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.