Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 1 - 05/01/16

Today was our first lesson working on our new devised unit! We were already given our stimulus before the Christmas Break and I already conducted some research on the stimulus!

We started off by reading the assignment brief which detailed the purpose of the assignment, our scenario, how to explore the stimuli, how to show research, how to show the devising process and performing the final piece. From reading this we have gained a lot of knowledge on the assignment and what is expected of us; knowing this will help improve our blog quality and gives us a check-list to link back to if we're not sure what we're missing.

We also looked at the specification which detailed the criteria which is needed in order to get a pass, merit and distinction. I'm aiming for a distinction so I tried my best to not pay attention to the pass and merit criteria. From looking at the criteria, I can confidently say what is needed of me in lessons/rehearsals, blogs, research and the final performance.

After this, we watched the music video for our stimulus song, "Chasing Pavements," by Adele. As I had already watched the video and made notes on my thoughts in my research, alternatively I kept a mental note of everyone else's thoughts on the video to compare to mine. Where I thought of it as Adele looking back on her past and the car crash symbolising a catastrophic event in her life, some others such as James thought that Adele was watching this "car crash" happen to someone else and chose to do nothing but watch. Me doing this helped me understand that one video can mean something different to different people.

We were then finally told our groups which I had been waiting all Christmas to find out! In group one is Ollie K, Cerys, James and Rhiannon, in group two is Lorna, Katya, Rob and Ollie M, and in group three is Charlie, Hope and I! I'm very happy with my group because I'm confident with my partners acting abilities, reliability to get work done and their attitude towards the course!

As Charlie was not in the lesson, it was left to Hope and I to draw our first thoughts from the song title, lyrics and music video. However, this wasn't too much of a setback as I had already conducted research over Christmas to show Hope so I can hear her thoughts and gain extra ideas from her. We decided to note down the key themes which were prominently displayed by the lyrics and song title. We did this so that if we were to take a broader approach to the task and only focus on main themes from the stimulus, we could devise a performance using them.

Below are the themes we came up with (Note: some are the same from my previous research):

• Love
• Friend-zone
• Eternal feelings
• Pain
• Sorrow
• Expression
• Depression
• Relationship
• Heartbreak
• Hope
• Feelings/emotions
• Confession
• Need
• Confidence
• Assurance

Following this exercise, we recapped a bunch of the techniques we have used before in our previous drama work. We did this so that we had a clear list of techniques to refer back to if we feel like we don't have enough in any of our scenes in the future. Below is the techniques we thought of at the time:

• Split Focus
• Flashback
• Monologue/Duologue
• Cannon
• In Sync
• Repetition
• Motif
• Freeze Frame
• Thought Tracks
• Lifts
• Narration
• Hot Seating
• Multimedia/Music
• Lighting
• Forum Theatre

I made a point that I didn't want our piece to be completely "acting it out" as this can get very boring for an audience. I still wanted to include lots of solid acting but have some scenes full dedicated to something else, for example: Physical Theatre or Mime. This would include a great deal of variety to the piece which would keep the audience interested! Although there would be scenes dedicated to different types of drama, we'd still include plenty of techniques in our "acting it out scenes." Hope agreed with all of this and we both decided that we would talk more about this when we had at least one solid concept for an idea.

We also briefly thought about how we were going to stage our scene but this only really consisted of us listing different types of staging and saying which we liked and which we were not so fond of.

Looking back this is something we shouldn't of allocated time towards as we needed to come up with an initial idea for a story to either develop, discuss or drop. Thinking of drama techniques is something that performers at our level shouldn't need to plan out and we should be able to think of them when we're devising. Deciding how we would have our scenes and what we would do within them was pointless as it would vary depending on what our story was. Thinking of staging is also unnecessary at this time without a basic idea let alone no scenes devised. I feel that we were thinking too far into the future instead of focusing on the task at hand.

Following this, we finally got down to thinking of an idea! For our first, and only idea so far, we took a broader approach to the stimulus and only focus on the main themes. Weirdly, all of the themes we had drawn from "Chasing Pavements" fit in with our story! Our idea was morphed and altered many times until we came up with a final basic outline. Below is a simplified outline (Note: the characters will be referred to using the actors' names):

• Hope and Lewis are both in love with Charlie; Lewis is Charlie's best friend and Hope is his girlfriend. The story starts with Charlie being recognised as dead and Hope and Lewis are mourning over him and blaming the other for his death. This would be our first scene.
• After the pair share with the audience a monologue each, we would (somehow) ask an audience member whose side of the story they'd care to hear first, Hope's or Lewis'.
• Hope's side of the story would entail her being worried about Charlie never spending time with her and always spending it with Lewis. This is all we have so far for this part but it would end with her finding out about Charlie cheating on her with Lewis via looking through his phone.
• Lewis' side of the story explains his battle with sexuality which inevitably ends with him falling in love with his best friend Charlie. He would, through many trials, tell Charlie his feelings about him. Charlie would respond befuddled at first but he then goes with it. After a week of sexting and flirting and spending almost every minute of the day with each other, Charlie realises he's doing the wrong thing and calls it off with Lewis, ending his affair and thus friendship with Lewis leaving him broken-hearted, depressed and sour.
• Charlie would come home to find his sobbing girlfriend who throws the mobile phone at her now ex-boyfriend and demands he leave.
• The final scene would conclude how Charlie dies and whether it was the doing of one of his lovers or his own actions.

Hope and I felt extremely confident with this idea as it still links to the stimulus and it has a lot of potential! I feel it's linked to the stimulus with the themes of Confession, Love, Heartbreak and Expression.

I feel we still need to think of other ideas in case this one doesn't seem as great as we first thought. That way we have a safety net to help us get back into things rather than spending our limited time on finding a new idea midway through the unit.

Next lesson we will bring Charlie up to speed with work we had done today and think of more ideas which we could base a piece on.