Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 3 - 08/01/16

This lesson we brainstormed for a new idea; we would do what we did last lesson by devising and performing a short piece to the rest of the class. We're coming up with more than one idea because if we only came up with one, spent forever developing it and then decided it wouldn't be good enough, we'd have to think of a whole new idea which in the later stages of the unit isn't very helpful. With these ideas being formulated now, we won't have to worry if we change it later on as we have these ideas to fall back on. Also if we were to try and brainstorm loads of ideas, we will have a lot more choice of what idea to go with and we can analyse them and choose the best one. 

Firstly, Charlie came up with the idea of having a psychopath who hears voices in his head telling him to do things. The way this links to the stimulus is that it shares a lot of the themes such as depression and innocence and the character would try to run away from these voices sometimes by "Chasing Pavements." We improvised a short piece with the following outline:

• Charlie introduces himself to the audience but then shakes hands with "people" who are in empty, reserved seats. Hope and Lewis walk in dressed in doctor's outfits.
• They tell Charlie to stop talking because there's no one there and he runs to the back of the room. The pair walk towards him telling him there's nothing to be scared of.
• Charlie attempts to run past them but the pair grab him and push him to the floor; Charlie is too weak to get up.
• Hope suggests to use his regular sedatives but Lewis uses something a lot stronger as the regular isn't strong enough.

This was all we got until we came to the decision that the idea wasn't going to work at all. We felt there was no point finishing devising when we knew we wouldn't pick that idea.

The next idea was having a confession meeting/AA meeting style performance, where Hope, Charlie and I confess our guilty pleasures. This fits well with the stimulus as it focuses on the theme of confession which is also key in Chasing pavements. We wanted this idea to be very different from our piece we presented last lesson by making it a comedy. We decided we'd go down the dark comedy route as they are popular for a modern day audience. The main speed bump we hit was not knowing what to do as we simply couldn't think of anything that was dark comedy.

We decided to take a different view on the confession meeting style performance and we came up with a flashback idea. We thought we'd start with the three characters in a circle, one as a teacher and the other two as students. The two students would be miming arguing whilst the teacher sits quietly. Eventually the teacher commands the pair to silence. Lewis' character has a monologue on his mother falling ill and Hope's character has a monologue of her father leaving home; these are the reasons for their argument yet the other is unaware. After this the teacher becomes a confession meeting leader and asks Lewis and Hope to say why they're there. Lewis is now a drug addict after the downfall of his confidence since his mother's death and Hope is severely depressed and self-harms constantly. Again we tried to keep the idea going but there was something about it which we didn't really like. Also, we decided that we would perform something physical theatre based as the last piece we performed to the class was heavy in dialogue. This is another reason why we didn't choose this idea.

We then turned to the idea of depression once again! We thought about a man who started off normal, took a "harmless" gateway drug and then fell into the spiral of narcotics. I really liked the idea of the temptation of the drugs play a role as a character. It would bring the issues down to a much more personal level and the audience would empathise with the "victim." Below is the outline of our piece we devised along with a video of it:

• Charlie walks around the audience who are in a domed-thrust staging and ends in front of a seat. Lewis pulls him by imaginary strings back into the seat. (Whenever Lewis or Hope do something it is via imaginary strings)
• Hope makes Charlie write as he is a schoolboy, Lewis makes Charlie smoke, Hope makes Charlie drink.
• Hope and Lewis place one of Charlie's hands each on his chest which forms a heart and tie the strings to an imaginary post. They pull until the heart breaks representing the loss of Charlie's lover.
• Together Lewis and Hope force Charlie to cut his own wrists. Lewis makes him get up then punches him back down.
• Charlie jumps out of his seat in an attempt to flee but Lewis and Hope stop him and pull him back into his seat.
• Lewis makes Charlie hold a line of cocaine on his arm and Hope makes him snort it. Hope forces Charlie to inject heroin into his bloodstream.
• Charlie gets up and walks around the audience again. He stands in front of his seat. Lewis and Hope force him to smile.
• They then force him to stand on the chair, hold him from under each arm and wait for him to kick the chair away. Charlie will be left hanging for a second then dropped.
• Hope and Lewis each pull Charlie's corpse up and the other cuts the imaginary strings. They try to force him up again to check if the strings are cut then they walk to the audience member in the central seat and attach their strings to them.

Ways to improve our performance if we were to perform it again:

• Charlie needs to remember all of the actions as he forgot to snort the cocaine and inject the heroin.
• Hope needs to be more dynamic with her movements to represent the power behind the movements.
• My movements need to be more fluid to represent the ease of the movements.
• Hope needs to remember what to do at the end as we were supposed to freeze after attaching ourselves to an audience member.