Our Performance - Evaluation

I was very nervous about our performance this morning, but by the end of the day, I felt we had a really amazing, truthful and effective piece.

We were all a little worried this morning, but after much planning and exploring with more ideas of riffing and emotional flocking, we managed to come up with an effective middle to our piece. We came up with some good ideas before that we decided to keep in our performance. We decided to stick to the Meisner Chat, the Lust Walk, BISP and Jack and Laura's kiss-pull. We then decided to do emotional flocking, then our stories that we have about something that had happened to us that meant something - my story was applying and getting into the BRIT School.

We then did the Riffing with the clap, then pulled the audience in and turned them around and turned the light off, we then whispered in their ears something we were extremely passionate about - I spoke about M&S Meal Deals and Self Service Checkout Machines. This made quite a few people laugh, but it didn't take away from the atmosphere in the room. I think it made some audience members grateful for the emotional break because our piece could be a little overwhelming for some people.

We then read out the stories that the audience had written down at the beginning. When they walked in, we handed them a piece of paper and asked them to write down:
I'm happiest when...
It made me feel...
My greatest fear is...
Which made them have to really think. When we read them out and we were doing the body riffing around them in a circle to music, it felt really powerful. The audience seemed to be really engaged with what we were doing and it made me feel more open to go further, because the audience were, emotionally, there with me. We finished with a body ripple of discovery and a group hug in the middle at the end.

We were all a little apprehensive about our performance, but I think it went really well. If anything could have been re-done, I would have made the emotional flocking a little bit more emotional as I still thought there were too many times where it got too much and was too overwhelming. We could have kept it quiet a little more, to create more of an atmosphere, but overall, I think the rest of our piece went really well and we had some really positive feedback from our peers and our parents.

I think we effectively managed to create a believable and emotional connection with our audience and some people got really emotionally attatched to our piece. When we performed it to our peers, I think that they got into it a lot more quickly and we had some strong feedback with people saying they wanted to join in and that they were welling up and some points, which was really good to hear, because it means that we know we were doing the right thing and just feeling it on stage.

We always have to work a lot harder when performing to our parents because they are less open to things and much more reserved people, however, I think we did really well, they all seemed to be really engaged and mesmerized by the riffing. When we were reading out the audience's stories and we were riffing around them, it felt amazing. With the music and the stories, I felt so powerful being able to move how I wanted to and move how I felt in my body. The audience members that were facing me were smiling and seemed to be fixated on all of us. It felt very surreal and when the performance had ended and everyone looked up from our hug, I felt the emotional connection break and I felt spaced out, as if I didn't know what had just happened because I was so involved in the piece. It was an amazing feeling that I didn't really want to end.

I feel like I've improved and learnt so much this term and, although some bits have been very stressful, it has been amazing and I feel like every lesson, I've been on an emotional journey and come out feeling exhausted, but amazing and so much closer to, not just everyone in my group, but also every single audience member.

Riffing

We decided to scrap the idea of the script and make a piece that simply involved different emotional stages and things to do with moral transgression. We did an exercise, which we worked and developed for the whole lesson.

Riffing is where you stand at the sides and start a rhythm with your feet, where you step forward and then stomp your feet back. We did this while clapping your hands on the step forward and sending our energy through our clap and into the middle of the circle to the person who is exploring their movement, to encourage them to keep going.

It is very scary and off-putting allowing yourself to be completely vulnerable, but once you're out there and you feel everyone's claps encouraging you, you feel a lot better and you don't feel like you look stupid, because you're feeling every emotion and movement. It is simply whatever feels natural.

One person goes into the middle and starts to move, however they feel, inside them, that they should move. They are very free to move and express things however they feel it. When you are in the middle, you need to follow every movement you feel in order to feel the next one. You need to find yourself a moment, where you have a recognition that you have found "it" or "something" that you need to keep developing. When the people around the edge feel as though the person in the middle has found something, you find yourself walking to the middle and copying their movement and you stay together in the circle until you become emotionally connected with each other. Then, the first person leaves and the new person tries to make up their own pathway of movement.

You feel very surreal when doing this exercise, when you're around the edge, you're exhausted because you're putting all of your energy into your clap and you are completely mesmorized by the person in the middle. You then find yourself noticing when they have found an interesting movement and you find yourself in the middle starting to copy them. It is an out-of-body experience, you don't tell yourself you're going to go in or decide your movement, you just find yourself in there suddenly and your feeling your whole body.

It's both very relaxing and exhausting at the same time! When you finish, you feel very spaced out, but also completely exhausted because it took everything out of you.

More Development

Will had made up a script over the weekend, which he brought in to show us. We read through it and started to devise around it. We then had a discussion to talk about our first impressions of the script.

On reading the script for the first time, I think it seemed a little blank and plain. I think it is going to be hard work, but if we really try, we'll be able to pull it off and get the script off the page and is going to take a lot of concentration and focus. It also requires us to imput our ideas on how we can improve it and us contributing ideas on how to bring it to life.

Some opinions of the class:

Cory: Very wordy - needs to be balanced with strong opinions.
Charlie: Like the drugs but, but needs more relevance to the couple. We could have our bodies as the stages in their relationship.
Dee: Positives and negatives of relationships. Not sure how to encorporate the stuff we did in the week. We could have the bodies spread out through the audience.
Kitty: Examples of how the love drug works.
Molly: Start with Sarah and Tom, then Jack and Laura kiss and ripped apart for a background to set the piece up.
Jack: Numerous relationships leaving the clinic with the pill, follow their lives.
Tom: More of a journey with people's bodies. Some go medically wrong. We could look at testing on animals and then lead into the animal courtships.
Sarah: Link moral transgressions - take the pill, against morals, abusive relationship - forces woman to take it. Explore these.
Jack: Have the audience like trial groups: give them each different coloured tic-tacs.
Molly: Side effects of the drugs leading to moral transgressions - the 7 deadly sins.

What are Morals?

Morals

"Morals have a greater social element to values and tend to have a very broad acceptance. Morals are far more about good and bad than other values. We thus judge others more strongly on morals than values. A person can be described as immoral, yet there is no word for them not following values."

Dictionary.com defines morals as: n : motivation based on ideas of right and wrong

So what?

"Understand the differences between the values, morals and ethics of the other person. If there is conflict between these, then they probably have it hidden from themselves and you may carefully use these as a lever.

Beware of transgressing the other person's morals, as this is particularly how they will judge you.

Talking about professional ethics puts you on a high moral platform and encourages the other person to either join you or look up to you."

http://changingminds.org/explanations/values/values_morals_ethics.htm

More Research on Moral Transgression

Some different definitions of what transgression is from different sites I found, whilst doing more research:

• A violation of law, command or duty: "The same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman."
• The exceeding of due bounds or limits.
• Moral Transgressions are any thing against the moral standards of a society, common is homicide, rape, stealing. Each society has its own definition of what is allowed, such as in a one African culture, homosexuality with an elder of the tribe is used to give word the groom will not have sexual relations with another female while married.
• A transgression is something that is against a command or law. Whether you are cheating on a test, or cheating on a spouse, you are committing transgressions that are not easily forgiven.
• A transgression can be a failure to do your duty. A sin is a transgression against God. The noun transgression is from Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin "act of crossing/passing over." from transgredi "to step or pass over".
•  The act of transgressing; the violation of a law or a duty or moral principle

Research on Moral Transgression

When researching more about theatrical ways to portray transgression in morals, all websites seem to point towards the Rocky Horror Show, so we could do something to do with dressing up in the costumes, or portraying the same kind of views they do to show the audience. We could make a piece about homosexuality, which would be relevant at the moment, because of gay marriage becoming legal in the UK.

http://www.newlinetheatre.com/rockychapter.html

This website talks a lot about the Rocky Horror Show, the 1960’s and the moral transgression in America and the UK and how the Karma Sutra became popular and more shows became quirky and a little controversial. We could do something to do with saying the lines of some of the songs from Rocky Horror or some of the more controversial lines.

Feedback on Our Piece So Far and What Needs to Be Done to Improve It?

I feel like our piece has got a lot of potential and we managed to pull together a lot of material in this lesson. I think that it is really important to make sure that we make it look good and we don't fidgit or move or break our focus because that could cause the whole piece to look fake and forced. Everyone needs to put 100% into it to make it look good and effective and to make sure it reaches the audience and makes them think.

We need to all be really mature when performing this, because it needs to be taken seriously to work and be believable. We need to be able to do what Will is asking and not over-act it - people tend to make acting too complicated, we need to keep it simple, to make it believable. As soon as we start to act or put on an acting face, you are losing your believability and anchoring back to your residual self and not becoming a believable character which you can feel emotions through and convey and believable performance to the audience, which is what you are looking for.

We need to make sure that the transitions between our scenes are smooth and flowing to make our piece fit together. To make this possible, we all need to know what we are doing and really focus ourselves in rehearsals to get it to look very accurate and smooth.

As actors, we really need to learn to get over stuff as performers and realise that the spitting and biting might feel weird, but if it is done with conviction, it will look really good. We also need to realise that the spitting is not aggressive, nor is the biting, it is just a sensual way to meet a parnter. We need to put a longer piece in about trangressing morals and have a monologue that sets up the audience's pre-conceptions of what morals are and what they're about. We could also add a lot more to do with the theme of love, we could have some other poems, some songs about love, some more things on the projector to do with the more romantic side, now we have explored the sensual side.

I think the piece is very good at the moment - it obviously needs a lot more work and rehearsal time, but at the moment, I think we have a good rough version of our finished play. It is very obscure and dramatic and definitely breaks our comfort boundaries and challenges us to see how far we are willing to go. I found that the biting and spitting not only questions the morals of the audience, but also questions our morals. I found that when I had to bite Alex, I was breaking my own moral code of "Not to bite someone or hurt anyone" and found myself asking myself if it was ok that I was biting him and was it ok that the reason I was biting him was that I was blaming it on "acting" but it still hurt us both, so you need to see if you can push past your boundaries and find it ok to hurt other people for the sake of acting, your job, your own protection or even protecting someone else.

As an actor if you are asked to do weird things, you just have to go with it and follow your instincts, you can't act through things you are uncomfortable with, you have to let the action flow naturally.

Some ideas, for our piece, are a little weird, but you need to trust your partner to go with it. For example, Sarah and Tom are challenged to create a real piece of drama that conveys people really being in love. This is challenging for them, because obviously they aren't really in love with each other, yet they have to make it believable to the audience, by not acting, but relaying their emotion into how they would actually be feeling. It is also challenging not to have a text. You have to use your instinct and if you have a feeling you need to go with it. It is also challenging because you have nothing to fall back on. However, you do have an advantage, so that if something isn't working, you can change it to make it fit what you want to do.

As an actor you are really challenged to break your boundaries of what would be acceptable behaviour in society and push past it and hope the audience understand what you're trying to convey. If you have an idea, you just have to go with it and explore it in more detail to see the potential.

Dan Ariely

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdsTizSxSI

We talked a little about Dan Ariely and his ideas of different people's morals when it comes to cheating and how it depended how much was at stake as to whether people felt comfortable cheating. On doing some further research, I found this video, in which he perfectly sums up his ideas of different morals.

http://danariely.com/

The above link is a link to his blog and all of his ideas on helping people with their questions and some of his views on morality. He states in his blog that it was when he was in hospital, recovering from some nasty injuries he sustained while involved in an explosion that he "became engrossed with the idea that we repeatedly and predictably make the wrong decisions in many aspects of our lives and that research could help change some of these patterns."

On this blog you will see all of the videos he has uploaded from his talks and links to all of his books, such as, "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty" and "The Upside of Irrationality"

http://danariely.com/?s=morality

Here is the link to his blog post "Social Power and Morality", which I found really interesting to read and see how he views that when given more power, you seem to have less morals as you feel you are entitled to more and that you deserve to have special treatment, even if you have done nothing to gain that power.

Theatre Workshop - More Second Half

After the video, we are then going to create a physical section of pulling and tearing your own body apart to portray to the audience the idea of lust and love that is portrayed in the poem.

We are then going to all split off into seperate groups to show the seven deadly sins and how they can effect your morality. We're going to have the skinny people in the group stuffing their faces with food, some girls putting loads of make-up on their faces, Tyler self-abusing himself and the other people in the group stealing things from the audience. This will really highlight the seven deadly sins and how each one is bad when it comes to morality issues and how they can effect how you behave.

We are then going to have a section where someone will have a piece of tube linked to some apple juice, which will make them look like they are weeing into a bowl. We are then going to have someone else come and drink the apple juice - this will really allow the audience to question what are morals and what is considered "appropriate behaviour" as although people have different morals, we still all have an idea of what is acceptable in society. After this, we have a bit from the poem, so that we are referring back to it for the audience.

Theatre Workshop - Outline of Our Play - Second Half

In the second half, we're going to start with a video of an artist - Franko B - walking down a catwalk and having blood dripping from his arms from where he has cut himself. We're putting in this video to emphasise to the audience that this is sinful, because you shouldn't harm yourself, so this could show another way of transgressing your morals.

Theatre Workshop - Outline of Our Play - First Half

We talked today about the order that our play was going to run, how it would work and what each section was about. We started by saying that the first half of our performance is going to be all about moral transgression and breaking your moral code. We are going to start with the audience in the room and all of us waiting outside. There are going to be two projector screens at either end of the room and each audience member will be given a piece of paper and a pen. Then, pictures of some of us from the class will come up and the audience will have to write down on the piece of paper what words have come into their head that describe what they think about them. They will be told that their piece of paper wont be seen, however the people who's pictures have been displayed will walk in and read them out.

We are doing this to get the audience to break their moral code by getting them to judge people before they get to know them. This will make them really think about their morals and make them realise how easy it is to break them. This exercise will effectively start the audience thinking about their morals and how strong willed they are not to break them and get them to think about what happens when they break them.

We will then have Sarah and Tom performing their Meisner exercise to show how their emotions change and vary in the course of a relationship. They're looking at the first meeting, trust, infatuation, mistrust and finally loathing.  By exploring all these stages of relationships, they have been looking at all the different emotions you go through and the morals you have to keep in a successful relationship. This will get the audience to feel the emotion and make them think even more about how their feelings are portrayed and how they react to one another.

Once they have finished, the rest of us come in and perform the Lust vs. Fear exercise we first did with Emma. We had to pick a partner and use eye-contact to stay connected to them and to stay looking at them as we all walk around the room. We then have to get closer and closer with our partner and do the kissing exercise, where we get so close to kissing and then move away. We did this a couple of times and then got really close and stayed there. We have included this in our piece to make the audience see the longing we have for this other person and the infatuation we feel when we're around them. This really effectively shows how to make the infatuation and how badly the man in, "The Flea" wants to kiss the girl, but without being allowed to. It makes the audience feel his longing - as long as we can make it feel believable.

We then go through different stages of some of the animal courtships we looked at and devised. I was with Alex and we had to be swans, but put into humanistic traits - entwining their necks into each other. We performed this for the class as a kind of dance, moving towards one another and changing the position of our heads. Will said that we should become even more entwined with each other, so our bodies are writhing all through each other, as if we can't get enough of them and we have to be with them. So we started pulling each others clothes, going through each others legs, playing with their arms, their back and entwining ourselves to try and become one.

After the kissing exercise, the animal courtship ritual we started with was biting. We all had to bite each other and really sink our teeth into them. We used this exercise because we want to show the audience how in love these people are and how much they have to be with each other and inside each other. We then did the entwining exercise, we did this to show the audience how badly they wanted to become one person. We then did spitting. This involved us spitting on ourselves and wiping it on and offering it to the other person to smell. This would show to the audience how in love these people are, which is how the man feels to the girl in, "The Flea" and how he is offering himself to her. We then looked at play-fighting. We did this to convey to the audience how playful and free a relationship can be, but also how it portrays to the audience how the relationship of the man and the woman in, "The Flea" works and how the guy is playing with her, by flirting with her and teasing her.

We then have the "kiss fight" with Jack and Laura. They reject their partners and go to find each other. They kiss and we all look on in jealousy. We then run towards them and try to split them up. We lift them into the air and make it look like the bond between them, and their love is too strong to separate them, until we finally separate them and lower them to the ground.

We have done this "kiss fight" to show to the audience how easy it is to break your morals of staying faithful to a partner, to not be jealous, to not to try to hurt other people by ruining their happiness, but also allowing them to feel the longing that the man feels in, "The Flea" and allowing them to see the power love can have over so many people.

Devising Scenes

We got put into groups and given a topic by Emma to devise a short scene to. I was with Cassie, Cameron, Sacha, Tyler and Cory. We had to do ours about the courtship rituals of animals. We had the idea to set it as if we were humans in a bar, with the men trying to pick up the girls by using the animals techniques. It started with Sacha being a pregnant, male seahorse, coming up to talk to us about how his wife is at home resting, while he came out to this club before the children are born.

Cameron then came on and tried to pick me up at the bar like a peacock, by miming his tail feathers spreading out and introducing himself as Mr Peacock, so I went off and started dancing with him. The Cory came over to Cassie and pretended to be a hippo. He pretended to soil himself and fling it around with his tail, while Cassie pretended to enjoy the smell. Then Tyler came on and pretended to be a deer. He had his hands as antlers on his head and Cory came on, as a deer, to try and battle him. They locked their hands together, as if they were antlers and Tyler beat Cory to the ground, so Cassie left with Tyler.

This scene was meant to show all the different rituals animals use and by expressing them as humans, we managed to make it a lot less fake and even though it was still comical, it wasn't humans pretending to be animals, which doesn't always work. Other groups had to focus on human rituals, the importance of virginity etc. This exercise was one, effective way of trying to present to the audience many different things we have been exploring and gave us some insight into some of the scenes we could include in our final play.

Lust vs Fear

We did a really effective exercise where we had to get into partners and stand opposite sides of the room in two lines, facing them. We then had to pretend to lust after our partner, but as soon as we touched we had to be completely afraid of them and imagine them as our biggest fear.

At first, we found this very hard to get into, as people were laughing because it was awkward and made us all feel uncomfortable. We had to keep doing it to get ourselves focused and mature about it. We then walked around the room and had to find our partner and get closer and closer to them and switch partners subtly, after running away from them. I was with Laura and we found it quite hard to lust after each other, but after a few times, it became less awkward and we started to just go with it. I then switched partners to Jack, when we were walking around the room and we had to get closer and closer to our partner. It was weird, seeing everyone else in the room getting so close to each other, but we were all being mature and trying to concentrate on the emotions. Then, as soon as Jack and I were facing each other and he put his hand behind my neck, he froze and I panicked and ran away from him.

It was really effective watching everyone's reactions because at first Emma was saying, sometimes, when you're scared of something, you don't run away immediately - you freeze or drop to the floor, so after we explored a lot more of how we actually behave when we are frightened, the exercise became a lot more effective and people around the room really started to feel the emotions. It didn't become awkward because everyone was doing it and it really helped to express your emotions and allowed you to feel the lust the man feels for the woman and the fear the woman has of letting the man get close to her. This also helps with our contemporary, as it allows us to feel the lust someone might have for someone else, but also the fear that is involved in Stockholm Syndrome.

The Flea Devised Pieces

We had to do an exercise where we got into groups, I was with Molly, Kitty and Sarah and we had to devise a scene that expressed, "The Flea" from a different view point. We did our scene from the viewpoint of the girl's virginity being sacred, so we had the idea to take a cattle auction and auction virgin's instead. Kitty was the host and Sarah and I were virgin's, so got sold to members of the audience. Molly was meant to be auctioned, but Sarah and I told Kitty she wasn't a virgin, so she was turned away from the audience in disgust.

We used this idea to portray to the audience how important her virginity is to her in her eyes and that without it, she would be ruined. The performances were really interesting to watch as some groups did it from very interesting angles, e.g. Tom, Laura, Cassie and Dee did theirs from the perspective of the flea and made a performance where they cried when their flea friend was killed.

These performances gave us some really good ideas on the different approaches we could take towards performing our piece and the different view-points we could express different messages through.

Leading and Following Exercise

We also did an exercise, in which we had to close our eyes and be led by our partner around the room. I was led by Sarah and they had to try and disorientate us, by turning us in circles, making us duck and go on tip-toe. We had to put our complete trust in our partner, which is just how the couple would feel in, "The Flea" having to trust each other completely.

We then swapped, so I started leading Sarah and as we were leading them we had to start describing in their ear a story. We had to whisper and describe a journey they were taking. I described to Sarah that she was in a long, dark tunnel. She couldn't see anything except a dot of distant light in front of her. There was a terrible smell and she was treading in smelly, disgusting, wet, slimy things on the ground. When we had to feed-back to the class, she explained that she felt really disgusting and started to worry about where she was putting her feet. I also made her duck through the whole thing, so she really felt like she was in a tunnel.

The whole point of this exercise was to make people realise how important their other senses are. We were considering blindfolding our audience for at least a part of our performance, so we were exploring how effective sensory deprivation can be, but also what it takes away from our piece and the limitations it could give us.

The Flea Exercises - Listening and Responding

We did many different exercises in our lesson - all to do with the poem, "The Flea". We used this poem as it is our stimulus for our experimental play and we need to be able to do different exercises, as this will allow us to experiment with many different ideas and help us to find an interesting and responsive way of creating our piece.

The first exercise we did was to do with the exercise we did before where we said something about a person and they had to respond - e.g. "You've got brown eyes." "I've got brown eyes." We practiced this exercise again, this time making sure that we repeated exactly what they said. Then we had to repeat back exactly what they said - e.g. "You've got brown eyes." "You've got brown eyes." - which was a lot more difficult! We then were allowed to respond to them saying what we saw back - e.g. "You've got brown hair." "You've got blonde hair." - this was a very hard exercise as it really relied on your concentration and awareness.

We then learnt the first two lines of, "The Flea" and had to say them to each other like a conversation and make it seem believable - e.g. "Mark but this flea, ands mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is;" "It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, and in this flea our two bloods mingled be." - this exercise was really effective for trying to get us to sound like we were having a believable, natural, flowing conversation. It worked really well at helping us learn to respond to each other, so that when we're on stage, we don't just reply with our next line, but we listen and respond accurately to what they're saying. Which will help our acting to stay fresh and not become too boring or repetitive.

I found that when watching the three common ground play's that the Year 13's did - the ones that worked a lot more effectively are one's that kept the audience engaged because the actor's seemed to be saying the lines to respond to what they had heard. For example, "Earthquakes in London" was a fantastic piece of theatre because of lots of different elements, but the main one was that it seemed to be really fresh to the actor's and although they had obviously rehearsed it a lot, they kept the audience intrigued and alert, because they were responding and listening to each other on stage.

Peter Brook

Peter Brook's work and ideas.

Improvisation Exercise

We had to do an exercise which involved us improvising by talking a little about ourselves. In groups of four, Sarah, Nora, Dee and I, we had to make sure one person stood in the middle and was comfortable saying things about themself. E.g. "Hi, I'm Nora. I'm 16 and I like football." the rest of the group, then had to be her subconcious telling the audience why she really likes football. E.g. "I only like playing football because I want boys to find me more attractive." etc. This exercise went on for quite a long time and it started to become really difficult to think  of things to say without it becoming comedic.

It was mainly hard because it was an improvised exercise. If it had been scripted, it would have been much easier to be more serious and to get more of a message across. This exercise helped to show the true emotions in your sub-concious and will help to improve your emotions when you are on stage, because it can be very difficult to have to do lots, sensually on stage.

We all found it very hard to come up with things to say and you needed to make sure you were confident going into it. In my group, Dee and I sat in the audience and spoke Nora's mind, while Sarah was sitting infront of her making up actions or gestures to fit with what we were saying. As the performance is going to be about relationships, we need to be sure we can play with our voices and play with the truth to get our message across.

This exercise helped us prepare for when we start devising our piece. It helped us to go deep inside ourselves for our emotions, which will allow us to put more true emotion into our piece, without it becoming cheesy or fake.

Notes from the Lesson on What to Perform:

Location: Cafe in the new theatre building - chairs and tables/you could put a bed in the centre/perfect first date spot.

Courtships: Old fashioned/modern/animals.

Irish Travellers: Dress provocatively and the men grab them.
Austria: The men have to ask the women to Waltz. They all have Waltzing lessons at school. The woman holds apple slices under her armpit when she is dancing. If she dances with a man she likes, he takes it and eats it.
Hippo: Has a poo and then swings it's tail around to spray it's scent to the female.
Peacock: Shows off it's coloured tail to the female.

We could do something to do with scent or some kind of speed dating idea - make the audience sit down/try to seduce the audience.
Courtship rituals and going deeper into the core of men and woman - include the kissing bit with Jack and Laura - relationships/being someone you're not.
The box office could be a bar - for dating.
Everyone could write their own dating profile and we could have menu's with us in them - the audience are able to buy you.
Memory - think of love stories.
Random profile selection.
Film response on the wall on a projector - have truth playing - he contradicts himself - the truth says what is really going on in his head.
1/2 show- human interaction - 1/2 show - animal interaction.
"Take Me Out" - cannot be cheesy/fake.
Subtle message of women rejecting men.
Animal Speed dating.

My Inital Ideas on How to Perform Our Piece

Initial Annotations on the poem "The Flea" by John Donne

What is Experimental Theatre?

Experimental theatre falls under physical theatre and site specific theatre. It is theatre, but it takes away the boundaries and limits. It is about exploring and developing your emotions. You don't have to use a traditional play, you can use any stimulus, such as devised, improvised, poems or pictures anything that allows you to combine your mind, body, words and movements. It pushes the audience; it is not meant to entertain them, it is meant to get a message across.

Experimental theatre is when the audience can sympathise with the actors emotions. We have failed if an audience sits bored listening to an emotionless recital of words. We have also failed if we're using cheap thrills inbn our work. eg. chasing the audience with a chainsaw. We must get across what is important about life.

Peter Brook identifies a triangle of relationships within a performance and those are:
1. Performers internal relationships.
2. Performers relationship to each otehr on stage.
3. Performers relationships with the audience.

Good experimental theatre demands an actor's unity between their thought, body and feelings. The actors must tune their theatrical instrument - themselves. Plus, being able to create a living, dramatic flow. Through that the theatrical miracle comes afterwards. Experimental theatre has emotions and emotional link to the space the audience are in. It allows the audience to experience the space.

Emotional Flocking

We did an exercise in the first lesson called "Emotional Flocking." It is called this because of the very simple reason that we are exploring lots of different emotions and we are doing it in unison, like a flock of birds. We started exploring our emotions by copying what Will was doing.

We started by hysterically laughing, which then moved on to crying and many other different emotions that flowed into each other. With this exercise all the emotion felt very forced and it was just like we were doing it for the sake of Will doing it. It felt very superficial - like the emotions we felt weren't true.

However we then did the exercise again, but called this Level 2. In this exercise we were allowed to change the emotion at any point and we had to get the whole class to change into different emotions. The second exercise felt a lot more powerful - like we were actually truthfully responding to what was happening around us, which led to the other emotions flowing nicely. This exercise made more sense and seemed more realistic as we had to listen to other people and respond accordingly.

What does it take to do the exercise well?

Real focus, maturity, a lot of concentration and energy - basically everything it takes to be an actor. If you don't give 100% - it just doesn't look good and you end up taking away emotion from the group. You have to want to get really involved. It also takes awareness and responsiveness to allow you to react the right way to the people around you. You must get involved to feel part of the emotion and make it believable. You need to be able to find a point to experience neutral emotion, therefore making your other emotions, not just feel more realistic, but actually make them more realistic as they come from deep inside.

As an actor, how do you benefit from this exercise?

You learn to harness your emotion and allows you to start really feeling those emotions. If you put your emotion towards something you can trick your mind into thinking it's true. For example, you need to find a realistic emotional hook. You could trick your mind into thinking that the little flick of her hair makes you absolutely despise her. Or, you can tell yourself that the pair of shoes in the room is going to make you sick. You can take it so far that after a while you generally start to feel really sick. It allows you to keep the emotions for future reference for when you are on stage or about to go on, you can use this exercise as a form of emotional recall. You benefit from this emotional hook, as it allows you to find a wayto feel your emotions, not to fake them. It also helps you to learn what triggers emotions and what allows them to be real.

Peter Brook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx2qHHFS5Yk

A video from the Guardian interviewing Peter Brook about his life, his new play, his travels and work. Peter Brook's directing techniques are largely influenced by Antonin Artaud.

Antonin Artaud

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpfVW6otfyQ

A video talking a little about Antonin Artaud's approaches to theatre and a preview of some of his work.