How has research effected our project so far?

Research has played a big part in inspiring us as a group, not only have the workshops we've created involved research to play a part as a stimulus, but our best work has involved a basis of research, for example the trial scene we created would of been unrealistic if we didn't have a knowledge about the understanding of how it worked. Furthermore research also helped us find a name and our main idea that we wanted to give the audience. We researched mental disorders, race discrimination and homosexuality acceptance through different periods to try and inspire us to create a scene through the eyes of one of the people and how they would of been treated in the 1900's compared to 2014 although this scene didn't particularly grab us the research again helped us move on to a different stronger idea that without research wouldn't of happened.

It has been proven that our best work is born when we look further into detail about the subject we are creating, weather we watch past students work, look at TV or news articles, or find videos and interviews online, they all work as stimulus' that inspire us to create pieces that are more realistic for our audience and would therefore help "force our audience to care about the content" something very important to us as a devising group.

Workshop 2: Verbatim and family life

Workshop 2: Ran by Katie, started with us watching a interview about a daughter not being allowed to see a boy because her father was strict and rather protective, we were asked to pick out 3 movements from the video (verbatim) and mimic them till we felt they were perfected, we then again split into groups of two and asked questions about the father and tried to involve the movements from the interview to create a realistic portrayal of the character we had watched.

After creating a more in depth character we decided to bring it further to life and use forum theatre to create 3 different scenes, intervening when we thought necessary to improve or experiment with a new idea, we first did the awkward "meet the parents for the first time" we played the boyfriend as different characters, respectful and hardworking, a college drop out, and a nervous shy character. We then moved on to the car scene on the way home from meeting the boyfriend the first time, the interrogation of who, where what etc. we again experimented with the characters, the mother being controlling, the father being care free, the teenager being stubborn or naïve after experimenting we had 2 scenes that fitted well together with a sense of comedy and family conflict either between mother and father or daughter and father. This was interesting to do as we saw that conflict didn't need to be dark or sad and that conflict could be expressed in a comical fashion that could add some relief to our piece.

Workshop 1: Newspapers and the media

Workshop 1: Ran by Rory, he started with a warm up getting us to start in a small circle and saying controversial topics to try and get opinions differentiating within the group, for example, abortion on the NHS, the adoption of critically ill children and the bombing of ISIS, this helped us get our brains thinking about how their was a differentiation between 4 people let alone countries and how topics have to be handled sensitivity as it can untimely result in wars etc. He then gave us two different news articles, one from Social Worker and one from The Times, we analysed the content and how the two news websites worded and presented things differently, it was interesting to see the biased opinions pushed upon the audience in the social worker compared to the reporter, fact and figure style of The Times. After spending 15 minutes talking about the language, the proposed views and our opinions on them we moved on to split into two groups one taking Social Worker and the other taking the news report from The Times.

Me and Abbie had Social Worker, we did slight research and worked out that Social Worker are always filmed talking on the streets, "socially immersed" in what ever event is going on and are very biased in their opinions. We went through the extract and picked the best points e.g "going to war will kill innocent civilians, accidents happen" and we then tried to report in the style of two Social Worker reporters to show their style and way of work compared to the very strict, "behind a desk" factual portray of The Times.

"Immersion"

Simple to say, devising in a group of opinionated females, and Rory, with a difference in nearly every situation isn't the easiest thing to achieve. After using several stimuli, we settled on a favourite "The Trail" by a theatre company using immersive theatre, the idea of involving the audience to any level immediately fascinated us all, and became the first thing we agreed on. We played around with improvisation trying to create characters from the idea of missing girl "Lucy Campbell" stemming from the idea of morally objective crimes, something for our audience to feel in conflict about, who was or wasn't guilty? But, again due to a difference of opinions everything we created was put to the "back of the draw" due to a difference of opinions. However keeping the idea of immersive theatre was something the whole group were passionate about and hence the group name "Immersion" was born.

"Immersion - deep mental involvement in something. Our aim is to smash the complacency out of the audience. We wish to force our audience to care about the content of our performance. We hope that they remain alert to our message long after the performance has finished."

 

Which as a group is exactly what we want our audience to feel, we went back to the idea of the trials and after doing research on the conditions of trials, what judges say, and the process of how defenders, witness and the accused are treated we had a wide understanding on the topic, we tried t create a scene but nothing amazing was born and again we put it to the "back of the draw" and focused on Frantic Assembly's attitude to working, "always forward never back" and continued with experimentation. After much debating about a wide range of topics we decided that until half term we are going to each create a workshop, either relevant to our previous ideas or maybe just a current event that interested us to try and create scenes and ideas that we can later stitch together. Whether this will work or not is yet to be determined but Immersion are going to give it a go.



Pathways - Composition Viewpoints

Although I am slightly late in talking about composition viewpoints (8 weeks to be exact) it is still something that has helped our devising, for something so simple. The aim was to get into groups, half of us would watch and the other half would participate, we were given a number 1-3 and told which order to enter the stage, dramatic music was picked and played and we had to walk around in without communicating, reacting of each other using only 4 simple movements, walk, jump, stop and sit, however the overall composition created was an intense, dramatic, silent yet hectic piece of theatre that told a story completely out of nothing, with no organisation or previous planning. It was interesting to see and feel how different movements and music could create a stunning 3 minute piece of drama that didn't take any configuration, this will be incredibly helpful for when the inevitable happens and we reach dead ends in our devising pieces, by simply playing music that fits our theme of conflict we could easily create either a new scene or at very least the stimulus for a new scene.

"The Enemy" - Using Verbatim

Last lesson we were given a sample of the script, "The Enemy"

"Freedom to think, freedom to act, the rule of law, intellectual development, equality of opportunity, eradication of corruption, a free market, freedom to worship freedom to express your opinion if it does not inhibit other opinions, equality of men, equality of women, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, the separation of church and state, the ability of every citizen to vote in free and fair elections to decide their own government, these thing's don't come free, these things have to be earned with war and blood, it's the only price. They said my sister was killed by the blast as the plane hit the building, they think she died quickly and I don't know I won't ever know for sure about that, but what I do know is that the man who ordered my sisters death did not want anything I could give him. I know that he was, according to the criteria I've laid out for you the enemy. He was the enemy of everything that allows you to do your job and everything that keeps you safe and gives you life. He ordered the attack as a retaliation, yes, but not against the bombs or bullets but against music, and movies and sports and life. And my sister loves those things. I didn't kill him because he killed my sister, I didn't kill him because of the country he came from or what he believed, I killed him because I know what the enemy looks like and it had his face."

The play was interesting when working on verbatim because the whole play used last phone calls, letters, witness reports, accounts from loved ones, of the events of 9/11, making it more realistic. As a group of 5 we read through the monologue and decided on lines that we thought we're important and then each took a line. We brainstormed several ideas, including re-creating a scene from inside and outside the building in a split screen fashion, we played with the idea of creating a bomb using physical theatre and then focused on terrorism and stereotypes, this linked us to the London bombings, something closer to home for all of us, and the idea that for the months after this people were very wary of people expressing their religion, or wearing rucksacks.

We decided to go with the judgement of people wearing rucksacks and set it on a tube, we each took different characters, I played a child with my mother to show how children can be so easily influenced by their parents opinions, a business man, and a commuter. We decided to use the practioner Artaud and involve the audience. Because it was on the tube we created spare seats that we we're going to push the audience into to create the busy hustle and bustle of a morning commuter train. At the "next stop" Rory entered the train, playing the victim, wearing a rucksack. As he entered the carriage we immediately spun our attention to him and moved towards him saying "I know that the enemy looks like and it had his face" we choose this line because it's extremely powerful and helped to excel the sterotypes further, we repeated this line 3 times until Rory removed his bag, the we returned to our starting postions and repeated a line about freedom (mine is highlighted above) to convince the victim he was free to express in any way he wanted. When Rory put the bag back on we repeated the process twice, until the final time where we gathered round Rory to hide his body from the audience a made a shooting noise to represent the fact that either we killed him, or  he eventually killed himself. We immediately turn around and add the extra words "I killed him" to add more intensive intensive power and return back to our seats, at the next stop Jack steps on wearing a rucksack and we turn our attention to him as if to signify that the whole process will continue to repeat itself and then the scene ends.


I was particularly proud of the way we worked together as a group and produced this piece of work, I think it linked well to the stimulus we were given, it represented conflict, inner and global and is defiantly something I would use in my final piece. 

Viewpoints 2

After giving up P.E at GCSE I never realised how much I would regret this decision when starting viewpoints at A2 Drama. There is the never ending urge from your body to give up and lay on the floor, especially as the summer weather decided to be kind for once. Viewpoints in a nutshell is all about silencing your voice, something easier said than done in a room full of Drama Students. Again we start with the series of yoga moves "Salutation to the Sun" always being told yoga was a "relaxing inner body experience" has taught me to not always believe what people say. The movements push your body to it's very maximums, and although amongst sweat, persistence and tears it helped to focus my mind and clear the thoughts or irrelevant things from my head.

As a group we also tried 12,6,4, a series of repetitive movements, being jumps, stops, and changes of direction, with the aim to bring the group together in a collaborative way, the first 4 times we failed miserably, but as the weeks passed it is very obvious to see the improvement that even if we say we can't, we can actually work together as a team if we focus our minds to it.

Then to make sure we were fully exhausted and couldn't move to full potential the next day, another exercise was introduced. At first this was simple enough, experimenting with a particular movement before it became boring and as drama students we felt the need to change the direction, tempo, or levels, however there is nothing simple about dragging your body slowly across the floor just because your attempt at regaining your breath and walking slowly backfired and you even eventually got bored of it. Overall though it helped us to see that on stage an audience can become bored of seeing you standing and walking slowly and that a piece of work will benefit much more from experimentation rather than familiarity.

Conflict Devising Project

We have been given the task to create "an informative piece of educational theatre (TIE)." Working in a group of 5, we spent the hour choosing a target audience (teenagers) and devising 3 questions to ask peers in interviews that would act as our verbatim. Our 3 questions were:

• Have you ever misplaced your trust in someone?
• Have you ever had to keep a secret from your friend/friends?
• Do you hold conversational opinions you can't air in public? 

We choose these questions as we believed they would allow our peers to connect with previous moments in their lives and therefore allowing us to receive more in depth responses giving us the best stimulus for our piece. 

Verbatim is a technique used by Max Stafford Clarke, it means "in exactly the same words, word for word, exact to the original source" you take people's body language, voice, "the way they tell a story" and emulate it in your own work, in more simper terms, there story telling and body language becomes a stimulus for your work and should be reflected perfectly within your own piece. 

Complictie

On searching Complictie, it became very obvious that they were a very successful drama group due to the extensive amount of positive critic reviews on their work but it also was very difficult to pinpoint a particular style/process of the work due to the fact Complictie, only continues one method throughout history, this being, that everything changes. Each production is different from the last, just as each rehearsal is different from the day before.

From the production "The Master and
Margarita" 

Some things could be described as being more or less consistent, for example they have a principle of working collaboratively and there's a strong emphasis on the performers body, even when starting with an existing play, rehearsals will involve lots of games and physical improvisation and exploration. When looking
at images of their work it also seems that the lighting is similar throughout each production, dark, with spotlights focused on the most important areas giving a very dramatic, impending sense to their work.

Many of their members trained at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and they say that this training is the heart of their teaching workshops, which reach over 2000 people in schools. These workshops include the techniques Complictie use in the rehearsal room, for example the neutral mask, clowning or story telling.

From the production of "The Elephant Vanishes" 

HOIPOLLOI

Hoipolloi "attempts to celebrate people's imagination", taking the audience's mind into "fantastical worlds and blurring the line between reality and fantasy." Their work is playful, theatrical, physical and shows elements of humour.

Since 2005, Hoipolloi has been producing the work off emerging Welsh artist Hugh Hughes. In the last few years Hoipolloi’s artistic focus has been producing the work of Hugh Hughes. This year we’re helping Hugh, his brother Derywn and sister Delyth bring Stories from an Invisible Town to life. They rely solely on funding and receive funding from many projects such as, Arts Council Arts, The British Council and the National Lottery Arts Project and through the donations of the general public.

There work reaches behind the stage in a very real way and engages audiences directly through a mixture off live performance and online digital context, there main objective is to tell joyful stories which entertain audiences whilst playfully challenging their sense of reality.

Hoipolloi was set up in 1994 by Shon Dale-Jones and Stefanie Mueller, they are based in Cambridge and have produced 17 new theatre shows, a film, and a range of online content, they are big promoters off community life and recently were seen with this street recruitment campaign.

Conflict

Our given theme for Unit 3 this year is "Conflict," Google's definition of Conflict is:

"To come into collision or disagreement; be contradictory, at variance, or in opposition; to clash"

Conflict is the essence of dramatic story telling, conflict may manifest as external or internal, but it is without a doubt that somewhere within a storyline, play, book or film there is conflict of some nature.  In story telling there is always a villain or the "bad guy", out to cause trouble usually due to the opposing ideas of the hero, this type of conflict can be intriguing, however to me, inner conflict is much more compelling. Internal conflict is the struggle that is seen in the mind of a character. The hero against himself. The psychology of conflict.

The word "clash" from the Google definition helped to act as a stimuli, the word clash to me, seems hectic and uncontrollable and therefore the idea of Physical Theatre really appeals to me for our given Unit 3 theme "Conflict." As Physical Theatre is very energetic and unforgettable it achieves the dramatic side you'd expect to see in an argument.

Frantic Assembly

Frantic Assembly creates thrilling, energetic and unforgettable theatre. The company aims to attract new and young audiences with work that is modern. Frantic Assembly's unique physical style combines movement, design, music and text.

Frantic Assembly is lead by director Scott Graham. Scott created the company with Steven Hoggett and Vicki Middleton in 1994 and strives to collaborate with many of today's most inspiring artists. Frantic Assembly has built a strong reputation as one of the most exciting companies in the country. The company has also performed, created and collaborated in 30 different countries across the world. 

"It's really hard to shock and surprise a theatre audience these days. Unless you are in the gifted hands of Frantic Assemby"
"A play that will stay in your head and your heart long after the curtain comes down, due to it's originality"
Western Morning News 

The idea of Physical Theatre really appeals to me for our given Unit 3 theme "Conflict." As Physical Theatre is very energetic and unforgettable it achieves the dramatic side you expect to see when you think of conflict.

Choreography for the "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" 

Frantic Assembly will be beneficial for us as a group when thinking about devising a piece of work with the stimulus "Conflict" in mind. We as a drama group were lucky enough to see their performance of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" their stunning use of portraying emotions through movement created a very memorable capturing piece of work. To use something similar to this in our own work would hopefully allow us to create similar tones for the audience maybe in a more striking way when using it to portray conflict. 

The "franticness" of it (excuse the pun) could make the audience feel very on edge if the conflict was something they could relate too as some of the movements are so difficult to keep track off the audience could almost end up feeling very involved in a performance.