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.