Devising/Theatre for Children/Schools Tour

 Wednesday 15th-Thursday 16th September 2015 

To begin looking at what we might want to use in devising our piece of theatre for children, we first discussed as a group theatre that we had seen as a child that was aimed at our age demographic, and what we had or hadn't liked about it. 

Through discussing what we found good and bad about the things we'd seen we compiled a useful list of ideas for what to use in the performance we create as well as what to avoid. 

Things that we have found effective and good in theatre for children and would like to use we put on a spider diagram in groups, which can be seen to the right.  

Discussing important topics and sending a message through the performance was a notion that we all seemed to like, and so keeping this in mind, we were given the task in our groups to choose a subject or theme we would aim at GCSE age children and create a short trailer for theatre based on it.
Jerome and I chose the theme of the pressure that we all face when we reach that age, the sudden completely ridiculous notion that gets thrust upon you that you must know exactly what you want to do, where, when, why, how, and that every decision you make now is absolutely set in stone. As you grow up and reach the level where you're taking GCSEs and thinking about your next step, you should feel full of positivity; it is your life and there are endless possibilities for you, and this is where you can get it all started. It shouldn't be seen as some big, scary, negative decision, and you shouldn't be pressured into making decisions you aren't sure about or made to feel like you have to do or be a particular thing.
So we made a trailer based around this, thinking it to be something our target audience of GCSE age children would be able to relate to and hoping they would take away a positive message from it.
Through this exercise I think we all started to get a feel for how we might like to go about creating our pieces of theatre, and by watching one another's "trailers" we also got to share ideas of subject matter we could use.

After going on a trip to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time on Wednesday night, the next day we discussed in class what parts of the performance had stood out to us, so we could again take inspiration for our own devising. To the right is another spider diagram, this one of things in the play that we found effective and might like to use.


In groups we then created short performances using techniques and parts of the Curious Incident that we really liked. In our group, we decided to make a performance based on the London Underground, and we used things we saw in the Curious Incident such as ensemble work, choral movement, physical theatre, mime, lifts/weight taking, sound effects, breaking the fourth wall and alienation (and more specifically using this to comedic effect). It is really fantastic that you can be given so many new ideas and so much motivation from going to the theatre, and I really felt there was a whole fresh wave of inspiration in our group as we developed our own work taking on board what we learnt from watching a professional company's.

Wednesday 23rd - Thursday 24th September 2015

After spending last week beginning to explore what we might want to use in our performances when we tour to a school, today we got into groups and started actually devising our pieces. 

We started working in our groups by writing down in a spider diagram all the ideas we had for our piece that we wanted to use. We wanted it to be set at GCSE age, focusing on students in that stage of eduction. We knew we wanted to send a message through our piece, a positive one that can be relatable to the target audience and hopefully even offer them some support during these times of pressure. We considered for a while what our message might be, and we kept coming back to the same thing... the notion of a "model pupil". And we began to ask, what really is a model pupil? We came to the conclusion that really, there is no such thing as one definable model student. 

And there suddenly we had our theme, a theme surrounding the whole concept of a so called model pupil. We discussed the idea of this, talking about how in our opinion, there cannot be one definition of a model pupil, because everyone is different, good at some things and not so good at other, skilled in such different areas. From this we found our message: Everyone is talented in different ways, and everyone can be successful in their own way. 

Together we were building up a pretty clear vision of what we wanted, and before getting to the actual rehearsal we embellished the idea we were creating with some more additions of what we thought would be good in the piece, such as having it based slightly on true stories by using aspects of our real lives in the performance, even if only in small ways. Something else we knew we wanted to use was a form of Alienation, breaking the fourth wall to connect with the audience more and engage them. 

We lifted all of these ideas off the sheet and put them into practice, beginning to devise our piece.

First we created a scene which looked at the social happenings at GCSE age, it focused on gossiping that goes on and how someone's personal life isn't really relevant to their studies, yet it can totally monopolise their time at school because of nasty behaviour and rumours. We worked on this for a while, but after a while we decided that we didn't actually want to use this scene, at least not yet, because it didn't feel quite close enough to our main message for it to start the whole performance. 

From working on this part though we did get some pretty good ideas which we could cooperate into the rest of our devising, such as the behaviour of the students towards one another and how that affects things. 

As we were sure that we were going to focus on each character and what they were good at to put across our message, we decided instead of creating a scene quite so busy, we would take it step by step, sort of working on one character at a time. 

So the first student we focused on really was Katy, as in our first class she was the stereotypical "nerd", clearly dedicated and good in this lesson. 

But how could we show this, and how could we highlight that she was the one person in the scene who was great in this class? We had to have some kind of a contrast, by portraying the attitudes of all the students towards that particular lesson. And what better way to give a snappy and clear portrayal of that than putting some narration to it? We decided that we could use Alienation right away, Klodian introducing each of us in a sense, while also looking at and questioning with the audience this thought of what a model pupil was. 

Klodian asked the audience somewhat rhetorical questions, and we entered the stage doing something related to each question. For example, Klodian asked "would a model pupil do their homework in class?" and Divina rushed on, trying to complete her homework before lesson started. 

Through assigning each of us a question about if our behaviour was that a model student would exhibit, the audience could see clearly who was supposed to be the good pupil in this class. 

The next lesson we looked at was music, in which we did a similar thing of showing who was the most stand out in that subject; Divina. The third scene we did we revisited the concept of the social side of school, looking at how they all interacted with one another outside of class. This scene was set at lunch time, and it showed how Katy was shunned from the rest of the group because she was thought of as "nerdy".  

We didn't have enough time to make our next scene yet, but happy with what we had so far, we performed to the rest of the class.

Our performance

The feedback we received on our performance was really great, we were told: 

• They liked the way Klodian broke the fourth wall and thought it was effective in interacting with the audience.
• The part in the music lesson where we had Sam off stage doing the voice of the teacher was good.
• They found it funny and liked the humour. 
• It was relatable, because they could see really clearly the cliques and what each person was like and could apply it to their own time at school in the past, seeing who was who from their own social circles. 
• Now that we had a lot of humour in our piece, maybe we could start looking at it a bit more seriously, for example exploring the genuinely negative affect the bullying towards Katy had.
• At the end of the piece, just stay completely still and let the audience assume naturally that the performance has ended, instead of saying that we were finished. 

I am glad we had two days to come up with what we have so far, because I think the gap between the initial creation and rehearsal and the rest of rehearsal and our first performance was a really good thing. 

By the end of rehearsal on our first day we were a bit overloaded I think, we had gone through so many different ideas and even created a whole scene which we changed our minds about that it was quite an exhausting process! However, when we came back the next day, we had a fresh look on it and new motivation to continue, and it all felt a bit more organised as we had some time to think stuff over. We also added two new members to our group on this second day, Melody and Carlos, and it is always great to have more team members, and they helped add new inspiration to the piece and the creative process. In our group there is now, Klodian, Divina, Sam, Katy, Melody, Carlos and myself. 

If we were to continue creating this piece, I think although we may end up tweaking little parts of what we already have, we'd mainly be focusing on just completing the story. We only got about a third of the way through the whole story, so if we were to continue this project we would still have a lot of work to do!
I will be keeping in mind feedback we were given on this piece and what we learned creating it and applying that to the rest of the work we do over the next couple of months.
Something that has particularly struck me from devising this performance is that I think it is important for us to keep humour in the theatre we create because we all enjoy it and it seems effective, but it is important to strike the balance between humour and seriousness, as was suggested to us. 

The possibility of merging performances with some of the other groups has been mentioned, and so watching one another's pieces we were thinking about in what ways, if any, they could work together as a bigger piece.

Romaine's group had a piece about two different kinds of people, one from a really rich, privileged background, and one from a poor and neglectful background. It looked at how one was snobby and cocky and expected he would do perfectly at all his classes and exams without studying but he failed, and one actually worked really hard despite the struggles he was facing and succeeded.
This could be mixed with our piece by combining their concept of stereotypes and what you'd "expect" not being true with our concept of everyone being different and also how people in our piece were treated based on stereotypes too.

If we were to work together with Didi's group, I think it would be really successful, as their story looked at all the characters as being contrasting and totally separate entities as well as how they all fitted into one another's lives, and when you think about it that is quite similar to ours and we could have all of their and our characters in the same performance.

Because we have all followed themes surrounding things like education, stereotypes, exams and results, cliques, how what happens at a young age affects your future and changing stages, I think all of the different groups could actually cooperate in a fantastic way. Also, I think with so many different techniques and styles in each piece it would be really interesting to combine them.

Considering how all our different ideas could work together has helped develop my understanding even further of how to take inspiration from the work we observe.

Wednesday 30th September 2015 

Today our task was to create a drama based around a social issue. 

The class was split into two groups of nine, and in the group I was in were Melody, Toyo, Klodian, Sam, Nuray, Ria, Didi and Brandon. In our group we were able to have some people as actors and others as a director and/or writer if we wanted. 

Our criteria was:

• Three scenes
• Five minutes long in total
• Set up
• Drama
• Resolution
• Remember target audience

We spent quite a long time discussing different social issues we could use, all of them somehow relating to discrimination. We knew we wanted to use a topic which had quite a broad variety of things within it for us to elaborate on, so we narrowed own our options to looking at stereotypes and how people are treated differently, and from this we came to the conclusion of exploring equal opportunities and how people still didn't actually get them. 

Sam was talking about how certain people might not get a job because of how they are stereotyped by the employer, and we selected the idea of having the first scene as an interview.
We thought that it could portray someone being discriminated against and discrimination affecting their interview and the outcome more than the their actual CV and suitability for the job. 

We decided to base this first scene around racial discrimination, and Brandon, Sam and I acted in it while the others directed. We also had Klodian introducing the piece to the audience by talking to them directly, as we kept in mind our Brecht work and decided we wanted to break the fourth wall a bit to connect with the audience and really put our point across. Klodian said to the audience that in today's world everyone has equal opportunities... but do they really? 

Our scene consisted of me interviewing Brandon and Sam, asking the exact same questions, but behaving completely differently towards them and having a different attitude even about the questions I was asking and their answers simply because of their skin colour. 

Sam's character was clearly competent, he discussed having amazing grades at school and qualifications, job experience in relevant areas, he talked of his strong qualities and why he was suited to the job, which he clearly was. Brandon however said he didn't have many qualifications and his grades were average, he had no job experience and was only applying because his mum told him to get a job. 

Despite this, my character let Brandon off on all of this and was completely encouraging towards him, yet she was unpleasant and standoffish towards Sam's character and still acted as though he wasn't good enough. 

Just before the end of the interview Klodian asked the audience who they thought would get the job, and simply from how I had been treating the character's differently they knew that it would be Brandon despite that being for all the wrong reasons. 

The result was that Brandon was immediately offered the job, but with Sam I deliberated for quite some time, and then offered him a trial run in a lower position job. 

We made the layout of this scene interesting, with three chairs all facing forward, spaced out equidistantly horizontally, one set a few feet further back than the other two in the centre. 

I sat in the centre and Brandon and Sam sat on either side, and we all played out to the audience as if we were talking to one another, Brandon freezing when I was addressing Sam and visa versa, to show the interviews were taking place separately. I think our staging was very effective, it worked well for this piece. 

Our next scene we decided to focus on another issue of equality; the wage gap. 

We wanted to make this scene really simple to display clearly what the issue was. 

Ria entered the stage and explained to Klodian where he would be working, and when, and then she told him his wage. She then did the same with Nuray, all the information being exactly the same right up until the wage, when she told Nuray she would earn less for exactly the same work and hours.
Nuray asked her why she got paid less, and Ria responded that was just how it is. 

This is how our piece ended, as we didn't have time to devise a third scene, but this was all right as we only had to perform what we had so far. 

After devising these two scenes, we discussed what the resolution might be, but all found ourselves at a loss. Quickly we realised that this was because there was no resolution yet, not in the real world, these issues still existed and they still have to be worked on. At the end of our piece we explained this to the rest of the group, that the lack of resolution or happy ending in these scenes reflected the real world situation. 

We got a very positive response from the group, they understood the piece completely and they got what the message was. I was really pleased with our work, I think we all collaborated really well and everybody contributed creatively be it through discussion, direction or performing.

Wednesday 7th October 2015 

Today we began looking at another aspect of our School's tour assignment, the workshop we will have to devise and run in our groups. 

The group I was put into today consisted of Cache, Elvina, Jennifer, Mara, Nuray and myself. 

Our task was to create a 20 minute workshop, keeping our target audience of GCSE age children in mind. 

We know that we will be running our workshop after they watch our performance, so the first thing we decided was that we wanted to relate the two activities. 

Since recently the subject we have been using for our Devised Theatre for Children performances is the idea of a model student, we chose to have something to do with this topic in our workshop, so the children could use what they learnt from our performance in their own work. 

We considered the option of using the subject in some games and exercises, but decided that we would save using it for the final activity which could be based around creating their own piece of drama. 

We discussed how we wanted to organise the workshop, and decided that it would be best to split it evenly into six parts and each lead one section. This way we all get to have equal input and we'll also have a clear structure which will help to keep things in order. 

We thought the best thing to start with would be a game where we could get to know the children and they could get to know us, so we chose to do a name game as our first activity. 

We thought back to the name exercises we did in class when we started college. First we were going to use the one where you say your name and then say and do an action starting with the same letter, such as "jump for Jennifer", but we decided not to use this one because one we all preferred came to mind. 

We chose to use the one where we go around in a circle saying our names, and then you make eye contact with someone, say their name and swap to their space, and they have to do the same to someone else and so on and so forth. 

I think this exercise is good for quick thinking and engaging people because it requires focus and communication, and this is why we thought it would be a good way for us all to learn each other's names. I offered to lead this beginning of the workshop, and we all agreed that I would. 

Next we wanted to warm everyone up, both vocally and physically. Mara was eager to lead the vocal warm up, and Nuray chose to lead the physical one.
Because we want this workshop to be quite professional and educational, we thought it best to use warm ups which we have actually learnt on our course, as they are legitimate drama warm ups. 

Because the looseness of the body and being warmed up physically can help aid your vocals, we chose for Nuray to lead her warm up first and then Mara hers after. 

For Nuray's warm up we combined a number of things from different warm ups we've done over first and second year, focusing on shoulders, legs, and spine. 

For the vocal warm up we chose to do some low humming to start the voice working and then teach the vowel and consonant sounds such as "Oo Oh Or", "LLL, NNN" and "DDD, TTT". 

We don't want our whole workshop to feel too much like just a lesson though, so next we tried to think of something fun we could do. Mara, Elvina and Jennifer were really taken with the idea of singing Kumala Vista, and we all tried it out and found it really fun. We thought this would be a good way to continue vocally warming up as well as getting everyone to focus, while having fun. 

We decided Jenny should lead this part, leading it as a repeat after her exercise, and she was happy to do this. 

Next we wanted to have more fun and play a game with them, something to keep the mood lively and make sure there was plenty of energy in the room. The game we chose was Splat, and Elvina said she was happy to lead the game. We thought this was an energetic enough game to hype everyone up a bit and motivate them before their final project in the workshop. 

Finally, we had to choose how to conclude our workshop. We were sure that for this part we wanted the children to create something, a piece of theatre with something to do with a model student. 

We decided to put them into small groups and give them about five minutes to devise a short performance portraying either a model student or a bad student, and the rest of us would have to guess which they had chosen. We put them into groups of three and one group of four because of the number of people from our class we'd be practising our workshop with. 

Cache said he would lead this final section, and now we had enough material for an entire workshop and everybody had an equal role in it. 

After planning out and practising the whole workshop amongst ourselves, we discussed how we would handle the situation to make sure nobody got out of control and we were able to stay on track. We decided first of all that we would distribute ourselves amongst the rest of the group so that we could keep an eye on everyone. We also thought when they are devising in their groups we should just all go between the different groups and make sure they knew what they were doing and were okay. Our major goal was to remain professional for the whole time and try to be kind but authoritative as a group and as individuals. 

Finally we planned that we would first line up in front of them and introduce ourselves to begin, and now we had our whole workshop prepared. 

Thursday 8th October 2015

We didn't have time to actually run our workshop on Wednesday, so when we came back in today we spent a little time going back over what we had prepared and then we did our workshop with the rest of the group. 

In my opinion, it went well. I think that we successfully completed everything we wanted to, we were all clear about exactly what we were doing, we managed to keep everyone under control, and people seemed to enjoy themselves. 

It wasn't as stressful as I thought it would be, and I believe this is because everyone in our group pulled their weight and we worked together really strongly to keep the workshop going and structured. I also think that splitting it into six sections was a good way of making it manageable and that this helped us keep everything in order when actually running the workshop. 

We as a group were happy with how it went, and all felt satisfied with the response from the rest of the class. 

We got very positive feedback from the class:

• They loved the energy we brought to the room as a group and thought our drive and motivation was really good. 
• They liked the way we distributed the activities evenly between all six of us and liked that we worked together as a group and each had the same amount to do. 
• Moreover on the last point, we were told that the way we shared out the workshop six ways meant the focus wasn't on just one or a few of us but was equal, and this made them feel they would remember each individual one of us, which they said was really nice. 
• They said the workshop was really fun and that they enjoyed all the activities. 
• We were told it was very well organised.
• They told us they thought we remained totally professional and were impressed that we stayed in character the whole time and didn't mess around, but handled things maturely and calmly.

We did however run over twenty minutes, and so next time we will have to keep time better and make sure that we stay on time throughout so we don't finish late. 

What I would say we could improve and work on is definitely the time keeping, and other than that I just think that with practice and more time we could work on that and also just neatening things up even more. On the whole however, I felt really happy with how our practice workshop went and I feel that we learnt a lot from our first trial and performed well as a team.

Tuesday 22nd October 2015

This is a picture of our initial ideas which we used  to start
creating a thought shower.

We have now been put into our official groups for this assignment, in my group are Brandon, Cache, Elvina, Jennifer, Mara, Romaine and myself. 

Today our group met independently in college to start developing our performance. 

Over the last few weeks we have all been learning a lot about creating suitable material for children's theatre and we've been exploring what's effective and what isn't. 

When we got together today in our group we started by discussing the different things we've each picked up on over the last month that we'd like to use in our piece. 

We already share a lot of ideas in common, and so building a strong foundation to our piece was really successful. We want a story with a clear message throughout, we want to break stereotypes that can so often have a huge effect on teens around GCSE age, and we want to inspire the target audience to understand that they can be themselves, and especially at this time of stress in their lives they should remember that they can choose their own path. 

Something we considered is that we want everyone to have an equally important role in the piece, but we also didn't want our piece to be too busy or confusing by having too many main characters. So, we decided we would split our group, three into playing the central characters, four working as a chorus.

We want our piece to be quite character centric, really focusing on the decisions of individuals and the effect their choices have, highlighting that people can choose the path they go down.
So the first thing we did was think about what we wanted our three main characters to be like, and knowing that we want to challenge social constructs and stereotypes in our performance, we thought it would be good to use three very contrasting roles, who all seem quite stereotypical or are stereotyped by those around them, but who end up defying those stereotypes and showing that you define yourself, not society.

Mara and Jennifer adding our ideas to the thought shower. 

Combining this with the theme of choosing your path, we came up with our characters quite quickly; three different students, two who are successful in their own way because they embrace what they're good at and what they like, and one whose entire potential is wasted because they don't choose to make anything of themselves and allow themselves to go down a bad road.
We've decided we want one character to be academically talented and to show the positives in that, one to be talented vocationally and to show the positives in that, and the other to simply not do anything, and to make bad decisions and do nothing to rectify it. 

Also, because the target audience are GCSE age, where GCSE courses and exams can seem all consuming and it can be difficult to look to the future and achieving your goals, we thought it would be good for our story to start in secondary school and follow the character's progressions into the future. We really want our piece to be relatable to the audience and to speak to them on a personal level, so we think that by centring the story around their age group and then moving further into the future we can show them possibilities which they could realise into their own lives.

Now we'd thought quite a lot about a good foundation for story, characters and message, we started talking about different performance styles we might use.
Recently we all took a class trip to see the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and there was a lot of really strong physical theatre work which we found effective. In things such as our mask assignment we have all been incorporating elements of this into our work, and we would like to take inspiration from it for this piece too, creating strong physical theatre as a chorus using techniques like mime and lifts.

We're really excited to continue developing our piece and start working on it practically now we've started creating it in our collective imagination.

Our finished thought shower at the end of the 22nd.

Thursday 5th November 2015 

Today we worked together as a group to establish a timeline for the creative process of making our performance and workshop. 

We've decided definite dates at which we want different things to be completed, such as the script being written, lines being learnt, costumes being decided. 

We have written out our timeline as well as assigning roles to each member of our company.

Today we were also given the task to produce something to show to the rest of the class as an introduction to our piece, whether we just shared our ideas or created a short scene. 

Our group decided to devise/improvise a sort of trailer for our piece, which was pretty fun. 

From creating this trailer and discussing our piece in more depth as a group, we came up with a few more ideas. We're now thinking that we'd like to use character development to quite some extremes, showing a real change in each of the main characters from start to finish. We're going to use this progression in their characters to focus even more strongly on breaking stereotypes and showing the importance of personal decisions and how the choices they make really change their lives. 

Next week our plan is to create our first scene and also work on a plan of as many scenes in the performance as we can, so we can get our script written over next weekend and have it ready for rehearsals the week after next.

Thursday 12th November 2015 

Today in our groups we continued planning our work. 

Our task was to map out a beginning, middle and end to our performance, as well as create a skills audit, stating any skills each member of our group has and considering how we might use them in our work.
Some skills which different ones of us have we're thinking of using in our piece include dance, rap, make up skills, physical theatre, accents, and acrobatics.

In order to decide a start, middle and end to our piece we sat down and started mapping out the structure more in depth than just three scenes, and then we divided all of the different parts we came up with into three.

Firstly, we want to show our main three characters, portraying how they are stereotyped by those around them, but also what they are really like, their personal reasons for being the way they are and their dreams. We want interesting development throughout our piece.
For our character representing the "talented" one, we want to show his progression of building his skill in rap, and putting himself out there, despite the fact that we see his mother is not supportive of him and he gets put down by her.
For our character the "academic" one, we want to show this storyline: she begins being smart in class, getting good grades, being a "model student", but gradually the decisions she makes to take drugs has a really negative impact on her, she chooses a bad path and she gets worse at school, her grades decline, she becomes completely distracted and her health is compromised.
Finally, for our character the one who everyone thinks is achieving nothing, she has a secret hidden talent and passion for art, but she keeps it to herself until eventually her skill is discovered.
Basically, for each of our characters we want to show how they are perceived and what they are really like, and by the end of our piece, our goal is for the audience to see that you can't judge on outward appearances alone, you don't know someone's story, what they might be going through or their true self.

Knowing that this is the story we want to tell, mapping out a start, middle and end wasn't too difficult.
Our start is going to be showing how they are all seen at school, focusing quite a lot on what they are like externally, with a little back story such as them daydreaming or us seeing their home life.
In the middle, we will be showing how they are making their way down whichever path they are on, and we'll be learning more about who they really are even if others around them don't see it.
For our end, we will see the outcome of all of this; the talent performing and following his dream despite being put down about it by his mother and being told it isn't the right path, the hidden talent finally revealing that she does do something with her life, and we will finally see the reason that the "smart" one has fallen off the track.
After coming up with this, we showed the start and middle to the class and explained what the end would be.

We have been discussing casting for our piece, and as it currently stands, Brandon will play the "talent", Jennifer will play the "hidden talent", I will play the "academic" one, and the rest of the group will be the chorus.
We decided to have two of the main characters female because so often theatre is male centric and we wanted to go against that and show more diversity than that.

At the end of class our group stayed in college independently and we have now begun rehearsing our piece, working through it from the very start.
Our first scene is going to be a flash forward, to create anticipation as well as highlighting the difference of what the audience may think of our characters at the start compared to at the end.
It is going to be a snippet of a talent show. We start in darkness, and as the lights come up we see Brandon centre stage, the rest of us spread out across the rest of the stage, all of us with our backs to the audience. Brandon turns to face the front, and as he does we begin chanting his name, creating the atmosphere of an audience chanting.
Then, as he is about to begin, the lights shut off, and we hear "Brandon, turn that cr*p off!" in the darkness.
We all exit the stage except for Jennifer, who sits down on a chair. The lights come back up and we see her drawing in her room, then she realises she is going to be late and rushes out.

Next, we all brings chairs on stage in the formation of a class room and sit down. In this scene we see how everyone is in class, my character always answering questions and doing all the work, everyone else being quite neutral, and Jennifer being a distraction and refusing to work. This is to show how we all appear to the naked eye.
During the end of the lesson, we see Brandon fall asleep, and now we act out what he is dreaming about. He dreams that his mother, played by Elvina, tells him how proud of him she is, and then he starts rapping as the rest of us all support him. Suddenly we disperse and he is woken up by the teacher, played by Cache, who tells him class is over.

We ran through all of this a few times and found that it is successful so far, all of the transitions smooth, and it seems to work in portraying what is happening clearly. To help our rehearsal time be more organised and to make sure the performance looks neat, while we were rehearsing this afternoon Romaine directed us as well, even though he will also be playing parts in this.

I think the rehearsals went well today, we're already making good progress and I think so far the material we are producing is of quality as well as being suitable for our target audience and having clear messages running throughout.

Developing the rest of our performance

Now we'd gotten off to a good start by laying down the story, characters, message and creating the first scenes, we continued to work through our performance scene by scene in order to let the story and our ideas develop naturally. 

The first thing we did next was decide what we wanted our characters names to be, which I will list below:

Brandon: Lewis

Cache: Mason

Elvina: Leonora

Isabella: Alice
Jennifer: Ashley

Mara: Marisa

Romaine: Jaycee

One of the key moment in our story is Alice falling off track by getting hooked on drugs, and we want this to be a gradual process, which has to start with her actually purchasing the drugs.
We managed to tie in another character, Jaycee, with this, by making him the person we helps get her involved. Alice's story is intended not only to be a warning but also a message about the importance of the decisions you make, and so to highlight the subject of choices and making your own path, we're going to show Jaycee getting out of the drugs business and getting himself on track as Alice does the exact opposite. This is to show that it is never too late to make the right decision and aim for better things, but making bad choices can really ruin your life.

The drugs storyline is very dark, and we really want to make everything about it so, such as the home scene being so dramatic, and so for the scene where she buys the drugs and gets involved in dealing we want to create a really unpleasant atmosphere and make everything about it feel unappealing.
We also want to highlight just how unlike Alice the whole drugs lifestyle is; she has to stick out like a sore thumb amongst the whole thing. So we thought of the idea of having her purchase the drugs in a drug house, which we want to portray as really dingy and full of people who've hit rock bottom, the exact opposite of how Alice appears in her studios, innocent persona.
So to show this, the whole chorus play druggies and a drug dealer, and Alice is completely out of place among them all.
What actually happens in the scene is Jaycee taking Alice to the drug house, and her getting involved with buying and dealing, then Jaycee actually telling the boss that he wants out. We want both things to happen in this one scene to make it really apparent that what happens is about the choices we as individuals make.

From our classroom scene we are able to establish for the audience what our main characters are like in school, but we know that is only one of the parts of our characters lives we want to portray.
We discussed and all feel as a group that another really important aspect of their stories is their home lives. So far, we only have a bit of Ashley at home, in which we don't really see any detail, and a slight insight into Lewis' family life through the moments we see or hear his mother. 

As for Alice, we didn't even have any home scenes so far. So, their home lives were really important for us to focus on. 

We started by talking about what we imaged their lives at home should be like, deciding there should be a contrast between each to further display the differences between our main characters.
For Alice, we wanted part of her going down a bad path to be to do with family pressures, so we thought about how her home life might be putting pressure on her. Because she is the stereotypically smart and academic one, it occurred to us that for her to be so driven and exceptional in her school work she should have a family who really believed in the importance of school and grades.
So, how could we make her home life unpleasant through this? We decided that her family should be putting her under too much pressure about grades, always expecting her to be better no matter how well she does. With each of our characters, we want their story to be relatable, and a lot of people are under pressure due to family expectations about grades and success in school, so considering this, we decided it would be a good background for Alice, especially as the topic of pressure is so present during GCSE age, which is the age of our target audience. 

We wanted to make Alice's home a really strong portrayal of the pressure and stress she felt, so we spent quite a while developing the scene at her house. Who would her family be, first of all?

We wanted to display the pressure from her parents, so we decided to have her mother in her home scene. We also thought we could take the pressure even further by using a theme which is relevant to a lot of children with siblings; being compared to your brothers or sisters and feeling like there is competition in the family. So, we wanted to also have a brother and a sister in the scene.

Next we had to choose how she would interact with each family member in a way that showed clearly why she felt pressured by them, and for us the first character we considered was her mother. 

We came up with the idea of having them discuss Alice's report card, which her mum is unhappy with because Alice is not doing as well as they'd like. We wanted to show extremes in each character's home life, so in this we thought that Alice's family should be expecting a ridiculous amount from her. This is why we decided her mum should be disappointed in Alice for getting A's, expecting her to get A*s. In this conversation we also in cooperated the sibling rivalry, by having her mum say that Alice's brother was getting A*s at Alice's age.

After this conversation with her mum, we chose for Alice to crash into the aforementioned brother, who we would see was unkind to her and mocked her grades, calling her a disgrace. 

Then, we considered how her other sibling could represent a struggle in her home life. We thought that her sister could be younger than her, and we could show that Alice had responsibilities looking after her sister too despite everything else she has to do. So, after her older brother has mocked her and left, her sister runs up and starts badgering her with things she has to do, such as helping with homework or taking her to her piano recital. We thought this would be a good thing to add again because it may be relatable to our audience, as in a lot of families even when someone isn't very old themselves they are still expected to be able to look after their siblings.

The reason we chose to have all these things happen in this one scene is that we wanted to show the pressure at home becoming so much for her that it pushes her to take drugs, so we wanted to use these three interactions as a build up to her breaking down in her room.

We as a group are strong in physical and abstract theatre, so we've known from the beginning of this process that we want to use it in our piece, and the end of this scene seemed like a brilliant opportunity, when we came up with the idea that the climactic moment where she takes the drugs should be enhanced by the chorus playing the role of Alice's inner thoughts.
We have everyone crowding around me, repeating all of the things on my mind causing me stress, such as things my family just said to me. This visual and verbal representation of the pressure crushing down on Alice is to try and have an impact on the audience, immersing them in her feelings and really bringing them into this significant moment in her life. 

So now we have created a home scene for Alice, we went back to the drawing board to decide what to do for Ashley and Lewis' homes. 

For Lewis, we had already started to show that he his mother is not supportive of him, so we chose to explore this further in a scene at his house. Even though we'd like to follow a similar structure for displaying the lives of each main character, we don't want it to be too repetitive, so for Lewis' house we decided to have it slightly different by having another character in the scene as well as Lewis and his family. We've chosen to have Mason at the house with Lewis, part of the reason for which is to display the lack of respect Lewis' mum has for him, as she still chides him in front of company, which is an embarrassing thing to happen, particularly at that age. Almost everyone has at some point argued with their parent in front of a friend or been at a friend's house who is fighting with their parent, and I think everyone can relate to how uncomfortable it is, so again we're hoping that the audience can sympathise with this situation.  

The lack of support that Lewis gets from his mother had to be at the centre of this scene though, so that is what we wanted to make sure was portrayed through the scene. 

To do this, we have chosen to show his mum criticising his rapping and putting down what he wants to do. To put this into an a situation of conflict, we thought that Lewis could be rapping while he's hanging out with Mason, and then his mum shouts at him and tells him off for it. 

But we wanted to take the troubles at Lewis' home life even further, portraying a different kind of abuse from family to verbal or psychological. So, we have Lewis' mum slap him at the end of their argument, to show the severity of the unkindness Lewis faces at home just for following his dream. 

This is also a great chance for us to utilise Brandon's rapping skills, which is something we've known we want to include from the outset when we cast him as the "talented" one. 

We rehearsed this scene a few times, trying to perfect it and strike the right chord of just how put down by his mum Brandon is. 

I think this scene is effective in achieving it's purpose, because we want to show through Lewis' story that if you fight the adversities in your life and overcome those putting obstacles in your way, you really can achieve your goals and dreams, and in order to really send the message to stay strong even through tough times, it's important that this scene is as bleak and unhappy as it is. 

I should also note that since we have this scene now as a clear representation of the strife Lewis faces with his family, we have decided to cut out the daydream from earlier on in the performance and also the line where Lewis' mum called from off "turn that cr*p off!".

Ashley's home life needs to be different to Alice and Lewis', which are both very negative.
As Ashley is our character who is able to get places without good grades, we need her character to be totally self assured in knowing she can be successful in her own way. And it is unlikely that she would be able to take the  attitude she does towards school work without consequences at home if her family were hard on her about it, so we want to show that her parents actually do support her.
We want this home life to actually be positive, not only to create the stark contrast between our central characters, but also to show diversity in the backgrounds we are representing in our work.
From the very start, we have wanted Ashley's talent in drawing to be something she keeps quiet however, and we wanted to have a scene where someone discovers her art. For a while we thought about perhaps a friend or boyfriend discovering it, but then we realised her family finding it would be the perfect chance to show their support towards her.
So, in this scene, Ashley gets home to find her dad has one of her drawings. He asks her what it is, and although she is very dismissive of her own work, he encourages her and tells her to follow her dream and do what she loves.
Whereas the other home scenes are quite dramatic and full of upset, in this one it is positive, and we want that to be present even in the atmosphere, so we're having this as quite a quiet and still scene, in which the audience should feel settled and content. To really take the audience on the journey with each character, we are trying to make them as involved as possible in each home scene, which is why in Alice's we're making it frantic to convey pressure, in Lewis' it is awkward and neglectful, and in Ashley's it is calm and peaceful. We're trying to create these three atmospheres for these three scenes so that the audience can feel the same as the main character in each scene and subsequently be more invested in their stories. 

I think that we are creating these effects successfully, as throughout creating and rehearsing these scenes, we have been taking turn to watch from an audience member's point of view and see if they are making the desired impact, and it definitely feels like we're setting the right tone with each scene. 

After the introduction of our characters in the school scene and further exploration of them through the home scenes, we want to now go further forward in their timelines and see how things have or are changing.
To show the progression and changes in each of their personalities and lives, we thought it would be good to return to the school setting to make the differences from earlier on stand out.
Keeping in mind the other skills we have as a group, we thought we could include dance in this scene, to utilise further our variety of performance skills as a company and also add another layer of something energetic and fun to our piece.
So, instead of having a class, we're having this school scene set in break just after class.
As the scene begins, the bell rings, and we see everyone descend into chatter and form their groups of friends. This scene is also going to be a good way to show the way all our characters fit into the social order in school outside of classes.

So we thought about how to in cooperate these things together, the dance and the social groups at school and how our characters fit into them, and we landed upon the idea of Mason playing a song and a few of the characters dancing to it one by one, with everyone else cheering them on. As this is all happening, Lewis is involved, showing he is one of the more popular ones, Ashley is going along with it but kind of staying low key, and Alice is on her own, basically not involved at all and just off her face on drugs.
We rehearsed this scene quite a lot and spent a while working out the staging, where everyone should be sitting to represent the friendship groups and how involved or not people where, and then once we had polished off the scene we had to think about why it was significant to our piece in terms of what could happen next.
We thought about what could happen in this scene that could provoke a transition to the next part of the performance, and it occurred to us that something should happen which makes Ashley leave, and then we can transition into the scene at her house. This works because we know that we want her house scene to be late on in the performance because her family aren't meant to discover her talent for quite a while.
So, to provoke Ashley leaving, at the end of the dance sequence, everyone starts saying that she should dance and starts egging her on, but we show that not only in terms of the classes but also the social side of school, Ashley doesn't just go along with what's expected.
I think a lot of young people feel slightly out of place at school, and in this scene we can see the total exclusion of Alice from the socialising which is an extreme example of this, and also the slight distance Ashley feels from it which is less, but still significant. Through this we are trying to relate to the audience on the same topic of not fitting in but on a couple of different levels at the same time.

Now we felt we have a strong start and progression in our performance, we've started to think about creating the final scenes and how to end it.
Of course for our last scene we already knew we are going to have Lewis' performance which we see a snippet of at the start, but we now had to consider how it should end for each character and how to tie it all together neatly.

The next significant, key moment in their stories is getting their GCSE results. The theme of grades has been prominent throughout, and a lot of the story has been building up to this moment in their lives; a moment of transition.
The message we are trying to send through our piece is that everyone can be successful in their own way, and it is about the choices you make and the paths you choose. So we had to think very carefully about what grade each character would get, how that impacts them and where they end up, whether thanks to or regardless of the grades.
This is what we have decided:
Ashley: Ashley's character is supposed to show the option of following a route that doesn't rely on grades and being successful without them, so to show that grades aren't everything Ashley will get an F and she will succeed in the future, opening her own art gallery because she worked hard at what she cares about; her art.
Alice: Alice's story is to show the dangers of bad choices and how they can ruin your life, so she will also get an F, but she doesn't make something of herself like Ashley, she ends up staying on a bad path.
Lewis: Lewis' story is to encourage people to follow their dreams, so for him we have decided he should get an A, a grade good enough to allow him to become a Lawyer like his mum wants, but he still follows his dream and does rapping because that is what he feels passionate about.
Marisa: Marisa is to represent the conventional path of education, she gets an A and continues to achieve success in further education and then gets a good job at a law firm.
Mason: Mason represents average success in grades, and that he still ends up where he wants to be and making something of himself through dance, even though he doesn't get super high grades. He gets a C and ends up running a dance company with Jaycee.
Jaycee: Jaycee's character shows that you can turn your life around, as he is no longer involved with drugs, and he gets a high grade (B), then opens the dance company with Mason. He and Mason ending up doing the same thing despite their grades being different shows that it's okay to be different and that the grades don't define you.
Leonora: Leonora has been portrayed as the slightly dumb character, and her grade is N/A. However, we want to show through her character that just because you aren't smart at particular things doesn't mean you can't make it or be good in other ways, and she ends up working hard at college and getting into University even though no one would have expected her to judging by her school grades.

I think through this results day scene and then seeing where each character ends up we can send out really positive messages to our young audience and inspire them to see that they can be successful in their own.
Now, we just had to consider how to show where everyone ended up in an interesting and smooth way. We think the best way is to go into the future, and have everyone in the same scene, discussing or showing what they're doing now.
We developed this scene quite cleverly in my opinion, tying each story together in a neat way.
We know we're going to see Lewis perform, which is how we can see where he ends up, and as Mason and Jaycee are dancers, we thought of the idea of having them perform with Jaycee.
We thought the setting for the opening part of the end scene can be Ashley's art gallery to show her success, and we discussed how to intertwine all their endings together from here.
This is what we decided:
Marisa and Leonora go to visit Ashley at the gallery and they all chat about what they're doing now. Mason and Jaycee then enter, carrying a poster for a concert. We find out that they are backing dancers for LZ (Lewis), and they are performing tonight. The characters all say they should go as a reunion, and then this is where we repeated the flash forward scene from the very beginning of our performance, only this time we actually see LZ, Mason and Jaycee perform.
We thought this would be a good way of linking the start of the piece to the end because it is an exciting way to keep the audience guessing about what they saw, and when they see these three characters perform at the end they'll realise what it was about.

So, for all of the successful character's stories we managed to create a scene in which they could tell the audience where they ended up in a naturalistic way by discussing it with one another, but for Alice we wanted to think of a different way of showing what happened to her.
We bounced around a lot of ideas, such as maybe they could just talk about it, or we could have a separate scene with just her and some druggies, and we even considered having a funeral scene to show she died of an overdose, but none of it felt quite right; in my opinion because it was all too distant from the rest of the characters.
Then we thought of the idea of her ending up on the streets, and after the concert the others all seeing her, but barely even recognising her because she's changed so much. This is what we decided to stick with, but as we were rehearsing this ending, we struggled with the blocking. It just didn't really work, because the stage was a bit messy with everyone on walking in a group, and the way we would have had to stage it looked unprofessional and not as neat as we wanted.
We had to think a lot about what to do to make this ending work, and then we came up with a stylistic idea that we really liked. We decided to have her Alice mentioned in the conversation, and then have Jaycee tell them he saw her last week and describe what she looked like. As he described it, the rest of the cast worked as a chorus to do the descriptions to me; such as messing my hair up when Jaycee says "her hair was a mess". We wanted to show the ultimate down fall and deterioration of Alice in this quick way, showing a fast transformation to really make an impact.
Jaycee says "her hair was a mess, her make up was all smudged, her clothes were ragged, she had cuts on her arm. She was on the floor, she almost looked beat up-no; not beat up... but she was worn down. She looked at me, but I just walked away."
As he explains all of this, the chorus mess up my hair, smudge my make up, mess up my clothes, mime cutting my arms, push me to the floor, go to beat me up then freeze, and then finally walk away when I reach out to them. After that, Jaycee says "it's so different to how she used to be, always neat and composed, and always holding a book". At this point I stand up and the chorus help me neaten myself up and hand me a book, and then I exit contently as past Alice.
We chose to do these transformations because they're a powerful way of displaying just how much she and her life changed because of her decisions, and I think this makes an effective impact.

So there we had it; our entire performance.
We got a chance to run the whole thing in front of the rest of the class and see how we felt, and unfortunately we really didn't like it and found that a lot of the piece just didn't work.
The feedback we received was that the story was good, but we lacked energy, and taking our feedback into consideration along with how we felt it had gone as a group, we realised quickly that we had to make some changes.
It was back to the drawing board, and the first thing we did was discuss every reason we thought it didn't work:

• We felt our message had gotten lost because the piece was too busy which made the important parts of the storyline less clear. 
• We didn't like how naturalistic it was, knowing we are a group that are strong in physical theatre we felt we really weren't making the most of our talent and creativity. 
• We felt parts of it dragged, and that there was too much unnecessary dialogue, and this made it boring for the audience and would mean they weren't engaged and we lost their attention. 
• We thought there wasn't the right balance between the different characters. 
• We didn't feel we were using the chorus as effectively as we could have been. 
• And also, the stories of the characters Ashley and Lewis felt too similar; we didn't feel there was a strong enough contrast between the three main parts because of this. 

Next we thought about these problems we had with the characters and what to do to solve them.
Perhaps we could change either Ashley or Lewis' storyline to make it more different to the others we thought, but we found it difficult to think of a third story that would be as strong as failing or succeeding. Our piece is about how there are different types of success, but it just felt like having two success stories at the centre of the piece didn't make much of an impact, they didn't really work effectively together to send a strong message. This is why we came to the conclusion that we should only have two main characters, one with a story of success and one of failure; we think that having two distinctly different stories will make the piece stronger, them being so different making them both bolder.
Of the three main characters, Ashley's story seemed the least definite, and so this is the one we decided to cut. We also made the call to have the other school kids as more minor characters so we could really focus on Lewis and Alice and also make more of using chorus work rather than lots of major characters.

Now we had removed Ashley from the equation, we thought about how this impacted Lewis' story; as he was now the sole main character representing success we wanted to tweak his story a little to make it stronger. To do this we chose to incorporate part of Ashley's story into Lewis'; being a distraction in the classroom. However, unlike Ashley who didn't end up doing well at school, with Lewis we want to break stereotypes and show a story where he can and does get good grades, but he still decides to follow his dream instead of doing another job his grades might enable him to do, such as being a lawyer.
While thinking about this, we also considered Alice's story and if there were any changes we should make to that now to draw definite contrasts between her and Lewis. What we thought was that there home lives were too similar, as they both had families who treated them badly. Wondering how to change her background to make it more different, we thought of having her family as not outwardly cruel to her, but just all very successful, which puts pressure on her, and also not having much time for her. This way instead of them being abusive like Lewis' mum, it is more like Alice just feels not good enough and neglected, and this way there is a bolder difference.

Now we knew exactly what story arc we were had for both Lewis and Alice, we started doing a bit of a remodel of our performance, changing scenes, cutting and adding some, and making the whole thing much more stylised and creative.
The scenes we chose to cut were obviously the ones with Ashley at her home because she is no longer a main character.

Now we knew we wanted to reshape our performance, we literally went through it from start to finish making any changes we wanted chronologically.
First; the opening scene, where we were all chanting for LZ. After a little discussion about it, we've decided that we don't think it is effective, because it is something that would work more on screen but not really in live theatre, and we just don't feel that we were creating the desired atmosphere and effect with it, so we cut that part. However, we really still like the idea of having a flash forward at the beginning which we revisit at the end, because it links the piece together nicely.
We just had to think about what we wanted to happen in it, and because we have two main character stories in our performance, we've chosen to show what happens to both Alice and Lewis at the beginning, only without an explanation, and then come back to it at the end and explain it when it makes sense having seen the rest of the performance. Following the theme of juxtaposition between Alice and Lewis, I thought of having the stage as a kind of split screen for the opening, on one side seeing Alice's ending and the other Lewis'. Creating this new start, we really focused on how to use the chorus and physicality to make it theatrically interesting and imaginative.
Building on the idea we use at the end of the chorus messing up Alice, we have chosen to have the chorus creating different atmospheres and treating Lewis and Alice differently to show how they ended up. Alice is downstage left, and Lewis is downstage right. The chorus spill in from either side and start circling Lewis, their movement and vocals fast and energetic as they cheer for him and have a good time. Then, they circle Alice, however as they surround her they jeer and mock her, their movement and vocals are slurred and slow. The chorus then split up, taking turns in pairs circling both characters in the said ways at the same time. Centre stage, we have Romaine, who serves as the playwright to the ending, being a puppet master and controlling what the chorus are doing by conducting them.

The same as how we had before only a glimpse of the end, this is what we want to do here again to create intrigue, and so after what I just described happens, everyone lines up and then disperses into a classroom formation, and we are in the classroom scene.
We want this transition to be smooth and clean, which is why we line up, in the order that everyone is in the classroom. Then, four of us step forward into another line, meaning everyone on stage is in a kind of zigzag, and we all sit down. We've decided that having so many chairs was a hassle which made transitions long and messy, so in the classroom we now sit on the floor.
We've kept the premise of this scene the same; showing how the characters are in class, but we all agreed that the scene was too long and boring before, so we have made it snappier and much more precise. Now, when Mr. Chips asks the class questions, only Alice and Leonora answer each time, Alice always being right to show she is a good student and Leonora getting them wrong to comic effect to make it more interesting for our young audience by having comedy.
In this scene now, the point where Jaycee and Lewis are talking, and also when Jaycee and Alice are talking, everyone else on stage goes into mime to make it appear tidier and to make the major and minor in the scene clear, so the audience know what they should be focusing on.
After Mr. Chips asks three questions, during which Lewis isn't paying attention, Lewis throws a ball of paper at Mr. Chips, which provokes conflict between them.
We have it staged so they argue one standing at either side of the stage, the rest of us in between all turning our heads in unison to look at whichever one of them is speaking to use choral movement.
They argue because Lewis is "a distraction", and Mr. Chips kicks Lewis out of the class. Lewis refuses and plays up for a while, causing an uproar to add more entertainment to the scene, but eventually he does leave. In their argument we've also added a bit of breaking the fourth wall, as Lewis asks the audience if he should listen to Mr. Chips. We're adding different performance techniques like this to make our piece more interesting and add layers to it.
We have kept in the fast motion, sound scape test in the scene, and also Alice asking Jaycee if he knows a dealer, but the scene  is now much shorter and more concise, which I think is brilliant because it serves its purpose successfully without being too long or tedious.
To tidy it up more, we also now have Mr. Chips handing out and taking back the test papers to and from everyone at once, staying in his space downstage left, so it looks neater and you still understand what's happening without him having to walk around the whole stage both times.

At the end of the classroom scene, as they are all leaving, Leonora tells everyone there is a party at her house and Jaycee tells Alice to meet him there. This is because a party is where we have decided the drug deal scene should now take place. The reason we've changed the setting of this scene is that

we had run this scene quite a lot, and although we managed to make it smooth and precise, something about it doesn't feel quite right. We as a group just feel that it is a little bland, as well as being non relatable because it isn't a setting which any of our target audience are likely to have any experience of being in or even seeing, and it doesn't feel quite realistic. Also, the rest of the class when watching us perform what we have so far didn't seem particularly taken with this scene, and it is really important during this process for us to take into account audience reception and the success of each scene as we go.

So, after quite some discussion on what to do, we decided to change the setting of this scene.
Not only do we want it to be more relatable, we also want it to have more energy and be more interesting for the audience on an entertainment level, so the reason we have chosen a house party for the new setting as there is a lot of potential for excitement and lively activity in that environment, as well as a party being something much more accessible for our young audience.

After the classroom, we still transition to the scene at Lewis' house, but we have made some changes and added some stuff to this scene. Whereas before it was only Mason, Lewis and Lewis' mum in this scene, we have now added the chorus to it. We want there to be consistency in our performance, and part of that is using our chorus throughout, partly so the audience become more and more familiar with the concept of a chorus, and also as we hope that through the recurring appearance of the chorus the young people watching can be learning about how a theatrical chorus works and different ways you can use choral movement or vocals to good effect. 

A lot of our chorus work is for the purpose of emphasising what is happening in the scene or a particular emotion, and then we realised that one way we could do this would be for the chorus to actually represent a specific character's thoughts and feelings, So in this scene, the chorus are being Lewis' inner thoughts, what he is thinking as his mum shouts at him, and how he is reacting internally even if he doesn't show it on the outside. I think this is effective because it adds more depth to Lewis as a character and portrays how he feels that he can't say any of what he really thinks to his mother; he is inhibited around her.
We as the chorus in this scene move with Lewis, speak what he is thinking, and also create physical representations of his emotions.
We did try splitting the chorus in two, having half of us play Lewis' mum's thoughts and the other half Lewis', but we didn't like this as much. It made the scene less clear, because there was too much noise on both sides. Moreover, the emphasis on this scene should really be on how Lewis feels, and by having some of us on his mum's side I think it took away from that.
This is why we have stuck with just being Lewis' inner thoughts, and we have received positive tutor feedback on it as well as feeling ourselves that it enhances the scene.

One problem we found with our performance before we started making these new changes to it was that the transitions from scene to scene weren't fast enough and that there was a dead stage at some points. Keeping this in mind, I thought of a way we could move smoothly into the next scene without people even having to leave the stage like we did previously. The next scene is Leonora's house party, and at the end of the Lewis' house scene Mason asks him if he's still going and Lewis says yes.
I came  up with the idea of Lewis and Mason staying where they are, seated centre stage, and the scene changing around them, almost as if it's fading into the house party smoothly.
We do this by Elvina breaking our from the chorus at the back and handing them drinks, and everyone on stage except for Jaycee and Alice staying on and starting acting as though they are in the party.
We tried this transition out and found it works well and saves time, so this is how we are changing scene. For the actual content of the house party scene, we decided to keep the same conversations we already had between Jaycee, Alice and the drug dealer (Big Brenda), and just build the rest of the scene around it. We knew we wanted to use music to really immerse the audience in a party atmosphere, so we thought for a while about what song to use that would be enjoyable for the audience, that they'd be likely to know so it would engage them, and that had a good beat for us to choreograph the scene to. We selected Man Don't Care by JME, and we're finding this works really well. However, we were given feedback that the lyrics were too distracting and detracted from what was actually happening in the scene, so we've decided to use an instrumental version of it instead of the original, meaning we can keep the same music and beat without the rapping distracting the audience.
We've really applied more stylised work to this scene, using slow motion movement in the transition from the last scene to this and choral movement as everyone takes drinks at the same time. We thought of this part as a kind of choreography, because we think to make this scene stand out as a busy place with only seven actors we need to make it really synchronised and compelling to look at physically and make the most of each and every person on stage working together to create the desired effect of a bustling party.
We have taken what we did in the scene where it was a drug house, having Alice really stand out and not fit in at all, and applied it to this, again trying to show that she is out of her depth, but this time in a social sense as well as the sense that she is getting into something she shouldn't with the drugs.
After the rest of the cast have broken out of slow motion, I as Alice enter, and we've made a sequence in which she is buffeted around and caught up in the frantic midst of the party as she looks for Jaycee.
By having everyone surround Alice and focusing on her trying to get through what are supposed to be big crowds, we are portraying that she is overwhelmed.
When Jaycee arrives he takes her to see Big Brenda, and she and Big Brenda have a conversation in which Alice agrees to deal for her. We felt that in the original drug house scene, this talk was bland and lacked interest, so we're adding more to it, making it more dramatic. Now, Alice sits centre stage in a chair, circled by Big Brenda, and the rest of the chorus all close in on her more and more as she agrees to show that she is getting trapped in this situation. We wanted to really show the definite moment that was the changing point in Alice's life, from which it goes downhill, and we've chosen to use physical theatre to represent it. As I agree, I literally fall back into the arms of the chorus and then exit, to show me falling into this new lifestyle.
Then, in Jaycee's talk with Big Brenda where he says he's quitting, we're using a canonical laugh from the chorus when Jaycee says he takes writing classes. Again this is to add more interest to the scene to keep the audience engaged and keep up the energy on stage.
I think this scene is much better than it was originally now we have changed the setting and added these performance style techniques to it, it's far more interesting to watch and also much snappier, so our audience won't lose focus. 

The same as before after the drug house, immediately after the party we go to the scene at Alice's home. This scene has been changed entirely, as I discussed previously the change in how her family treat her and what her home life is like.
In the scene she now comes home and only sees her mum, who she talks to briefly. Alice keeps trying to talk to her mum about something, but her mum keeps cutting her off and talking about the success of Alice's siblings. Then, when Alice tries to get a word in about herself, her mum receives a phone call and leaves. This, feeling neglected and like no one has time for her, is what pushes Alice to take the cocaine she bought.
Bringing back the method we used at Lewis' home, the chorus play as Alice's inner thoughts building up to her taking the drugs. We've chosen to do this instead of her having a monologue to show that this is all the stuff Alice keeps bottled up inside. As the chorus speak as my inner thoughts, I make a steady beat by stamping my feet, and with each stomp her thoughts repeat and Mara as a chorus member becomes a table from which I take the drugs. I think this build up is effectively dramatic, showing that even though she is alone she is so surrounded by all of these bad thoughts, and they push her over the edge.

Romaine had a wonderful idea for this scene, that we should also use the chorus as different objects in Alice's house to utilise our physical theatre skills. Cache is a doormat, Mara a key, Brandon a door, Romaine, Jennifer and Cache then seats. Romaine also came up with the thought of having expectations of her home life vs. the reality, by showing what she wishes it was like, then rewinding and showing what it's actually like.
To do this, first I enter through the door, go and sit down, and am handed a book, sitting there contently. Then Elvina says "stop. this doesn't look right. Rewind", and we all go backwards, rewinding me entering the house. Brandon had an idea that we could then go back to the classroom scene at the moment when he is arguing with Mr. Chips, and then Elvina can say "pause. Too far; fast forward", and we can fast forward to where Alice is entering the house again. Then, once Elvina says "play" again, the scene at Alice's house where she talks to her mother then takes the drugs plays, and we see that is what actually happens.

We've tried this out and it looks really good, especially with us all moving at the same fast speed and making rewind and fast forward sound effects vocally. I think this makes the scene even better as it adds a bit more flavour to it.

Now we thought about the need for a scene which explicity states how things are changing in the lives of Alice and Lewis, specifically in terms of school grades, and we thought the perfect opportunity to show this is through a parents evening scene. In the scene, Lewis and his mum and then Alice and her mum talk to a teacher who explains Lewis is improving and getting good grades, and Alice's grades are declining. Lewis says it is thanks to his mum even though we as an audience know she's abusive, and Alice is on drugs in this scene and completely out of it, portraying how they are now behaving.
This scene is good because it is a key moment to show the audience the transformations in Alice and Lewis and also to show that time is passing.

Next we wanted to revisit the scene which was previously the second class room scene, after class with the dancing. This scene was always to show how the main characters fit into the social order, and now we have changed it to being a split screen to show Alice is truly isolated and Lewis is doing really well. On one side we see Lewis and his classmates all talking about exams coming up and saying they feel ready. On the other side Alice is talking with Big Brenda, giving her dealing money and shaking her hand. Through this scene we are wanting to show that they are really going down paths of their own making now.

As we have shown the progression of Lewis' and Alice's lives now, all that remained was the ending.
We have decided to have a results day scene, and then jump into the future to show where people got thanks to or regardless of those grades. Alice gets an F, and the chorus all react, shocked. Lewis gets an A, and the chorus all cheer for him. This is all we have in the results day, to show the ultimate ending of that period in their two lives. Next we say "Five Years Later", and this is where the chorus embody their characters from the classroom earlier on and speak to the audience, telling them how they did in school and then how they succeeded and where they are now.
Each character has a very different story, some of them got good grades, some of them didn't at all, and they all took different routes to where they are now, but they are all successful in their own way. This is to highlight our message of having no limit to your success and your decisions being what makes or breaks you. Jaycee says he became a playwright and director, which links into the last scene which we saw some of at the start of the piece, in which he is directing everyone.

From this, suddenly we break into the same scene we flashed forward to at the start, and now we see the rest of it too. The idea is that now the audience have seen the whole story of each character, they will understand why they're being treated like they are by the chorus, and we hope they'll understand that what would have seemed very odd out of context at the beginning is now clearly a representation of the end to their stories.
After an exact repeat of what we did at the beginning of the performance, instead of all lining up, we now finish the scene, with Jaycee the director/writer narrating.
"What happened to Alice, you might ask? Well..." he says, and we do the sequence I described earlier in which he talks about how messed up she was when he saw her and the chorus do everything he is saying.
Next however, when they leave me on the ground and walk away, they go over to Lewis. "
"What happened to Lewis?" Jaycee asks. The chorus all surround him, cheering, and as he is about to start rapping they all freeze. "I think you already know what happened to Lewis." says Jaycee, and the lights go down.
This is now the end to our piece, and we think it is much better than the one we had previously.
It is more interesting, there's much more energy, it's neater, more creative, and it just feels like it's a much better way to end it.

Performing in College

Today we performed our piece to a student audience in our college. 

I feel that it went really well. Our energy was high, the whole piece was smooth with no issues transitions or any problems like that, and we all enjoyed performing; proud of the work we have produced. 

We got really positive responses from the audience, as they were engaged, laughing a lot at our comic moments and having the desired reactions to all the different scenes. I felt that we were successful in working together really strongly to keep them engaged and interested, and not a single person dropped the ball or let the energy flop; it really felt like it went very well. 

I also feel that we did well at playing back off the audiences reactions, working with how they were responding and playing up to that, keeping them entertained by judging the atmosphere. This isn't always easy to do as you never know how the audience will react, but I'm really pleased as I think we did a good job of communicating with them. 

This new and improved version of our piece was definitely worth putting the effort into, we felt really satisfied actually presenting it to an audience and the response being so positive really helped affirm our confidence in the piece. 

Performing at our First School Tour 

Today we performed our piece and ran a workshop at a school, performing to year nines, tens and sixth formers. 

We were happy with how it went down, they responded positively and really seemed to enjoy our performance, which is fantastic. Of course this whole time we have been constantly keeping in mind our target audience and trying to create work which we think will appeal and relate to them, and it was truly great to see that the work we've put into focusing on that got a good result. 

I think the way they reacted to our performance, seeming genuinely interested to watch and being involved in it, shows that we targeted it right and the material we produced was suitable for our young audience. 

It was interesting to note the difference between performing for the young adult student audience at our college and the much younger audience at the school. Seeing how the different audiences differed in response to parts of the performance was a really great example of how age demographics interpreted our work in their own ways. 

What was really good for us was that both responses, although different in some ways, were positive, and our material worked for both types of audience. I think this means our work is accessible to a wide range of audience, and in my opinion the fact that the older audience also enjoyed it even thought it was created for younger people tells us that we achieved our goal of not wanting to treat the school kids immaturely and credit them with the ability to understand and enjoy our performance without it being dumbed down patronisingly like theatre and media for children and young people often is. 

The workshop also went well, even though we had a large group to work with, which was a potential difficulty, I think we handled it professionally and managed to keep it organised well but also have fun. The young people seemed to enjoy it, everyone was properly participating even the more shy or quiet people, and we tried our best to create a fun and comfortable atmosphere so they would feel happy taking part in our activities and could get as much out of it as possible.

From their response to creating a freeze frame based on keywords which were associated with our performance, we could also see that they had really paid attention to the performance and picked up on the parts of it that were meant to stand out, for example different versions of success, which was brilliant to see. 

All in all I am really glad with how our tour is going so far; we feel even more inspired by the success of this one and will carry that motivation and drive into our next visit to a school, which will hopefully be in the new year. 

Applying Acting Styles

Bertolt Brecht

His full name was Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (February 10th 1898-August 14^th 1956), and he was born Medieval City of Augsburg, in the Bavarian part of the German empire. Baravia remained his place of living until 1924.

Bertolt’s mother was Sophie Brecht (Née Brezing) (1871–1920), a devout Protestant, whose influence meant that Bertolt knew the bible, and at a young age was exposed to Luther’s German translation. Sophie also suffered with breast cancer for much of Bertolt’s youth. His father was Berthold Friedrich Brecht (1869–1939), who was Catholic, but persuaded to have a Protestant wedding to Sophie when they wedded in 1897. Berthold worked at a paper mill at which he became managing director in 1914.
Bertolt had one sibling, a younger brother named Water who was born in 1900, and their family was middle class.

As a child, Brecht suffered with a congenital heart condition as well as a facial tic. For the purpose of relaxation, he was sent to a sanitarium. His health had another turn for the worse at age twelve when he had a heart attack, but he made a good recovery and was soon able to resume his education.

He had a good education, attending a Protestant elementary school Volksschule from the age of six, and then at age ten a private school; The Royal Bavarian Realgymnasium (Koeniglich-Bayerisches Realgymnasium).
There he was schooled in latin, humanities, and later learnt of philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. It was during his time at school here that he began his writing, co-founding and co-editing “The Harvest”, a school magazine. By the time he was sixteen, Brecht was writing for a local newspaper at this point.
At age 18 Brecht was almost expelled from his education for disagreeing with the popular view that it was necessary to serve for your country in the war, but the threat of being expelled never came to fruition, and by the time he was nineteen he had left school anyway as he was employed doing clerical work in the war, the reason he was kept to clerical work being his health conditions.

It was in 1917 that Brecht resumed his path of education, now attending Ludwig Maximilian Universitaet in Munich, studying medicine. By the time Brecht was studying medicine here, his mother’s cancer was escalating to the point where she had to have heavy doses of morphine.
It was whilst attending here that Brecht wrote his first play, “The Baal”, which he wrote on the subject of the life of C.D Grabbe , after having read Hanns Johst's “The Lonely One” and insisting that a much better play could be written on the same subject.

Brecht’s studies were interrupted yet again in 1918 when he was drafted into the war to serve as a medical orderly, but 1918 was also the year that saw Brecht write his second play “Drums in the Night”, a tale of a soldier who, on returning home from war, discovers the woman who was is fiancé is now engaged to a war profiteer.

In 1919 Brecht joined the Independent Social Democratic party, and thus began his involvement with communism, which would continue for the rest of his life.

Subsequent to his to his interest in socialism, he began to write theatre reviews for an independent socialist newspaper, by the name of “Volkswillen”.

1919 was also the year which saw Brecht become a father, as his girlfriend at the time Paula Banholzer gave birth to their son, Frank. But, in 1921, he took his second trip to Berlin, where he met the actress and opera singer Marianna Zoff,  who he soon married and had a daughter with; Hanne Hiob, who in fact lived to become a famous German actress.
Brecht’s love life was far from the conventional and monogamous kind, as even married to Zoff and having a child with her, he was in many affairs throughout their marriage, one of which ended up bringing about their divorce. The said affair was with actress Helene Weigel, who had his son Stefan in 1924 and who he ended up divorcing Zoff for in 1927. Weigel and Brecht married in April 1929, and the year after their marriage, the couple had a second child; a daughter named Barbara. Interestingly, Barbara as well as Brecht’s other daughter Hanne, became an actress.
It should also be noted that in 1944 Brecht had a child with Ruth Berlau, but sadly it did not survive.

Brecht’s fuel for passion and sexual experience did not only extend as far as marrying several women, but it is also thought that Brecht never had ”no fewer than three mistresses at any time throughout his adult life”[1]. Moreover, from the young age of sixteen Brecht is also known to have begun regularly visiting a brothel for the purpose of gaining sexual experience.
Brecht was also no stranger to homosexuality, as he used to invite artistically minded male friends to his home on weekends to read “erotic compositions”[2], and in his diaries contained loose reference to his need for both males and females to satisfy his sexual desires.

Back to Brecht’s career however, it continued to blossom as in 1920 he became chief advisor on selection of plays at Munich Kammerspiele, and continued with writing his own plays; his works in the early 1920s being In the Jungle of the Cities (1923,)Edward II (1924,)The Elephant Calf (1925), and Man Equals Man (1926).
Drums in the Night was the first play of Brecht’s to be performed however, premiering in 1922 at the Munic Kammerspiele and winning Brecht the Kleist Prize. The first performance of Baal came the following year.
The flourishing success of Brecht’s writing throughout the 1920s was partly due to a move he made to Berlin in 1924, which he was insistent was a necessity to his writing career. In the years following the move Brecht also published his first ever book of poetry, named “Hauspostille”, which also won Brecht a literary prize. In 1924 Brecht also became a consultant at Max Reinhardt's Deutches Theatre in Berlin.
Though Brecht’s work was going so extremely well, it was actually politics which was fast becoming a large interest in his life, and his political views and opinions fast began to influence his work and became apparent in it. It is fitting then, as where there are opinions there is inevitably a counter argument, that some discord and unpleasantness slowly began to erupt around Brecht’s work.
In 1930 Brecht’s opera “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mohagonny” opened in Leipzig and caused a riot.

Two years later, a political film by Brecht named “Kuhle Wampe” after a place in Berlin were unemployed people lived in shacks, was apparently too controversial,  as after premiering in Moscow it was banned from theatres in Germany.

Despite the backlash against some of his work and his political position, Brecht persevered with both a literary and political lifestyle, writing even more plays such as He Who Says No (1930),The Measures Taken (1930), and The Mother (1932), and continuing to let his beliefs shine through in his material.

But, as 1933 dawned, Brecht began to fear for his very life. Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and Brecht fled with his family, living in exile. Brecht’s work was then banned in Germany, and in 1935 he was stripped of his German citizenship.
During his years of exile Brecht wrote Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (1940), Mother Courage and her Children (1939), The Good Person of Szechwan (1941), and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Uri (1941), whilst living in many places such as Vienna, Zurich and Prague, until he eventually gained his Visa and went to the USA in May 1941. However, in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee called Brecht into questioning to testify about his alleged communist activities.
Fortunately Brecht managed to outwit those investigating him, but fearing that something else might happen due to politics in America at the time, he quickly fled the USA, flying out to Switzerland only shortly after his testimony.

One year later in 1948, Brecht’s long exile came to an end and he returned to Germany.
Once back in Germany, Brecht and his work were recognised and appreciated by the Communist cultural establishment, who happily provided Brecht with the opportunity to direct Mother Courage and Her Children at the Deutsches Theatre. Soon Brecht founded his own theatre company, the Berliner Ensemble, and in 1954 he was awarded his very own theatre; Theatre am Schiffbauerdamm, which he accepted, despite his differences with the type of Communism the German Democratic Republic practiced.

For the last few years of his life Brecht wrote few plays, the success and fame of which didn’t match that of his earlier plays. However, during these few years, he did write many of his most well-known poems, including Buckower Elegie. In 1955 Brecht was awarded a Stalin Peace Prize, just one year before his death. He died of a heart attack on August 14^th 1956.

For me, researching Bertolt Brecht’s life and contextualising his work and theories has really helped me with understanding what informed his views and opinions, especially politically, and how this affected his plays and the messages he was trying to send.  As Brecht was so politically minded I can see how he developed many of his theories and techniques such as Alienation in order to really get an audience to think, and through this try to make a real difference to society.

Also while working on Mother Courage I have been considering the time it was written in, what was going on in his life and how this impacted the actual content of the play. This has been really helpful for me, to think about the themes and social points of Mother Courage in relation to Brecht’s personal experience of war, and to develop an informed understanding of what Brecht wanted to do with this play; produce a war story which instead of glorifying war, sent out very anti-war messages and highlighted the corruption within war times and the ultimate futility of it.

I think for me as an actor working on and performing Mother Courage it is really important I’m able to understand what Brecht wished to achieve with the play, and by learning about him, his background and upbringing, his life and views, I think my interpretation of the play has strengthened and I also find it much more accessible as a result of this.

Epic Theatre

A concept primarily introduced by Bertolt Brecht, Epic Theatre is a way of viewing theatre which moves away from the norm. Brecht suggested through this that an audience viewing a piece of theatre should not be sympathising with the characters and being immersed in the story, but should rather be analysing, looking at objectively and even critiquing the actions and characters. Through this method of consuming theatre the audience should then reflect upon themselves and the real world in the same way, being able to look at things objectively and think clearly about morals, politics and external actions and relationships of and between people.
Brecht encouraged his actors to distance themselves from their characters, and to use their roles as a means of portraying how different characters behaved towards one another and as indications of social relationships. He told his actors to do this, not to think about their characters inner monologues and thoughts and feelings. Part of using the characters as symbols for different types of people is that when playing Brecht's characters, actors are often encouraged to use things like stereotypes and gestus (which I discuss in the below rehearsal diary) to tell an audience clearly what that character is like and what they represent quickly and easily without the need for deeper exploration of that character's psyche. 

This entire concept of theatre is very contrasting to that of Konstantin Stanislavski, who we studied in year one, whose whole theory was about the psychological aspects of theatre, an actor truly becoming one with their character, understanding their feelings, thoughts, personalities and empathising with them, and the situation on stage appearing as real as possible. 

“Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it” means what?

This quote could be interpreted to mean many different things I’m sure, but what it means to me is something very clear and, in my opinion, exceptionally relevant to any form of art or media.

When you read a book, when you see a play, or hear the lyrics to a song, you can be inspired. What you read, see or hear can affect you quite incredibly, even if somewhat subconsciously.
Our opinions, as individuals and as a society, are susceptible to influence from all around us, whether it be from the people we speak to, the goings on in the world, or the art we consume on a daily basis. What we absorb from all of this informs our views, opinions and ourselves as we evolve, and as we are always able to learn more and grow more, these things are able to affect the way we think and feel and our growth as a person or as a larger community.

And so when somebody or something is given a platform, a voice, it should be used to do well, to discuss important matters, express opinions, and inspire change for the better, because anyone that platform or voice reaches can be impacted by what they see, read or hear.
Now, what better platform could there be to speak from than a stage? What could be more expressive and inspiring than art; paintings, theatre, dance, music, film, television, poetry?
People do, and we as a society do listen to what is conveyed to us through the art we choose to surround ourselves with, and so, simply through spreading thoughts, ideas, and views through art to people, we can shape the world. An artist of any kind really can make a difference through their contributions.

Art is not something which simply shows us exactly what we see in our lives and in this world; it’s something which can display endless possibilities.
Sure, art can imitate life, much of real life is used in art, but then it is expanded, or analysed, even questioned, and what comes out of it is something more than just what went in, it is something which exposes and explores life.

And from this, this fascinating process of communication, sharing and influence through an infinite number of creative outlets, we find that art really can be used to shape the world and the people in it, and that it can be true; life really does imitate art.

I find this quote extremely relevant to our work in Mother Courage, as this play was intended to send out very strong messages, specifically anti war messages, and it is our responsibility performing it to keep in mind the influence our work could have and do the best we can to convey the social and political points the play makes.

Mother Courage and Her Children

This musical was written during the peak of WWII, during Brecht’s exile.
An important Brecht motto relating to this play is “war teaches people nothing”, the play is very anti-war and breaks past the tropes of normal war stories and plays, it portrays war as having no heroes and no possible positive outcome.

Synopsis

The setting is Seventeenth century Sweden, during the Thirty Years war of 1618 to 1648, a war between different European countries, in which they battled in an attempt to make one another either Protestant or Catholic.
Mother Courage (whose real name is Anna Fierling) is running a war time canteen. 

It is a wagon, which she carts around after the armies, selling stuff to local people as well as providing brandy to the people and soldiers. With her on the wagon, are her three children: her eldest son Eilif, her second son Swiss Cheese and her youngest, a girl named Kattrin, who doesn't speak after she was mate mute by an incident with a soldier early in her life. 

The children help their mother to run the wagon business.

We learn that Courage has travelled up north from Germany to make money off the war, and that the reason her children are helping her with the business is that she doesn't want them to be in harm’s way. She is stopped on the road however by a sergeant and a Swedish army recruiter, who recruits Eilif and takes him away with them.
Courage comes across Eilif again briefly as she passes through Poland following the army. During this encounter, Eilif is being commended by a Swedish general for fooling locals peasants and successfully stealing their cattle.

Courage continues her journey trailing after the army. Swiss Cheese becomes a paymaster, whose job is to carry the army’s money in a money box. We are introduced to one of courage’s friends, a woman named Yvette who works as an army prostitute. Mother Courage, the general’s cook and an army chaplain find themselves casually discussing politics, but they are abruptly interrupted by invading Catholics and are all taken prisoner. The group decide to pretend to be Catholic and blend in with the other side, and Swiss Cheese, fearing being caught with a Protestant money box, hides it in the river. But he is caught hiding it by S.C Catholic, and is apprehended and arrested.

Courage plans to sell Yvette her wagon in an attempt to make enough money to bribe the Catholics into letting Swiss Cheese go, but she is apprehensive as she realises this would then leave her with no money. She is not quick enough to make the decision, and sadly Swiss Cheese’s fate is sealed. He is shot eleven times. On being presented with his body for the purpose of identification, Courage pretends she does not know him.

Courage’s wagon is trashed by the Catholics and she is also fined, and she is going to complain to a catholic colonel, but decides against it after discussing with a soldier that there is no point fighting against the injustice. Courage does not give up entirely however, she follows the Catholic army along the road to Germany. On the journey they come across some injured peasants, who Courage reluctantly offers some of her shirts to use as bandages.

A little later on, at a Catholic general’s funeral, the chaplain tells Courage that the war will go on forever, and that she should stock up on supplies since there are low prices at the moment.
Courage does so, sending Kattrin to buy some supplies. On her way back, Kattrin is attacked by a group of soldiers and is given a gash on her face.

Due to stocking up as suggested, the canteen business reaches a height of success. However, it is just now that the Swedish king is killed, and subsequently peace is declared. Courage fears for the negative impact this will have on her business.
Yvette returns after being gone for a long time, and now her life is quite changed; she is widow to a wealthy count. She is unhappy however to come across the cook, who is an old lover of hers.

Courage is forced to sell her extra supplies to make money. Eilif attempts to repeat his earlier action of stealing from peasants, but now the war is over it is a punishable offence and he is taken away to be executed. Courage, busy with business still, does not know of his death, but chaplain does go to give his support to Eilif at the execution.

Only the cook and Courage are left together now as the chaplain has gone, and they are forced to beg for food. In a change of luck for the cook however, he inherits an inn from his aunt. He offers for Courage to go and run it with him, but on the condition that Kattrin is left behind. She declines the offer, refusing to leave Kattrin.

Courage and Kattrin take up residence with their wagon in a peasant town. While courage is out in the town doing business during the night time, the Catholics plan a sneak attack on the town. Kattrin, realising what is happening, bangs on the drums on the wagon to warn the townspeople. The Catholics try to make her stop, but as she refuses, they end up shooting her dead.

All three of her children are now dead, and yet Courage does not give up. She signs a lullaby to Kattrin and pays the peasants to give her a burial, and then somehow finds the strength to continue on her journey. She gets back on the road and leaves to continue her canteen business. 

Themes

• Society and class
• War
• Religion
• Rules and order
• Power and authority
• Innocence and guilt
• Justice/injustice
• Money and war profiteering
• Motherhood and family 

Rehearsal Diary

Wednesday 16th September 2015 

Today we started work on Bertolt Brecht. We watched a documentary called "Changing Stages" by Richard Eyre as part of our research into Brecht, his work, his theories and how he compares to other play writes and theatre theorists such as Konstantin Stanislavski and Samuel Beckett. 

After watching this and gathering relevant information on Brecht, we translated some of the theories we just heard about into practical work and further explored and learnt about Brecht's techniques. 

We looked at his technique called Gestus. 

Gestus is where you do a physical gesture or movement, usually paired with a facial expression, to indicate clearly who or what you are/what is happening. For example, if you were being a cleaner, you might pretend to be sweeping the floor, and simply through this one basic action or pose the audience would be able to immediately guess what you were. It does tend to use stereotypes, which is of course rather problematic, but the reason that gestus employs such a simple way of representing somebody is that Brecht wanted his actors not to be their characters on stage, but display what type of person their character was. 

Brecht did not want the actors to be thinking deeply about their character's inner monologue, nor did he want the audience to be thinking about that, and so by doing something so self explanatory as gestus, the audience are provided with a situation and/or people without the need for even having to know what those characters are thinking or feeling. 

We looked at gestus by a small group of us standing in front of the rest of the class. We were instructed or do a tableau of war. Melody and I sat down, freezing with me attending to a wound on her leg, Katy lay on the floor, Mara crouched over her and miming pointing a rifle into the distance, and Cache and Klodian froze with one of them supporting the other and helping them to walk. 

Just through this, the entire rest of the class were able to guess that we were at war, who each of us was and exactly what situation we were all in. 

We looked at this notion of simplicity explaining a situation by being given a simple environment in which to devise a short piece of three scenes. We were given an office as the setting. 

Working with Klodian, Mara, Didi and Melody we devised a story where two companies which were going under planned to merge with one another to save themselves, but one of the companies planned to let the employees from the other get sued so they could claim any surplus money from the lawsuit. 

Creating this is and watching the other groups' piece it became so clear how so much can be provided to the audience with not much at all. We didn't even think about our characters in depth, only what they were doing and what they were like. Just through these base things the narrative could still be served, the narrative being not a story for the audience to be immersed in, but a situation for the audience to observe and be able to pick apart objectively. 

Through these two exercises we also looked at Alienation, another technique of Brecht's. As in Brecht's work, the audience are encouraged to analyse objectively what they see instead of sympathising with characters or getting emotionally involved, alienation is a way of "making the familiar strange". The actors or a narrator can interact directly with the audience, breaking the fourth wall. The way we were told to use alienation in our pieces was by giving a title to each scene, and subsequently acknowledging that what is happening on stage is not real, but is in fact a contrived situation for you to judge and analyse. 

Brecht's theories and techniques are so interesting and now we've begun to scratch the surface, I'm looking forward to working on them further when we are given our scenes from Mother Courage and Her Children next week. 

Wednesday 23rd September 2015 

Today we sat together as a group and all did a read through of all the scenes we will be doing from Mother Courage and Her Children. We got a sense of the scenes and all had a think about which characters we might like to play. 

Rob cast the groups and assigned us all scenes, and I will be playing Mother Courage in scene two. 

I'm really glad I've been cast as Mother Courage, because I think it will be a real challenge and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to try something different. 

Wednesday 30th September 2015 

Today was the first day we started rehearsing our scenes from Mother Courage in our groups. 

First we had independent rehearsal, in which Cache, Klodian, Ria, Romaine and I read through our scene a few times and discussed our understanding of it. 

Our scene is where Mother Courage and the Cook are bargaining over meat she is selling, meanwhile inside the tent Eilif, the General and the Chaplain are sitting conversing while they wait for dinner. 

Mother Courage and Eilif are reunited, but she is very disappointed with what she hears he has been doing and she slaps him. 

When we worked with Rob, we set out the staging of the scene and went through it trying to add more flavour to it now, as well as taking direction from Rob. 

At the moment we are really just getting used to our scene and characters, and I think we're only scratching the surface so far, but we're definitely making a good start. 

In rehearsal we did look at the relationships between the characters in our scene and how these are supposed to be portrayed with clarity to the audience, and since I have also been reflecting on this while learning the lines. The Cook and Mother Courage have quite a funny, bantering and almost flirtatious relationship, as the Cook has a thing for her. 

Eilif and Mother Courage obviously have missed one another and love each other because they are family, but he thinks she should be proud of him and she is appalled at the way he has been behaving. 

Eilif is in the position of having to impress his superior the General, who is impressed with his service and seems to have quite a liking for him. The General is rather chiding however of the Chaplain, who he claims preaches so much it bores everyone. 

Mother Courage thinks the General is a bad General, which she explains to the cook in a little monologue, and the cook's relationship with the general doesn't extend much further than chain of command. 

Because Brecht wanted his characters used to portray different types of people in our society and how people treat one another, I think it's really important that we understand clearly their behaviour towards one another and how that can be used to make a point about how people behave in real life.

Wednesday 7th-Wednesday 14th October 2015 

Over these two weeks we have had a few more Mother Courage rehearsals. 

At the moment we're in the stage of the rehearsal process where we're stopping occasionally and discussing exactly what we think is going on, and I think this is good because it means we're all working together to fully understand our scene, and we're all striving towards the same goal. 

What we want to do with this really is pick out the messages and statements the text is intended to send out, rather than getting bogged down in things like what our characters are feeling. 

To try and achieve this, we've been looking at what we think Brecht was trying to say through this scene, as his work is so based on making social and political points. He wanted his audiences to be able to analyse objectively what was happening on stage, and so we are currently trying to work out just how to perform our piece that will make the audience think like this. 

The play Mother Courage is very anti war, and we need to try and make a constant connection with the audience, making comments to them on this theme wherever possible and really using our lines and the situation to convey the desired message that war is bad and achieves nothing. 

It really is quite a challenge, because it almost opposes so much we usually do in the process of developing a scene. Usually we would be thinking in great depth about our characters inner monologues and emotions, their objectives and their reasons for their actions. All of this however is very in the style of Stanislavski, whose work and theories were very much based on the psychological, and Brecht's theories and techniques are just so contrasting to this that we're having to learn almost a whole new way of performing. 

To help with this, we've been given the advice to almost make our characters caricatures, looking at using stereotypes and over exaggeration of their base personalities to make points about what their roles are and what people in society they are supposed to represent. 

For the first time we've had the chance to run through our scene in front of the rest of the group, and this was interesting. I found that because we knew they weren't already fully aware of what was happening in our scene because they're all doing different ones, it was a good opportunity to see how successfully we could portray the scene to them, and I feel like it was quite different acting it with an audience there who we could actively try to engage. 

After we all ran through our scenes, we sat down for a feedback session with Rob. 

Most of the notes he gave us to work on were general:

1. Technically, we all needing to be moving our voices a bit more, so as to really bring the text to life and make sure it doesn't sound one dimensional. 
2. There is currently a lack of cause and effect in the scenes, we really need to work on this. 
3. Put into practice more what we learnt in first year, even thought Brecht is different to what we've worked on in the past we can still apply skills we've accumulated so far to the development of this piece.
4. Dig deeper to really find out what's going on, and what the message is. Linking back to what I said before we were told we really need to be communicating these anti war messages to the audience as much as we can. 
5. To really work harder on portraying the characters, make them stereotypical, almost cartoon-like. Rob suggested we may even try playing them in a style of a comedian just to practice making them really exaggerated. 
6. Be much more over the top, as where we are now is not so much naturalistic, but just too flat. 
7. Moreover on this, also go really over the top with the story, make it as big as possible. 
8. There are a lot of large paragraphs in these scenes, but when we have a lot to say, don't throw the lines away or rush through them, really take our time. 
9. Overall, we have also all been told to really think more about how we can make these pieces Brechtian.

Specifically, the feedback I was given was to make my portrayal a bit more guttural. 

All of us playing Mother Courage as well as a few other characters were also told to look at the aphorisms in our lines and make sure we understand what the text implies and what these aphorisms are actually saying. 

Bibliography

‘Biography of Bertolt Brecht’ Grade Saver, <http://www.gradesaver.com/author/bertolt-

brecht> [16^th August 2015]

‘Bertolt Brecht’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, <http://www.britannica.com/biography/Bertolt-Brecht>

[16^th August 2015] 

http://www.shmoop.com/mother-courage-and-her-children/summary.html

Performing with Masks

Tuesday 15th September 2015

Today we started our masks assignment with Sharon. 

The first thing we had to do was learn about the key principles of working with masks: 

• Always have your back to the audience when putting on or taking off a mask, as an illusion has to be created to make the audience believe, and this can be ruined by them seeing you put it on and off. 
• Once the mask is on, never touch it or talk. This also makes it appear unrealistic, not to mention that your vocals would be totally muffled by the mask. . 
• You absolutely have to respect the mask, as a performer you serve the mask, and it controls you, you do not control it. 
• You don't give movements and body language to the mask, it gives them to you. You must let what the mask is channel through you and your physicality rather than trying to assign it a particular personality or character. 

Before we started actually using the masks, we did some exercises to practice what it would be like performing in a mask. 

Because your facial expressions can't be seen in a mask, you have to convey your emotions to the audience entirely through the mask and the rest of your body language and physicality.

When you're performing in a mask, it is also important that no matter what you're doing with the rest of your body, your head is facing the audience at all times so the mask can be seen. 

So, what we did to start working on this was line up at the back of the room and walk slowly towards the mirror. We had to keep our faces neutral, our heads facing forward the whole time, and try moving our body around in different ways as we walked, experimenting with how we could use different levels, turn different ways and make different gestures without turning our head away from facing forward. I found it really quite difficult, I think it's going to take a lot of dedication to learn this way of performing. 

Next, we continued to focus on this but in groups. We had to come up with an interesting way of walking from one end of the room to the other keeping in mind the rules of masks, a neutral face and head forward constantly. Didi, Nuray, Jerome and I were had Didi as the focal point of it, and we looked at how her body language and movement changed depending on which one of our characters walked alongside her. I found it so hard to keep a straight face and try to put across what my role was like and how I was feeling just through my body. 

We learnt that because one of our tools as a performer, our facial expressions, cannot be used, we have to enhance other aspects like gesture and movement. It all has to be made even clearer and bolder. 

Next we went up in pairs, and simply had the task of walking across the stage, greeting and briefly interacting with one another in the middle, and then exiting. The whole time our heads had to be facing forward. I can't believe just how tricky it is to do basic functions while trying to keep your head in one position; it takes so much concentration. 

When we got to actually working with the masks, we took turns doing a solo exercise: putting on a mask, walking across the stage with it on, interacting with the audience a little and then exiting. 

It feels so bizarre wearing the mask, knowing that no matter what you do with your face all that's seen is the expression on the mask. Keeping this in mind, you have to adopt the body language which corresponds to the mask. I found wearing the mask for the first time both very odd and fascinating.

I think it is going to take a lot of getting used to working with masks, but I also see it as an amazing opportunity, not only to begin learning about and understanding a whole new part of performance, but also because I think the skills we'll learn through this will assist me greatly in the rest of my acting. 

I often find that I'm awkward about what to do with my body on stage, I find myself unsure of exactly to do physically, and I think focusing so much on movement, gestures and body language is going to help with this, even in the sense that hopefully it can improve my physical confidence in the stage space.

Tuesday 22nd September 2015

Today we looked more at the elements of mask work we learnt last week, this time exploring them in more depth and also discovering more about working with masks.

What we focused on today was age. Because we can't use speech or facial expressions, it limits the ways we have to convey to the audience what age our character is. Because of this, it is so important that we're able to embody every aspect of our role through our body, including the age they're supposed to be.

To begin, we repeated the exercise we did last week of walking towards the mirror in a line. We had to try and walk neutrally, with no facial expression, and we just had to settle into our neutral and how it felt walking and being in the stage space portraying no story or emotion at all.

From this, we moved into walking as different ages. First, we had to walk around the space as if we were a five year old, but Sharon told us not to immediately start acting as we thought they did off the top of our head, but to think about it, focus on the five year old we were being, and let it channel through our walking. I feel like this is a much more effective way of portraying the age, because there are more layers to your performance when you actually put your mind to it and explore it, rather than just doing a basic movement you assumed straight away might be a five year old.

Then we transitioned into walking as a teenager, which, somewhat ironically, I actually found more difficult. As we weren't allowed to mime props, thereby eliminating the possibility of doing the stereotypical "on their phone", and because there are so many different types of teenagers, I struggled to decide quite what to do. However, the exercise entailed actually changing up the personality or emotion of the teenager every so often, so having the chance to try out a few different things helped.

Next we went back to being five year olds, and we did an exercise where we as that five year old had to find our favourite toy and play with it. We looked at how big and exaggerated we could make our movements to make it clear what we were doing. It feels unnatural putting such emphasis on movements and motions you'd normally hardly even see, but the more we did it, the more used to it I became. Continuing the exercise, we paired up and had to play together with our toys. During this exercise what we tried was each of us being the major or minor focus at different points, as the audience need to know where they are supposed to be looking at any given time.

During this, we weren't allowed to talk to one another, and I found it really interesting how we're able to communicate with one another silently in our work, I think it is a great way to develop teamwork and cooperation.

Our next task was to interact in pairs again, but this time as teenagers, not children. We had to prepare a short greeting/scene as teenagers and then perform it for the rest of the group. In the scene our heads had to be facing forward of course, and we had to try and make clear what our characters were. Melody and I worked together on this, and it was quite a challenge to do this whole greeting and use your body completely without turning your head away.

I feel like this masks assignment takes a lot of concentration and it feels like it is really helping me work on focusing on individual aspects of performance, in terms of physicality.

Working together on this is really good, because in our mask work it is important that we can interact both with people on stage and with the audience, and by practising together we can get used to holding the story on stage together as well as engaging with the audience.

An exercise we did on our own was kind of a development on what we did last week where we just chose a mask, walked across and interacted with the audience in it.
Today, we had to do the same, but there was the addition of two boxes of props in centre stage which we could use.

I really enjoyed this, it gave us enough time to get comfortable in a mask and experiment with the body and movements of that mask. It is a very strange experience being on stage in a mask, it almost feels as if you aren't there as much as you are when your face can be seen.
Something I thought was so striking and effective which people did was just being quite still, being confident enough to let the mask do the work. We observed that having that strong, self assured presence on stage really encouraged a stillness in the audience and drew us in as an audience.
Something I tried to focus on while I was in the stage space wearing the mask was exactly this; taking my time, being confident in not doing too much, trying to maintain a good presence. A lot of these exercises we did prior to this one where we actually used the masks helped, as I felt really quite confident and comfortable in the mask this week, already much more so than last week.

The last thing we did today was another group project. We worked in trios, two acting in masks and one directing. I worked with Didi and Nuray, and I was directing. The task we were given was to create a short performance based around five year old children at their first day at school.
We chose two very contrasting masks; one with a sad facial expression and the other with a somewhat mean smile. Our natural instinct here was to look at the theme of bullying, as that could be the relationship these two masks had with one another.
Nuray was the mean, uncontrollable, rude, bully, and Didi was the nervous, shy, quiet, sad kid.
We worked around it being the first day for both children, but them both having such different attitudes and making such different starts. I think that using the young age of five which offers such specific physicality and having a first day as a setting which is so full of possibilities was really great stimulus to work with.
It wasn't only really great experience to create our own performance and gain experience of working with masks though, I find it just as important to pay close attention to everyone else's work. By seeing what seems to work and what doesn't, then feeding back to one another, I'm starting to build up quite a clear idea of what makes a successful performance working with masks.  

Tuesday 29th September 2015 

Today we looked at centres, and more specifically building a character from a centre. 

The day started with a warm up, in which we did our usual exercise of moving around the space in neutral. However, part way through the warm up, we were given a different way in which to walk around the space. We had to imagine our centre was in our head, and that our centre was what was leading us. Next we tried moving our centre to different places around our body, such as our leg, our knees, maybe our arm. We explored how where your centre is placed alters your movement.
Last week we looked at how important it is to make things clear to the audience, especially where they should be looking and where the focus is on stage. We explored this further through centres, putting complete emphasis on the part of our body where the centre was, over exaggerating our movements to make clear where that centre is.

Once we had gotten warmed up and begun to understand the concept of working from a centre, we did an exercise crossing the stage one by one with the rest of the class observing, and we had to choose a centre and make it clear as we crossed the stage.
We discussed what seemed to work to clarify where a centre was, and it all seemed to be about a combination of timing, stillness and over exaggeration. We also found that comedic value really added to the effect on the audience when using a centre.

Next grouped up into threes and were set the task of devising a short piece in which the three of us interacted all using our own centres. Melody, Jerome and I were in a trio.
We improvised a scene on the tube, and thought about how we could make it clear to the audience where each centre was, while also being able to interact with each other realistically. In the scene, I was a pickpocket, and it was based around me taking things from Melody and Jerome without them noticing. I think we were effective in achieving our goal, as the audience seemed to understand where our centres were as well as the narrative. 

Now we were well acquainted with how to use a centre in our performance, we combined it with our mask work. First, we took the faces of different masks and applied a centre to them which fit the face and character we felt that mask had.
Then we moved on to actually using the masks, doing an exercise where we crossed the stage in a mask using a centre, interacting with the audience as we went. We could choose any mask, but what was important was that our chosen centre informed the character and attitude of the mask, and it all came together to portray a clear role.
We all did this exercise twice, the second time trying to really emphasise and focus even more on putting this across. It is quite difficult applying a centre, because even though it helps build your character and add to your performance and physicality, you have to keep in mind all the principles of mask work and using a centre at the same time, and you have to do your best at both things simultaneously, not allowing your focus on one to take away from the other. With a lot of concentration it can create a really full and comprehensive character, particularly in terms of movement.
We worked together also in masks using centres, as we began to enter the stage space while others were already on, crossing paths and interacting with each other as new characters we created using a new mask and a new centre. Again, this added even more to work on, and it was actually really fun to push yourself into working in a mask, with a centre and other performers all at the same time.
Our work with masks is developing at an exciting pace, and all the time we're accumulating more and more we can use in our pieces when we devise our final performances for this unit.

The final thing we did today brought back in the major and minor work we did last week and added that to everything we were already doing.
Mara, Jerome and Romaine took part in an exercise which the rest of us observed, in which they had to use masks, centres, interaction and major and minor performing. Sharon gave them different points at which to change between who should be acting in major and who in minor, and we all watched the way the whole narrative was effected just by who the focus was on. In a sense I find that whoever is acting in major, we as an audience get a chance to sympathise with and see things from their point of view, as they are who our attention is on and therefore we see the scene taking place almost through how they see it and how they feel. It is very interesting what a huge difference using major and minor acting makes, and I also think it really helps to clarify the narrative and prevent the stage from being too busy with action and the scene appearing messy.

Putting together all the different techniques we've been learning over the last few weeks in this lesson was really great, I feel with all these different skills we will have a strong foundation for our performances. 

Tuesday 6th October 2015

Today we were put into the groups for our final performance with masks and we created our pieces. 

I was put into a group with Cache and Jerome, which is fantastic, as we're working together really well and make a good team. 

The first thing we had to do today was come up with ideas for our piece. The stimulus we were given was that it has to be based around school, even if not in a school environment, just related to school somehow. 

Jerome pitched the idea of having a dramatic storyline, one with a serial killer. We really liked this idea, excited at the prospect of such a thrilling basis for a story, and so now we had to think about how we could incorporate this with the school theme. I suggested that it could be set at a school trip to the fairground, as this offered up a great setting for some quite creepy material, which we all agreed on. We considered that one of the students could be murdered, but then decided to take this into a further plot twist; that one of the students was the killer, who had faked their own death. However, after feeding back this idea to the rest of the group and discussing the nature of the masks with Sharon, we came to the conclusion that the masks were too innocent to have such a dark storyline, so, we had to think of a way to use our idea of horror in a more light hearted way, and how to translate a dark storyline into something less heavy. 

Our idea for the killer was that they were a student who was bullied and sought revenge, and we considered how we could put a less dramatic turn on this. We decided to have them as a student who was bullied and decided to play a prank on their bullies, scaring them, to stand up for themselves. 

The perfect setting for a scary prank is a haunted house ride, and since we had already decided to set it at a fairground, this was ideal. 

Diagram of ideas

Now that we had a good foundation for our story, loads of ideas began to flow for costuming, props, lighting, sound, characters and scenes. To the right is a spider diagram of some initial ideas and a timeline of the scenes we came up with. 

Timeline of scenes

Firstly, we wanted to focus on what our characters were like. Cache and Jerome are going to play the bullies, and I'm going to play the girl they pick on. We decided Jerome would work with the mask that has a cocky smirk, Cache with the one that looks kind of dorky with its teeth out, and I will work with the one with the sad, shocked expression.
This is to show that Jerome is the leader out of him and Cache, that Cache follows what he says and is quite susceptible, and of course that I am upset by the way they treat me. 

To make it very clear to the audience who our characters are, we wanted to have quite slow entrances for each of us as an introduction to our characters. Through these entrances we decided to each pick a centre, and to really emphasise that point in our body as a means of conveying our character's overall persona and emotions. My centre for example was my shoulders, and I slouched, wanting to appear nervous and also down in the dumps. 

For our costumes, to follow the school theme visually, we have chosen to wear white shirts, black jeans and ties to portray school uniforms. 

Next we considered the key scenes for our piece to create a clear storyline. We knew we wanted to set up the situation, to have the prank, and then to have a happy ending. 

Jerome came up with the idea of us travelling to the trip by bus, Cache suggested using bus sound effects for this, and together we devised the staging of three chairs and the use of choral movement to show the bus journey. We swayed in unison from side to side and front to back, shaking slightly, to portray the bus moving around and turning corners. 

To make it clear to the audience where we were going, I thought of using some Brechtian style, walking across the stage with banners to explain. So when we arrive at the fairground, I walked across with a banner which reads "School Trip to Fairground". 

We wanted our first scene at the fairground to display the relationship between the characters, so we thought of showing the way Cache and Jerome treat me as I try to join in with them and they shun me. Wanting to use more physical theatre, we thought of going on a roller coaster ride. Cache and Jerome get on it and I try to sit next to them, but they shoo me away and so I have to sit in the back. 

We thought about how to show what ride we were on, and decided to make big gestures to show the audience, first pulling on the safety bar across our chests to hold us in, and then all leaning in the same directions and different points to show we were on a fast ride. 

Wishing to really highlight how mean Cache and Jerome are to my character, I mime throwing up after the ride, and the two of them laugh. 

We wished to show a lot of time passing at the fairground, but had to keep in mind that we only had five minutes, and so Jerome suggested doing a time lapse. We developed this idea by staging it split screen, Cache and Jerome enjoying themselves on one side and me bored and on my own on the other. Cache suggested we did all of our movements sped up as if we were showing it all in fast forward, and I said we should add a clock ticking sound effect over it, all of this enhancing the illusion of time passing while highlighting that my character wasn't allowed to be friends with them. 

Next was in my opinion the most fun part of our performance to devise; the scary prank scene. 

First we had to consider how to create the atmosphere of the haunted house and immerse the audience in it. To show what they were entering, we used another banner saying "Haunted House", but we wanted to do much more than this to set the scene. 

I thought a great way to create the dark, creepy environment was to switch off the lights and have the stage almost completely dark. Cache suggested instead of leaving one light on we could each have a torch, not only to shed

We considered different scary sound effect we could use; creaking floorboards, heavy breathing, screams, but Jerome suggested a piece of music called Kimyou na Yume playing over the scene, as it sounds like fairground music, but with an eerie, creepy twist. We all loved this and decided it was the perfect sound effect for this scene. 

Now we decided and rehearsed how I would scare them in the house. First, I sat on the floor in centre stage, swaying from side to side creepily, and they came to investigate, then I scared them. Next I changed position to stage left, frozen, and when they came to investigate, I scared them again. 

To keep it light hearted and follow the notion of it being a prank, we wanted to make this comical, so we chose to have a jokey chase scene. At this point I run after them across the stage one way, then the other, and then follow them into centre stage and pop up behind them. 

We rehearsed over exaggerating our movements and being quite cartoon-like in this scene to make it humorous.  

We ran through this scene a lot, wanting to make sure the staging and everything was just right so it could deliver the full impact. 

Finally, we created the resolution to the piece. We had to decide how to make it a happy ending was for them to be friends in the end, and we did this by my character buying the other two ice cream and ending the piece in a happy pose, me in between them with their arms around my shoulders to represent that I had been accepted and we had made up.
We just had to join this to the last scene, so after the two ran from the haunted house, I went to see them, they jumped, still afraid, and I comforted them by taking them to get the ice cream. 

I feel we managed to tie it together nicely and achieved successfully a happy ending for all three characters. 

Now we had our entire piece, we ran through it over and over, trying to make sure we followed all the key principles of mask; don't touch the mask, keep your head facing the audience, don't talk in the mask, never put it on or off in front of the audience. 

We also practised interacting with the audience, making our physical embodiment of the characters clear and using our centres, and trying to use the right combination of moments of stillness and over exaggeration to make a captivating and engaging performance. 

Once we had time to create and rehearse our pieces, we performed them to the rest of the group.
We didn't use the masks for this first showing, but in a way I think this was good, because it gave us a chance to make sure we really knew what we were doing and improve our piece before making it more difficult by adding the masks.
I think this first performance of it went really well. The audience were very responsive, they laughed and seemed to find the humour funny, and as far as I could tell they were engaged throughout.
I also enjoyed performing it, and it all came together very nicely, which is really satisfying and gives me great motivation to perfect and perform it for assessment next week.
I also found performing with Cache and Jerome just as good as working with them, I feel we communicate well with one another on stage and make a good company, complimenting and supporting one another's work and coming together to fulfil the potential of the overall performance.

It is already a lot of fun working on this project and I have a really good feeling about it, I'm very excited to perform next week. 

Mask Evaluation Character Masks

Describe your working process… 

i.e. Who came up with the ideas, how did you develop them for performance?

This section of the evaluation is in my logbook. 

What worked?

I think that a lot of the ideas we came up with in the initial creation of our performance worked well, which I'm really pleased with. 

I think our portraying our characters through their entrances and centres worked well, as we received a positive response from the audience which indicated they understood the dynamic between our parts clearly.
I think the humour in our piece also went well, as we used big over exaggerated and almost cartoon-like movements at different moments for comedic effect, such as in the haunted house when I was scaring and chasing Cache and Jerome, and the audience seemed to find this funny.
I would say that our overall interaction with the audience was successful, and I think we managed to build a good connection with them, because they did respond appropriately at different moments and seemed engaged in our performance. We were really happy about this because the work we put into rehearsals making sure we had moments where we involved them worked well in our live performance.
I also think that the sound and lighting effects we used in our piece, such as music, bus sounds, and turning off the lights and using torches added a really good layer to our performance and were successful in creating the desired atmospheres, such as a scary and tense one in the haunted house.

What could have been better?

As in my opinion both our rehearsal process and performance went well, I think that what I would improve on would essentially just be neatening everything up. Through more practice and rehearsal I think we could have made each part of the performance even stronger, literally just making the whole thing a bit tidier. This is because at some points I found it quite challenging to manoeuvre around the stage with the mask on, such as when chasing Cache and Jerome or exiting and entering with banners, because it was quite difficult to see in the mask as it limits your vision.

So I believe moments like these could have been better, and if we were to work on this again that is what I would focus on improving. 

What have you learnt about working with mask?

One of the most important things I have learnt from working with these masks is that they are absolutely not just props or costume, they really are performers in their own right and it is only through working with the mask that you can really build a strong performance.
Moreover I have learnt that you must take character and physicality from the mask, rather than applying it to the mask. In order to be convincing and to really create the illusion of bringing a mask to life, you have to let it be itself and adopt that character of the mask.
I've also learnt a lot about the many ways you can really use your physicality to its full potential in mask work, and that movement, body language and posture truly can be just as effective and expressive as words.
I have also learnt the importance of stillness and slowness when working with masks, and that sometimes less is more when connecting with the audience, because the mask itself portrays a lot and can be a demanding presence on stage even if you are very still.

Name the basic techniques?

• Always having your back to the audience when putting on or taking off a mask, so as not to shatter the illusion. 
• Never speaking or making sound once you have the mask on. 
• Not touching the mask once it is on, as this is another thing which breaks the illusion. 
• Allowing the mask to give you movement and character, really letting its personality flow through you and letting it control you, not the other way around. 
• Always keeping your head to the audience.
• Having clear entrances and exits. 
• Making your physicality strong and clear to fully portray your character and emotions without the need for words. 
• Interacting and connecting with the audience whenever possible, making sure they are always engaged in the performance and fully believing in the masks. 
• Using centres in your body to enhance your physicality and convey certain characters or emotions. 
• Working cooperatively with other performers on stage and together making a strong piece by all following the rules of mask while interacting with one another too. 
• Using major and minor, making it clear where the audience should be looking and who or what the focus is on at different points. 

Finally …How will this work help you as an actor?

This work has been so focused and intensive that I think it has really helped build discipline for me as an actor. It has taught me a lot about getting into the zone to perform, and I think in any kind of performance work I do this will be immeasurably helpful, as I will hopefully be able to think back to finding my neutral and getting in the right mindset to create work and perform. 

It has been so heavy on physicality that it has really done me a world of good in being concise and confident with my body language and movement. As an actor I have always found it quite difficult to be confident physically on stage, but this mask work has helped me a lot with being able to feel sure of myself physically even when not moving or gesturing. I've also learnt a lot from it about exactly how to use my body as a performance tool successfully, which I will be able to apply to all future work as a performer. 

The absolute concentration and commitment required to working with a mask, remembering all of the rules and techniques while also completely applying yourself to a role as well as working with the other actors cooperatively, connecting with the audience and serving the narrative of your piece is very challenging and having so much to think about at one point and learning how to find the balance has given me important skills in being able to divide my focus across several aspects of performance at once. 

Altogether I think that my both my confidence and skill as an actor has been improved a lot through this mask work, and I intend to carry through everything I have learnt from it into any future acting work I do. 

Technical Theatre 16

Today we were supposed to be finishing our music video, but we have experienced a few issues, which is very frustrating. Our goal today was to take the entire music video, duplicate it, and then when it plays the second time over to have it in reverse.
However - as I blogged about in our last session - there is no reverse or rewind effect on imovie.
So, this week Dominic helped us to export the video onto the server so he could reverse it on another device.

To export the file we had to:

• Open the project in imovie
• Select "share > export movie 
• We exported the movie to the desktop, which took about 15 minutes
• Then we dragged the exported file from desktop into the server 

While we waited for the movie to be exported to the desktop, Becca showed us Conchita Wurst's performance at the Eurovision 2015 semi finals to show us the lighting on it. It was really cool, they had a whole curtain of lights all controlled individually, moving up and down in a particular sequence that made it look like the movements of wings (which fits the song "Rise Like a Pheonix"). It was beautiful, I'd like to find out how they designed it. Becca told us that each light on there will have been controlled by DMX; I almost can't believe that such a huge display can be controlled by one system, but it's awesome. 

Anyway, after the movie finished exporting and we moved it into the server, Dominic then went to another device and reversed the movie for us on Final Cut Pro. He came back and helped us put the reversed file back onto the desktop and then we tried to move it into imovie, but this is where we reached our next problem. Even though imovie said the file upload was successful, we couldn't find the file anywhere in imovie. After trying to upload it a few more times but it still not working, we had no choice but to give up. 

It is really annoying that we still cannot finish it ourselves, but Dominic has really generously told us he'll export it as a different file type tomorrow morning to get it finished. Hopefully that will go well, and we will finally have our finished music video! 

Technical Theatre 15

Today in technical theatre we continued editing our video, but as Mo wasn't able to come in today, Elvina, Ryan and I worked on the video.
This week we were able to work a lot faster because we already know how to do the editing and stuff that we learnt last week.

We put in all the rest of the clips that we wanted to use using the same steps as last time, and it didn't take too long. But once we had used all of our available footage, we realised that we didn't have enough to cover the entire song! So frustrating, we really weren't sure what to do. We considered fading the song out, but at the point in the song where our footage finishes it sounds wrong fading out, so we eliminated that option.

We were desperately trying to think of a solution, when Ryan came up with a really cool idea. He said we could play the whole video in reverse at the end and then have it like it never happened. Elvina and I both loved this idea, and so we decided that was what we wanted to do.
But then, another obstacle arose.
Basically, we couldn't find anywhere the option to reverse clips or play them in rewind. We searched all over imovie and we couldn't find that effect anywhere. Annoyed but assuming we must have been missing something, we Googled it to find out how to do it. Our internet searches proved as fruitless as our searching around on imovie, though, we couldn't find any way to do it.
We suspected then that maybe you can't do it in version 9 of imovie, and Dominic came down and confirmed that for us. He said that in our next class he'll show us how to export our project onto another device and use different editing software to do the reverse effect, which is really nice of him.

So for now we've done all we can, and after we use the other software next class we get to start editing the completed video in terms of things like contrast and fades in and out.