The dress run

The Dress rehearsal unfortunatley didn't go as well as expected. The performance felt 'bitty' and it was commented that as performers we looked lonley on stage and that we weren't using the space in the way it shoudl have been for the nature of our show. We also felt down hearted whilst peforming which came through to the audience, as soon as one scene didn't work we began to feel somewhat embarrassed by the rest of our material. When talking through it at the end with our lecturer he told us that we seemed to have lost faith in our material and we immiediety understood what he meant as our material had seemed flat as we had become, in a sense, ashamed of what we had created when there was no need to be, we needed to get our confidence back.

Adding in the lights sound and music I feel changed our piece quite radically, not in terms with content but in terms with the amount of conviction that was suddenly in our acting. They add so much more to the action going on stage and aided the scenes. I feel that adding it in is quite an important part to the devising process as it hightlights things that perhaps don't work within the dynamic of the piece when it used to work well as an individual piece. Everything coming together shows you how far you have come yet I am glad we have thought about lighting, video and sound throughout the process as I feel that we have managed to utalise everything somewhat successfully due to us working alongside technology, instead of adding everything in a rushed panick at then end.

The first run

Today was the first full run through of the show but instead of feeling jubilant at the fact that we had managed to create all this material we actually felt somewhat panicked. We didn't feel our story made sense, we felt the individual stories lacked something, even though we all each had our own interview material and live stage action. However when we showed it as a scratch we learnt that we had worried too much, we discovered that the audience made sense of the story as a whole and made sense of the individual aspects of the characters stories. They found it entertaining and enjoyable. We were pleasently surprised at this reaction and also found their feedback incredibly useful.

I did feel somewhat worried about my story however because I tell the story which is then aided by the mexican band but they became the entire focus of the scene and I found it very hard to bring the audinces attention back to me, their presense was quite over powering on my character. I flagged this up as I felt quite uncomfortable in this scene as I felt no one was listening to my story, therefore we decided that the scene needed to be developed and reworked so that my character still had the status and main focus in the scene.

shadows

The last and final element to be added into a our devising process was that of silhouette. We decided that the character of Roger should always appear as a shadow as to mask his identity until the very end. And even then, the human you see in the last scene of the play was still difficult to see. Using the silhouette was another interesting layer added to the piece and we felt that it helped to complete the show as we had felt, although never really discussed, that there was something missing and shadow figures was the missing piece.

finding the end

Our group has so many ideas that it has been impossible to get a clear meaning from our story. There are so many ideas, yet so many things don't add up, there are gaps and the relationships between the characters aren't clear.

Therefore finding an end to a story, which at the moment is uncomplete, was proving very difficult. I think that this was the real block that our group has had through out the entire devising process, we've always had ideas, and before christmas we were plowing along at record pace creating about 20 minuets worth of material with out all the film we had done. Thus hitting a brick wall at this time in the process was a bit of a shock.

The group was getting somewhat frustrated and I felt that there was some tension in the group at this present time because I felt that we all had different ideas of what we wanted the ending to be and in some sense, what we wanted our show to say. In some cases, a difference of opinion can be exciting and new and interesting ideas can come out of contrast but in this situation we found it a struggle to find something positive. We left the rehearsal feeling that the issue had been unresolved which I personally didn't like as I felt we had left the rehearsal feeling negative about the material, which I don't think was particuallarly good for the group.

other things

Coming back from the Christmas holidays has helped us to look at the show with fresh eyes, however in the first two sessions back we have found ourselves hitting a block with where we want our story to go. We had so many ideas which we wanted to include and was finding it somewhat hard to pare down.

Following the scratch performance we showed before christmas we were told by some of our peers that some of the scenes seemed somewhat offensive and were wanred that we might be crossing a line that we didn't want to cross. I feel here that our ideas were taken in the wrong way as our aim was never to poke fun of disability, I feel that the audience were watching it out of context as we did not have any of the video footage to go with the live action on stage therefore the audience could not see how an individual scene fit in with the rest of the show. We were somewhat put out at first as we were worried that we had offended people but then realised that the audience would not be the same when we performed the final show and the show would be developed enough so that individual moments that might be seen as offensive will be in context with the rest of the story. I also felt that this was quite a positive moment because it showed us that we couldn't please everyone and the group quite liked this idea, how we could create tension within the audience thus making for a more interesting show as it had the potential to start debate.

costume and other things

Today we went to Tina's costume room and told her about our ideas for what we wanted the charcters to wear. We wanted things that would compliment each character and also make for very individual characters as well. We wanted each character to stand out. We also talked about possible ideas for wooden legs and thought about how best it would be to make them, weather we wanted it to be a stick where we could have to tuck our legs behind us or use socks. We came to the decision that instead of a wooden leg we would instead have a miniture tree as our leg, using old wellies and painting them and putting leaves and roots on to them which would then make the end idea of turing into trees make more sense within the show as a whole.

the ladder

Our rehearsals at times in the beginning stages felt somewhat flat, we couldn't always think of material and nothing would seem to flow very well. However when the introduction of prop came to us, we were suddenly more inspired and creativity began to flow. The ladder was used as something to climb on, lean on, stand on, look through and move around the stage and this somehow made the process feel richer, there was something to use, something physical that could be turned into anything we wanted. i think that the introduction of this while we were improvising was incredibly helpful in our devising process because it gave us a stimulus, it was something to work with.

Our final work in progress was somewhat successful for us as a group, as although their was a group member missing, we managed to show about 15 minuets worth of material. It was very rough around the edges as we hadn't thought through scene changes and therefore the material was somewhat messy. However we were successful in delivering very comic material which came across as surreal to the audience.Their was a problem with the last scene however, as this was probably the least surreal scene, set at an 80's style prom where one of our characters loses her wooden leg while being spun around. A couple of audience members felt it slightly offensive as it was going towards poking fun at disability, which is something that the group really didn't want to do. The advice that was given to us was very useful in helping us to see that our piece, if we didn't think it though in any more detail, had the potential to be quite offensive. Therefore our task was to then begin thinking about how we could blur this line that was inbetween an incredibly funny show, or a terribly funny show. We therefore discussed about going for the surreal within the interviews themselves, to show that the entire world we were creating on stage is not based in any kind of reality that an audience member would know. The interviews would therefore be as wacky as the action on stage, whereas before we had wanted the interviews to be very serious and quite real.

Workshops

The group over four weeks were split up and sent to different workshops. As a whole we thought that this was very useful, we could all learn about different techniques of devising, devising through movement, video, text, picture and games. After the workshops we talked about what they involved and some of this information helped aid our ideas, others did not. We found playback incredibly useful as it's something that can be employed when the group begins to flag and run out of ideas, its a good thing to use to bring inspiration back. We also employed some work we did with Glyn in the dramaturgy workshop where we used hotseating to find characters and stories, this medium also helped us decide to go down the documemtory style interviews that will be a big aspect of our piece.

I thought that these workshops also helped us to have some interdependancy, we could go off on our own or as a two and then having some responsibility to sharing with the other members of the group.

I think that most of the groups found this useful as it was said that if all of the groups did the same workshops then you would create work that was one dimensional, by going to the different workshops and learning about the different aspects of devising it meant that we could create a piece of work that was rich, diverse and exiting.

It also helped us to think about the technical aspects of our piece alongside the practicle nature of it which I believe is a good thing. I think that if technical information was given to us towards the end of the module then we wouln't be thinking about it as something that works with the action on stage as opposed to sticking it all in at the last minuete. I feel that it's important that the group establishes a relationship with the technology now, rather than discovering it in the last instance. I believe it will allow and help develop ideas, enhance action and speech and by working with it now we can establish what intentions we have in affecting the audience.

Artistic Policy

We wish to create a theatre that is experiemental yet true to life, a theatre that encompasses all aspects of human emotion and expeirence. Our aim is to make theatre accessible which comes from real life yet still thrives on technology, puppets and music. We wish to facinate by the peverse and ultimately tell stories that excite, shock, provoke, intrigue and involve.

Ultimately when we started thinking about what theatre we wanted to create we came up with a complete mish mash of ideas, all wanting to do different things, things with puppets, sad stuff, funny stuff, music, sick stuff. But one thing we all had in common was the fact we all wanted to tell stories. The back ground we all come from was that of storytelling, all drama I have worked on has involved a story, a narrative, some sort of structure. So we begin with this. What story do we want to tell?