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.