Double - F(l)ight - Blog 9 - 08/07/16

Today we finally performed Fight or Flight for real.

What went well:

• The chairs were moved quietly
• All timing was correct
• All the lifts were very successful and safe
• We displayed our characters emotions effectively through body language and facial expressions.
• All transitions were very smooth

What didn't go well:

• Lorna and Rhiannon lifted Rob up way too early so this left us standing for about 7 seconds without movement which looked very odd.

I feel this piece conveyed the messages which we wanted it to and appealed more to our more mature audience.

Double - F(l)ight - Blog 8 - 06/07/16

Today, we performed our piece to Year 8's in the hope of recording it and having it as our final performance. After performing it, we realised there were a few issues so we decided to have this performance as a tech run to work out any issues and we decided that we would perform it for real in our Single lesson on Friday to the rest of the class and Ashley. We decided to perform it to a more mature and older audience as they would understand the more adult theme of domestic abuse and discrimination then a younger audience would. Also, they would instinctively take a further interest into the piece and look deeper into the meanings of things.

Issues and need for improvement:

• There were gaps between each scene where the music lagged
• The wrong song came on during Charlie's scene due to technical difficulties

We also have added projection to our performance with questions for the audience to ponder on. This allows the audience to think more deeply about what their watching.

Double - F(l)ight - Blog 7 - 29/06/16

This lesson, we taught Ollie the ending we came up with last lesson, rehearsed all of our separate scenes and tried out our rewind ending idea.

When teaching Ollie our ending, we explained to him the significance of each movement and how these linked with our stimulus which helped him grasp a better understanding of our ending and therefore made him learn it quicker.

When it came to working out the rewind ending idea we needed to run our opening first! Our rewind idea was to have our opening repeated but in reverse order so that it shows that after resolving the issues in the therapy session scene, what happened before (the opening) never truly existed. After running the opening which helped keep it fresh in our minds, we worked out the reverse and performed it.

Finally, Lorna and I ran our scene together. We found a good version of our music (Space Bound by Eminem instrumental) on YouTube and rehearsed but found ourselves getting the opening hand movements wrong. But after further rehearsal and watching back our video of our movement, we got it sorted out.

Next lesson we will do a whole run through of everything and finally perform our F(l)ight piece. 

Double - F(l)ight - Blog 6 - 22/06/16

Today, we finished the ending scene of our our F(l)ight piece. We began with deciding how we'd like to perform this scene and what we'd like to show. We wanted to include chair duets which is another physical theatre technique used widely by Frantic Assembly. We then went on to discuss how we wanted our story to end. Our initial idea was to show where the victims are now and how acts of abuse and discrimination have affected their later life. This was a very popular idea but we struggled to work out how we'd show this with chair duets. We then thought about showing how to mend the issues and the methods in which people use. This meant our chair duets worked really well as we could adapt this idea into a group therapy session kind of scenario. After much deliberation, we decided this was how we'd portray our ending.

We quickly laid an outline of what we'd want to show in this scene. We decided to show how the abuser has seen the error of their ways and tries to apologise to the victim but as the abuse they'd received has affected them so deeply, they aren't too accepting of their apologies. But once the victims see that their abusers really have changed, they react positively and give them a chance.

Below is the movement:

• We enter with chairs and place them in a circle facing inwards and sit. We sit opposite our partners in the circle (e.g. Lorna sits opposite me and James sits opposite Charlie). Rob doesn't bring a chair as he is the counsellor. 
• We perform one movement every beat for eight beats. This movement refers to whether our character is a victim or abuser. Lorna kicks forward aggressively, whilst I cowardly look over my shoulder.
• We then go round in the circle, starting with Charlie, and interact with the person to our left. Our interaction depends on who we are and who we're interacting with. If a victim interacts with an abuser they'll use a more gentle action like a reach for their shoulder while if an abuser interacts with a victim they act very violent such as raising a fist.
• When we get around the circle, we reverse the order and react to the action of the person to our right.
• After this, Rob lifts me up using puppetry, moves my hunched up arms to my sides to represent giving me confidence and moving me along. I then go behind the chair two spaces to my left. This is repeated with James and Rhiannon.
• Rob then stands up each abuser and moves them one seat to the right so they are infront of their own victim. They are then stood up again, one-by-one, and Rob attempts to rehabilitate them by hugging them and offering them his hand; after each abuser is helped they turn their chair and face it the same direction as their victim so they're both facing outside the circle. 
• Whilst he is helping each abuser, the other abusers are performing the same action as the victims whose seat they're in (e.g. Ollie now looks over his shoulder and holds him arm nervously like I did as he's in my chair).
• In cannon, we perform three sequence's of movement's:
• 1. The abuser holds the victim's shoulder but they get shrugged off, the abuser hugs the victim but gets shrugged off, the abuser pulls the victim's shoulder and they turn and face to the left whilst staying seated.
• 2. The abuser touches the victim's leg but gets pushed away, the abuser puts their arm around the victim's shoulders but get pulled off
• 3. The victim gets up and attempts to walk away but when they get too far away, they fall back and get caught by Rob who brings them back to their seat which the abuser had been turned facing them.
• Ollie and Rhiannon start and when they get to sequence 2, Charlie and James start at sequence 1, when Charlie and James get to sequence 2 and Ollie and Rhiannon get to sequence 3, Lorna and I start. 
• To finish, the abusers hold their hands out to their victims, palms facing them. The victims at first are apprehensive but then bring their hands out slowly and touch palms. The chairs are then taken off at the end of the song and Dark Necessities fades in and we perform the opening in reverse.

Next lesson, we will work out the reverse opening and show Ollie our counselling session scene.

Double - F(l)ight - Blog 5 - 15/06/16 *****ADD VIDEO*****

Today, Lorna and I finished our partner scene and selected music and as a group collated ideas for our final scene.

We started the lesson by deciding how Lorna and I would perform our beginning section. We wanted a short sequence before our duet which detailed how we got in the position later on. As Lorna abuses me, we wanted to go very Brecht and give the audience an important message. We wanted to start by having Lorna look like the victim and the audience would assume this but as the scene goes on, the audience realise it's quite the opposite and it exposes how the public assume that domestic violence is always aimed at women.

We decided to start with a short hymn hands section and move into very slow movements; our opening is described below:

• I start center stage and Lorna walks in slowly. She sits down by my side and holds out her hand, her palm facing me.
• I reach out and our hands connect palm to palm. She pushes towards me slowly and slightly but I push her back sharper and she winces.
• I stroke her hand and place it back down then go to stroke her ear, leading down to her hair, I let go and am left looking at my hand for a few seconds.
• I get up and help her up, holding each other forearm-to-forearm. I look at her for a few seconds and she lets go and walks downstage center.
• This then flows into the scene we already have.

The song selected is, like the other two groups, a song by Eminem, "Space Bound." We felt that the overall mood of the song matched the theme of our piece and the song flows rather well and adds to the atmosphere of our duet.

Another thing we added to our piece is at the beginning, as Lorna walks in, she says, "I'm sorry," to me but at the end I say the same thing as she walks away. This adds to the whole effect of society assuming only women are abused and the surprise at the end is even more effective.

We ended the lesson with the idea of an AA style therapy session including the victims, abusers and the innocent (Rob). This would involve chair duets as used by Frantic Assembly which I learnt from my research on them.

Below is the video of our piece:

Double - F(l)ight - Blog 4 - 08/06/16

Today we continued to stage more movement for our scenes in our groups and changed some elements of our ensemble opening.

Lorna and I began by running through what we completed last lesson and tried to think of some new movement. We originally were going to have some sort of kick after she rolls me off of her back but we couldn't think of a way to do this where it looks authentic. Eventually, this is what we came up with for our scene:

• I lean on Lorna's back and we perform a back bend but then she stands up straight and rolls me off of her back.
• We slide one step to the right then turn 180.
• We circle around and face each other and I run towards her, break down to my knees and beg for her to take me back. She kicks me down and I fall, heartbroken.
• Lorna then offers to help me up and I look up at her helpless and relieved. I latch onto her hand and she pulls me up halfway then drops me. She spits at my feet before walking off.

We were also considering having a short hymn hands sequence at the beginning of our scene to display how we got in the situation which we're in.

The song we're planning on doing our movement to is "How To Save A Life" by The Fray however, the other two groups are both using tracks by Eminem ("Stan" and "Love The Way You Lie,") so we may change our music to another Eminem song such as the instrumental for "Mockingbird," or something else soft.

Below is the video for this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Ekvx4b0E8

For the opening scene, we decided to swap James and Rob around as in Ollie, Rhiannon and Rob's scene, Rob doesn't become abused or abuse anyone else; he is the innocent bystander. As Lorna, Ollie and Charlie abuse their partner and Rhiannon, James and I get abused, we decided to swap Rob with James to display the two sides of abuse. Having Rob in the centre suggests he needs to choose between each side.

We finished devising this scene aswell keeping in mind the "choice" Rob needs to make. Below is our movement:

• As Ollie, James, Charlie and I catch Rob from falling (NOTE: Rob and James have swapped movement for the beginning of the scene) we all pass Rob over to Ollie so he can place him on the floor (This represents Ollie as the father figure to Rob as he is his father in their group's scene. Rob lies still in the foetal position.
• Rhiannon holds Rob's hand and then stands up and forms a line with me and James. Lorna does the same and stands in a line with Ollie and Charlie. The victims of abuse stand with their hands in cuffs to represent how chained and restricted they are.
• Rob begins to stand and we all do a sharp movement. We do this three times and take a step back each time. The abusers get more and morelated restricted and the victims get stronger and rebellious. This results in the tables being turned and the power has been shifted.

Double - F(l)ight - Blog 3 - 25/05/16

Today, we began properly staging some movement for our Fight or Flight piece. We started to build up which relationships we want to express and what route we want to take our piece.

We began the lesson watching a video James, Rob and I found which features a lot of combative physical theatre. The video was the music video for Try by P!nk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTCDVfMz15M). This video gave us a lot of inspiration for movement and we will probably use similar techniques in our performance. We also watched a few videos of adverts for equality which is a topic which we feel confident about basing our piece about. The way we linked this to the stimulus is thought of fighting against discrimination or running away from an issue staring us in the face (flight). Below are the adverts we watched:

• Respect - TV Commercial 60 Seconds: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjBfU-bfGII)
• "The Invisible Discriminator" - Stop. Think. Respect. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvTyI41PvTk)

We also took note of which songs we thought would work well to create physical theatre movement to. Below are the tracks we found:

• Sound of Silence - Disturbed
• Down With The Sickness - Disturbed
• Try - P!nk
• Faint - Linkin Park
• Numb (Opening) - Linkin Park
• Dark Necessities (Opening) - Red Hot Chilli Peppers

We then started on an opening to our piece whilst keeping the theme of Discrimination in mind. We used the intro to Dark Necessities by RHCP for our introduction. Below is our movement we came up with:

• James is laying in the centre face down and the rest of us are laying around him. After each beat of the music, we, in canon, grasp the air above us, slide away from James and turn so we are kneeled by him.
• Once everyone has rise, we all slide forward in the same position, Ollie and I, keep control of his legs and the others pull him up so he rises like a pencil.
• Ollie and I grab underneath his arms whilst Charlie and Rob kneel down opposite each other so their legs are steps for James to walk on. Mean while, Lorna and Rhiannon stand in front of Rob and Charlie.
• Ollie and I support James so he can step up onto Rob and Charlie's legs. He reaches over Lorna and Rhiannon but they push him back without looking. James then falls back and Ollie and I catch his top half while Charlie and Rob catch his legs.

Below is the video for this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byrjrxdtqXs

We then got into groups (James, Charlie/Rob, Ollie, Rhiannon/Lorna, Lewis), created a relationship between each other and devised a physical theatre/dance section together.

Lorna and I wanted ours to be a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship where the male is being abused by the female. We chose this because it's usually an unspoken version of domestic abuse and we felt it doesn't get enough coverage. We haven't been set on a song yet but we like the sounds of Because Of You by Kelly Clarkson and Love The Way You Lie Part II by Rhianna due to they're linking lyrics and they're variety in dynamics.

Below is the movement we have so far:

• I start behind Lorna and stroke her face but she shrugs me off. I then hold her waist and she did a head roll into walking away.
• I walk towards her but she raises a hand, I then try again then she crosses her arms at head level and turns towards me.
• She turns away and I attempt to embrace her but she rolls pass me (Round-By-Through - Frantic Assembly) and we end up back to back.
• I lean backwards and she holds me up with her body (Weight Distribution - DV8). She then flicks we off, I turn and she kicks me.

Next lesson, we will work on completing our dance section.

Double - F(l)ight - Blog 2 - 18/05/16

In today's lesson, we conducted research on different physical theatre techniques from different theatre companies including the likes of DV8 and Frantic Assembly.

Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr4J2ppLZZw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzqVld5PD7k

Lorna: https:///www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjKCN6g-dx4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4mXhW7TXQ8 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBgiNgAdB3Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Vy8fb_LZQ 

Rob: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnAPHHYbi-M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cuQ0797sfw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLFFQ-hd9a8

Charlie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cuQ0797sfw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhlShytmHLo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgdw2J5IcVg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcXTk1iGpeY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTSG_vLOuo4 

Rhiannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YC1jlzVzf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxhjVRiozK8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dMB-iWrYp4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTr1JbINkZk 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI9t86hDNC0

Ollie: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dck+tv+domestic+violence

Miss Cordell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rSJT4FuRww

Double - F(l)ight - Blog 1 - 11/05/16

Today we began our first lesson on our new physical theatre unit!

We began with our stimulus and drew key themes and ideas. The stimulus we were given was F(l)ight. The themes we were drew from it are labelled below in our mind map:

Next lesson, we will research different physical theatre techniques from different theatre companies such as DV8 and Frantic Assembly.