine more flowed and natural, more for presentation and maybe help with future transitioning.

Lastly the most physical was the lifts which were split  into two, first being 'Flying' which was where one person was lifted by the class with the support from two peoples shoulders for the main person to push their weight up and the rest of the class to use their hands to hold the persons legs for when they go up. But the person that's lifted need to have inner core strength to prevent a tip and to help the lift be more smooth and for it to go higher. Second lift was called 'calypo' where again one person was being lifted but on their back with two people as the support and the rest using their arm strength to hold up the persons legs in the air. Then once the lift feels comfortable by everyone, the group can move with the person in the air by walking around the room.