Final Major Project

Final Major Project

Finally the time has come to embark on our Final Major Project at college.

The start of this process is splitting into two groups, one of which will be performing the Blue Room by David Hare and the other Love and Information by Caryl Churchill, and the group I have been put into will be working on and performing Love and Information.  

So of course, the very first task we have been faced with is to begin researching, exploring and discussing our play, getting to know and understand it, what it’s about, and start considering how we want to approach developing our own production of it.

Beginning to explore Love and Information

The first thing we’ve done is look through the script together in a lesson where the whole class got the chance to explore and share ideas on both plays. We looked through the different scenes, the structure of the play, the way in which it’s written as well as its content and we began to evaluate what we think of it and try to pick out things such as the style and themes of the play.

What stood out to us most prominently as soon as we started reading through the script is the absolutely random nature of the play; we soon found that it is a series of random standalone scenes, none of which link to each other in any way except for that they may share similar themes or messages. There is no one story in this play, but rather it focuses on a vast amount of scenes separate to one another, each exploring their own characters, situations and stories which then don’t feature again in any other scenes. To try and make more sense of this, we started looking more closely at the actual structure of the play, and it became apparent that despite the seemingly disparate nature of it, it’s actually quite carefully plotted out.

The play is split into seven sections, each of which include seven scenes, all of which are completely different, even down to the length of them; some several pages long while others only consist of a few lines. Now we were beginning to understand how the play is organised more, we began to look at the content of the text, trying to suss out the themes, features and techniques in it and also start thinking about what artistic styles we could apply to it ourselves.

Thought shower on Love and Information 

In the picture to the right you can see a thought shower we created, sighting some different things we noticed within the text as well as what ways in which we think we can approach developing and performing it.

For example, we noticed that the scenes are written very naturalistically.

It is plain, simple dialogue, totally normal conversations with no specific stage directions assigned to it or notes on how to deliver the lines, all it consists of is lines which can then be interpreted and performed in any way we decide. There are subheadings in each section, which we believe to be the titles of each scene, and within each scene there are lines separated only by literal return spaces between them on the page. Other than this, there is nothing in the script. 
There are no specific characters, the lines aren’t assigned to anyone in particular, there is no set amount of actors for each scene, and there are no stage directions, all of that is entirely up to us. We are given the dialogue, and with it complete artistic license to perform it however we see fit, choosing and creating our own characters, deciding ourselves how many people to have in each scene and assigning the lines to people ourselves. It’s quite an incredible opportunity to be given I must say, as although it means there is so much more work for us to do, it also gives us the chance to really use our imaginations and stretch ourselves to not just learn roles and lines but actually help create and develop the very foundation of the play we’re performing. It’s a big task, but I see it rather than as being daunting as being a brilliant chance to push myself and work hard both individually and as a team to reach our full potentials.

So, having seen that we can interpret this text however we want to, we considered and discussed different techniques and styles we may want to use in it. For example, as the play itself is written as so naturalistic, but we want more variety and diversity between the different scenes to create a more interesting and full performance, we’ve been talking about performing some scenes in a naturalistic manner and others in a more abstract way, to create a bold contrast between different parts of the play as well as to add more layers of interest to it and also utilise and display many performance styles and skills we have at our disposal. One of these skills we wish to involve as you can see on the thought shower is physical theatre, something we have all worked on a lot during our time at college. I believe we’ve built a good understanding of the ways in which it can make a huge impact on a piece of theatre and really add to it and shape it in the most incredible ways, and I strongly believe that employing it in parts of Love and Information will make bounds in strengthening the quality of our piece.

Something that we picked up from the text itself, the way in which it is laid out, is that we think it needs to be very fast paced and smooth in terms of transitions from one scene or section to another, especially when it comes to the shorter scenes, as otherwise it could end up looking messy and disjointed, which is not the result we want.

While looking at the different ways in which we could develop the piece, we also considered different practitioners whose styles we could use as influence, and we all gave ideas of whose work we would like to take into consideration while shaping our piece. We thought of Bertolt Brecht, using his technique of alienation at some points to really involve our audience, and I also suggested taking this audience involvement even further by taking inspiration from Antonine Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty”, a style of theatre which assaults the audience’s senses. However because this style usually requires material of dark matter which could be easily disturbing to audiences, I thought we should only take the influence of the idea of involving the senses, in subtle ways such as perhaps through using sound effects.

On this note of approaches to adding technical aspects to our performance, we also discussed the possibility of using very colourful lighting at some points, most likely in our more abstract scenes, not to distract or detract from the acting or quality of performance but to add to visual appeal for the audience.

Group discussions and exploration of the play is really helping me to develop an understanding of it and particularly how we can go about interpreting it and making it our own, but I have also been doing research myself at home into Love and Information, the play itself, the background of it and some research on the playwright Caryl Churchill. This research I’ve been doing is also helping me a lot and what follows is the information I have gathered which is helping inform my creative process.

Research on Love and Information

A very unique piece of work, Love and Information is a play which focuses on societal issues of how we gather and process information, and how our relationships and interactions as humans are affected by a world where information is passed and twisted and shared in so many different ways which constantly inform and influence our views and the actions we take.  We are so greatly influenced by the world around us, in a vast amount of ways, even by things as simple as an advertisement, and Love and Information allows an audience the chance to consider and reflect on how our natural humanity can be affected by these kinds of external information which, though they aren’t intrinsic to what we are as humans, still have a large impact on us.

However, rather than pushing a specific message or political stand point, through her work on this play Caryl Churchill leaves it very open to audience interpretation, allowing people to take away from it what they want. This is one of the things I find so compelling and in a sense very freeing about working on this text; it’s all about exploration and interpretation both for us as a performance company and for the audience we will have the opportunity to share it with.

Themes

Love and relationships: Each individual scene in this play looks at, however briefly, a relationship or connection between people. It explores the different types of love and relationships, whether it be familial bonds such as in the scene “Mother” where a woman reveals to a boy that she is in fact not his sister but his mother and had been pretending his grandmother was his mum to hide the fact she’d had a baby at the age of thirteen, friendships such as in the scene “Affair” where one friend struggles to tell another they believe their partner is cheating on them, a romantic relationship such as in the scene “Grass” where the characters are in a relationship and have children together, or even the connections we have to people less close to us who are simply co-workers or acquaintances, in scenes such as “Lab” or “Remote” where the specific relationship between the characters is not made explicit.

Information: As previously discussed, one of the themes this play focuses on heavily is that of information and how it affects us as humans, how the information constantly bombarding us from the world around can actually violate our thoughts, feelings, privacy, even memories.

Randomness: I think this play also looks at the random nature of things which we see and perform as daily rituals and routines, for me so many of the little excerpts from this text highlight how these small day to day actions and interactions can seem so big to us, but really so much of life is just random, and sometimes things can’t be explained, or there is no reason for them. We all like to believe we have control over our lives, and of course to a certain degree we do, but I find studying this play that it just shows how even when we believe we really know what’s going on and have everything completely in order, anything can suddenly be thrown into the mix, and things can change drastically in a matter of moments… life is unpredictable, but the randomness isn’t something we should try to fight, but rather embrace and accept as part of living. That is something I interpret from this play, and I’m even finding it’s actually helping my approach to working on it, as it’s giving me the understanding that even though it can be frustrating when something doesn’t really make sense, as I find with some of this play, it doesn’t matter, it just is what it is and you have to work with that.

Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill, born in London on September 3^rd 1938, is a British playwright known for her work exploring sexual politics, feminism and sexuality.

She has written almost 60 plays, including Cloud Nine (1979), Top Girls (1982), her first ever play Downstairs (1958), and the most recent of her works; Escaped Alone (2016).

Over the years her merits for her work include winning several Obie awards and an Olivier, and as well as being honoured with awards she is highly praised by many as being one of Britain’s greatest dramatists.

She is known for creating pieces of work which push boundaries both in terms of political messages and themes and conventional performance styles, throughout her long and flourishing career she has continued to constantly refresh and reshape contemporary theatre with her style of surrealism and her boundless imagination.   

This helps me to understand more deeply her work on Love and Information, because it is so different to anything I’ve seen or worked on before, and I now understand that she meant for it to be that way; with it she is again reshaping theatre even in terms of what a play is expected to be like.

Something I find extremely fascinating and quite incredible is that from researching Churchill I have discovered she takes inspiration from practitioners such as Bertolt Brecht with his Epic Theatre, and Antonine Artaud with his Theatre of Cruelty, both of whom in our very first look at Love and Information as I previously discussed we thought of taking influence from and applying elements of their work to developing our performance. I find it hard to imagine this is a coincidence, I think it’s clear they must have had a big influence on Churchill’s style, as it was so apparent to us so soon that the techniques of these two other practitioners could work so well with Churchill’s material.

I think Churchill is intriguing as a playwright, and doing background research into her, her influences and her contributions to the arts is supporting my ability to do justice to Love and Information and better comprehend what her intentions were with the play.

Love and Information: The Creative and Rehearsal Process

Ordering scenes and sections

Now that we had made a great start by getting to know the play and what approaches we could to developing it, we came to the next stage of really making it our own. We aren’t going to be doing the entire play, as it has so many scenes and it would be too much of an undertaking for the time allotted to complete our FMP, so what we’ve done is gotten together as a group and chosen which scenes we would definitely like to do and which ones we are going to cut. To do this, we read the various scenes and each shared with the rest of the group which ones we’re interested in keeping. We’ve now compiled a list of all of those scenes, and the others which no one has chosen will be cut. However, if at a later point we decide we would like to include any more we will revisit these other scenes and which ones we may have changed our minds about, 
as it’s so early in the process that nothing is set in stone yet.

For now at least, the scenes we have chosen to use in our production are as follows:

Ordering scenes and sections 

Section One: Secret, Fan, Lab

Section Two: Affair, Grass, Terminal, Message, Mother

Section Three: God’s Voice, Star, Dream, the Child Who Didn’t Know Fear, Schizophrenic, Recluse

Section Four: Flashback, Wedding Video, Savant, Ex

Section Five: Shrink, Rash, God

Section Six: The Child Who Didn’t Know Pain, Wife, Earthquake, the Child Who Didn’t Know Sorry

Section Seven: Fate, Stone, Manic, Virtual, Facts.

Now we had a clear idea of which scenes our production will consist of, it was time to cast the play. As there are no set characters or numbers of actors in each scene, we’ve had to sit down with our scripts and read through each scene we’ve chosen to keep, coming to conclusions together as a team on how many people we believe should be in each scene, casting each scene, and then assigning each line in the scene to specific actors.

This has taken us a whole afternoon, it’s been quite arduous work, but it had to be done and I think the artistic choices we’ve made have been good and that having made these concise decisions about roles and casting that we’ll now be able to head straight into beginning to rehearse.

The scenes I am cast in are Fan, Grass, Schizophrenic, Ex, Stone, Virtual and Facts. I’m very happy with this as there’s a lot of variation between these scenes and I’m excited at the prospect of stretching myself and pushing to be completely different in each scene. I also find it compelling that for each of these scenes I have the opportunity to create my own characters entirely, through personal decisions and working together with my fellow performers in each scene to help shape the characters within it and the relationships between them.

As this whole play relies so strongly on teamwork and ensemble though, it’s not only our own scenes we’re going to be working on, but rather we aim to work as a team to all contribute to and help develop every scene in the play, truly making the whole thing something we can be proud of. We have decided that one of the most logical ways to work on the text is to develop it chronologically, simply working on each of the scenes we have chosen to use from start to finish until we know what we’re doing for every one, and then we will just rehearse and rehearse until it is perfected.

Section One

Secret

This is the first scene in the whole play, and we know we have to use grab the audience’s attention with it. In this scene, we see two people discussing a secret, one of them trying to get the other to tell them what it is. The nature of this scene is very mysterious, as even when the secret is shared between the two characters, the audience still don’t get to find out what it is. In fact, even in the script, we as actors are not told what it is either. It leaves it up to the imagination of those watching, and we wanted to work with this to intrigue people and have them interested from the get go. The whole idea of a secret is such an enclosed, private and intimate thing, and that’s what we want to convey through the atmosphere and the way Divina and Toya communicate in this scene. We want for it to all feel very secretive so that the audience are involved as soon as the play begins rather than feeling separate from it. So we started thinking about how we can create this effect, and the first thing which occurred to us was that the staging will be important. We want our two actors close together on stage, making it seem very enclosed. In the text there is discussion of them not being able to be close because of this secret keeping them apart, but then of course that changes when Divina chooses to eventually tell Toya what it is. One way we thought of representing this visually is to have the two back to back at the start of the scene, standing right behind one another; symbolising that they are so close together yet not able to completely see eye to eye because of a secret between them. Then, when Toya gives up trying to find out, she begins to walk away, showing she is removing herself further from the situation. This is when Divina chooses to tell her the secret, we’ve decided she’ll stop Toya leaving and turn her to face her. Divina then leans in to tell her the secret, and this is where we had the idea of using choral vocals. The rest of the cast all make the noises of whispering as Divina leans in, masking whatever she may have said even though there is no actual line there in the script, the audience wouldn’t know that. Everything now goes silent, it’s out, it’s done, and our two characters deliver the closing lines of the scene, and then it ends there; the audience given no conclusion.

I feel this is going to be a really effective start to our play and should draw people in.

Something which has come up discussing the ensemble work however, and also because we’ve been thinking about how fast our transitions are, is how we want to stage our piece. We thought that perhaps it would be interesting if the whole cast were on stage for the entire performance, and we used major and minor so that the focus of each scene was clear without people who don’t have a role in it having to leave the stage. Originally we considered having chairs lining the back of the stage, which we could all sit on in neutral and then enter each scene from when necessary. This is quite like something we saw that happened in the National Theatre’s production of A Day in the Country, as we saw their set for it when we sent on a tour there. We really like the idea of us all set on stage for the whole thing, however we felt it wasn’t quite enough to just all be sitting at the back; though simplistic we found perhaps it would be too plain and that there’s more we can do with it.

We’re considering having our chairs set around the whole stage, organised symmetrically but dotted around upstage, downstage, stage left, stage right and even centre stage. This way, scenes can take place between the different seats, and when there’s ensemble work in our scenes we’ll all be more involved in the space the scenes are taking place. This is working thus far, as in secret when we all whisper we now have the sound going around the whole of the stage. I also think it looks good in secret because it makes Divina and Toya look more surrounded, adding to the atmosphere of having to keep something quiet and private.

As for lighting for Secret, we want the focus to be on Divina and Toya, and we’re thinking what better way to do this than to have a simple spotlight on them, which they’re both inside, showing the intimate nature of this interaction between them.

This means they will stay centre stage the whole time however, which changes how it was staged that Toya would walk away and Divina would follow her; they need to be more still than that. So, at the start of the scene, they are still back to back but sitting on the floor, on the phone to one another, and the whole thing is a phone conversation meaning they can be stationary instead of it being more naturalistic where they may move around if it was in person.

The feedback we’ve received on the lighting for this scene is advice from Sharon that rather than a plain white spotlight we use a yellow coloured one, as it makes for a more secretive atmosphere visually. Also, a few of us went to seek out props backstage, including the phones for this scene, and we found some old fashioned phones which we thought would look good in Secret. Divina and Toya tried out using them to see how it looked in one of our rehearsals, however this hasn’t worked, because as pointed out in tutor feedback, we want this play to be relatable to our target audience, and we could keep this in mind even in terms of time period by using modern phones, thus enabling our audience to be able to better picture themselves in this situation and therefore connect more easily to it. 

Fan

In this scene, the entire cast is involved, everyone having at least one line as well as lines as an ensemble. This is proving to be a very tricky scene to work on, it requires such attention to detail and perfecting to get the timing just right, as the whole thing is a series of quite short lines divided up between the whole cast, so cues have to be picked up quickly and correctly in order for the scene to flow. In Fan, it is an unknown number of people discussing someone who they are a fan of, boasting about facts they know about him and arguing saying people are making things up when they don’t really know. This scene can be used to highlight that rather terrifying “fangirl” or “fanboy” mentality so popular in contemporary culture, particularly in the media and amongst young people. Cast your mind for example for a ridiculous argument that may take place somewhere such as a YouTube comments section, where people will bicker over who has more claim loving a celebrity because of the amount they know about them. That is the atmosphere we want to create with this; everyone has to be over the top, convinced they’re absolutely infatuated with this figure they’re all discussing, and even competitive over them.

The only person who isn’t being like this is the person himself they are all a fan of, who Ryan plays. He has no lines, but simply takes to the front of the stage, portraying physically this celebrity figure they’re all so obsessed with. We thought this would be a great time to involve the audience, as Ryan will be on his own at the front of the stage for the whole scene, he’s going to interact with them, waving, pretending to sign autographs, even posing for pictures with them. We’re hoping that involving the audience this early on will keep them engaged following on from Secret where we will have tried to grab their attention.

In this scene, we also want to incorporate choral movement as well as choral speech, and this adds another challenge for us as a group to overcome together. First and foremost we’ve had to decide exactly what movements everyone will be making and when. We want for it all to be exact and the same. As the scene starts we will all be sitting in neutral on our chairs.

Then, at the first line each person has, they stand up as they say it. Then on our second line, we each stand up onto our chairs, and on our third line we stand back down onto the floor. Even though we’ll all be standing up and down at different points, we like this way because there’s still a pattern which everyone will be following, so if done successfully it will look really neat and tidy.

As for choral movement, on top of what I’ve just described, we also have synchronised movements. On the lines which everyone says together, such as “eurgh”, “how do you know” and “you’re making that up” we all turn 90 degrees to face a different direction. The only time we don’t do this is on the last page of the scene on the first and third time we all say “wait” together. Then, our last movement is choral where we all sit back down on the chairs at the end of the scene as we say “what are we going to do”.

We’re rehearsing and rehearsing this every day we’re in college because it’s taking a lot to get the timing and cues right and make sure everybody’s movements are in time, but we are getting there.

We took a film of one of our practice runs of the scene so we could watch it back and observe how the movements looked, although not the whole group was in for this rehearsal so I had to read in for some people. Below is the video.

We like the visual pattern and neatness doing these movements and I think it’s very important to really utilise our abilities as an ensemble in this scene which everybody takes part in, so we’ve decided to definitely stick to the choral movement we’ve chosen.

I like that we’re employing these bits of physical theatre in this scene, I think it’s working really well.

As we move through rehearsals of this scene we’re of course getting feedback as we go along, and what has come up on several occasions is the need to pick up cues quickly and then not rush the lie, something which can be quite confusing because when you come in with a line so quickly your instinct is then to rush it, but we’re definitely improving at this over time.

For my character in fan, I'm trying to work on sounding and looking really in love and infatuated with this person we're talking about. Our body language as an ensemble is fairly neutral in this scene, so it is difficult to embody that absolute passion for someone with movement limited, which is why I'm trying to portray this through my vocals as much as I can instead. For example, on my first line, as I stand up, which I'm doing very quickly to show my enthusiasm and desperation to be involved in proving my admiration of this person, I'm making my voice very loud and with almost a shrill quality to it, in order to portray that fore mentioned desperation. 

For the rest of my lines, I'm adopting an altogether over the top voice for whichever emotion my character is feeling at that time; when she is sceptical and doesn't believe others I'm applying an accusatory quality to my voice, when she is frustrated that none of them know what his favourite smell is I'm prolonging my words slightly and putting on a childish and whiny voice. I'm trying to overexxagerate my vocals to make up for not expressing things physically in this scene except for with our stock movements and choral movement. 

Lab

In this scene we see four people in a lab, two of whom are scientists explaining the process of the work they are currently doing to the other two who are fascinated and taking notes. Considering the nature of the previous scene, we wanted this one to be quite naturalistic, with just a few extra flourishes to add that bit more to it. So for the majority of this scene, it is just naturalistic conversation, but we’ve also decided to add in mime and use some cast members who aren’t playing a role in the scene, Divina, Katy, and Toya, to represent the “chicks” being discussed by the scientists. The scientists are explaining the research they’re doing, how they are studying behaviour of baby chickens, then cutting off their heads and dissecting and analysing their brains to gather information. So the involvement of the three chorus actors playing the chicks is to act out what is being described by Sam and Melody that the chicks do without having to leave their chairs or distract from the dialogue or the where the major focus should be in the scene. When Melody and Sam talk about chicks pecking at beads, Amber and Jerome put out their hands to Katy and Toya, who mime pecking at beads in their hands. Then when Sam says he cuts the head off a chick, he mimes slitting Divina’s throat and she then plays dead. We didn’t want have too much going on in this scene, so we thought that these subtle involvements of chorus members would be just the right amount to add. This means of course, especially as it is a fairly long scene, that it is completely up to the four actors who have speaking roles in it to keep the audience engaged and interested the whole time, even in lines they have which are quite long explaining scientific processes. The main feedback which is coming up as we work on this scene is simply about physical and vocal projection, so that the actors can really perform the piece out to the audience to keep them paying attention.

There is also a slightly comical element to this scene, as Sam particularly plays his role as an eccentric scientist, Melody being the fed up co-worker, and Amber and Jerome absolutely hanging off their every words; it creates a funny dynamic which I believe will help a lot also with keeping the audience interested.

When we first started to look at this scene we were concerned that it would get dull to watch, but I’m finding as we move through the rehearsal process that it keeps getting brought to life more and more, especially now that everyone is off book.

We’ve also decided on the tech we want for this scene now; green lighting and the sound effect of bubbling to create the illusion of being in a laboratory environment. I think that this is successfully effective in setting the scene clearly.

Section Two

Affair

As Section Two begins, we are drawn back again to a situation between two friends, not dissimilar to that in Secret, as one of them has something to tell the other. Wanting to link it back to Secret, making connections of themes within the play clear to the audience, we have chosen to stage this quite similarly; a naturalistic conversation between these two friends. At first we thought they could perhaps be in a social setting such as a bar, but the issue we found with this was that it made it lose that intimate feel of it being just the two people talking about something secret. So instead, we have mirrored Secret quite closely in another sense in that Divina and Elvina are the only people who do anything in the scene, the focus is completely on their dialogue.

Again with the lighting we return to a similar colour; an orange/yellow colour cast across the two actors. I think the simplicity of the staging and delivery of this scene really helps to highlight what’s important in it without other distractions; the connection between these two characters. This scene I think focuses quite strongly on that theme I’ve discussed of how information can affect relationships between people, it’s a brilliant example of that, as was Secret. Both scenes are interesting ways to portray how even something like one person withholding evidence from another can make a big difference to how they feel about one another and the bond between them, and they also both look at how sometimes it’s difficult to know if you should tell someone something because you can think of both reasons for and against telling them. I think most people if not everyone has been in that situation at some point or another and therefore this will make these scenes relatable to our audience and hopefully help them connect with the play and leave with something to think about. 

Grass

This is the first scene in which I have a role with lot of dialogue, and I’m working with Ryan in this scene. The scene is centred on a conversation between a couple in which one of them has “grassed” on someone they know to the cops and the other is concerned about what the consequences to this may be. When I first read through this scene, I felt immediately I would find it interesting to work on, which is why I selected it myself as one of the ones to keep in our production in the first place. Ryan and I discussed who would like to take each role, and having read through the lines we came to the conclusion that I would play the person who called the police and Ryan would play the concerned partner. We talked about what stereotypes or assumptions could be made from the dialogue in this scene, such as what people would immediately assume about the situation or the characters just from the text. This came up when Ryan pointed out that stereotypically, and due to sexism, when reading some of the lines many people would assume that his role was a woman, because the kind of lines it has are those generally given to female characters due to stereotypes surrounding gender roles about such issues as who would be talking about the kids and fretting over a situation like this. We talked about this and decided that because of this it would be even better for Ryan to play that role, because it means we’re avoiding altogether the risk of creating that stereotypically overly emotional female character which can be found in so much fiction. Following the same views as Churchill  herself we think it’s important to be challenging gender roles such as that, and the very fact that there are no assigned genders to anyone in this play gives us the opportunity to do so.

One of the first steps Ryan and I took to developing this scene was simply to lift it straight onto its feet and just run it through, seeing what came instinctively doing so and what happened naturally between the two characters. I found that it flowed naturally and easily right away, just trying it out straight off made it feel genuine and give us the chance to play it out just moment by moment as would happen in real life rather than having planned out anything beforehand. We found as soon as we set off with it that the pace was quite fast, the atmosphere frantic as Ryan’s character’s worry builds up and up and my character’s frustration follows as she tries again and again to calm him down. This really worked; it feels that it fits the scene well. During this heated conversation between them both character’s emotions are very on the surface, even though my character is trying to keep a lid on it, and I can really already feel a sense of this when we run the scene. I think their emotions would be added to even more because of the stressful nature of the situation, the fact that now my character has told the police about whatever it is this person has done the matter is now out of their hands, and especially with Ryan’s character thinking of the worst case scenarios and being paranoid this scene captures quite a tense moment.

Although we seemed to find our feet with this scene so quickly, I find it important considering we’re given no background information on the characters or stories in this play that I take the time to work that out for myself in order to create a more in depth and full performance and portrayal of each scene and character. So, Ryan and I went about deciding what the background to our scene was. First we picked out the snippets of information that the text offers us; the characters have children together and are therefore most likely a couple, and this is what we built on. We’ve come up with the idea that they are a couple around their thirties, who are married and have been with each other for quite some years. We think they have two children, both of whom are primary school age, because there is discussion on the kids being picked up from school. We decided one of their children would be about four and one around seven, and that we would have been together for a while before we settled down, married and had kids, so we would have been partners for about ten years now. Due to the line “you weren’t at work? You could’ve gotten the kids from school”, we also concluded that in their usual routine it would be Ryan who had to do school drop off and pick up duties while my character worked. All of these things indicate to us that normally they lead quite a conventional lifestyle, and that this would most likely add to just how dramatic this situation feels for them, but we noticed it’s definitely Ryan’s character that is more phased by it, and so we started to ponder over why that might be. The conclusion we came to is that perhaps my character is more used to this sort of stress because before they met they lead quite different lives. So we’ve chosen that my character used to have a bit more of a shady life, not necessarily she herself, but that she at least had connections with people she used to know that disconcerted her partner, who had never been associated with anyone “dodgy” or untoward and now found it a cause for great concern that they may be involved in something of this manner because to him it is unthinkable, because before he met her he never had anything to do with people like that or situations like this.

Working out this background information is helping our scene feel fuller and is also helping inform me in making decisions about how my character should act and behave, particularly her behaviour towards Ryan. She is frustrated because she thinks he’s over reacting, but also she is sympathetic because she understands that he isn’t as adept at handling this sort of thing as she is. She’s also concerned herself of course because something always could happen, but it’s difficult as she is trying to take a positive and strong approach to what’s going on as well as trying to reassure herself that she’s done the right thing even if she isn’t sure she has, and Ryan’s reaction to it is making all of these things that much more difficult to keep under control.

We’ve been working on this scene for a while now and I feel it is continually strengthening as we go along. The tutor feedback I’ve received thus far has been technical notes such as projection and making sure I’m not in profile, and I’ve been taking these notes on board and trying to make sure I’m facing forward enough and that my vocal and physical projection is strong and enables me further to really engage with the audience and direct my performance outwards even though my character is focused so strongly on Ryan. 
Below is a short video of Ryan and I rehearsing Grass.

Being off book we’re able to experiment more now, and we’re considering the staging and physicality of our piece more. When I enter, Ryan’s character has just been waiting, stressing, and we want to portray this to the audience visually so they are able to know that right away. Would it be better for him to sit down fretting while he waits, or do something less subtle? This is what we wondered in rehearsal today, and it seems like a good idea for Ryan to be pacing around in the stage space while he waits for me just as the scene begins before I enter, as this is an effectively explicit way of portraying his character’s emotions before the dialogue has even begun. Being restless is a clear indicator of stress and worry, and so that is what Ryan is conveying to the audience in these first few moments. It is also clear from this and the start of their conversation that Ryan already knows what has happened, so we think that my character must have contacted him to let him know before she got home and since that he has just been waiting for her to get back so they could discuss it, or rather, so he could question what on earth she was thinking and let out the stress he’s been holding in while waiting on his own.

I really like how the scene starts now with him pacing and me entering looking quite guilty and slightly unsure of what to expect, I think it sets up the scene effectively.

We’ve also added something else new to the scene; choral vocals from the rest of the cast and a sort of flashback effect as my character explains what she said on the phone.

Now, instead of just telling Ryan what I said, I go “I said-”, then we freeze, the whole cast makes an automated beep sound effect, I step aside into where there will be a spotlight and now I’m acting out what I said actually miming a phone as if this is her casting her mind back to exactly what I did. We’ve added in our own line also, so that before I say “no I won’t leave my name thank you goodbye” melody plays the voice of the person on the other end of the phone asking “would you like to give your name?”

Once the phone call has ended I then freeze again, there is another beep from the ensemble, the spotlight goes off and I step back into the conversation with Ryan and it resumes.

We really like this addition to the scene as it looks convincing as a flashback and we think it will help add something different to what is otherwise naturalistic; we like to keep adding little touches like this in order to really put to use as much of our potential as performers as we can.

The whole scene has come together nicely, I’m feeling really positive about it and the way we’ve worked as a team both Ryan and I and with some influence from the rest of the group to help shape it how we would like.

We’ve received more feedback now further along in our process, the first time we had the chance to run our scene in the theatre where we will be performing. Sharon observed us and discussed with us to think about the pace and the levels in the scene, the different moments at which the stress levels can go up and down, when the franticness should peak and when there should be moments of quiet to create contrast. She suggested we slow down a little as we went through so we could think about where to make these changes in the flow of the scene, and when we did that we found that it really helps make the scene more realistic and believable. Before, it was very much at a high stress level of quite raised voices and hectic tones the whole time, and now we’ve discovered at which moments we can let that settle, and there can be more clear changes in thought process such as Ryan pausing and then realising I could’ve picked up the children from school and asking about it. With these more natural changes in thought process and interaction with one another I think we’ve made bounds in improving this scene further, I’m really happy with the progress we’ve made.

Now that we are getting closer and closer to performing, it’s gotten to the point that we know this scene inside out and I feel really comfortable and confident with it. We’ve been given feedback from Sharon that now we know it so well we just have to be careful not to fall into the rhythm of it too easily and to remember to really listen and react to one another.

In our last few rehearsals I’m going to keep this in mind and try to make sure that when we perform to our audience we keep the scene feeling fresh and genuine and stay in the moment as much as possible.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my physicality and vocals for this character, and so at home and on a day at college where we were given the six W's sheet to do on our characters, I've been making lots of decisions about what she is like, who she is, how she would move, speak and conduct herself, and behave towards Ryan. 
As already established, she is in her thirties, has a husband, two children, a job, and we've already worked on her background and past having involved people who got caught up in bad behaviour. This is all the foundation I'm building the rest of her character on. To maintain a family life and a job especially when you have young children and a husband who is clearly quite a stressful presence at times, I believe she would need to have a lot of focus, drive, and be able to conduct herself and all of this in an organised manner. Being used to handling these things is why I am playing her in this scene as still trying hard to keep things, particularly Ryan's emotions, under control. This is why I'm making hand gestures trying to calm him, and why while Ryan is pacing around and very mobile, my character is quite still, not letting herself get into a state. Trying to keep a handle on the situation is also why I approach Ryan at the end of the scene, trying to get him to just look at me and be still for a moment, attempting to get him to pull himself together, even though this doesn't work. 

In this scene I am under a lot of stress however, and as previously mentioned I think she's still trying to convince herself that she hasn't made a mistake, which adds to the strife that she is currently under. So, instead of being completely confident with my posture and body language, although I'm aiming to make it clear that she is just managing to keep herself together, I'm also trying to display little hints of uncertainty and discontent, for example being slightly tensed up in posture around my shoulders and back and allowing my concern to show through my facial expressions at different points when she is unable to mask it. 

As for her voice, I am trying to be articulate and paced in my speaking, as well as trying to ground my voice so it doesn't go too high even when I'm exasperated or loud. This is because of her age; I want it to be clear through my voice that this character is mature and not young, and I think these vocal qualities are indicators of that. 
At some points I do raise my voice however, or speed up my speech, and at these times my intention through this is to express her outbursts of emotion, namely frustration at Ryan's stressful reaction. 

I find it interesting to play this character as I think she has quite a lot going on internally in this scene, some of which she is even trying to keep hidden, so for me as an actor there is a lot to work with in terms of physicality and voice, and I'm enjoying working out these different parts of how to portray this role convincingly. 

Terminal

This is one of the scenes from the play which is very short, but very powerful in only a few lines. In it a patient is asking her doctor for information on how long she has left to live because of a condition she is suffering from. We aren’t given any details such as what the illness is, but from the dialogue the urgency and sadness of the situation is made apparent. Not wanting the impact of the content to be lost in this scene by the audience not noticing it enough because it’s just a short conversation, we thought about how we could make this scene stand out so the audience really pay attention to what is being said rather than the full effect not being made. Rob made the suggestion that we use the technical theatre options at our disposal to our advantage in this scene, having the character playing the doctor pre-recorded and projected onto the back of the stage. We really took to this idea, not only because it’s something unique, but also because it will help add to that feeling of isolation and how impersonal things can be even for people in a place as dire as not knowing how long they will still be alive. Things can be so impersonal and people so disconnected in society today, and by having someone giving news even this sad simply on a screen rather than there as an actual human we’re making a point about that, I think it will strike a very subtly poignant note.

Message

This scene is one with, funnily enough, potential for a very strong message. Rob was telling us that in one production of this play he saw this scene featured somebody who was clearly supposed to be portraying someone of Muslim belief. In the scene, it’s two characters, played by Ryan and Toya, discussing the notion of people living in terror because killing people and killing yourself sends a message. We could make a strong political choice depending on which direction we take this piece, and we feel that it has to be something Toya and Ryan feel comfortable with because it’s them performing it.

There are so many different takes we could do on this, and there’s a lot to consider because depending on what we chose to do we could make a real impact in one way or another. We’ve been thinking about it and discussing it as a group, and we’ve been wondering if whether because this whole play is so open to interpretation we should keep this scene as exactly that too; rather than making a final decision about what specifically the situation is, leave it to the minds of the audience. This may even say more, because it allows people to think about why they may assume one thing or another about the scene. So, we haven’t chosen any specific agenda with it, we’re leaving it to see what people make of it themselves. I think this is a good idea and I would be interested to know what different people’s takes were on it; perhaps our audience reaction will indicate what people think.

Mother

This scene is about a woman revealing the truth to her son that she is his birth mother who had him when she was thirteen and that the person he has believed to be his mother his whole life is in fact his grandmother. I find this scene really interesting, it’s such an intense moment to be captured, yet the actual conversation is so casual as if it were simply discussing what to have for dinner. I think this is an interest commentary on how distant and emotionally closed off people can be even in extreme situations sometimes.

Katy and Sam act in this scene, Sam playing a young character and Katy his mother. The scene begins with Sam sitting on the floor playing on his game console, could be any normal household, any normal family. Katy enters and tells him she needs to talk to him while “their” mum is out. At first he won’t pay attention to her fully because he is so engrossed in his game, another example of human interaction being stunted and interrupted by external material sources, but then he leaves his game for a moment and she tells him the truth about his parentage. We want this to be a very still and quiet scene, so the focus is completely on these two characters and the truth of the moment, it isn’t dressed up at all or messed with; it isn’t contrived, it’s simply as base as it would be if something like this happened in real life.

We’re keeping simple lighting over the two characters and nobody else is involved in this scene, and the tone stays very much the same throughout, leaving the dialogue as raw as it can be, meaning there’s nothing to detract from what is actually being said.

After the previous scene where Toya and Ryan are quite mobile on stage and almost in an argument, and the scene before that with the large projection, this scene brings us back to base with a simplistic conversation between two humans, all that is present onstage them and their relationship. I think this is really good; it ends section two on a very real human moment.

Section Three

God’s Voice

Section three opens with God’s Voice, a piece themed around Religion, scepticism on the subject and people believing their actions may be justified by their religion. In it we see a conversation between two people, Ria and Jerome, one of whom is explaining to the other how God instructed them to do something. This whole scene focuses on God and religion, so what better setting we thought than somewhere people are praying? We have Ria centre stage on her knees, in praying position, the rest of the ensemble spread around the stage in various other forms of prayer, representing lots of different types of religion rather than just one as we think it’s best to use a platform of performance to represent a wider variety of lifestyles and religions rather than being limited. Jerome then approaches Ria, him being the only person on stage who isn’t praying in some way, and he challenges what she’s telling him about having being spoken to and instructed to act by God.

Jerome and Ria explained that they think Ria’s character has done something bad and is saying that it’s okay because God told her to do it, and that Jerome is sceptical and thinks it is hypocritical to be so religious and then do something sinful, especially in the name of God.

This creates for a bit of a conflict in the scene, but it’s important that it is only subtle and not a rude disagreement because of the setting and the people surrounding them. I think it’s interesting for us to have so much peace and prayer surrounding this situation in which there is somebody so sceptical and unsure of the whole notion, whose words some of which almost go as far as to mock the whole idea by asking quite ridiculous questions such as what language did God speak to her in and did he have a regional accent.

For the lighting in this scene we’re having it so it looks like candle light, softly glowing lights across the whole stage creating ambience and a peaceful feel, in the very centre of which is this disruption, which while though not particularly loud or disturbing would be difficult to ignore especially in contrast to the absolute serenity around it.

Star

A very calm and beautiful scene, Star simply shows us two people discussing astronomy. It is a short and sweet few lines of dialogue, and one of the few scenes in our production which has absolutely no negativity in it; there is no conflict, no cause for concern,  nothing bad at all, just pure and simple conversation over something pleasant. We aim for this to provide the audience with a nice break from the heavier parts of the play and bring their attention to a bigger picture than these human interactions which most of the play is focused on. I personally see this scene as an opportunity to show that even with all of the day to day business going on and how important material things can seem, there is always still so much more in nature itself and in the natural structure and design of the world and humans ourselves than in human-made unnecessary complications to life. Reading this scene, I think of “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves”. Because amidst this muddle of scenes which display the messes and mistakes we as a human race make, we are suddenly taken away from that completely to simply on something as pure and natural as the stars, creating such a bold and immediate contrast between something as real as a star in the sky and something as ultimately trivial as many of the small issues we face day to day, which can seem so huge to us until put into perspective, and the terrible things we can sometimes choose to do. It makes me think the fault really is in us, we can lose sight of what is truly important so easily and get caught up in materialism and falseness, and this is affected so much by the kind of ultimately meaningless information fed to us every day which becomes such a big part of our lives it actually alters how we think and behave. I have no way of knowing if it was Churchill’s intention to make people think about things like this through this scene Star, but that is certainly what I take from it, and I hope that when we perform this moment to an audience they will take something from it themselves.

Aside from my thoughts on the meaning of the scene, In terms of the actual staging, we’re using the ensemble, the whole cast are going to be gazing up into the sky, and we’re having small silver lights sprinkled across the whole stage, as well as a projection of the sky and stars on the back wall, and Amber and Matthew will be stood centre stage just looking up and talking to one another calmly. This one scene doesn’t focus on humans so much but the world itself, and that is what we hope for the audience to get a sense of watching it.

Dream

With Dream we are quickly brought back to the subject of human interaction. We see two people discussing that they wish to have an affair with one another, and by the end of the encounter it is apparent that is what’s going to happen. This is another scene the nature of which is relatively secretive, but we didn’t want to overuse the structure we employed in Secret and Affair. This time we’re looking at the idea of these two characters, Jerome and Toya, getting closer and closer together physically at the same time as they get closer to the idea of cheating and eventually it is clear that they’re going to. When the scene starts, they are on either side of the stage, as Toya describes a dream she has which lead her to believe that her partner is cheating on her. The dialogue then quickly turns to this meaning that she wouldn’t fee guilty anymore if she cheated, and so now they begin to walk closer to the centre of the stage as they talk, symbolising them getting nearer and nearer to breaking and doing it. Eventually they reach each other in the centre, the scene ending on “either way”, meaning if the dream was about her partner or the two of them either way it meant they were going to be together. This is where the scene ends, the lighting goes down and the audience are left to guess at what will happen next, which seems pretty clear considering the content of the scene. The physicality of the characters plays such an important part in portraying what they are thinking and feeling, as body language and gesture reveals so much, so I feel the way we see these two moving together physically and visually reflects their inner monologues of wanting to be closer together in many ways, and I believe that the audience will, even if subconsciously, make that link in their minds.

Our technical aspects for this scene are really gorgeous; they create the visual imagery which Toya is describing in her opening monologue. She talks of her dream, in which she saw a garden, blackberries, a butterfly, a rose, and as she describes each detail of her dream, lights come up in colours corresponding to the things she is talking about, until there is built up a state of green, pink, yellow, even a small orange light portraying the butterfly, and then suddenly, when infidelity and cheating is mentioned, the lights all go to red, a colour associated with danger, lust, passion, all themes surrounding unfaithfulness.

I love that we’re using everything we have to really dig into the depth of each scene and make all the details in the text stand out, having seen it in our tech runs I think it works very effectively and helps add a flourish of magic to the scene, bringing to life the words as Toya speaks them.

The Child Who Didn’t Know Fear

This part of Love and Information is very different to any of the others, the whole scene being a monologue. Ryan was really keen to take on the challenge of this, and everyone in the group is happy with the decision for him to perform the monologue. In terms of how he delivers the speech itself, it’s all down to Ryan, he’s spending a lot of time developing different physicality’s, voices and vocal qualities to tell the story, and I and the rest of the group are giving him feedback as he progresses. Although all of the text is said by just the one person in this scene, we discussed that we thought it would be a good chance for the rest of the cast to work as an ensemble.

The first way we thought of perhaps involving the whole cast was by taking some of the lines out of the monologue, which in it are being said by characters in the story tellers’ story, and saying them as those characters in the story. We thought we could all adopt different parts of the story as he was saying it and act it out, and for a while we did ponder over how we might go about this, but nothing seemed quite right as we went through our different options. As we want the whole cast to be involved, and there are only really a select amount of roles in the story being told, not to mention it is a story which changes location and setting and skips chunks of time, it all just felt it was going to be too messy to try and organise, and we really don’t want our piece to end up looking unprofessional. Pondering over what to do, the idea has been brought up that perhaps we shouldn’t be part of the story, but in fact people listening to it. We built further on this then; they should be children, we could all adopt the physicality and reactions of children listening to this tale at story time. As soon as this idea was brought into the mix it just seemed to fit so much better than the previous plan, and so we have decided that this is what we’re going to do.

We all gather together, sitting on the floor in a group, listening closely to Ryan’s tale. We are upstage of Ryan, but his performance is directed outwards, so he can tell the audience the story and his vocal and physical projection isn’t lost upstage but rather sent out as if the whole of the audience were also at this storytelling. The rest of us react, gasp and all embody the roles of small children listening to this tale of a child who never felt fear, and with Ryan’s brilliant deliverance of the monologue paired with the reactions supporting him from us as an ensemble, the scene is really coming together so nicely.

Feedback we have received is to decide concisely the age range of the children we are playing, so that we can make sure we’re all doing movements suitable to that age together and making it clear to the audience. We have chosen for them to be very young children, and are now all making a more conscious effort to ensure that our physicality’s match one another’s.

I really enjoy these scenes in which we work as an ensemble, I think the fact that we’re getting to do it so much in this production is really helping to strengthen our ability to work together in harmony, and I think this is a really important thing to be able to do in performance of any kind.

My role in this scene as part of the ensemble means that unlike with scenes like Grass I don't find I have great depth to go into exploring the specifics of my character, as all the children in this scene are serving one purpose together, acting as a body of people rather than individuals. So I have been focusing on stereotypical things to indicate that I am a child. I've cast my mind back to work we did during our masks assignment, where we looked at how to portray different ages through physicality. At that time we did work pretending to be children, and I'm applying that to this scene, thinking about the posture and movement of young children and embodying those as much as I can; for example sitting with my legs crossed slumped down because young children don't worry about things like good posture or a straight back, playing with my fingers or shoelaces absent mindedly as small children often have a tendency to fiddle. 
The only vocals I have in this scene are gasps and reactions to Ryan's story, so for these moments I am working on making my vocals quite soft and higher in pitch than usual, to help make clear that I am of a very young age in this scene. 

Schizophrenic

From the moment we first began looking at Love and Information this scene stood out to me. I’m fascinated by psychology and I find mental illness very compelling subject matter to work on. This scene is about somebody who suffers from mental illness, and I thought it would be a good challenge for me as an actor to push myself to portray a character very different to ones I have had the chance to play in the past. In this scene is myself, Divina, Amber and Jerome. Looking at the theme schizophrenia; split personality disorder, what came to mind for us was the prospect of having more than one person represent each character. There are seemingly two people talking in the scene, but why not take the very subject of the text and apply it to how we perform it. We split into two sides, Divina and I representing one character, Amber and Jerome the other. The number of people speaking in the scene builds, it starting with me alone, and then the others joining in, conveying the voices building inside somebody’s head, the feeling of more than one consciousness being present within a person.

“How do you know I’m evil” is my first line, which opens the scene, and as soon as I say this a secretive, hushed whisper is passed through the rest of the people on the stage, my role the only person left out of it, isolated; meaning to set the tone that the themes of this scene are dark. We aim to create a feeling of unease and discomfort, making the audience feel what the character feels, this is not intended to be a pleasant scene but rather one which an audience would not feel comfortable while watching; by this point they may have relaxed into simply sitting and watching, but we want to keep them constantly engaged and on the edge of their seat, bringing fresh and new ideas to the table as we progress through the play.

Divina joins in on the next line, then amber, then Jerome, and then we move together into our pairs on opposite sides of the stage and you can see it is a standoff and there is clear conflict between the different characters we are seeing.

Divina and I are working on the movements and gesture of our role. She is disturbed, we want her movements to be subtly unnatural, disconcerting, as we stand holding hands to signify the two personalities hand in hand with one another, and we stare blankly across the stage to Amber and Jerome, showing no remorse or concern at the matter of us knowing we are ill. When asked “you do know you’re ill” by Amber and Jerome, we look to each other, smile, and respond “I’ve been told that”. The utter dismissive reply and the blatant happiness in Divina and myself is to make our character a cause for concern to the audience, almost creepy without it being too clichéd or over the top.

For lighting we’re having moving spotlights surrounding the stage and at one point a bright flash of light everywhere as the whole cast say one word together, we want our lighting to also be unpleasant, trying to achieve our desired effect of the audience feeling uncomfortable by everything seeming slightly distorted in this scene; lights moving, two people portraying one person, the content of the actual lines themselves which is sinister and discusses Divina and I having been given “signals by traffic lights” to hurt Amber and Jerome. Everything about this scene is twisted, and that’s what we’re trying to represent.

I’ve also been doing some research at home into schizophrenia and how it affects people, in particular what physical traits can be associated with the disorder, because I would like to portray it as realistically as I can.

Some of the most common physical symptoms of this particular disorder include having a dead and expressionless gaze, and strange uses of words or odd ways of speaking. There are of course also many other indicators, but having researched several different symptoms these are a couple which I think are most accessible to portray dramatically in such a short scene through just the way we speak our lines and our facial expressions.

I’m applying what I have learnt about this disorder to my portrayal of the character, hoping not only that it will strengthen the quality of my performance but also because I believe it’s our responsibility as actors to get to the truth of a moment on stage and this is greatly aided by as deep an understanding of the scenes and characters as possible.

I’ve also been looking at the mental effects schizophrenia has on a person, particularly in young people and teens. For example, it makes people feel paranoid and suspicious of others, it affects day to day life making even simple functions difficult to perform due to social troubles as well as mental disruptions such as disorganised thoughts, even hallucinations and delusions. I’ve been looking at these effects so that I can think of these things during the scene and try to get into the state of mind someone with the disorder could actually be in, because as I remember learning about in depth during our work on Stanislavski, the psychological bleeds into the physical, and I believe if I have a clear vision in my mind of what my character is feeling and thinking and going through, it will inform my physicality too.

Recluse

Recluse, one of the longer excerpts in the play, is about someone who is trying to hide away from the media and reporters. Ryan and Sam portray two characters in a house outside of which are the press trying to get information and invade their privacy.

Melody plays the voice of the generic reporter outside, asking questions and trying to get as much information as possible. Inside the house, everything is naturalistic, Sam and Ryan acting out the scene with naturalism, and it is then the goings on outside which we are going to use different techniques for.

We wish to create the illusion of a lot of press being outside, of it being overwhelming for Ryan’s character, but we don’t want to just keep using the entire cast when we need to make the effect of a large number of people. Instead, we came up with the idea of using vocals to make this effect. Ria joins in on the scene, reading out Melody’s words about one second after Melody; thus creating an echoing sound, rather than it just sounding like one person is outside. For a while we had Melody and Ria seated on chairs, but we thought there was more we could do here than that. We tried positioning them downstage left and right, mirroring each other’s posture and movements, yet still this didn’t quite fit. It didn’t help make the impression that there were several people outside Ryan and Sam’s house, because you could clearly just see it was only Melody and Ria.

The next thing we tried was actually having them stand in the audience, becoming part of that crowd. We’re finding this works much better, as now it is Sam and Ryan alone on stage and a whole crowd of people where the reporters’ voices are coming from.

Section Four

Flashback

From one stressful moment straight into another, we want to make the transition between Recluse and Flashback smooth and hold the tension present in both scenes. Flashback features Elvina trying to catch her breath, unable to because of the things she has seen that have disturbed her, and Jerome trying to comfort her and assure her that she is okay. To make this frantic feeling of hyperventilating and feeling caught up in short, sharp breaths, we have chosen to have the scene beginning with heavy breathing from the entire ensemble, creating loud enough sound effects vocally that it shows how overwhelmed Elvina’s character feels. We are all slung over in our chairs, bent double, breathing heavily, creating the sense of being trapped, representing Elvina.

“Breathe” says Jerome, and in unison all of us stop breathing, silence falling, and the only noises left the dialogue between Elvina and Jerome.

This scene is needed to be snappy and frantic, only a small number of lines, the only calm thing in it Jerome’s attempt to comfort Elvina, everything else conveying a sense of urgency and inability to escape one’s thoughts and imagination. This is why we have adopted quite a fast pace for Flashback, immersing the audience in that sense of panic and fear, trying to get them to relate to the emotions of Elvina’s character.

I think this is working successfully, you can feel that atmosphere build in the stage space when we run this scene and with the volume and energy in our choral sound effects this should be sent out to the audience with a strong impact.

The technical challenge I’m finding working on this scene is the difficulty to really project vocally when doubled over with my diaphragm trapped. It is difficult to project as loudly as I could with the correct posture, so I’ve been doing breathing exercises to work on this, breathing in for a count of five, holding it for five, and then releasing it for as long as I can. This is helping me to control my breathing which aids greatly with holding in the breath when we all collapse down in our seats suddenly and to preserve that air strongly enough to be able to release it in that position while projecting.

Working like this I’m finding it much more comfortable and it’s working well for me now, because prior to developing this way of controlling my breath and vocals for this scene I found there was strain on my throat and diaphragm as I was actually breathing very heavily and uncomfortably to create the effect which can be achieved without having to really breathe so heavily that it’s hard not to run out of breath.

Wedding Video

This is another scene which involves the entire cast. It shows a group of people watching a home movie of a wedding from their past. We want to make a nice comfortable atmosphere in this scene, in stark contrast to its successor. This is a happy, cosy scene with family and friends sharing, and we want the ambience to be relaxed and pleasant. First and foremost we thought about staging, and what makes most sense to us is that we all look out to the audience as if the film we are watching is there; this way all facing forward and all the dialogue directed out to the audience.

We all sit in a sort of line, some of us on chairs, others on the floor, all crowded around leaning, lying or sitting in comfortable and relaxed positions, everyone’s body language portraying that of people who feel completely at ease and content. I think having the whole group of us there all together makes such a welcoming and friendly environment which should extend to the audience as well.
For this whole scene I am making my body language and voice very relaxed, to show that my role is just chilling with friends and family and feeling completely at ease.

This scene needs to flow naturally as if a big group conversation actually would, and this is proving to be quite a challenge for us. The main issue we’re experiencing is picking up cues fast enough, and then we find that when we do there is a tendency for us to accidentally rush through the scene.

To avoid this we’ve been running the scene again and again, just trying to get used to the flow of it and the order of every line better so that we know when exactly to come in without then rushing our lines.

This is getting much better as we progress through the rehearsal process, and we’ve also been looking at making our lines almost spill over one another at some points to give the conversation a more realistic feel; like when there is a large group talking people don’t wait for a pause to speak but end up interrupting by mistake and chattering along at the same time.

We’ve been doing this particularly at the middle section of the scene, in which we all start listing things from history which could’ve been filmed if everybody that ever lived had been recorded. This is the point at which we all spill in over one another as our contributions to the list of things that could’ve been filmed come to mind.

We use choral vocals in this scene at the start, where we all laugh together at exactly the same time, but other than this we aren’t using any surrealism or stylistic or abstract techniques, although we did try some out at first and changed our minds because we felt it didn’t work well enough. When we first looked at the scene it was only meant to be about four people who had roles of humans, and the rest of us were supposed to represent Sam’s thoughts when he goes off on a tangent in his mind about whom he wishes there were videos of. We tried taking a line each from that excerpt of the scene, standing behind Sam and saying them as he looked to be in deep thought and the other actors on stage froze, but this just wasn’t working. It was not clear enough that we were supposed to be Sam’s thoughts and the whole concept of it was lost because it wasn’t easily understandable enough for an audience to pick up on what was happening. This is the reason we decided to move onto the more naturalistic style which I have described, and this works much better and makes far more sense both for us and I’m sure those watching too.  

We’ve been given feedback that now we have our cues and the structure of the scene organised clearly we need to maintain that neatness right to the end. At the end of the scene we all get up and leave to our separate seats around the stage, but we’ve not all been getting up at exactly the same time, meaning it looks disorganised. To rectify this we have put in a count of three at the end of the scene where we all stay frozen, immediately after which we then all get up and depart the scene in unison. This is making it much neater.

Savant

The idea we had for the earlier scene Affair that we could have the setting of a bar or a pub we have now thought fits this scene better, as the subject matter is lighter hearted and better suited to this public setting.

We see two friends here, one with the ability to remember everything in absolutely perfect detail and the other asking them to describe different days.

We thought this scene could be used as light relief amidst some reasonably heavy subject matter in the other scenes, which is one of the reasons why we have chosen to set it in the friendly and comfortable setting of a bar/pub.

The rest of us work as a chorus in minor, miming conversations and drinking, creating the backdrop to the scene, and Jerome plays a bartender, who after listening into the conversation chimes in at the end of the scene, curious of Elvina’s unique ability and asking for another example. I like this scene, I think the mood we create is going to make it pleasant and easy to watch, and I believe it’s very important that the audience are allowed some of these moments as well as the more poignant or dark ones to keep a good balance and strike bold contrasts between the different tones within the text.

Ex

This scene features Jerome, Toya and I, discussing our past relationships. In the actual script the first thing you would assume is that it is two people reminiscing about when they were a couple, but we thought we would develop our own take on this, pushing it a step further. We came up with the idea that instead of it being just the two, both Toya and I had been seeing Jerome at the same time without knowing, and now afterwards, on meeting up with him and going over old memories, Jerome begins to struggle to remember which memories were with which woman. How we have gone about trying to make this clear is by dividing the scene into four sections, Jerome speaking every other line for the entirety of it, and Toya and I taking two quarters of it each, I the first and third quarter and Toya the second and fourth.

I think this is an effective way of showing how intertwined the two relationships were, and that Jerome confuses moments with the two different women because it was hard to keep track of.

This is quite a sad scene, all three characters, although finding it within them to laugh a little at past memories, ultimately feeling nostalgic and sad about past memories and what could’ve been. The dynamic is very interesting with all three of us, it gives you a glimpse immediately into what may have happened; hinting that the reason both relationships ended could’ve been that Jerome’s character was seeing both women simultaneously.

To portray visually that Jerome is at the centre of this, the person who links them all, he stands centre stage, Toya and I on either side of him. Though the topic of conversation so intimate, there is space between both of us and him, Toya and I stage left and stage right, signifying the distance between us and him after what happened. We all begin upstage, and together, at a slow and steady pace, we’re going to walk forward together downstage until eventually we reach the front and all stop. We’ve been given feedback that this looks symmetrical and aesthetically good, and also I find personally it’s symbolic of them all moving forward, but then stopping; never quite able to move on.

The very final line of the whole scene is “sometimes”, referring to the fact that they used to cry a lot. Toya and I say this line together, ending on a note which shows that the result of both relationships is the same; everyone is left feeling unresolved, which could be the reason they all decided to meet up again after all the time that has passed.  

At the sections in the scene where Toya or I aren’t speaking, we don’t freeze, but rather go into minor; a technique we learnt about when working on our mask assignments earlier in the year. This is to show that both of us were always present, even when the attention of Jerome was focused on the other.  I’m really happy with these little nuances and subtleties we’ve devised to symbolise sub textual qualities within the scene, and the feedback we’re being given is that there is a very nice tone and feel to it.

I have been trying to decide for a while what direction I want to take to approach my role in Ex. My first instinct was to try making her happy to see Jerome again, and finding reminiscing pleasant for the most part, only a little awkward around him but still able to laugh and smile comfortably. However, this hasn't been working for me, it just doesn't feel natural that in this moment, with this dialogue, she would be in this sort. So I've thought more about it, and decided that she is in fact more awkward and sad than happy. I tried to put myself in her shoes and make it relatable, imagining how I would feel if I was meeting up with an ex partner after years and years, and taking a trip down memory lane with someone who used to mean so much to me and now wasn't even a part of my life. 
That would be so odd, it would feel quite a delicate situation to be in, and this is what I want to portray in my embodiment of this role.  

So I am making my body language quite closed, displaying insecurity and holding back, I'm being quite tender and cautious with my movements, even walking with light steps. At many points I'm showing that she is unable to even look at Jerome much, only making eye contact with him occasionally, at other points finding she has to look away because it's too hard to be that direct with him. I'm not being completely still either, fiddling with my hands sometimes or shuffling my feet subtly to indicate nervousness she feels around her ex because of how many emotions she still holds about him and what happened between them. 

For my voice I am following the same tone, making my vocals quite soft and unsure, almost stuttering at times just with little pauses mid sentence to give the audience the impression she is even trying to hold back from sounding upset or letting her voice break. With the unsure sound to my voice I also intend to convey that she is unsure exactly of what to say or do, not sure how he would react, and this for her would be so sad because there would have been a time when she could be so natural and open with him, and that had all changed now. 
Altogether I want to show that she feels wistful, sad, that she misses old times, she's nervous, and these are the main things I'm trying to show through my characteristics and mannerisms in this scene. 

Section Five

Shrink

Sam and Ryan act together in this scene, Ryan trying to explain to Sam that things from his past which used to just be pain now have meaning, and Sam’s response asking him to explain what he means frustrating him.

They sit at the front of the stage, in what can be seen quite clearly as a stereotypical therapy session, patient and doctor sitting opposite one another, Sam’s body language open and trying to engage Ryan while Ryan sits insecurely, looking on edge and not as relaxed.

We try to find comedy wherever it is in this play, as it is quite subtle in some places, and in this scene Ryan and Sam have chosen to highlight it by really playing up the stereotypical aspects of their roles; Sam’s voice posh, slow and stereotypically “professional”, Ryan more shaky and seeming a little unstable as he talks, and we see the conversation escalate to the point where Ryan throws a little strop and Sam comes in with a sarcastic comment about how Ryan should go to his analyst and have something “turned into meaning”. This is a comic moment, the sarcasm on Sam’s part and the dynamic between the two characters helping transform this scene into something more entertaining and not taking itself too seriously.

Rash

A rash, something which can spread, not only on one person but from one person or place to another; this is what we thought of coming up with ideas on how to do this scene. The dialogue takes place between only two people, but we’re involving the whole cast, showing the rash they’re talking about isn’t isolated. We want to generate that feeling you get when you think of something like a rash where you almost start to feel itchy yourself just imagining it. So as an ensemble as the dialogue takes place we all itch and scratch ourselves, and then repeat the last line of the scene all together; “did you get the new cream?”, showing everyone is  being affected by the same problem and that it’s widespread.

God

We had a group discussion about what to do with the scene God, reading through it and wondering who it could take place between. The dialogue is one person questioning another about God and having meaning, the other person clearly annoyed by the conversation and not interested. This brought to mind for many of us the people who stop you in the street or in public places either preaching, handing out fliers or leaflets or trying to convert you to a particular religion. Especially in London, this is something which people encounter a lot day to day, all of us in the group having experienced it at least once. This means it’s something relatable to our audience, so we’ve gone with the idea of using this as the situation taking place. First we thought of having it set on a street, with Toya trying to walk past and getting stopped by Matthew. We tried this out, but found it difficult to stage and saw that it looked a bit messy. So we began thinking of other locations this could take place, and this is when we thought of the people you sometimes encounter hovering around supermarkets, particularly near the checkouts, stopping people who pass to preach or talk about whatever religion they are devout to. We were going to have Toya doing her shopping and Matthew following her around, but again this looked untidy and therefore didn’t work.

Often the people who approach you in public try to corner you, so we thought using this to eliminate the issue of the scene looking too messy by having them somewhere they wouldn’t be moving around.

So we started creating the setting of the supermarket, with checkouts in the foreground, the idea in mind that we could have Toya working at the till, and Matthew in the line bothering her with this conversation while she just tries to get her job done and get him to move along and keep the line moving.

This works much better, as the stage isn’t too busy and the focus is on the actual conversation rather than Matthew following Toya around which was distracting from the content of the dialogue and made it harder to follow.

To make the setting clear and create the rest of the supermarket around the two main characters, the rest of us set up the stage clearly as a shop, some shopping in the background, pushing trollies or carrying baskets, Melody working on another till, some of us going through Melody’s till and purchasing our shopping.

Sharon has said this looks much better than us all just walking around on a street which wasn’t as clear as this is, and has also given the suggestion of making supermarket till “beep” sounds of scanning items to add to the illusion of the setting. We’re doing this now and it is successfully adding to making it more realistic.

Section Six

The Child Who Didn't Know Pain

This again only has two main roles, played by Ryan and Sam. They are two children discussing what pain is because one of them has no signal going to their brain from anywhere in their body, so he has never experienced pain and doesn’t know what it feels like. Being quite a long scene, as a group we think it’s necessary to make the most of the humour in it for the entertainment value so we don’t risk the audience zoning out part way through.

Sam and Ryan are doing this really well, making it comical, and completely adopting the voices and physicality of children as well.

As for the rest of us, we don’t play a part in this scene except for one moment where we’re involved, as Ryan pinches Sam, Amber, Toya, Jerome and I mirror their movements and the line “ah, get off”. Because we’re sitting on the chairs at the front of the stage and therefore in the foreground and look as if we’re part of the scene we thought it best to have us interact in it even just at that one point, and it’s also another good opportunity to utilise our chorus work skills.

Wife

We have put a lot of thought into wife, how to stage it and use the lines as effectively as possible to really make an impact with this scene.

In it are Jerome, Amber, Melody and Toya. In it a woman is trying to convince a man that she is his wife, while he remains convinced that he has lost his wife and everyone who loves him and that she isn’t really her. Our initial reaction was that he could’ve been in some kind of accident and be suffering from memory loss, so at first we were going to have Jerome lying in a hospital bed, with the three women all playing the exact same role, showing that in his mind his vision was blurry and he was either hallucinating or seeing multiples of the same thing, like when your vision doubles up. We thought we could make something unnerving out of this, so the audience aren’t sure who is telling the truth, if these women are really there, are they one person or more than one, is Jerome crazy or imagining things, or is he actually being tricked and lied to? There is definitely such potential for mystery in this scene and that’s what we want to achieve. We tried having Jerome lying across several chairs for them to represent a hospital bed, but it didn’t look right, so we scrapped that idea.

It would have meant he was restricted physically too, and when trying out different things with this scene we found that Jerome breaking away from the other characters on stage and trying to get away from them looked really effective, so we want for him to be able to be mobile rather than limited in movement.

In fact, the physicality in this scene has a lot to do with the impact we’re trying to make; we want all three women trying to reach out to Jerome and reassure him that they’re his wife, with him suspicious and untrusting, not even wanting to be near them. This shows strongly the conflict in the scene and the mistrust.

Another way in which we wanted to make this undercurrent of unease and suspicion is with the lines the “wives” say. We have them all reciting some parts together in complete unison, while at other times speaking on their own and arguing their own corner, all of this adding to that uncertainty for the audience of what to believe the truth is or what’s going on. Using technical theatre to add even more to this eerie air, while all three women speak together joining in with what one another are saying, we’re having flashing white lights over them, the speed of the flashing getting more frantic as they go on speaking and each of them join in. this looks quite chilling, the oddness of it putting you on edge; feeling this even as a cast member I’m certain the same effect will be made on our audience.

Furthermore, at the end of the scene they’re left with no conclusion, only wondering what is actually happening and what will happen next; and there is something quite unnerving and almost sinister about  the end as we have Jerome surrounded by the three women, saying he is frightened and asking what they are. We hope the result of this to be that the audience are left feeling that same uncertainty which is building up throughout the whole of the scene.

Earthquake

We are taking this opportunity to make a change of tone completely. This scene could be done in quite a manner of different ways, as it is essentially just two people talking about an earthquake they’ve been hearing about. It is Elvina and Katy talking about it. Originally they tried out Elvina being genuinely distressed by the subject as she talked about it, but they’ve been developing it differently throughout our rehearsal process, now it becoming more comical and them interpreting it in their own way for humorous effect.

The matter of their talk is so serious, but the two characters discuss it as if it’s just chitter chatter about something trivial. Their dismissive attitude towards it and apparent inability to really connect on any level about what they’re actually discussing is not only funny theatrically, but also quite a comment on one of the themes of this play being that humans can become so disconnected and switched off from genuine emotional responses because we’re so desensitised. Even Elvina who is saying she cried when she thought about it is in this scene just talking as if it were any old gossip. The casual nature of their talk warrants an equally casual setting, and we’ve thought of putting the in the hairdressers, just going about their day to day, and I suppose in the scheme of things rather shallow routine while they talk about this absolute tragedy where people have actually died, the both of them just flicking through magazines as they chat.

As well as this scene being funny, them even adding to it by putting on regional accents stereotypically associated with the kind of characters who would interact like this, I think it also makes quite a strong point about desensitisation in contemporary culture particular in relation to the media, which we can even see them consuming in this very scene as they read their magazines.
Following the casual nature of this scene and it's setting, and the stereotypes in place as well, being a hairdresser working on Elvina's hair in this scene, I'm adopting relaxed, casual posture, and doing mime which is a clear indicator of who I am and what I'm doing, styling Elvina's hair. 

The Child Who Didn’t Know Sorry

Here we see melody and Ryan trying to get their son Jerome, who is playing a child, to apologise for hurting someone. This is a really short scene, so we’ve done as much as we can with only five lines in it. Melody and Ryan divided up between themselves the parents lines and Jerome responds each time that he’s not sorry, Melody is the mother pulling him along trying to engage him, Jerome breaks away from her throwing a strop, and Ryan is the father slumped over in a chair acting drunk and not really giving Melody any support; a commentary on the information fed to someone throughout their life, such as Jerome as a child always seeing his father’s lack of involvement and empathy, influencing people to behave in certain ways and think different behaviour is acceptable.

This scene concludes section six as well, and we’ve chosen to all join in on the very last line in it, shouting “you have to say it” at Jerome, making a loud impactful ending to the scene and the section.

Section Seven

Fate

In total opposition to the last long conversation we saw take place which was delivered so dismissively and without much investment from either person, here we have two people almost debating over how much as a human is our choice and how much we’re bound to do because we’re made that way and it is just part of who we are.

It’s an interesting excerpt of text to have in this play as it breaches the very subject I was just discussing in relation to the child who didn’t know sorry, about how much we make our own choices and are ourselves and how much we are changed by the influences around us and our natural builds as humans, is there such a thing as fate and if so what is it decided by, the whole subject of nature vs nurture, the psychological and the sociological.

We’re really making this scene as different to Earthquake as we can, a lot of our work on Love and Information trying to draw parallels between different people, situations and attitudes. Elvina and Katy were quite absent minded, seemingly laid back and normal people just having a casual chat, and so instead of repeating that, in Fate we see Elvina and Divina debating in quite a scholarly way, representing a different kind of people, those who feel that their opinion is right and makes them more intelligent or above others, rather than Katy and Elvina’s characters who disagreed but didn’t feel competitive about it, whereas Divina and Elvina are both so sure they’re right that there’s quite an argumentative feeling between them.

Taking this parallel further, we’re also setting this in a public setting, but again one completely different to the last, this setting supposed to represent a high end, posh restaurant and a different crowd of people to those we saw in the hairdressers. To show the demographic and perhaps even class of people in this scene, I am being stereotypically "posh" in movement and gesture; my posture straight and proper, my legs crossed neatly as I sit at my table, my gestures polite and gentle, conducting myself very tidily altogether. 
Of course, as in Earthquake the rest of us are in minor so as not to distract from the major focus of the scene, so we are all in mime again rather than making any sounds like we did earlier in the play in Savant, and we are finding this works to make the setting around Elvina and Divina’s realistic without taking away from their performance. 

Stone

Stone shows one person who is clearly the victim of bullying and has some sort of personal issues, and what appears from the text to be at least a few people talking about him and then participating in bullying him.

Everyone wants to be in this scene, we’re going to make a kind of mob mentality of a big group of people all ganging up on someone, showing the severity of the bullying that takes place. It makes most sense to us for them to be young people, as it is amongst young age groups that you most commonly witness this manner of bullying taking place.

We wish to portray the isolation and loneliness that victims of bullying face as well, so we have every one of us playing a bully all together in a big group and Ryan on his own in the corner being their target.
To really generate the full effect of people being mean, menacing bullies, as an ensemble for this scene we have been working together on physical traits and how to all move and stand. We're al grouped together quite tightly to display that pack mentality, we're quite brutish and careless with our movements, for example when I push Sam forward forcefully. We stand with casual, stereotypically "teenage" posture, all physically embodying the confident, cocky, bullish nature of these people in the way we stand and move.
For my voice I am also trying to portray this, making my voice deeper and less refined or friendly sounding, and my manner of talking more lazy and thoughtless than for example when I'm playing a thoughtful adult character like in Ex. Especially all together as a chorus, I think we're creating a realistic group of these characters, ones you would believe capable of cruelty and hopefully the audience can see from the way we're behaving and moving as well as our words and actions that we are a threat.

We’ve interpreted the middle of the text in this scene to indicate that they steal the “special stone” they say this boy has from him and start playing with it, we thought this could be the point at which they start bullying him in this moment even though it’s clear from the way they talk about him and behave that it’s a regular occurrence picking on him.

We’re all grouped together centre stage, Ryan downstage right alone, sitting in a spotlight playing with his stone, which we have decided to mime to avoid any accidents or mistakes involved in using an actual prop.

When we start talking about should we get it from him, we all push Sam over to go and do it, again displaying the kind of nastiness you see in these groups, people even ganging up and pressuring one of their own, as Sam is the only person who seems sympathetic and not wanting to take the stone or be mean to Ryan.

A lot of the times we’ve rehearsed this scene and tried to block it and work out the staging, because there are so many of us, it looks really messy and exactly what’s going on is confusing, so we’re putting a lot of work into our ensemble for this. We’ve come up with the idea to use slow motion, choral movement and choral speech to create a strong, clear chorus and make the scene professional and organised. Sam is pushed to get the stone from Ryan, and up til this point everything has been naturalistic. Now however, as Sam throws the stone back over to the rest of us, we all go into slow motion together. Sam throws the stone, I catch it, I throw it to Jerome, and then Jerome throws it off stage. As he does so, he leans back, and still in slow motion, we all lean back with him, then as he releases the stone and throws it, we all lunge forward in unison and resume normal speed. All this time Ryan, who adopts the same speeds as us to keep the choral movement consistent, stands up and tries to stop us, then goes offstage to get his stone. We all start talking about him getting it, again Sam saying he thinks he might need that one and not be able to find it, still clearly sympathetic, while the rest of us disregard his comments entirely and continue to build up the cruelty to the point where we start hurling stones at Ryan and shouting at him.

At this point originally we all starting picking up stones, laughing, throwing them at Ryan as he crosses back over the front of the stage, and calling out different variations on “here have a stone”.

This was always such a jumble though, and we’ve been told that it looks messy and ruins the work we’ve put so far into the strong ensemble work.

It was suggested by Sharon that to tidy it up we all throw one stone at the same time, saying “have a stone”, and then we all freeze throwing it.

We’ve tried this out and it feels much better for us and apparently looks better too, so this is what we’re sticking with because up until this point we haven’t been quite satisfied with our ending to the scene because it felt a bit all over the place. Now however it is much more together and it feels like a stronger end.

Manic

When we first compiled the list of scenes we wished to have in our version of this play, Manic was one of the ones we wanted to keep in.  Ria was cast in this, however she has expressed her discomfort with the length of the lines she would have to do as it has some very large paragraphs in it, and so we’ve come to the decision as a group to cut this scene from the play, because Ria wasn’t happy with it and no one else was keen enough on this scene in particular to re cast it and take on the role she would have played.

Virtual

This scene has intrigued me from the very first time we did a read through of Love and Information. It reminds me of the film “Her”, set in a futuristic world in which the mobile device Siri has evolved to the point that everyone uses it for everything all the time, and in the film one man falls in love with his Siri.

It’s a fascinating concept, and it is very similar to what is happening in this scene. One person, the part of whom Jerome plays, is arguing about how real their relationship with a virtual being is, claiming that she is able to love him even though fundamentally, being virtual, she doesn’t actually have the capacity for feeling. However, because of the absolute intelligence of the technology, it seems real enough to convince this man beyond all reason that somehow it has developed human abilities and emotions.

The people with speaking parts in this are Jerome, Elvina, Sam and I.

We considered for a while what would be the best approach to take to this, and it felt most right to us that we really use the virtual theme and actually have the voices in the scene that aren’t Jerome as computers. Jerome’s character is in this world where he is so engrossed in technology that he has fallen in love with and has virtual sex with a computer game, he’s completely surrounded by a virtual reality, and that’s what we want to convey; this is why Sam, Elvina and I are going to be playing virtual entities ourselves.

Jerome is the only person is the whole situation who is actually human, he has no real connection to anyone else here; he’s basically alone although he couldn’t accept that. So we are placing Jerome centre stage by himself, I, as I start speaking first am positioned centre stage also but set behind him, and Sam and Elvina are on either side of him. The rest of the cast surround us all in a symmetrical formation, remaining motionless and expressionless for the duration of the scene, as do Sam, Elvina and I.

We are all emotionless and virtual, only saying words we are created to know and be able to say, and Jerome is expressing himself emotionally and physically while none of the rest of us do. I begin the scene, Sam joins in a third of the way through, and then Elvina joins as well the next third of the way through, we all speak our lines in total unison, with deadpan emotionless and robotic voices, displaying clearly what we are, nothing more than devices of technological intelligence.

This dynamic portrays how different Jerome is to the computer he thinks he is in an actual romantic and sexual relationship with, and shows the extent of his delusions, because even surrounded by beings which while able to speak to him have no genuine or real connection to him, he still can’t see that this is the case with his virtual “girlfriend” too. I think the artistic decisions we’re making with the staging of this scene and the roles that Elvina, Sam and I play are going to really send that message; it’s almost a warning about the way we’re moving further and further away from a place of natural humanity and closer to a world completely dominated by technology.

Feedback we’ve received which we’re working on is for everyone who isn’t Jerome to really focus on consistent stillness, making sure that even stationary we don’t make any movements such as even slight twitches; we want to be as statue-like in our physicality as possible. To work on this I’m focusing a lot on my breathing and relaxing my muscles for this scene, so I can adopt a complete stillness without any tension that may cause little movements.
As well as being completely still and expressionless to show I am just a computer in this scene, I've been practising my vocals a lot to really get into changing from the last scene where I am so animate and my emotions are clear in my voice, to this scene where my voice has to sound totally robotic and completely devoid of any emotional qualities. It's an interesting challenge, having to dismiss everything we work on about how to use your voice expressively in acting, now that all has to be stripped away and my tone, pitch, pace, everything has to be completely neutral. 
I'm enjoying the challenge of it; one of the things I really adore about Love and Information is the sheer variety and range within ourselves we get to explore and improve by being so many different types of characters and roles all in one production. 

Facts

The last scene in the entire play is a series of questions and answers.

We pitched a few different ideas for this; it could be study partners, some kind of challenge, maybe a questionnaire game show, and the one that stuck is the game show idea, because as it is the last scene we want a way to have everybody participating, and this idea allows for a large number of people, facilitating our full cast.

We’ve chosen Katy and Ryan to play the hosts of the Game Show, asking questions alternately.

The rest of us are split into two teams, all of the answers divided out and at least one assigned to each cast member so the whole company participate in this scene both physically and vocally. We were going to have one person from each time playing the team buzzer to use physical theatre; however this idea hasn’t stuck because we think it will be better for everyone to have an actual character in our very final scene.

In terms of staging, we have one team downstage left and one team downstage right, with Katy and Ryan centre stage upstage. For this scene only we’re having no chairs at all, clearing them all to upstage in the transition between virtual and this scene. This will give us a completely clear space to use for our final scene and our bow as well.

First we had our teams facing one another, looking at Ryan and Katy as they asked the questions, but the feedback we’ve been given advises that each team face diagonally forward, the team on stage right facing the opposite corner of the auditorium and vice versa, and we now don’t look over at Ryan and Katy at all. This means our performance is directed much more out rather than being as contained as it was, and also none of us are in profile which is far better.

We would very much like to end the play on a happy and entertaining note, so this scene is going to be fun for both us and the audience watching, it being light hearted and enjoyable. So for the whole of this scene we’re having very high vocal and physical energy levels, creating an atmosphere of excitement and tension as we all scramble to answer the questions and win the game. This is working well; it means the whole show will end on a high note which I think is a really positive way to finish.

To make the show more believable we’re having sound effects, but creating them vocally rather than with technical sound effects. Sam makes the sound of the buzzer each time someone reaches forward and hits their buzzer to answer, and I am making a “ding” sound effect when someone answers a question to indicate that it was correct, and then at the only question anyone gets wrong, Jerome is making the incorrect answer sound effect.

We’re also having music to start the scene, as we all cheer, and bright, colourful lights flashing all over and spinning on the stage, everything about this scene bright and lively.

Throughout this whole scene we’re building up a competitive mood on stage, all of us showing how desperate we are to answer the questions and beat the other team, and this mood peaks at one point quite near the end of the scene, where Sam breaks away from his team and walks up to our team to answer a question, completely confident that he’s right and trying to make a big show of it. We’re using this as a joke, as he has such cockiness answering and coming over and then the incorrect answer sound is made to indicate he was wrong. At this point, while returning to his side of the stage, he just keeps walking off, too embarrassed to stay on. It is funny moments like this which are helping as well to make this last scene really fun.

We struggled to figure out how to fit one line into the scene however, where one character asks “do you love me”. This is of course something which wouldn’t make sense as a game show question, and later on in the scene it is answered with “yes, yes I do”. We considered cutting it, but then thought that perhaps as there are two hosts, maybe this could be an exchange between the two of them. Ryan asks Katy if she loves him mid all of the questions, and we all turn to look over, confused at what is going on. She replies “don’t do that”, and the questions resume. Then however, just before the last answer, she tells him that she does, and they embrace one another in a hug. This is a way to have a very sweet actually human moment on stage, bringing nicer meaning to this scene; something else which I think makes it a lovely way to end the play.

Then, after she says this, both teams at the same time lunge forward for our buzzers and all scream out the final answer. Everyone on stage now freezes in this position, and the lights go down.

I really love this ending, the whole scene has been vibrant and now it ends on an equally energised moment, concluding our whole production with a bang.

Rehearsal in the drama studio 

We know what we’re doing for all of our scenes, the transitions from scene to scene are smooth, and our seating order is organised well so that everyone knows where on stage in which chair they should be sitting at any given moment, but something that we want to make clear is the transition between the different sections of the play. Because it is divided into seven sections, we want some way to signify where one section changes to another, to break it up a bit more instead of having one constant speed of changes between every single scene. However, we still need for it to be smooth.

We considered the option of having everybody change seats at a section change, but this was too complicated and liable to go wrong, and didn’t look clear enough. Instead, we’re going to put in pauses between the sections, a pause of ten seconds each time one section ends before the next begins.

To do this, at the end of each scene that closes a section, all of the actors on stage freeze in their last position and maintain that freeze for the whole ten seconds while music plays over the top, then they all disperse and the next set of actors get up and start the next section.

The music playing over this is very helpful, because otherwise we found people were breaking from the freeze frames at different times and there was too much room for error with everyone just counting in their heads. The clips of music are timed to be exactly ten counts, so now we know to freeze until the music finishes and then move.

Feedback we’ve been given tells us that this is working well, and that especially now we’re all freezing and then continuing at exactly the same time, these pauses between the sections not only are still smooth but also help with the pace of the whole play to make sure it isn’t rushed and give it some moments where we aren’t just going from scene to scene to scene.

Setting up the stage in rehearsals 

In our company as well as our roles as actors and all contributing to the creative process and the making of our production, we’ve also all had individual roles to fulfil in our company. 
My role is Assistant Director, which has consisted of trying to keep everyone in order, organising things such as making sure everyone in the company is responsible and in for rehearsals on time, and chasing people up contacting them to find out why they’re late if they are and when they would be going to arrive. 
This role has been a lot about trying to keep things running smoothly, whether it be by keeping tabs on where the other company members are, gathering people for warm ups at rehearsals or helping setting up and taking down the scenery and props, as well as finding props and costumes from backstage for our production.

Of course with every role we each have in the theatre company comes responsibility, but I am taking it as an opportunity to rise to the challenge of stretching myself beyond the role of acting and creating and using and developing further skills in organisation and communication. The chance we’ve all had to fill different roles in this theatre company for our FMP has been really interesting and beneficial, and is also helping a lot with keeping everything running smoothly because there’s someone covering everything that needs to be done.

The whole company and play is completely organised now, everyone knows exactly what we’re doing for each scene, and I feel the bounds in progress we’ve been making as a team over the last number of months are tremendous. We’re now in our last few days of rehearsal and everything is really coming together, even though things were a bit wobbly when we first came back after our two week break. I’m feeling confident with our piece, especially now we’ve had the chance to rehearse in the theatre and do tech and dress rehearsals.

Now it is just about going over it again and again to really fine tune the whole thing and just make it the absolute finished product in time for our performances in a few days’ time.

Evaluation

We have finally performed our Final Major Project now, both our matinee and evening performance are done and dusted and now all that’s left to do is evaluate our work and also how we feel the performance itself went.

This whole process has been one which has required so much work and effort, at times it has been quite challenging, and of course we have faced little issues and bumps along the way as is always the case when creating a piece of work, especially one of this scale. Despite the hard work it has required though, it has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience as well, all the effort we’ve been putting in feeling completely worth it and now I feel it has really truly paid off.

Particularly the last two weeks have been rather stressful, but I feel proud of our group that our work ethic, harmony as a team and dynamic as a theatre company hasn’t been affected by this; we’ve been persevering and getting the job done.

And the final pay off to all of this really has been our actual performances, which I truly feel tremendously pleased with and proud with all of us for.

I believe both went successfully for several reasons; I feel that the energy was brilliant, I can say with confidence that I feel I completely gave my all to both shows, putting in 100%, and I felt that the whole cast put in this effort too and there wasn’t a single person letting the side down. We kept scenes lively, there were no disasters with lines, even when people made little mistakes we all managed to smooth over them easily and therefore they wouldn’t have been noticeable to the audience; I feel we handled the whole performance very professionally. Our transitions were smooth, each scene flowed to the next without any hiccups, and between each section everybody maintained the freezes and I think this made the breaks between the sections successfully clear.

Our ensemble work was strong, everybody absolutely knew what they were doing and our moments of choral speech and movement all went well, making me feel so happy with the quality of our work as a body of performers together.

Our reactions from the audience, both the student audience and the different demographic of people who came to watch in the evening, where what we hoped for. I believe that we achieved our goals in creating our desired atmosphere such as for example humour or more thoughtful moments, as the audience laughed when appropriate and were silent when there were the sadder or quiet moments in the play. This indicates to me that they were engaged and I felt a good connection to the audience throughout, I believe we did a good job of maintaining this connection and their focus for the duration of the shows.

Personally, I am happier with my individual performance in the evening, as I feel that both physically and vocally I projected more and was even more confident, consequently giving my absolute all in our second performance more so than I felt in our first one. However, though I feel that my second performance was stronger personally, I do feel very happy with my input in both.

In conclusion, I’m proud of the work that I have put in throughout the creative and rehearsal process and the performances, and I genuinely feel that both individually myself and as a team with the rest of the group, our Final Major Project has been one of the strongest pieces of work we have produced, and it has been something I’ve fully committed to from start to finish, and it has all been absolutely worth it. This experience has helped me to grow as an actor and performer, as a team worker, a company member, and these are things which will continue to help me in whatever work I do from this point forward. 

It has also been a truly unique experience working with this amazing group, and I will never forget this or indeed the whole of our college experience, being part of this wonderful class has been very special.

Bibliography

Bibliography

https://d2wasljt46n4no.cloudfront.net/files/Community/Resources/2015/Love%20and%20Info%20On%20Cue.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryl_Churchill#Themes_and_plays

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/nov/20/caryl-churchill-conquered-british-theatre-here-we-go

http://www.helpguide.org/articles/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-signs-types-and-causes.htm#effects