Single - Contemporary Theatre Unit (1984) - Blog 4 - 29/04/16

Today we began with devising a prologue for our version of After Troy!

We discussed the different ideas that we could have for our era and location and we came to the conclusion that a modern day urban London is our favourite! We discussed locations and we thought (linking back to my research for 1940's London) we could set our piece in an abandoned London Underground Station. This links the civilians of the second world war and the women of Troy as this area is their shelter for worse to come. We used a lot of inspiration from the images James found in his research of graffiti and we want to have in spray paint along the back wall different icons representing different Greek Gods (e.g. Trident for Poseidon, Lightning bolt for Zeus).

We then got to devising the prologue itself! We wanted our prologue to display the carnage during the battle of Troy and the depression of the women of Troy. We wanted to show the women at their highest point then show how, when the Greeks came, they're entire lives changed. The song we performed to was, "Nightmare," by Avenged Sevenfold.

Below is our fully devised scene:

• Kat, Hope and Lorna walk in with drapes in their arms to represent babies like mothers.
• When the drums enter in the music, we run in pairs to a woman, (Rob and James runs to Lorna/Ollie K and Charlie run to Hope/Ollie M and I run to Kat) and yank their babies away from them. One of us pull the drapes away and the other takes the other end of the drape to pull the 'baby' apart.
• The girl would run into the drape and be "slingshotted" back into the centre.
• In our three's (with the exception of Charlie's three; Charlie exits to drag on Rhiannon later) we each perform a sequence of torment. Mine, Kat and Ollie M's sequence goes like this:
• Kat attempts to run and dive past Ollie and I but we catch her, Ollie takes her body, I take her legs.
• We lower her down and drag her back by her arms.
• As she struggles we push her forward instead.
• Once everyone finishes we get into pairs (Ollie M, Kat/Ollie K, Hope/Lorna, Rob/ Charlie, Rhiannon/James, Lewis) While James and I start wrecking the set into ruins (ripping off drapes from the walls, breaking furniture etc.) while the pairs take it in turn to run more torment sequences:
• Ollie M and Kat portray mental violence
• Ollie K and Hope portray physical violence
• Rob and Lorna portray sexual violence
• When the three pairs finish their sequences, I walk over to Charlie and Rhiannon. Charlie starts offering Rhiannon water, but I snatch the bottle away and drink it. Charlie then pushes Rhiannon down and exits with me.
• The soldiers all form a formation at the back and hear a call from the distance and we exit.