Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 2 - 07/01/16

Today we brought Charlie up to speed with the ideas we had on the title and lyrics of Chasing Pavements and we showed him the research we conducted in and outside of class! After seeing this, he was extremely fond of the ideas we had and he brought even more ideas to the table! We were asked to present a small scene from our performance based on the idea we had currently had as in future lessons, we would come up with different ideas to create a scene and we would make a decision on which idea we would take further.

I showed Charlie and Hope the extra work I had done outside of class on the idea we already had on my other blog post and they loved the storyline I had come up with. We discussed this story further which led to a lot of changes. After closer inspection, we decided that rather than asking the audience which side of the story they'd like to hear and then we tell one side then the other, we thought that it would be a lot simpler to remove the audience interaction and just perform the sides of view mixed together. This removes a great deal of unnecessary complexity which would only confuse us and may lead to us performing the wrong scenes. This would also put a lot of pressure on whoever would help us with our lighting because as there are two different potential orders for the story, they would have two different potential lighting orders so if they get it wrong, our whole piece would be ruined!

We decided that we would really like domed-thrust staging. This is because it curves the audience around the performance and makes them feel a lot more involved. We would also have a small gap in the centre for the actors to walk in and out of when necessary because, again, it immerses the audience into the performance very effectively.

After not being sure how Charlie dies, we finally decided how:

• Charlie breaks up with Lewis, leaving him heartbroken.
• Charlie comes home to a very emotional Hope (as she has read the texts between Charlie and Lewis) and she breaks up with him and kicks him out of their home.
• Charlie goes on a drinking rampage and commits himself by taking a cyanide pill.

We thought this would be a good way to kill Charlie as it completely pulls the rug out from under the audience. While at the beginning we would have Lewis and Hope blame the other for the death of their ex-lover, the audience doesn't find out that it was suicide which took his life until the very end.

Speaking of the beginning, we got to work devising the opening scene. We had already pre-decided that we would have the opening scene be the death of Charlie and we would have Hope and Lewis argue over whose fault it is. Below is an outline of the scene:

• The scene starts with Charlie seated at the centre of a table, drinking from a bottle of some sort of alcoholic beverage bottle. He looks at the bottle in confusion and collapses across the desk. He is now dead.
• Lewis and Hope enter either end of the table. All 3 characters are in different places at this time as the scene is abstract.
• Lewis and Hope speak to themselves and blame each other for their ex-lovers death.
• They both finish on the word "gone" (choral voice) and Hope and Charlie exit.
• Lewis performs a shot monologue detailing how he and Charlie met in school. He mentions how he was bullied for being bisexual.
• Charlie walks over to Lewis after noticing how solemn he looks but Lewis thinks he's like the others who just want to bully him and he tells Charlie to leave.
• When Lewis finally tells Charlie that he's bullied for being bisexual, Charlie asks who's been bullying Lewis. Lewis tells him and Charlie walks off calling to Kyle (the boy who was bullying Lewis.
• Lewis breaks the fourth wall and details how Charlie punched Kyle for him. Charlie comes back and introduces himself to Lewis. The pair walk off to the canteen.
• In the canteen, Lewis introduces Charlie to Hope, his future long-term girlfriend. She compliments Charlie on his attire and offers to take him to his next lesson.
• When Charlie and Hope get up to leave, Lewis says, "And that's how I met him," Hope says, "Little did I know," and together (Choral voice again) they say, "that he'd be the love of my life," (both referring to Charlie)
• Charlie re-enters as a police interrogator (represented by a change in costume) and points to a photo of Kyle and a photo of Charlie asking Lewis to identify them.
• Lewis identifies them and DI Sanderson asks him how he felt that the pair were getting friendly again just before Charlie's death. Lewis responds, "How else would you expect me to feel? I feel pissed off!"
• DI Sanderson tells Lewis that he now understands his "motive." Lewis asks what he means and DI Sanderson tells him that he killed Charlie. Lewis denies everything but DI Sanderson says he has enough evidence to put him away for a long time...

After practising and perfecting this we performed this to the class! To the right is the video of the performance:

I feel we performed our piece very well and we kept the audience engaged and in suspense during the tense parts and we amused them during the comedic parts! I feel the main way I could've improved is making my speech a lot clearer. When Charlie first meets Lewis, my speech is very muffled as I'm slouched in my arms across the table. If I were to sit up properly and articulate better, the performance would be so much better!

Next lesson, we will work on brainstorming more ideas on which a solid story can be devised whilst still keeping in mind our stimulus: Chasing Pavements.