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| 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!
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