Devising- The Progress

We have been working on a piece called 'The Ritual of the Lost Souls'
It starts with us being spread out, using our bodies to create levels, We are as still as can be, slowly reaching out for something, hoping it may the truth, something that makes sense to each individual. We have in our mind set something that we are truly searching for, this allows us to keep focused and give an honest performance.
The further we reach the harder things get, or the more frustrated we are in not finding our truth. Some people get extremely vocal whilst others use their facial expressions to show their emotions. During this whole ritual there is music played throughout, until suddenly it turns off, everybody gets back to the real world , and start sweeping things under the rug, which will symbolize how people don't always take the truth , or in finding it well...

Devising for the 45 minute piece- the process!

So far things have turned out to be rather emotional, in order to create real theatre we must find the truth, the truth inside ourselves. This for some has not been an easy exercise and for me personally was also hard, however it's very satisfying to speak about true emotions, fears and secrets.
This process is 'A Way In', in helping us with the devising process. It also allows us as actors to be real and comfortable with our emotions on stage. Letting go only allows an actor to be more free. Lots of improvisations have been part of this process too. We have been learning about 'Plastics' which is a full body movement, using our bodies to show emotions, a training method of Grotowski. We used plastics whilst listening to music, reacting with impulse which too allows us to free our minds. In other lessons we had to write a few paragraphs to express our thoughts and feelings about our lives, how we get by, what are morals may be, how do we guide ourselves, etc... Through this exercise we used a few lines from each written piece to form a small piece of theatre. This whole process developed into something a little more interesting. Each day we are building new pieces of work, it seems so far that our play will be about identity and will be short pieces interlocking rather than a full flowing 45 minute piece, however things do change.

2nd Year so far... :o)

Second year so far has proven to be a joy! After so much time away from uni I feel inspired and ready to go.

Our first day was spent at 'The Tate' to get some inspiration from the poetry and dreams exhibition.

Below are a few pieces that I loved.

It was interesting to see and I guess in a way it did inspire me in preperation for our first module of the year. After being out of a creative environment for some time, being surrounded by art most definitely opened up my mind, which gave me an idea!

THE IDEA - where it came from!

Sitting at lunch with Dominique... I get a call from my boyfriend, he starts rambling on about how he had to stay up ALL night sending some music files to a producer. He had the files ready to send in a minute format but as soon as he loaded them up to send he accidentally DELETED all the files! The consequences were for him to stay up all night to re bounce them into this one minute send format, thank goodness he had backed up the original files! This got me thinking...
This gave me an idea about how reliant we are on technology, what a shame if you loose all your work! What a shame if you didn’t back up, I mean it's kind of a crisis these days if we loose our valuable work.
Dom and I discussed this and came up with a few ideas.

We needed to come up with a proposal in order to show off our ideas.

Below reads the proposal, ideas, etc!

THE BIG EYE!

The idea is to find the meaning of cyber world.
How far do we actually live inside it?
Are we dictated by cyber world?
Do we live in cyber world or the real world?
We’re we more real in the 60’s?
Was that the ‘REAL’ revolution?
Is cyber world a dream or reality?

Passwords
Trapped

Life without a phone documentary


Can we trust cyber world?
They know my mother fucking bank details!

Bugs
Viruses

Research- finding the true emotion-How did Nick (teacher) feel when his computer got stolen?

Iphones

Cyber world- this is my life, this is your life
Facebook statuses, gather our statuses to create a script,
Do we want to live forever- does cyber world enable that? Is that why we are so obsessed?
You do live forever; is that our subconscious speaking? Are we scared of ending? Dying?
We want to speak, be heard, and see our name in lights, on screen.
In cyber world we are heard, or do we just want to hear ourselves? Remind ourselves?
Why, what, where, and who are we with?
It’s a way to speak to the word, but it’s not THE WORLD it’s cyber world!
It makes us feel bigger…rather than the small speck we really are.





Back at The Arts Depot :)

Meeting the new 1st years was really nice, and now every Monday it has been decided that both 1st years and 2nd years will share a morning class exercise, which involves, stretching, warm ups and generally getting HOT!
The games we play allow us to forget about the weekends and concentrate on the days to come.

Having Michael as a new teacher is also proving to be a success, he has set the class some interesting challenges in order to get our creative minds thinking.
We started with an exercise called 'The Grid'.
The Grid is basically an imaginary basic grid that we follow, using sharp moves to turn and change direction. We started walking the grid in silence, then eventually, naturally, took on characters and tasks, which only involved ourselves. This grid carried on for around 2 hours, people could jump in and out of the grid to watch, or could carry on the grid task to see where it would lead... After some time it seemed that the grid had disappeared and soon was a piece of theatre, where people were connecting and interacting, however no words were spoken. Though so much was said.
At some points of the exercise, it seemed like you could of been in some mental hospital, people lost there inhibitions and went... well slightly mad!
I took myself out the grid to shoot videos of some moments...
click on link below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbhiHvzQOPE

The Radio Script Workshop

The year is nearly finished and soon I would have completed my first year of Uni! I am very pleased to say that I feel very proud and excited at the same time... For the last few days at Uni we have been working towards a radio drama recording, we have written our own scripts and soon will be recording them.
I have been working with Mario and so far the process has gone smoothly. We have sound affects organized and the script is complete.

We have written the script in radio drama format.



You & I

By

Kate Meranda & Mario Hitra


The Characters, The Boy (TB), Little Girl (LG) & Mum

SCENE 1

THE SOUND OF A TAP DRIPPING, ECHOING THE ROOM

SOUND OF HEAVY BREATHING

BOY: I feel so stupid

GIRL: Why do you feel stupid?

BOY: I am stupid:

GIRL: Stupid

BOY: I can’t believe we’re back here again, back to square one

GIRL: I though we we’re gonna get out?

BOY: We we’re supposed to get out, but we’re back here again

Pause… Breathing

GIRL: Think I’m growing- Do you think I’ve grown?

Pause

GIRL: I’m starving, I need to eat, cant focus

BOY: Not sure we can eat right now

NOISES OF SCRATCHING OF THE WALLS

GIRL: Stop doing that, you always do that, I’m sick of that noise

BOY: I’m sick of these walls, I’m sick of this place, I’m sick of this situation we’re in

GIRL: What we gonna do?

BOY: Shut up! Sound of scratching of the hair… Just give me a minute

Pause

GIRL: Why are you being like this? You promised me we’d get out of here, I can’t go on my own, I need you… Are you even listening to me?

BOY: (loud) Alright, Alright shut up

GIRL: Why have you stopped listening to me? We used to be a good team You & I… If you start listening to me again… we’ll be out of here in no time!

BOY: (angry) Without you we wouldn’t even be in this situation, you’re always in my ear, (shout) just shut up for once

GIRL: Shhhh , don’t shout, they might hear you !

SOUND OF HEAVY FOOTSTEPS

INNER VOICE: BOY: It’ just a black hole, I haven’t seen the light in days

GIRL: Could be weeks, could be months.

BOY: I keep hearing the same noises, over and over again; we’ve been down here for days,

GIRL: Could be weeks, could be months…

A DOOR OPENS

MUM: (OFF) Darling what are you doing? We have to go now; we’re going to be late.

GIRL & BOY: OK I’m coming

The Tech Run and Live Show All In One Day!!!!! Crazzzzyyyy!

The tech run went rather well but at the same time was all very stressful, as we only had one day to do a dress rehearsal and a tech run due to having the bank holiday Monday off. This whole process was a lot different from any tech run I had ever done because this time we were the visionaries and directors of the pieces. This entailed writing the scripts and then translating the written word into action on stage. To also aid the effect of the pieces, we were responsible for light, set, props, costume and sound.
I had a meeting with lighting technician so I could discuss with him all the lighting ideas I had and make notes of all the cues. We settled on use of a spotlight at different points, strobe lighting and different coloured washes to evoke a haunting atmosphere on stage. I specifically liked the idea of flipping between strobe and coloured washes to show the tension and inner conflict of the main character; washes representing the beauty of his art and strobe to reflect his destructive strive for ultimate perfection.
Sound was also crucial in defining the message of my piece to the audience. The piece started with a heartbeat, leading into ‘Big Sky’ and ‘Architects Dream’ by Kate Bush and ending with ‘Skinny Love’ by Birdy. Extracts of all of these songs had been previously comped together to create one long stream of music. This made it easier for the soundman, as all was required, was pressing play at the outset and allowing the track to run. These songs were selected on three criteria; their lyrics, rhythm and worldly production. ‘Big Sky’ has a tribal pattern throughout, creating a ‘world-music sound’. This was very important to me, as I did not want my piece to be set in any particular part of the world, or in any particular time. My main character and his message were both timeless and international. I also loved the lyrics; the idea of reaching for the ‘Big Sky’ mirrored my main character’s desire to reach his own ‘Big Sky’, which sadly seemed forever out of his grasp. ‘Architect’s Dream’ was about an artist’s journey, in this case a painter and ‘Skinny Love’ was about the breakdown of a relationship, which is how my piece concluded.
In the way ‘Architect’s Dream’ was about a painter’s process of creating his art, my subject onstage was creating his art through building and decorating a huge, entwining plat. I had constructed this at home out of three large sheets of white polyester, which I platted together and then embellished with different coloured and textured materials. My subject’s action onstage was to continually construct and destruct this plat, striving to make it as beautiful as humanly possible. This plat represented any artist’s work, or in fact any person’s desire to be the greatest they can be, both to their advantage and also to their downfall.
I made sure that I wrote out all the light, sound and projection cues clearly in the right order according to the script, I felt it was important to be organised in order to run the light box with confidence and professionalism.
Costumes were very important, and also needed to be timeless and non-fashion specific to any country or decade. I wanted the costumes to portray the different personalities of the character’s wearing them. These characters had strong individual traits and I chose to dress them with hints of different animals that mirrored their characteristics. One was dressed in feathers across her upper body to be an owl, representing the wise and the thoughtful, one in vibrant reds and yellows to represent the lion, strong, aggressive, the Alfa Male of the jungle, the third had feathers sprouting from her head and was in a dull grey body, to represent a bird, timid, afraid
and introverted. As well as these characters representing external figures in his life and the different types of personalities people have, they also represented his inner conscious and opposing personalities he had in his own head; his inner struggle.
The timeless and international message of my piece being mirrored by the choice of music was also reflected in the worldly tribal movements the girls were doing. This is the point where strobe lighting was used to enhance the tension in the girl’s dance. When choreographing the girls, I made sure to tell them that their facial expressions were just as important as their bodily movements. I wanted their faces to be wild, eyes to be wide open and expressions to represent their individual animals choice.
We also had a big job setting up the stage for each piece, which meant it was very important as a class to work as a team to help make sure that the whole show ran smoothly.
There were a few hic-ups with setting up the stage, luckily it was a dress rehearsal and from this experience allowed us to understand how important it was for everyone to make sure that they are helping back stage.
We finally finished our dress rehearsal and only had about 45 minutes to collect ourselves together before the live show began. We also made sure that all the props were positioned correctly side stage.
The live show was an amazingly enjoyable process and I felt very much in control of what I wanted to achieve during my time in the sound box. I felt my communication skills were strong and I was not afraid in being direct with the sound and lighting man. Overall I was pleased with the performance however on reflection of the live show, if given a second chance I would push the girls further with their movements and make sure they had a specific thought process throughout their dance, so every move was a direct result of an internal emotion. I would also do this again with the main character and his lover with their emotional love story so their emotions for each other were more real. I would achieve this by ‘Hot Seating’ the actors asking them different questions outside of the given circumstances of the piece, so they could build a true picture in their heads of what, why and who their characters really are, and what they mean to each other.

Rehearsal Discovery... The Changes

Today was our third rehearsal, which went pretty well, it was performed to Nick and Michael, which was a good thing as they both had some great constructive criticism.
The most important thing that was noticed was that the connection between the actors was not strong enough and the emotions of each actor are not on display. The thought process was being lost and it soon becomes just a piece of dance that has no relevance to acting. As a director I have been trying to encourage the whole 'bringing on the emotion' however it still has not sunk inn, so it seems. The solution is to go through the whole performance without any dance moves, basically to act it out, there are no words so it will be purely using the face, body language and feeling the emotion. Once this is achieved, the audience will have a deeper understanding as to what this piece of theatre is saying.

The Changes:

Through this rehearsal some changes were made and they are as follows.

1- Chris will be taking things off the Plat bit by bit in scene 3.
2- Chris will be stage left along with the Plat, rather than being centre.
3-Chris will not be hunched down, he will remember to keep his back straight.
4- As the girls start the ensemble dance, Lucy will not want to be part of it at first, then the others invite her and she slowly joins.

All in all I am happy with this rehearsal and I am excited for the next one.

Here is what Lucy may be wearing for the show... It's very bird like ;)

Idea's For Projection

The Flower is Blooming!





The Flower is Dying



The Beautiful Stars and The Sky



The Changing of the Weather, The Storm