Double - Commedia Dell'arte - Blog 15 - 29/02/16

Today in double we continued to devise and workshop ideas for our piece.

We began by sharing the ideas for scenes which were supposed to link to our new main idea for our piece. Below are the ideas which were brought to the table:

After discussing these ideas we chose to start off by devising the opening scene. There was a lot of controversy about whether we would have the audience start in their seats (cabaret staging) or whether we would have them walked into our "restaurant" by one of us. If we were to have them walked in, it would most likely be by Columbina as she's considered very beautiful so the managers would want the prettiest employee to let the customers in. We ended up deciding against letting the audience in because our original idea for it just wouldn't work. We thought that we could have the audience being let into the restaurant by Columbina but everyone else wasn't ready. We would have Zanni sleeping, Captain admiring his reflection in a large silver dish, Harlequin eating the night before's leftovers off of the floor, and Brighella picking stuff up off of the floor. The only issue with this is that as the audience moves in, some members will see everything and some will only see some of the action. Also, we felt this type of introduction wouldn't do the characters of Commedia Dell'arte justice. We wanted each character to have their own separate scenarios where they're introduced.

We then devised a short outline for what we want the opening few scenes to be:

• Brighella telling Harlequin to get out of the leftovers and do something but Harlequin would have none of it.
• Doctor and Pantalone (the managers) confuse Captain (the chef) by telling him different options for starters but Captain's flair gets him recognition with a new recipe
• Columbina finds Zanni sleeping in a cupboard and attempts to get him ready for serving customers.

With Doctor and Pantalone's scene with Captain we've already finished devising it and here is the outline:

• Doctor and Pantalone enter the restaurant kitchen talking about how they haven't got a starter for that evening.
• The pair joke saying that they know what the other is thinking and on the count of three they say completely different dishes.
• An argument stirs, the pair argue over whom is the better manager. Pantalone mentions how he knows how to get in profits and Doctor mentions how he knows which food tastes nicer (good opportunity for a joke about Doctor's weight).
• Doctor insists to ask the chef, Captain, which is better. Doctor looks over to Captain, back to Pantalone and says that Captain agrees with him.
• Pantalone gets cross, walks over to Captain and tells him to make his starter. Doctor goes to opposite side and tells him to make his starter. This involves Captain being confused and throwing ingredients everywhere.
• Captain shouts stop whilst holding a ladle in the air as if it were a sword and suggests a combination of the two starters. After Pantalone and Doctor's befuddled reactions, he goes on to say that the recipe had been in his family for generations.
• Doctor then passes it off as if it were his idea and he exits with Pantalone thinking of the profits leaving Captain downtrodden.

For Columbina and Zanni's scene, it is very similar to the scene Rhiannon and James devised last time except the washing line is replaced by dishes and sinks and Zanni's glue s replaced by sticky syrup.

An idea Ollie and I had for next lesson is having a scene based around Pantalone's love for money and Doctor's constant bluffing of any knowledge. Below is the outline we came up with (Doctor and Pantalone are shortened to their initials):

• P is panicked about how they were going to please their critic that night and whether a bad review will have effect on their profits. D says how he has a solution.
• D has a love potion which will be put into the critics food and make him fall in love with the food. This excites P as he wonders about the amount of customers a good review will bring in.
• D mentions, as a side note, how the potion wasn't cheap. P clocks on to this immediately and demands to know how and why.
• D explains all of the intricate ingredients of the potion and goes on to pretend to know what he's talking about. P interrupts him and asks the most important question: How much did it cost.
• D reluctantly tells him it costed £4000. P freaks out but D reassures him saying that it will be a key investment and that he hasn't paid for it yet. P asks when and how will be able to pay that much!
• D says that someone will collect the money tomorrow and that there's plenty of money left in the cash register. P realises the flaw in D's plan and says is he sure. D says of course he is and asks why as he moves towards the cash register. P insists there's not much left.
• D opens the cash register and nearly screams in horror. D announces the lack of money and throws comical items (rubber duck, feather etc.) out of the register in search of at least one coin.
• D questions who would take the money, meanwhile P is taking wads of cash out of his pockets and placing them in his groin sack, exclaiming his terror also.
• D suggests there is a thief in the midst and blames Harlequin. In order to shift any possible blame from himself, P blames Harlequin too. The pair leave to confront him.

Next lesson we will work on more scenes to be developed and present mine and Ollie's scene to the rest of the class to see what they think.

Whilst writing this blog, I came up with an idea on how we would open the piece. Once we let the audience in, we'd all be frozen still mid acting (e.g Harlequin eating, Captain admiring reflection). When the audience is settled we'd have the lights dimmed down then brightened back up to start the piece.

Triple - Historical Context - Blog 16 (Restoration) - 29/02/16

This lesson, we began and completed our restoration theatre performance.

Dan handed everyone a script which contained an extract from, "The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter," written by George Etherege. This extract featured the characters Young Bellair, Dorimant, Harriet, Lady Woodvil and Busy. I was given the role of Lady Woodvill and the background I was given on her is that she is very high classed and has a rather high pitched voice;  she's also very melodramatic and over reactive.

We began by reading through the script to learn what the scene was about and clear up any issues with our voice. After this we got up and performed it a couple of times to correct any problems.

After this we finally recorded our scene:

Notes to improve:

• My movement was okay but if I made it more feminine it would give away my character's gender better
• My entrance should be a bit later as I stand there awkwardly for a moment until my line

Double - Commedia Dell'arte - Blog 14 - 26/02/16

Today, we added the finishing touches to our masks and we came up with our new idea!

We started the lesson by adding elastic string to our masks so that we can finally wear them when performing. This means we get more rehearsal time with our masks and we can rectify any mistakes we make involving our masks such as facing the audience. To the right is an image of my completed mask:

Following a physical and focus warm-up we began a characterisation warm up. This consisted of walking around the room like our characters, changing our movement based on given emotions for our characters to feel and greeting each other in our characters. When walking, I kept in mind how Pantalone walks based on my research; "hunchback," and "walks with hips forward." When greeting other characters I based this on how they were positioned on the status tree of Commedia Dell'arte:

• Zanni: Hostile greeting, shooing him away if he gets too close
• Columbina: Flirty greeting, dirty old man flirting with a sweet innocent girl
• Brighella: Hostile greeting, giving an order asap
• Captain: Hostile greeting, cautioning Captain before he tries anything
• Harlequin: Hostile greeting, giving an order asap
• Doctor: Friendly greeting, greeting an old friend, perhaps an insult for banter purposes

I felt these exercises were very helpful for us as they aided us in nailing our characterisation. Wearing the masks through this exercise aswell was very important as it allowed us to focus more on the task as we felt properly immersed into our characters!

After this exercise, we gathered round and shared our ideas we came up with for scenes that we could potentially take further. We had multiple ideas put across but they all featured one main focus: a few characters working together to do/achieve something but everything going wrong. From this main focus we thought about what setting we could have and we could then go more in depth about what we would have go wrong. We originally thought a wedding would be hilarious featuring Pantalone tripping over walking his daughter, 1st actress, down the aisle, Harlequin eating the wedding cake and Doctor having to improvise a speech. However, we realised we wouldn't be able to do this idea as we had already agreed that we would remove the lovers from our piece as it makes things easier as we wouldn't have to deal with costume/make-up changes.

We then thought of behind the scenes of the wedding; we could have chef's, waiters, dishwashers and an overseer. We followed through with this idea but instead of having the behind the scenes of a wedding, we figured we'd have our piece set in a restaurant. We came up with a great idea of having the audience seated in cabaret which means we could use the audience area as the restaurant floor and use the audience as our patrons. We had a constant flow of ideas which featured different ideas for things to go wrong and using the stage as our kitchen; this makes our piece rather abstract as the characters on the restaurant floor won't be able to see the characters in the kitchen but the audience will. Below is an image of our collated ideas, our staging ideas and the roles each character would take in this piece:

Pantalone and Doctor would be two patrons dining in the restaurant; I felt this would immerse the audience into the performance even more by not only having the actors interact with them but having two actors be part of them. We had an idea of having the pair as critics of the restaurant being able to make digs at the staff and criticise the food but we had an even better idea: we would have the kitchen staff think that Doctor and Pantalone are critics and they would be rushing around trying to make everything perfect (this would result in many accidents) and when Doctor and Pantalone leave, another audience member (someone who we'd discuss this with before hand: Ollie Marshall from single said he'd be happy to do it) would say that he was the critic and was appalled by their service.

Next lesson we will begin workshopping many of our ideas (left column of the image above).

Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 20 - 26/02/16

Today, we began searching for headlines for which we could edit and use in our projection. This began with us searching the internet for headlines but a great deal of them weren't what we needed. They either featured a location which wasn't the one where we're basing our piece in (not North London) or they weren't worded in a way which makes it easy for us to cut. In the end we found one headline which will do for now but if we need another at all, we can always search for one in our own time. Below is the headline we found very useful:

We can add onto the end something along the lines of ":result of suicide." Which would be part of the big reveal.

After this we spent time trying to find news reports on suicides. We found a few but the mention of suicide was mostly in the middle of the reporter's sentences as opposed to the beginning/end. Instead we looked up text-to-speech to read out our news reports. We found one website (Oddcast) which provided very life like voices and after trying out a few sentences to hear how the voices sounded, we decided that this would be the website we would get our reports from.

Next lesson, we will record our text-to-speech news reports and focus on the order of events in our piece.

Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 19 - 25/02/16

Today was a very effective lesson for us as we made some major changes to our piece which will result in scenes being added and removed.

We began discussing the future of our piece and we'd realised we've forgotten our original focus: the death of Charlie! We felt we had added in the interrogation scenes at the beginning but towards the end of the piece we were more focused on the relationship statuses of the trio rather than leading the audience onto who the killer was. When devising the interrogations we have we had made them rather short. This was most likely due to us having a production plan so soon that we wanted to move onto the scene so we had very poorly constructed short interrogations. In order to improve this, I will research police interrogations and analyse what sort of language the interrogator uses, how the person being interrogated reacts and how they last. 

We agreed that in order to improve our piece and redirect the current focus we have, we need to create new interrogation scenes and perhaps alter the ones we already have. We definitely need to add more interrogations with Hope as she only has one; we will need to add at least one more interrogation with me. However, when adding interrogations, they must be relevant and offer more information to the plot every timer otherwise they would be wasted time.

We also discussed how we could change the opening too! We had an idea of using news reports and headlines to show the death of Charlie but only show part of the headline; at the end we show the entire headline which reveals the extra vital information. Below is the outline we came up with:

• Charlie starts seated on the back chair and falls slow motion onto the table, dead. Whilst this is happening, we will have news headlines projected behind him saying something along the lines of "Body found in North London apartment"/"North London man found dead" etc.
• We will also have audio from news reports repeated over the top exclaiming relevant things but not giving away that it was suicide.
• In the final scene, we will show Charlie taking a cyanide pill and then the projections which follow will also have the correct ending added which reveals that Charlie's death was suicide. The news reports audio will also continue to reveal that his death was suicide too.

Next lesson, we will spend researching how we will be able to get the audio and headline and whether they will merge perfectly or not. If not we will have to work out a resolution.

Double - Storytelling - Blog 22 (Snow Queen) - 24/02/16

Today we performed a full run through of our entire piece.

We made notes after each scene of what we needed to improve and what needed adding. The way we've worked out who would change what, we decided we would alter our own scenes. Below are the changes which need to be made:

• Lorna's scene - Narration needs to be recorded
• James' scene - Silhouettes need to be sorted
• Lewis' scene - Narration needs to be recorded - Placards need to be made
• Rob's scene - Cut down
• Rhiannon's scene - 
• Charlie's scene - Learn our separate lines - use more expression - gesture towards the person we're standing by in the audience
• Ollie's scene - Need to sort projection and lighting

I will make my placards and record my narration ready for next lesson.

Triple - Historical Context - Blog 15 (Medieval Research) - 24/02/16

Today Rhiannon presented her research for her chosen era of theatre: Medieval Theatre

Medieval Theatre

- started after the fall of the Roman empire; merged into a body of disreputable jugglers and inferior minstrels
- their performances were always crude and immoral
- they weren't stopped because they responded to the demand for dramatic spectacle
- around 1200 AD, performances were spoken in Vernacular, the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people of a country or region.
- Mansion Staging: small wooden platforms used in churches, actors moved between the platforms to represent different places e.g Heaven and Hell
- Saint plays: Skit-like, community gatherings, based on spiritual stuff, broad and melodramatic
-Passion plays: Performed on special days e.g Christmas/Easter, at church at first then outside, bloodily realistic representations
-Mystery/Miracle plays: based on bible stories, became more comic to appeal to a wider range, elements of political commentary, led to backlash from church, often banned, women got more roles, started to add music into it to become more sophisticated.
- Decline in Medieval Theatre: Theatre became commercial (no longer community venture), no longer religious plays, social structure was changing

Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 18 - 23/02/16

This lesson we decided as we had all of our scenes devised and we had the entire room to ourselves, we would sort out our lighting for our performance!

As this was my first time using the lights I decided to familiarise my self with the lights and play with the different functions. We had two different types of lights, two behind the audience, which have warm white, cold white and neutral white settings, and multiple lights around our performance space which have multiple colour settings.

Below is the written outline of the light settings we have so far:

The settings at the top are for the backlights and the settings at the bottom are for the lights around the performance space.

For the opening scene Hope came up with an idea which elaborates more on the issue of Charlie's death. She said that we should have a scene where Shanice is being visited by a police officer at her and Hunter's home and being told the bad news about her fiancée's death. I then added onto this point and worked out how we can include this into our performance without using techniques we already had in our piece:

• Shanice starts onstage, at the table, and hears a knocking at the door; she walks offstage to answer.
• Officer Fisher (me) will greet her and ask to come in and Shanice allows him too all offstage. This voiceover-like dialogue brings something fresher than the regular dialogue which would be featured a lot in the rest of the play.
• The pair then enter and sit at the (dining) table. Fisher tells Shanice about her fiancée's death and we freeze.

Depending on whether we keep this scene or not, we'll look into how we'd join this into our previous opening scene.

We also renamed our character (again!) as we agreed that the names didn't suit the characters at all. Hope chose the name Kourtney as it is a typical name for a "chavvy" urban black girl, I chose the name Ben as it's a typical wealthy (he transferred from a grammar school) and gay name and Charlie changed his character's name to his own name, Charlie. This is helpful as, when he plays DI Sanderson in rehearsals, he continually calls his other character Charlie rather than Hunter so this name choice resolves this issue.

For the interrogation scenes, we chose to have a dark lighting scheme with no lights excluding one of the backlights on the cold white setting. This really accentuated the shadows of the actors onstage which symbolises the lies/secrets they may be hiding. For the school scene, we're using orange lighting to create a sepia effect to represent how far back in time that period was. We're using pink in the dating scene as pink is very representative for the theme of love and we're using red for the You Don't Own Me scene as it's a darker variation of the pink showing how Kourtney and Charlie's relationship has gotten darker; the lack of the white backlights in this scene fully promotes the theme of darkness.

Next lesson, we will look at analysing if the piece needs any further changes and, when they're dealt with, continue setting our lighting.

Double - Commedia Dell'arte - Blog 13 - 22/02/16

Today in Double, we watched Rhiannon and James perform they're scene they devised last lesson! It was hilarious and it effectively presented the relationship between their characters (Columbina and Zanni). This is the outline of how they're scene went:

• Columbina is hanging out some laundry to be dried, Zanni enters and she gestures suggestively towards him. Zanni notices this and tries to style his hair using extra strong glue.
• Zanni squeezes the bottle into his hair and runs his hands through it. He tries to removes his hands but they're now stuck in his hair. He shouts and panics gaining the attention of Columbina.
• She turns and Zanni acts as if he is flexing his muscles. Columbina turns to continue her chores and Zanni rolls around on the floor in an attempt to remove his hands from his head.
• Columbina turns again and Zanni starts to do sit-ups and counts each rep in a mixed up order ("64, 65, 92, 7, 101" etc).
• Columbina turns away and finds the bottle of glue, reads to the label and says, "just my type," suggestively.
• She turns back to Zanni and says he looks different today, to which Zanni denies. She asks whether he had used the glue and he reluctantly admits his mistake.
• Columbina grabs Zanni's hands and releases them from the surface of his head one by one, followed by a yelp of pain from Zanni.
• Columbina ruffles Zanni's hair and says goodbye but as she goes to walk off she learns that her hands are now stuck in Zanni's hair.

With this scene, the rest of us gave the following feedback:

• James needs to move more as Zanni as he rarely ever stays still.
• Rhiannon needs nail down on how suggestive she's being as it's typical of her character.
• James needs to be more fluent when it comes to switching from trying to get his hands out of his hair and trying to impress Columbina; he should switch while she turns not after she turns.
• James needs to keep facing the audience more and making sure his mask is seen as the masks are a key part of Commedia Dell'arte.

After a second runthrough where the pair had rectified their errors, we decided to add in another character. We felt that Doctor would be a funny character to add as he would ramble on about how he knows everything whilst the other two are wanting to be rescued.

This is the extension to the scene we created:

• Doctor enters and asks what's the matter and Columbina explains and asks for help.
• Doctor nullifies her pleads for help and begins to ramble on about his knowledge ("Ah yes! You see this glue must contain a very strong proportion of Lictotin which..." etc).
• He continues until Columbina shouts over him loud enough and asks to be helped. The Doctor must mention about the proper technique on how to pull before he grabs her out of Zanni's hair.
• Doctors pats Columbina on the shoulder and bids her farewell; as he goes to leave, he realises his hand is stuck to her shoulder.
• The pair try and pull each other apart whilst Zanni goes to hug Columbina's leg. Zanni successfully hugs Columbina leaving them all connected by glue.

After adding Doctor we wanted to add another character into the mess! We thought it would be effective to add Captain as it would open up plenty of options for us to play with.

This is the extension to the scene we created:

• Captain gallops onstage with his horse, steps off the horse and asks what's happening. Doctor asks Captain to wait until they're finished.
• The sticky trio freeze and look at the audience. It looks to Captain as if Doctor and Zanni are sexually attacking Columbina.
• Captain commands Doctor to unhand her and draws out his sword. The pair duel with Captain whimpering after every strike.

We were unsure at first on how we would have this scene end but we had two alternate endings:

1. Harlequin enters and taps Captain on the should which leads to Captain jumping, in cowardice, into Doctors arms, thus being stuck to him. Doctor and Columbina beg Harlequin for help but, after a mocking ponder, Harlequin leaves.
2. Captain goes to stab Doctor but Doctor dodges, causing Captain to fall over bringing the other three down with him resulting in a big sticky mess of 4 people.

Next lesson we will share with each other our ideas for other scenes and try to combine them into our main focus for our piece.

Triple - Historical Context - Blog 14 (Elizabethan) - 23/02/16

Today in Triple, we started Lorna's Historical Context era, Shakespearean/Elizabethan. For her scene, Lorna wanted it to be conversational as this links to the Elizabethan theme but she still wanted to keep it appealing to a modern audience. Originally, she wanted to use the theme of a Skype video call which would easily appeal to a modern audience. However, Lorna changed her mind on this as she felt her new idea was much better: having Tom and I act out the duologue from her chosen Shakespearean play (Midsummer Night's Dream) whilst Toby and Dan play a gay couple watching this scene on TV at home. She felt this would offer a great deal of hilarity as Toby and Dan would be voicing their opinions on what was happening in the DVD of Lewis and Tom and pausing and rewinding their actions.

Lorna chose Tom to play the role of Demetrius and me to play the role of Helena as it was agreed that Tom appeared more masculine than me due to him being him older than me, his facial hair and upper body strength. Lorna did not play the role of Helena herself as she took a more directing role in this piece and in Elizabethan times, female roles were played by boys while male roles were played by men.

We started by performing the scene with just Tom and I while Toby and Dan read through their script and decide where they would interject (pause) and what they would say. After a ten minutes practise we joined the two together; this went reasonably well but there were multiple improvements to be made:

• Tom and I need to be more fluent with our lines
• Dan and Toby need to keep more in focus instead of rambling for around a minute
• Tom and I need to keep still when we're supposed to be "paused" and I need to make my reversed speech more realistic

After sorting these issues out, we performed and filmed our piece:

Notes to improve:

• My movement and voice needs to be more feminine to give away my character's gender
• I need to slow down my speech as it becomes slurred and you can't understand me.

Double - Commedia Dell'arte - Blog 12 - 12/02/16

Today in Double we made a big decision to completely ditch the whole murder mystery idea. We did this as we felt that we were going nowhere with the devising and we constantly stuck for ideas and the storyline seemed too dull. Also, the scenes we had planned seemed too forced and we felt like we had to stick to certain character combinations. With this kept in mind, we decided to split off into groups and devised new scenes for us to draw inspiration from. This seemed like a step backwards but we knew this decision was for the best as this was likely to be our last opportunity to do so.

We split off into groups (James, Rhiannon, Lorna & Ollie/Charlie, Rob and I), and began devising our scenes. With the other group they devised a scene Zanni and Columbina (James and Rhiannon) while Lorna and Ollie offered support and contributed with ideas and constructive criticism. Meanwhile, Charlie did the same while Rob and I tried to construct a scene between Captain and Pantalone.

We started off by researching the typical scenarios which occur between Pantalone and Captain but after searching we couldn't find anything. We decided to devise our own original scene instead which we would base around the characters' personality. We wanted to play on Captain's cockiness and need for power/money by demonstrating  how he reacts under pressure.

This was the outline we came up with:

• Pantalone is at a bar and Captain enters
• Captain challenges Pantalone for his money drawing his sword
• Pantalone pulls out a comically much bigger sword and Captain switches from his confident swagger to being completely afraid
• They battle; Pantalone turns away still fighting taking a sip of his drink.
• Pantalone defeats Captain

Although this seemed like such a great concept, after many attempts, we found it very difficult to perform. We will keep this idea archived for later in case we were to use it again or steal parts of it for another scene.

Next lesson we will watch the other groups performance and work on how to improve it even further.

Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 17 - 11/02/16

Today in Single, I shared with Charlie and Hope my ideas for our Hunter's Breakdown scene!

We began by discussing which music we would use; we could either have the original track of Madness by MUSE or the instrumental. We all agreed to use the instrumental as the lyrics may distract the audience's attention from the performance. Also, we didn't want our audience to recognise the song as they would be thinking of the artist and the artist's thoughts on the song, whereas the effect we wanted was the audience to be reminded of our performance upon listening to the song in other scenarios of their lives.

We then got up and started acting it out without music so that we weren't under any pressure to rush through the movement. We learnt the actions pretty quickly and my vision was becoming a reality! After this slow run, we ran it again but with the music and me saying out loud what should happen when so that Hope and Charlie knew what to do and when as they were new to the choreography!

Next lesson, we will polish up the choreography and then film this scene. We'd then start planning what to improve and our decisions will be based on what needs improving in our video we took last Friday of everything we had so far.

Triple - Historical Context - Blog 13 (Greek) - 10/02/16

This lesson, we finally recorded my Greek Theatre piece after another runthrough.

We began by listening to the audio track I brought in which was edited at the right times. I did this by using audacity to fade the track in and out for when we had chorus lines to speak. This was a lot smoother than having the track paused and played. We also spent a great deal of time learning the chorus lines. I felt that the performance would be less effective if Dan, Toby and I were holding scripts so I ensured we learnt them.

After learning the chorus lines, we rehearsed the scene a couple of times then finally filmed it:

Notes to improve:

• I need to be wary of those around me as I walked into Tom during the performance.
• My stab and barge sequence wasn't as sharp as I wanted it to be.
• The music needs to be better timed with the chorus lines.
• Our movements need to be more in time especially the chorus looking towards and away from the audience.

Double - Storytelling - Blog 21 (Snow Queen) - 10/02/16

Today we started on our last scene left for Snow Queen: Rhiannon's. For her scene, Rhiannon wanted to narrate the entire passage while we mime actions linked to the words. We spent the majority of the lesson annotating our passages on where we would add actions and which lines we would say. We remembered from sorting out Charlie's scene that all of us speaking one line can be too loud and lose the story telling effect with the mixed tones of voice. With this kept in mind, we split up the lines so that Lorna spoke the lines of Robber Maiden, James was the Reindeer, Charlie was the Pigeon and Rob, Ollie and I were Gerda

Below is the shortened passage with our actions annotated (my spoken lines are underlined):

Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 16 (Devising) - 09/02/16

Today, I decided to work on devising Hunter's Breakdown scene. This is what I got so far (FPS is shorthand for figurative puppet strings):

• Hunter receives a call from his supervisor and gets fired. He hangs up the call and steps into centre stage.
• Clive enters stage right and walks past Hunter and Hunter looks at him, reaches out but Clive walks past like a ghost, Clive stands at front left.
• Shanice enters stage left and walks past Hunter and Hunter looks at her, reaches out but Shanice walks past like a ghost, Shanice stands at front right.
• Clive pulls Hunter gently with FPS and Hunter moves towards him slowly per pull.
• Shanice pulls Hunter a tad more vigorously and Hunter diverts off track and towards her.
• The pair perform a tug of war for Hunter until he falls to the floor on his knees.
• Clive walks behind him and lifts him up arm by arm using FPS, Shanice runs and pushes Clive away. This loosens the strings on Hunter and he falls back to the ground.
• Shanice lifts Hunter up arm by arm using FPS, Clive pushes her away letting Hunter fall to the ground once again.
• Clive pulls him up using FPS and they stand facing each other. Clive grabs Hunters hands and looks at him desperately. Shanice uses FPS to pull Hunter away from him.
• Shanice feels Hunters face and stares at him deeply, Clive uses FPS to pull Shanice away from him.
• Hunter falls to the floor as he's pulled back. Both Clive and Shanice go to help him up but they freeze mid lunge, then retreat to standing.
• Clive walks towards Hunter slowly and wraps his scarf around Hunter's neck. Hunter tries to pull it off as he's struggling for breath but gets it off quickly.
• Shanice walks towards Hunter, caresses his face then kisses him on the cheek. Hunter tries to wipe it off as if it were poisonous acid.
• Hunter lies down, face up, facing upstage. Shanice and Clive lie either side of him leaving a two foot gap between each other.
• Shanice sits up, uses FPS to pull Hunter towards her so that he's laying across her.
• Clive sits up, uses FPS to pull Hunter towards him so that he's laying across him.
• Shanice sits up, uses FPS to pull Hunter towards her, but mid roll he gets up and walks to the front seat and sits on it.
• Shanice and Clive run to him immediately and get on both knees either side of Hunter. They beg for attention but Hunter ignores them.
• Clive uses FPS to move Hunters hand toward Clive's face but Hunter resists and moves his hand away before he touched Clive's face.
• Shanice uses FPS to move Hunters hand toward Shanice's face but Hunter resists and moves his hand away before he touched Shanice's face.
• The pair go to reach out for him but their hands freeze midway and he stands and walks downstage.
• The pair stand and start pulling Hunter back using FPS but Hunter shrugs his shoulders forward and the pair jolt forward as if the strings had snapped. Shanice and Clive exit. Hunter steps backwards and performs his monologue.

I feel that this scene is very effective at portraying the loss of emotion in Hunter now as he realises the mistake he's made and that he doesn't the love of his old school friends. It's also effective at illustrating the competition between Shanice and Clive both fighting for Hunter but resulting in nothing. It represents Clive's confusion as to why Hunter left him and Shanice's forgivingness as she just wants him back.

When deciding the music to use with this scene, I wanted something along the lines of a slow song, perhaps a ballad, but one's which conveyed a similar message as the scene itself. Here are some of the songs I thought were suitable originally:

• Stitches by Shawn Mendes
• I'm A Mess by Ed Sheeran
• Jealous by Labrinth
• Angels by Robbie Williams
• When I Was Your Man by Bruno Mars
• Stay With Me by Sam Smith
• Make It Rain by Ed Sheeran

The main issue, however, with these songs, is that they were mainly compsed of actual lyrics and the instrumentals were very gappy. Make It Rain by Ed Sheeran wasn't gappy at all and was a personal favourite of mine but it didn't have enough variety and stayed pretty constant for around a minute and a half.

Upon further searching I came across Madness by MUSE. I found that the instrumental had a lot of variety and the message conveyed from the lyrics and title match very well with the state that Hunter's life has turned into: Madness!

Next lesson, I share with Hope and Charlie this new scene and workshop anything that needs to be changed and hopefully film it too!

Triple - Historical Context - Blog 12 (Greek) - 08/02/16

Now that we have completed our masks, we started rehearsing the scene wearing the to get used to having our peripheral vision restricted. I also made some changes to how the chorus lines will be spoken.

Firstly, I altered who was actually going to be saying the chorus lines. Originally it was going to be the whole cast but I've made relevant changes based on how things would've been done in original Greek theatre. Tom and Ash (Odysseus and Cyclops) are no longer speaking the chorus lines as they are the main roles. The main roles within Greek theatre weren't also part of the chorus so it would be silly having the mains speak the chorus lines. Additionally, I've excluded Lorna from the chorus lines. This is because although she's part of the chorus as well, as a woman in Greek theatre, she would typically have a lesser role in everything. So to distinguish her being a female amongst the all-male chorus, I've removed her. Now the only one's speaking the chorus lines are Dan, Toby and I. This not only correlates with my research but it also makes speaking the chorus lines easier as there aren't as many people trying to sync up with each other.

Next lesson, we will film the performance and finally move on to a different type of theatre.

Double - Commedia Dell'arte - Blog 11 - 08/02/16

Today, we continued painting our masks defining some key features with separate colours. I began by creating a darker brown from the brown I used for the rest of the mask and painted extra details such as bags under the eyes and wrinkles. This helped support the theme of age behind the character of Pantalone.

Double - Commedia Del'arte - Blog 10 - 05/02/16

Today in Double, we began painting our masks! We painted them as the colours and designs will link to the characteristics of our characters.

I decided to paint my Pantalone mask brown. This is because brown is often associated with cheapness and stinginess which, from my research, matches Pantalone exactly due to his Scrooge-like personality. Brown is also recognised among all things foul such as mud, faeces and cockroaches.

When I come back next lesson, I will have purchased a pillow case from which Ollie and I will remove the fluff from the inside to use for eyebrows and facial hair for our masks. Giving our characters these white fluffy eyebrows will help our characters look even older! I'll also add black or darker brown lines under the eyes and the forehead of my mask to give Pantalone wrinkles and bags under his eyes which all contribute to making my character look ancient.

Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 15 - 05/02/16

Today we devised the still image scene between Shanice and Hunter and performed our entire piece from the beginning up to the end of Clive's monologue.

When creating the still image scene we wanted to show the couple's relationship evolve but we didn't want it to be too cheesy. Originally we wanted to have a series of still images with thought tracks but I came up with a potentially better alternative. I thought instead, we would have them mime what they were doing for a few seconds then they end in a still image of them holding each others hands. I thought it would be cute if they were holding hands on each still image but that may come across as too cheesy. We could also have thought tracks here too but for now we wanted to see if the mime to still image idea worked first before adding more to it. Below is the scene outline:

• DI Sanderson asks Shanice what her relationship was like after that first date, he's sat on the left side of the table while Shanice is on the right chair. She talks about how her relationship was perfect.
• The pair move their respected sides chairs to the front and sit in them. DI Sanderson has changed to Hunter via rolling down his sleeves and wearing his cap. Hunter tries to grab her drink but she mimes saying no jokingly but seriously. He taps her on the opposite shoulder while she's not looking and she turns behind her.
• He sneaks her drink to where she laughs and frowns to seek attention. He puts the drink back when he's done and holds her hand. They freeze for a few seconds.
• The pair then lean back in their seats and act as if they are driving with Shanice in the passenger seat.
• The pair then move their seats back to their respected sides and sit in them as if they were eating dinner on a date. Hunter gets up walks over to her and proposes to her.
• They get up and start hugging each other in a frenzy love. Shanice sits back in her seat and DI Sanderson sits back on the table.

An idea I had for this scene was to have a soft instrumental of You Don't Own Me as a backing track. I thought this would be great foreshadowing of the events later to come.

After devising then performing this new scene, we continued to run through what we had. Upon completion of this runthrough, we made a list of any major issues we encountered:

• As DI Sanderson, Charlie kept calling Hunter Charlie due to us previously having our characters share the same name as us. We will determine next lesson whether we'd change the names back to our own names or leave them how they are.
• When performing the, "Elastic Heart," scene when we reached my monologue, the song kept on going which required us to manually turn the song off. By next lesson, I will have edited the song so it fades out at the right time and I will also add and cut any other music we have in our piece. This includes:
• You Don't Own Me (edited)
• Text tone
• Marimba ringtone
• Phone call conversation

Next lesson, we will work on devising the remainder of our piece then focus on sorting out any issues we have.

Triple - Historical Context - Blog 11 (Greek) - 04/02/16

Today, we painted our masks in preparation for my Greek theatre performance. When paining my mask, I wanted to stick with my design and be a golden yellow colour with a tint of brown as this was the colour of typical Greek soldier masks. I also painted the band which held the mask to my face as I felt that the original white band looked odd with my golden masks so I made it the same colour.

I feel like my mask was far too yellow so, next lesson, I will add more tints of brown to the mask and possibly, if the paint dries in time, rehearse the scene with masks on.

Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 14 - 04/02/16

Today we finished creating our placards for the, "Asking Out," scene. We completed the painting process then created a script for what we wanted the texts to say. This is the script:

Charlie: Yo x
Hope: Hey x *monkey emoji*
Charlie: Can I ask u a question b? x 
Hope: yeahh go for it x
Charlie: Do you want to come & see Deadpool with me? x
Hope: yeah sure x *monkey emoji*
Charlie: Friday yeah? x
Hope: At 7 x
Charlie: Yeah safe b x *kissy emoji*

We then printed out the emojis and wrote out the text onto the placards. Upon first writing the text, we realised that the text wasn't bold enough to be seen from a distance by our audience. We weighted out the text and then finished by glueing the emojis too the placards.

Next lesson, we will focus on creating the still image scene between Hunter and Shanice and possibly recap on everything we've done so that we have an updated running time for our piece.

Triple - Historical Context - Blog 10 (Greek) - 03/02/16

Today in Triple, we continued Papier-mâchéing our masks leading up to my Greek theatre inspired performance. My mask was very uneven in some areas from where I had made a cut around the forehead so that the top of the mask was in line with my hairline. I smoothed out this cut which resulted in me having part of my forehead being shown but nothing too major.

I began bulking out my masks across the bottom, embossing and building a thicker texture making my mask look more protective and threatening. A mistake I made last lesson was leaving my mask face up to dry which resulted in the weight of Papier-mâché to push out the sides of the mask as the face sunk downwards. I fixed this issue by making the mask very wet with glue around the sides then holding the sides inwards slightly as I waited for the glue to dry. When the mask felt more rigid in this area, placed it on the table, face down, to let the glue dry properly.

Next lesson, we will finalise any changes left to make to the masks then finally paint them.

Double - Storytelling - Blog 20 (Snow Queen) - 03/02/16

Today, we discussed the details of how we would perform Charlie's scene based on which way he chose to perform it. This led to us actually beginning to block and rehearse this scene.

Charlie decided that he didn't want any movement in his scene and that he wanted it to be him reading out the text while the rest of us speak some of the lines in unison. Choral voice is a great way to grab an audience's attention by highlighting some of the key words in a story by having more than one person speaking them.

We began by reading the story to make sure everyone knew what this section of The Snow Queen was about. We then read through it again but for each sentence we decided whether there was a word which we felt would be effective to all speak at once. This resulted in multiple adjectives and characters names being spoken in unison. We decided that we would definitely have the characters Snow Queen and Finland Lady spoken with choral voice as they are main characters in this section of The Snow Queen.

When we started to the read the text with the selected words spoke in unison, we decided that it sounded wrong to have so many people speak one word so we decided to allocate each word to one or two people. This lowered the volume a tad and made the story more interesting to listen to.

After reading through the text a couple of times, we decided to choose where we would have our audience and how we would be positioned. We thought placing ourselves within the audience will add an eerie effect to our story telling as it would seem they were hearing voices amongst them. We positioned ourselves so that there was some sort of gap between the speakers who say lines together very often. For example, James and I say quite a few lines in unison so we positioned ourselves at opposite sides of the class room from each other.

Next lesson, we will focus on Rhiannon's scene and therefore completely finish devising our performance. This means that after Rhiannon's scene, we'd focus on tidying up what we already have and recording the narration which needs recording.

Single - Devised Unit (CP) - Blog 13 - 02/02/16

Today we began making our text message bubble placards for our "Asking Out," scene. To create these, we used card and watercolour paints. We were originally going to paint them light blue but after not being able to find the right colour, we went with a green instead as it was a much easier colour to form.

Next lesson, we will focus on completing these placards by painting the remaining few then adding the text/emojis to them.

Double - Storytelling - Research (Snow Queen)

Last night had put my developed story telling technique into practise! I decided to read my younger sister a bed time story. The story I read was Cinderella and took about 10 minutes to read. When telling the story I took notice of what I had learnt from my research on story telling:

• I varied my pitch/tone when reading to keep my voice interesting to listen to
• I changed my voice completely for when I spoke characters lines to give the effect that the story teller and the characters are all separate people. I also changed my voice appropriately to each character; for example when I spoke the lines of the Fairy Godmother, I was well-spoken and slightly higher pitched but as the Ugly Step-Sisters, I spoke rather common and sharp.
• I paced myself a lot better making sure I didn't rush through the story but not longing it out either.

After reading the story, my sister was well-entertained and wanted me to read another! This has improved my story telling skills a lot more as I've put them into practise. This will enhance my section of narration a lot and therefore improve the whole performance.

Double - Commedia Dell'arte - Blog 9 - 01/02/16

Today, we continued with our masks by adding Plaster Paris over the top of the paper features which we glued to our masks. After adding one layer of the Plaster Paris my features are a lot more distinguished and accentuated. Shown in the picture to the right, my wrinkles on my forehead and large eyebrows are a lot more bolder and embossed, giving my character an aged look. This matches Pantalone's description of being very old from my character research. I also gave my mask a short, hooked nose as this represented power in Commedia masks. This level of power matches the high status of Pantalone in the world of Commedia Dell'arte.
Next lesson, we will focus on adding any more necessary layers of Plaster Paris to strengthen the masks and painting them.

Triple - Historical Context - Blog 9 (Greek) - 01/02/16

Today in Triple, we began applying our mask designs to the masks I brought in last week. We all cut our masks to shape them into what our characters would look like. Following my design made last lesson, I cut out the area around my nose and mouth and also trimmed the forehead up to my hairline. I did this as it would make the mask more comfortable for the performance. This makes the mask look a lot more like a helmet which links to the story better. We then glued paper to the mask to strengthen the mask and define certain features such as the cheeks and eyebrows.

Next lesson, we will continue glueing our masks and potentially moving on painting the masks.