Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 4 - 12/01/16

Today we spent the whole of the first period researching a new idea! Whilst Charlie researched our new idea of Domestic Violence, I researched homosexuality.

I first researched coming out stories as I wanted my coming out as the character of Lewis in our first idea to be as authentic as possible!

Below are some of the more interesting ones from this site (http://www.queerty.com/16-of-the-best-and-worst-coming-out-stories-from-anonymous-sharing-app-whisper-20140820):

• Today I came out to my mom. Her only response was "I hope you're ready to disappoint you father.
• I came out to my dad. He says I'm not his son.
• I'm going back in the closet when I go to college. I t isn't worth this pin and awkwardness.
• They say the truth will set you free. Well when I told my family I was gay, I wound up in the hospital.
• I came out of the closet to my mum. She came out to me too.
• I resent my mother for telling everybody when I came out as gay. She had no right to share that. It was my life and she chose to make it about her pain.

From this, I've learnt that a lot of coming out stories feature a prominent negative effect on their life so my character is just another one of the misunderstood hearts of the gay community.

Charlie had spent some time researching domestic violence and we took some time reading the stories he had found and we thought how we can use these stories to influence our performance. Some featured being pinched and slapped constantly, bullied and continually belittled. We also noticed that most of the posts were written by men other than women and we were rather confused as the stereotype situation is women being domestically abused. We found that more than 40% of domestic abuse scenarios have male victims which was much greater than any of us expected. We decided that this would be a great basis to build from as domestic abuse shares some of the themes explored in Chasing Pavements such as depression.

We started by arranging some movement for the scene. This is the movement we thought of:

• Lewis and Hope are arguing.
• Lewis goes to slap Hope but Lewis freezes.
• Using Round-By-Through, Hope grabs Lewis' arm and they swap positions and Hope is now the one about to slap Lewis.
• Hope slaps Lewis. She then shouts at him while he cowers. She sends him away but as he leaves she pushes him to the ground and he looks up to her in fear.

Along with this we were thinking of featuring some narration from Charlie who would explain how domestic abuse isn't always conducted by men towards women.

As he had more experience in the area, I asked Ashley if he could teach me how to perform stage combat. He showed me how to punch and slap someone realistically and these are the steps he took me through:

• Punch/slap with the arm which is on the same side as the audience.
• Keep an arm's length away from the receiver to avoid hitting them accidentally.
• Pound chest/slap hamstring with the other hand when the punch/slap should connect.
• When punching, resist the urge to lean forward and swing your punch as it's less likely to reach the receiver's face.

Next lesson, we will perform and record this piece and we will choose the idea we want to develop further.