Double - Dr Faustus - Blog 13 - 20/06/16

Today we finally started getting on our feet and devising the prologue.

Below is our movement we came up with (The song we're using is, "Sencit Music - Devil Amongst Us - Epic Action Rock Dark Suspense Powerful"):

• We start off in a line behind Faustus in a chair. Charlie uses puppetry to force Faustus to create potions and study books. This represents Mephistopheles as Faustus' inner demon.
• Two bars after the beat intensifies, we in the line reach out and pull our hands back in twice to represent the lost souls in hell trying to escape.
• Rob and I drag off Lorna and Rhiannon off to the flats where they would draw half a pentagram on one side, swap sides, finish the pentagram and then walk back to the chair. James, Charlie and Ollie have a short movement section at the same time and they end back at the chair surrounding Faustus who is seated. Rob also goes back to the chair too.
• Everyone mimes stabbing Ollie in slow motion as I walk from the end of the traverse holding up the scroll of the contract. As we get closer and closer, Ollie contracts inwards in fear and then bursts out and we then walk away speedily into the audience. This leaves Faustus in a blackout for two seconds until the lights come back on and he starts his opening monologue.
• The rest of us are behind the audience ready to prepare our costumes behind the flats.

We had some discussion about how we'd perform the hand section in line. There was mentioning of not having any hand actions at all but there was also the point of having hand actions throughout the entire section. We decided to go with only the two hand actions as we wanted to represent the lost souls in hell but still have the audience's focus on Faustus' actions.

We next came to the difficult task of how we'd present the chorus lines after our prologue. There were two very different ideas we had:

• Perform the prologue how we planned then, after we've exited, we'd walk into the audience still in blackout and read a line each. This approach is very Artaudian as it shows no separation between the audience and the actors and the audience's senses are assaulted by sound and light (or lack of); hence the term "Theatre of Cruelty."
• Speak lines of the chorus during the prologue. This is a much more Naturalistic way of speaking the chorus lines as the audience are focusing on the performance and attach to the characters. This is the sort of thing Stanislavski would do.

We discussed our plans further and further and we ended with the decision of eliminating the chorus opening all together. We decided this as, although there were plenty of possibilities for movement, having extra lines movement on top of what we already had to learn was unnecessary, especially as our prologue summed up the chorus.