Triple - Devised Unit (LR) - Blog 9 - 30/09/15

Today, in triple, we decided we were in need of a new scene! As I had completed the animation for the backdrop, we decided to work on the emotional turmoil scene. 

We started by deciding what kind of scene we wanted it to be. Did we want it Brechtian? Did we want a dance? If so what type of dance? Finally, we decided on a ballet/contemporary dance piece as we felt this would include a great deal of abstract movement to tell a story.

To start off with, Tom, Lorna, Toby and I walk on stage whilst the animation is playing in the background and we perform this short little dance, choreographed by Lorna and Tom (these steps were written by Lorna):

-   4 devolepe walks RLRL
-   plié in 2nd facing front with reach to R, L arm
-   weight on to L leg with L hand hiding face
-   L arm down and circle R arm forward over to point down
-   look R then front
-    spring on to R, kicking L leg, whilst arms mini circle sideways across chess. Step out
-   chest pulse
-   step R over L, step back on L and hop, picking R leg up to a retiré making a full turn

-   walk to positions

While we do this, Rhiannon, Ash and Dan are already in poses behind us ready for the second part.

The second part starts with Tom walking to the centre and sitting on the floor; he represents, "Little Jake," who is referenced in the song in the background. Then one by one, we would all enter and leave with interactions with Tom in-between. Some of us are provocative and mean whilst others are cool and nice. For example, Ash walks in, lifts Tom up and pushes him around using contact improvisation. Meanwhile, I walk in, tidy up his clothes, share a bro-fist and leave. We only got as far as the second to last person, so next lesson we will continue to devise this.

Single - Contemporary Theatre Unit (FSN) - Blog 5 - 29/09/15

This lesson was the lesson where everyone was going to find out their roles in, "The Flint Street Nativity." Below is the cast list:

Mary - Lorna

Star / Ass - Lewis (Me)

Herod / Joseph - Rob

Shepherd - Katya

Angel - Cel

Gabriel - Rhiannon

Wise Gold - Charlie

Wise Frankincense - Ollie K

Narrator - Ollie M

Innkeeper - James

I'm extremely happy with my roles and I'm looking forward to the final performance already! 

After finding out our roles, we watched the first act of the film of our play to get a visualisation on what our characters do, how they move etc. As extra research, in my free time, I watched Act 2 too.

Following this viewing, we gathered together and read a large chunk of the script in our characters whilst using their voice too. This got us a lot more familiar with our characters parts in the play. I also highlighted my script before the lesson as I got it in my double lesson.

Double - Refugee Devised - Research - 29/09/15

Research Points

-child soldiers lost all human rights (mention this)*

-there are thousands of child soldiers in the world (mention this)

-the soldiers are very young; mostly under 10 (mention their age, 8 and 7)

-taken from bad places to serve (mention an anecdote; "you're not at your peasant mothers farm now")

-girl soldiers raped (perhaps chuck that in)

-lots of them in one army ("join your new brothers and sisters")

-children are broken down then built back up ("here, we'll break you down to your basic parts, build you back up into our obedient robotic fighters")

*how to include in our performance

Double - Refugee Devised - Blog 6 - 29/09/15

This lesson we lacked the presence of Rhiannon so we couldn't work on her lift as we had planned to but we still had plenty to be getting on with.

We started the lesson discussing what we needed to do and basically made a plan. We decided that the child soldier scene needed some extra work and we hadn't even touched on Charlie's monologue. 

We followed this planning with finalising the child soldier scene. With the research I made (on the last double blog), Ollie and I found it a great deal easier to create our dialogue. We've changed Lorna and Rob's movement in this scene so that they progressively mature throughout their "gunfight" and they're not freaked out after killing, they merely walk towards the corpses, walk back to their original positions and await mine and Ollie's entrance. This reflects how child soldiers are trained to be soulless and careless about what they do. When Ollie and I walk in, we also bring this up as we say between us, "We've done it, we broke them down to their basic parts and rebuilt them into our own obedient robotic fighters!" Following this, Ollie and I circle Lorna and Rob and alternate speech. We lay into them reminding them that they have no past and they are now "men of uniform. " Saying men instead of children signifies that they no longer have an age and that they're being thrown into the battlefield.

Charlie also brought an idea to the table regarding something he saw in an army programme on TV before. He remembered a scene where the sergeant is shouting at his troop an inch away from his face while the soldier maintains a straight face forward. The sergeant shouts, " What are you?" and every time the soldier would reply, "A soldier!" The first time he says it rather quietly yet strongly, the second time he says it a bit louder whilst being slightly annoyed, and the third time, because his sergeant shouted extremely loud this time, he turns to his sergeant, looking exceedingly angry, and shouts, "I'm a fucking soldier!" We've decided to "borrow" this for our piece.

Finally, we quickly ran through the final scene, which is a depressing reprise of the first scene, a couple of times so that we can tweak anything that needs adding.

Triple - Devised Unit (LR) - Blog 8 - 28/09/15

Today, we performed our monologues to the rest of the group which we were asked to write for homework last lesson. We performed these in the hall in front of the podium to set the scene of a real MP's speech.

Labour Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn

After performing my monologue I was given the following advice from the class and Mr Webb. My views were very split between different parties of parliament so I would need to choose a specific party then voice the opinions my party in my monologue. Mr Webb recommended I go for Labour as my original monologue mostly had Labour views. Another improvement I need to build upon is to use my movement appropriately. When addressing the audience to apologise, I would hold my hands at belt level with legs together and standing up straight, meanwhile if I were going to display anger I would use hand gestures towards the audience by pointing with a slightly wider stance and maintaining a straight back. Matching movement with tone of voice is far more effective to get your point across than having them be different. Finally, I spoke too fast and too slow in some areas. When describing a horrible event I should long out key descriptive words. 

Afterwards we went back to our classroom and workshopped a random person's monologue with forum theatre. I was chosen. Forum theatre is where someone or a group performs something and the audience will stop the performers when they have some constructive criticism to add. 

After this forum theatre session I feel like I've improved so much more with my monologue; with a little more work, it'll be ready to perform for real.

Triple - Devised Unit (LR) - Blog 7 - 24/09/15

This lesson we prepared for our MP monologues! We did this by watching videos and listening to the opinions of the MPs on the London Riots. This will aid us in writing our own monologues for MPs as we would have a full insight into their views on the riots. Our homework for this lesson was to spend our weekend to write our monologues for the MP scene in the final performance. 

This is the monologue which I made:

What happened here last Thursday night brings up a great deal of questions, and these questions need answers! These events have led to disarray with unsurity around the number of casualties and fatalities of the innocent population. The police aren't blameless! The initial smaller uprisings should've been dealt with in a more prompt manner and this is unacceptable.

Single - Contemporary Theatre Unit (FSN) - Blog 4 - 24/09/15

This lesson, we split the group in half (Lorna, Ollie M, James, Rob, Rhiannon/ Cel, Charlie, Kat, Ollie K and I) and were told to quickly devise devise a short piece based on children preparing for their nativity; so basically we had to make our own Flint Street Nativity.

In our group, we decided our plot was to be a rehearsal gone wrong! We had all replicated different stereotypes of 7 year-olds to make our characters more believable. We also went for the offensive approach with our characters. Most 7 year-olds are brutally honest and unintentionally inappropriate, so we decided to have our characters say inappropriate things such as, "Baby Jesus can't be brown!!" and, "That's the noise my mummy makes most nights."

After rehearsing, we performed our pieces to the other group and they presented theirs.

Single - Contemporary Theatre Unit (FSN) - Blog 3 - 25/09/15

This lesson we were given a scene of the script from Flint Street from Act 2. The characters from Act 2 were the parents of the children from Act 1. We started by reading out the scene as a group; we took the roles of the parents of our last characters from Act 1. 

After reading it out once we read out again in different characters and obeying the stage directions more accurately. After this reading session, we got up and acted out the scene in characters of our choice; I played Wise Frankensense's Dad. We had to stop multiple times to amend errors but our first run through wasn't too bad considering it was the first day we'd read the script.

Double - Refugee Devised - Blog 5 - 25/09/15

This lesson, we decided we needed to analyse our piece properly and see if our piece was going to portray the message we wanted it to. After running thorough our entire performance, we'd decided many things needed altering. 

Firstly, our opening scene, the circus introduction, lacked the circus atmosphere. We edited this by replacing the transsexual (James) and the acrobatic twins (Ollie and I) with, "The Three Amigos!" These clowns are entertaining throughout with slapstick fighting, melodrama and clumsiness. We added Rob in as an additional child soldier with Lorna and we changed their entrance so that they come bursting onto the stage in an acrobatic and energetic way and they proceed to aim at the Amigos; this causes The Three Amigos to panic, and die in a melodramatic way. 

Rhiannon's circus character has now been altered from an escape artist to a magician too. She enters from stage left/right and she notices The Three Amigos getting up. The Amigos walk towards her intimidatingly and she backs up against the curtain. As we get closer, Rob and Lorna come over us with a black sheet. They hold this sheet up blocking our view of Rhiannon which gives her the chance to "disappear" (hide behind the curtain) without the Amigos or the audience seeing her. She then "reappears" with The Three Amigos carrying her back onto the stage.

After making sure we all knew this scene, we discussed the rest of the piece, what scenes we were keeping and who knew what. This conference improved all of our knowledge on the outline of the piece. 

Triple - Devised Unit (LR) - Blog 6 - 23/09/15

I'd decided to complete the animation which was needed for the London Riots performance. This was something that the rest of the group was impressed with and it was perfect for what it was needed for. Now it only needs a few tweaks so that some of the actions are in time.

Double - Storytelling - Blog 3 (Original/Classic Story Telling) - 23/09/15

Today, we elaborated more on our story telling and began to script a story for us to perform; whether it be an already made story or an original story. We split into groups (Lorna & James, Charlie & Rob/ Ollie, Rhiannon & I) and started brainstorming ideas. 

Firstly, I had suggested the story of a man who had really wanted a pet and one day gets the perfect the dog, a dog that can do tricks, talk, obey orders, everything! But the catch was only this man could see this dog; to everyone else it seems he was talking to thin air. Through the frustration caused by no one believing him, he attempts to kill this imaginary dog but this results in his own death. The man is found the next day dead with bite marks to his entire body.

I personally felt that this idea was good as it shows the madness of an individual who wants one thing in his life and as he can't have it, it leads to his suicide, and Ollie and Rhiannon agreed. Although they felt that a dog would be difficult to portray so we tweaked the idea to replace the dog with an imaginary friend.

There would be a boy (Me) who had an imaginary friend called Evie (Rhiannon) and he always did what she said. We thought we could use this as a link to mixed personality disorder and that this "imaginary friend," would be the boy's other identity. Evie would tell the boy to do things which leads to him murdering and blaming it on Evie, claiming it wasn't him, "she did it."

By the end of the lesson, we got halfway through making our script, so next lesson we will finish the script, rehearse then perform.

Single - Contemporary Theatre Unit (FSN) - Blog 2 - 22/09/15

This lesson we continued to work on different roles of our play, "The Flint Street Nativity,"  so that Miss Cordell could analyse us in our different roles so when it came to casting she could tell who would be good at which roles.

We started by splitting the group in half (Charlie, Lorna, James, Cel and Kat/ Ollie, Rob, Rhiannon and I), and, with rehearsal, we performed a section from Act 1 Scene 1. This helped us perform a part of the script that didn't hold strong in our brains and be in a role we hadn't worked in before.

After this, we performed another section from the piece as a whole group, but this section only had 4 characters involved. So most of us sat out where 4 people would perform the piece. Then, we would switch out and mix and match everyone into different roles. This helped us identify which role we were best at and which role everyone else was good at.

Double - Refugee Devised - Blog 4 - 21/09/15

We began this lesson with the addition of a new member to our Double PA class, Rob! We decided to quickly get Rob up to speed by presenting to him what he had already done; we showed him the opening scene. He was very satisfied with this scene and we agreed to work his character in at a later stage.

After informing Rob about our stimuli and showing him part of what we had already, we had decided to work on the new scenes. Last lesson, we decided that every character were to have a backstory but after much discussion we agreed that every character having a backstory would make our piece very long and boring so we've decided to only stick to two, Lorna's child soldier backstory and Rhiannon's "falling in love" backstory, with perhaps another if needed.

We next, continued with Rhiannon's backstory where we left it, however we've tweaked it slightly. Between Rhiannon being betrayed by her new-found soulmate and being kidnapped by Charlie (the slave master), we've added a short physical theatre piece. When James leads Rhiannon off of the tube, they have their little dance then they sit down and Rhiannon monologues about how her new Russian boyfriend, Vladimir (James), is taking her on holiday to visit his family in Russia. As they stand and turn from their travel, he backs away and joins the rest of us in formation, his gang. We follow James' lead as we step forward, slowly and powerfully in an attempt to intimidate Rhiannon. As we move towards her she becomes confused but then fearful after realising she put her trust in the hands of the wrong man. Her movements in this physical theatre piece are fast and frantic (ignore the Frantic Assembly pun), completely contrasting our movement to show the sudden change of relationship between Vladimir and Veronica. 

As Rhiannon faced a different side of the group, the member of the group whom is closest would then be the leader of all the groups movements. In this fragment of our entire piece we included a lot of gestures and facial expressions to demonstrate the power the group had over Veronica and we even performed a 3 identical lifts too! This lift showed Veronica's desperation to be with Vladimir as he was the only person in the biggest country in the world whom she knew, yet she still wanted to reach for him. After this physical feature part, Veronica gets sold just as she did before.

We had also discussed ideas for the child soldier scene too this lesson. We had decided that Rob should be a child soldier alongside Lorna too as they both had quite young faces, they were short and they were talented at playing children. Lots of ideas were brought up in this segment of the lesson including the backing music (Toy Soldiers by Martika), the realisation of war not being a game and how ill prepared and independent child soldiers must be.

Triple - Devised Unit (LR) - Blog 5 - 21/09/15

Today, we watched part of a documentary centred around the lives of the civilians who took no part in the London Riots but were forced to watch it surround them. It focuses on their feelings and motives during this period and the things they witnessed. Whilst watching this documentary, we made notes for us to refer to later.

At the end of the lesson, we had decided the contents of our final performance and the order of these contents. We would start off with the ill Manors gorilla physical theatre piece we had made on one of our first lessons then move onto our rioter interviews. After this we would perform a still image/transition piece where we show the scenarios which took place that led to the rioters interviews. We then would have our police to psychiatrist interviews followed by an emotional turmoil piece which would then illustrate what happened to these police officers which led to their need for psychiatrist help. We would then have a consequences scene in which it shows the consequences of the illegal behaviour of the rioters. Following this, we would have a series of speeches made by MPs and then to finish we would have a reprise of the ill Manors gorilla physical theatre scene but instead of having chavs being symbolised as apes we would retain our characters from the last scene and show the MPs as apes.

The only scenes out of these that we haven't yet devised are, the MP scene, the emotional turmoil scene, the consequences scene and the still image/transition scene.

Double - Refugee Devised - Blog 3 - 18/09/15

Today in our lesson, we continued our circus refugee devised piece. At the beginning, we went through what we've already done. Luckily, everyone remembered what they were doing so there was nothing to go over. We decided that we were going to work on new scenes rather than adding to the old one's.

The first scene we were looking at was Rhiannon's character's backstory. Through much discussion we decided to have her travel through London, fall in love with a man (James) on the Underground, then follow him off to then be captured by a slave master (Charlie). We devised this scene so that it would include a great deal of physical theatre. We began by moving from our original poses at the end of the beginning scene and did a short bit of physical theatre.

We moved from our first positions and journeyed through the studio as if it were the London Underground. We used a lot of Round-By-Through as we ventured under the arms of our classmates and performed weight shifting lifts. After this we lined up and acted as if we were waiting for a tube and when it arrived we all rushed to the door. As we got on the tube, we mimicked standing on a train by holding on to hand rails and checking watches. When the train stopped we'd all get off except for Rhiannon and James. Once the train was empty, they made eye contact and, "fell in love." Again, Round-By-Through was used here as it showed the immediate emotional attachment between the pair.

After this tube scene, James pulls her off the tube and they run together around the studio to signify travel. They end up walking into a building and finding Charlie seated waiting for them. James brings her towards him after closing and locking the door. Rhiannon looked confused, Charlie exchanged money with James and James left with Rhiannon gazing at him in a betrayed manner. Charlie then takes her off.

Another scene we worked on was Lorna's character's scene. Sadly, we had only got halfway through this scene as we ran out of time. Lorna's character, Kiri, was a child soldier, so we showed her in a battlefield environment. We were planning on Lorna to have two adult soldiers with her too (Ollie and I). The reason we thought Ollie and I would be a good choice is because Lorna is rather short and Ollie and I are the tallest in the group so this would signify the difference in age and power. This was as far as we got so far in this lesson so we will pick this back up next lesson.

Single - Contemporary Theatre Unit (FSN) - Blog 1 - 18/09/15

Today in our lesson we started our first scripted piece for which we will be evaluated and graded. The play we were given is called, "The Flint Street Nativity." It's a play all about a group of children from a typical primary school preparing for their nativity play. To begin with we, as a class, read the first scene of the first act together to get to know the story.

After reading this first scene we started rehearsing in our current temporary roles up to the first song. 

Single - Monologues - Blog 1 - 17/09/15

This lesson we performed our monologues! We each took turns to perform our monologues in front of the whole class and then received feedback and performed it again with relevant changes made.

I chose the monologue from, "The Dark Knight" performed by the Joker as it captivates the audience and grabs their attention immediately. After being halfway through my performance, I was told to change it up. I was told my movement and voice were perfect but my performance was very similar to other performances of the role. 

A still from my monologue in the movie, "The Dark Knight."

So to change it up, I spoke in my regular British accent rather than the an American accent and instead of being very excited and fast paced, I slowed down entirely and spoke as if I was very bored about the story I was telling to the audience as if I had told it a million times. Although I felt my previous performance was better, I had shown compliance and that I can take direction.

Double - Storytelling - Blog 2 (Campfire Stories) - 16/09/15

Today we looked at our campfire stories which we were told to find for homework last lesson. We gathered together in a circle as a class and told our stories; I volunteered to go first. After each person read their story, the class offered feedback on what went well and how it could be improved. After finding things to improve on, we read our first couple of lines with our alterations made.

Following this we, got into pairs (Rhiannon & Charlie/ Ollie & James/ Lorna & I) and worked on each others stories by listening to us reading them then offering constructive criticism. We then got back into a circle and performed, our now, perfected tales.

Triple - Devised Unit (LR) - Blog 4 - 16/09/15

This lesson, we continued our London riots unit by devising our interviews. We had already came into our lesson with thoughts on what to do in our pairs/group of 3 (Tom & Rhiannon/ Lorna, Dan & Toby/ Ash and I). Ash and I had decided that I were to be a police officer and he were to be a suspect of arson which led to a women jumping out of her window to escape. This idea was inspired by one of the images were given last lesson (pictured to the right). We then performed this to the class and gained constructive feedback.



After performing our piece and watching the other groups, we watched a documentary called, "The Riots in their own words Part 2: The Police." This showed us what the riots were like for the men in uniform.

Single - "He's Talking" Scripted Piece - Blog 2 - 15/09/15

Today, we continued our scripted work in our groups of three!

We started by quickly watching Lorna, Rhiannon and Ollie Marshall's piece as we didn't get enough time to watch them last lesson.

After this, my group performed our piece again and as we went on we were told to perform our pieces in different ways. For example, we got Kat to get a lot more annoyed towards Ollie, and another time we got her to be reluctant to talk to him.

Following our group, we did this again with the other two groups. This activity helped us notice different ways to act characters.

Double - Refugee Devised - Blog 2 - 15/09/15

Today we continued our Brechtian work on refugees, although this time the Year 13's weren't with us. As last lesson we struggled devising straight from our stimuli, we were given a script to inspire us also. We started off by reading the script aloud in our given characters. We then started discussing ideas on what these characters could be doing and where we could add Epic Theatre techniques. Following this brainstorm we looked to our devised piece and discussed what we were going to do. We decided that we were going to use the same names in the scripted piece we were given and give them all different services they were used for then allocate each character to someone in our group. For example, Lorna played the role of Kiri, a child soldier. 

After this, we came up with the idea of our story; this idea was a big mixture of quite a few thoughts contributed by the group. Firstly, Charlie said that we should have everyone in a circle, on chairs, in an AA meeting style and we all discuss and share our dark pasts, then Rhiannon came up with the idea of having a master to all of these "slave children" and he's trying to sell them but still having the staging in the same way. After all agreeing on this we decided to build our characters quickly. Rhiannon was Veronica and she was a prostitute, Charlie was the slave master, I was Cojo, and Ollie was Yao and we were twin street entertainers, James was Jess, a transsexual prostitute and, as already mentioned, Lorna was Kiri, a child soldier. We quickly improvised the beginning scene and it turned out to be very dark and sad.

Someone, I can't recall whom, came up with the idea that we use the scene we had just improvised as our last scene and our first scene be the same, "Introduction of the slaves," theme but made comical. This, at first gets the audience laughing at a very strong and difficult political topic without realising and then as the piece goes on and on and every backstory is revealed, the audience begin to realise what they were laughing at. This technique is very Brechtian as Brecht was passionate about getting a message across to the audience. For the beginning scene, we decided to go with a circus/freak show motif where us slaves are now starting off as the, "Acts for tonight's big show" and Charlie is now starting as the Ringleader; this means Charlie constantly has power over us throughout the whole piece, whether we're circus acts or slaves.

Triple - Devised Unit (LR) - Blog 3 - 14/09/15

Picture 1

Today in our Triple lesson, we printed off images of off a news website of the chaos which encapsulated London during the 2012 riots. Our job was to analyse these images and draw key ideas and themes from them and observe the message they try to put across. The rest of the lesson was very much discussion based.

Picture 2

The first image shows a young man in a tracksuit walking confidently through the streets of London with the burning carcass of a car in the background and innocent bystanders. The keywords I drew from this were tracksuit, chav, bandana, fire embodies chaos, standing out from the crowd behind, empowered, no fear, poor.



Picture 3

The second image shows a bus ablaze in the center of an empty street. The keywords I drew from this were burning bus, high repair costs, high transport costs result in inferno, flames, contrast to the darkness around it symbolising a spark of rebellion, empty street, lonely.

The third image was a women jumping from the window of her second story flat into a crowd of people prepared to catch with flames in the background. The keywords I drew from this were rescue, blazing pyro silhouettes the innocent, fear leads to poor desperate choices, hope, trust, trapped, emotional scars.



Picture 4

The final image a group of working-class rioters walking together looking rather intimidating with flames and smoke roaring up behind them. The keywords I drew from this were unity, flames, represent power and chaos, intimidating, peer pressure, band-wagoning.






Double - Refugee Devised - Blog 1 - 11/09/15

Bertolt Brecht

This lessons we started our work on Brecht. Bertolt Brecht was a German practitioner and a playwright. Brecht felt that audiences were too engrossed in the plays they were watching and were too immersed. He used countless techniques to create something called Epic Theatre. These techniques include: placards, fourth wall breaks, narration and third person thought tracks. We also had Ashley Clayton and Dan McKay (Year 13), join us in this lesson as they were able help us as they've done plenty of Brecht work.

We started by bringing together our knowledge on Brecht as some of us knew a lot more about Brecht than others. Lorna and I knew a lot about Brecht already as we spent a lot of time in GCSE learning Brecht. We listed lots of techniques and key ideas of Brechtian theatre.

Afterwards, we split the class into two groups (Me, Ollie, Rhiannon, and Lorna/ James, Charlie, Dan, Ash) and chose a children's story to act out. My group chose, "Little Red Hiding Hood" and the other group chose, "3 Little Pigs." Progressively, we were told to add more and more Brechtian techniques such as flashback, and third person narration to make our pieces much more Brechtian. We then performed our pieces to each other and received constructive criticism.

One of our Stimuli

Following this activity, we analysed some stimuli we were given; they were images of refugees. One was an image of evacuees children at a train station during WWII and the other an image of Asian refugees on a small boat. We were told to devise a piece using these stimuli. After much discussion and trial and error, we decided that a scripted piece would be a much better option.

Single - "He's Talking" Scripted Piece - Blog 1 - 11/09/15

Today was the first time we'd done scripted work together. We were put into three groups (Charlie, Cel and James/ Lorna, Ollie Marshall and Rhiannon/ Ollie Kelly, Kat and I) and we were each given a script. Our group got an extract from the play, "He's Talking." Of course Kat got the only female part of Tanya and Ollie and I randomly picked our characters. I was Miles, Tanya's partner and Ollie was Luke, Miles' friend who bombed racist nations. This extract explains the situation and relationships between these three characters in this part of the play.

My group

In order to work out what we were going to do in regards to movement and speech, we read the script in our roles so that we understand our character's motives and the plot itself. After reading it, we created the set with a few chairs and performed it. Our first run through was very rough and lacked a great deal of movement but after giving each other tips and running through it three more times our piece was very active, captivating and funny where it should be. We then performed our piece to the rest of the class including a few Year 13's and we feel we performed it very well!

If we were to redo this piece, there's only one thing we could improve on: knowing all of the lines so that we could perform it without scripts!

Triple - Devised Unit (LR) - Blog 1 & 2 - 07/09/15 & 10/09/15

07/09/15

Today was our first Triple Performing Arts and it was very enjoyable. Despite our class being small we still work well together and have a shared attitude towards learning and performing!

We started our lesson by discussing the London Riots and how they affected everyone involved. This brainstorming session helped us understand our new topic and enabled us to talk about it more confidently.

Following this activity we searched for news stories related to the London Riots. This further increased our knowledge on these tragic events and having a better knowledge will enhance our performances in the future.

I performed this research task with Toby and we found a large archive of stories on the London riots on the BBC News website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14450248

This article documented some of the carnage and events which took place during the riots. These included:

• Several fires broke out in Croydon, including one at a large sofa factory which spread to neighbouring buildings and tram line.
• Police found a 26-year-old man in a car in Croydon suffering from gunshot wounds. He is in a serious condition in hospital
• At Clapham Junction looters stole masks from a fancy dress store to hide their identity
• More than 100 people looted a Tesco store in Bethnal Green, the Met said, and two officers were injured
• Cars were set on fire in Lewisham

The events of the riots spread to areas such as Bristol, Liverpool, Kent and the Midlands.

There were also many eye opening quotes from witnesses of these events:

"It looks like a war zone - I have never seen anything like it in all my life,"

 "There was a bus on fire and huge black clouds were coming out of the bus and people were racing away and everybody seemed quite terrified and fired up, people were becoming aggressive."

"There were a few people crying. The driver didn't want to open the doors but a few people forced them open so they could get out."

"For the kids, it's their only way of venting their anger. There were too many people and not enough police."

This research task helped us understand the utter carnage these events had caused to the lives of the victims, police and even the rioters!

After this, we read the lyrics for the song, "Ill Manors," by Plan B. This song by the London rapper is all about the London Riots, the events leading up to them, the people involved with them and the community involved, otherwise labeled as, "Chavs." This exercise brought our attention to more the actual people involved rather than the events.

10/09/15

This lesson we continued to work on our London Riot unit and further looked at how the community named, Chavs, are portrayed as animals. We created a piece of physical theatre using our main stimulus music piece, "ill manors," by Plan B for background music. We started wearing hoodies, bandanas and caps to represent ourselves as, Chavs. We started off in stereotypical chav/roadman poses to signify to the audience that we were rioters. As the song entered the first verse from the beginning instrumental, we all slowly morphed into gorilla like figures and acted like gorillas. This included movements such as walking low down whilst dragging our knuckles on the floor, jumping around on the floor and throwing objects across the room. We also interacted with each other like apes too; we would occasionally confront each other and slowly rise up to show who had more dominance (pounding our chests aided us in portrayal of power) and then who ever backs down would run away while the dominant ape would bask in his glory. We did this to mock the comments of the media who portray the working class rioters as animals.

In the lead up to the chorus, we retreated to the back and when the explosive chorus starts, we turned back to the audience and morphed back into Chavs whilst gesturing to the audience. We did this to captivate the audience into our performance; this personified them as policemen and we gestured towards the audience offensively. Afterwards, we then continued to be gorillas; later we got into still images of rioters in rioting positions (e.g. Throwing molotovs, throwing chairs punching a policeman etc.) After the still image we moved back to our original starting positions to end the piece. This performance would be used to convey to the audience what the media think of working class rioters.

Single - "I Don't Like Mondays" Devised - Blog 1 & 2 - 08/09/15 & 10/09/15

08/09/15

One of our stimuli for our piece.

Today we started our mini devised performances. We first started with 3 stimuli: a song, ("I don't like Monday's," by The Boomtown Rats) a quote, (pictured to the left) and two photos (one of chaos in a school corridor after, what looks like, a murder, and one of children's cuddly toys laid out in memory of those who had died.) In order to create a piece and start devising, we looked at all our sources and drew key words and themes from them. From these key themes , we came up with the idea of a sociopathic girl in a secondary school whose emotions get the best of her.

We started by planning a beginning and an end point. The beginning being an abstract drama piece of the girl's emotions spiralling out of control in her head and the end being the girl's breaking point being met. We, first, focused on the emotions scene where we had Kat as the girl and the rest of us being her emotions. James played the role of Innocence, the only thing keeping Kat pure and sane. Lorna played the role of Fear, one of the negative factors which leads her to her actions. Fear is playing on Kat's mind about what she will do, how, the consequences of her actions, the consequences of not performing her actions and what will happen next for her. Ollie played the role of Depression, another negative factor ruining her sanity. Depression is the most comfortable and familiar emotion in Kat's head, as shown by Ollie's short monologue at the beginning, because Kat has dealt with constant bullying so depression has made itself at home. Finally, I played the role of Anger, the most dominant emotion in Kat in this piece. He tries to show Kat the bad side in her but it make it look good. For example, when I told her to kill her bully (Lorna), I told her that Lorna deserves death after what she did to her. To "us."

Our first scene consists of Kat's crazy monologue, Innocence trying to persuade Kat to do good, Anger pushing Innocence out and tainting Kat, Fear worrying about what will become of us and depression being...well depressed. For the role of Anger, I thought thoroughly on my movement. I knew it wouldn't be immediately obvious to the audience that I wasn't an actual physical being, that I was an abstract character, so I tried to enter and move as I believe anger would. I felt Anger would lead all movements from their chest and shoulders to show dominance and aggression which are key concepts associated with anger. I'd move slowly but heavily to show the brute strength of Anger as when someone is angry they usually feel stronger but more sluggish too. When I spoke, I was deep, gravelly and close to Kat. Anger is an emotion which creeps up on you and is only explosive when triggered so I believe that the tone and tempo of my voice was perfect for Anger.

Next lesson we are looking to finalise this scene and start and finish the second/last scene.

10/09/15

This lesson we finished off our devised pieces around school murders. After quickly running through our opening scene we swiftly moved on to our ending scene. Following much discussion, well I say discussion it was more of a debate but nevertheless, we decided on what we were doing with our scene. It basically consisted of showing the daily bullying cycle for Kat, Innocence drifting further and further away and Anger slithering into control and eventually the inevitable death of the Bully (Lorna). We represented the separation from Innocence/the connection with Anger by having Kat sat in centre stage with Anger on stage left and Innocence stood to the right of Kat. Innocence were to start high up and confident and Anger were to start low down and weak and eventually as the days of constant harassment tick by Anger crawls closer and Innocence drifts away. 

Finally, Anger persuades Kat to, "give her what she deserves." We portrayed the bully's death by a simple stab to the chair but Lorna standing and screaming. We dragged out the death by having Kat at the front slashing at air and the rest of us falling to our knees as if we were actually being stabbed. I feel we finished our piece on a sadistic but comical manner. During Kat's opening monologue, she starts with, "How to kill someone..." and after Kat kills everyone, she says, "And that's how you kill someone...class dismissed!" The repetition creates an eerie atmosphere and is somewhat comical in it's irony. When Kat says, "Class dismissed," she says it very cheerfully. This is not only a slight comic relief to the audience as the entire piece is very dark, but it fully expresses and finalises how much of a nutcase Kat had become as she felt no remorse or guilt after killing someone and chose to say something funny instead of something deep. A great way to put the cherry on the cake!

Double - Storytelling - Blog 1 ("Three Brothers") - 09/09/15

Today we started our unit on Storytelling! I'm looking forward to what this unit has to offer as I feel I'd enjoy the different ways in which we would tell the story (e.g. through dance, narration, physical theatre etc.)

We started the lesson discussing what makes a good storyteller and what makes a good story. This brainstorming session helped us understand the qualities of a storyteller and how they use these qualities when telling a story.

Upon discussing this we watched an extract from the movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," where the story of, "The Three Brothers" is told. After watching this scene were then told, as a group, to tell the same story but in our own way using as many drama techniques as possible.

We first allocated characters: I played the role of the elder brother, James played the role of the middle brother and Charlie played the role of the youngest brother. Rhiannon and Ollie played the role of death together and Lorna played the role the thief and the dead fiancé. We then started going through the story and figuring out our movement, actions and transitions. We used a range of physical theatre techniques including Round-by-through and lifts. I feel they were used very effectively to tell the story. Once we had devised and rehearsed our piece, we performed it in front of an audience of Year 13's.

Double - Practitioners (Frantic Assembly) - Blog 2 - 07/09/15

This lesson, everyone knew each other already so the start wasn't too slow. At the beginning of the lesson, we were told to get out a chair each and sit on them in a horizontal line. This was our first position. We were told to move between a total of 8 positions that we would pick randomly. After going over the pattern a couple of times, we added movement from the "Round-by-through" work that we did. Following this, our piece was much more effective at captivating our lovely audience (Ashley Clayton; Year 13). After perfecting this, Miss McSherry gave us a stimulus which she later revealed to be an extract from Shakespeare's, "Othello." Everyone's focus was on me whilst I was a drunken guard. My actions and gestures were more lazy and clumsy meanwhile my movement was staggered. Our audience enjoyed the piece as it vocalised what the scene in Othello meant and it was interesting and comical to watch.

Afterwards we watched a video by a theatre company called, "Frantic Assembly." Frantic Assembly are a very "physical theatre" based company and use a lot of movement from physical theatre in their pieces. They use these techniques to paint an image in the minds of the audience and convey their characters emotions effectively.

We watched one of their videos on YouTube entitled, "Frantic Assembly Masterclass: Building Blocks For Devising." They taught other people in the video how to do Round-by-through; the technique we learnt last lesson. What they did more than us, was they added weight into the mix so when moving, the tempo was slower and when lifting up each others arms to go through each other, they had no room to move through due to the lack of space as their arms were very heavy to lift out of the way. After this, we practised our pieces from last lesson and tried to improve upon them.

Following our improvements, we continued to watch the video and learnt a new technique called, "Hymn Hands." These are varied speed movements of placing hands on each others bodies and other similiar movements. This technique can help replicate a lot of stories such as fighting, playing or healing wounds. After watching this video, we paired up and created our own short "Hymn Hand" pieces.

We then came together as a group and watched a video advertising Save The Children called, "Most Shocking Second A Day Video." We shared our opinions on the video and what themes we could draw from it from which we would then pick a theme or multiple themes and create a piece together as a group using the Round-by-through techniques and Hymn Hands we learnt so far. We decided it would be best if our group of 6 split into 3 pairs and made our own mini-pieces and then when we were done in our pairs, we grouped back together and performed our 3 ideas together at the same time. I paired up with Ollie and we decided to use the themes of War and Loss and told the story of a fatally injured soldier being carried to a safe spot to check over but ultimately he was taken to meet his untimely demise. We used Hymn Hands a great deal to express my characters eagerness to assist Ollie's character.

When we performed all of our pieces together they went incredibly well together as they all showed a common theme: Loss.

Double - Practitioners (Frantic Assembly) - Blog 1 - 04/09/15

This was our first lesson of not only Double Performing Arts but Performing Arts in it's entirety. Despite only knowing a few people, I easily got on well and worked well with everybody in the class. We all showed a positive attitude towards not only working but performing too!

To kick of the lesson we got into pairs and listed reasons why people do drama. We came up with a huge list of reasons including, To entertain people, To gain life skills, and To educate yourself and others. This exercise helped us all vocalise our reasons and allow others to get to know us somewhat.

Afterwards, we did an exercise in which there we three chairs and we had to move form chair to chair simultaneously with the rest of the class. After perfecting the original task we added a different stimuli and movements to enhance our exercise. This helped us work together as one unit and develop our improve skills.

Following this we did an exercise where we got into partners and had to keep eye contact and stay the same distance apart from each other. One person would be the leader, so whenever they moved, their partner would mirror their actions as if they were connected by a web by the eyes. After we had practiced this for a while, two Year 13s, Toby and Ash, then attempted to interrupt our concentration whilst we're still moving. If someone were to lose eye contact with their partner then they would have to join whoever caught their eye (e.g. If James were to lose eye contact with me and then focus on Toby, he would then partner with Toby, his new leader and I would then go to steal someone else's partner.)

After this exercise we started briefly on our work to do with physical theatre called Round-By-Through. Through is walking through someone such as going underneath the arms or through the legs. Round is spinning around someone by rolling across their body. By is using hand gestures with your partner's body. We only covered this shortly though. We then watched each pairs work and added different music in the background, changed the tempo of their entire piece and changed the pairs focus. We also analysed each performance and thought up scenario's and stories behind their movement.

This first lesson was extremely fun and I very much look forward to the next one!