The Jellybean Video

This video has really made us, as a group, think more about the idea of Life and Death in reality, and spending our days in as worthwhile of a manner as possible.  This video has really helped us to open our ideas to the possibility of introducing some living and dying related scenes into our performance, and has sparked questions within the group such as "what would you do if you had one day to live?".  We may later decide to base our entire piece on that question, but right now we are seeing this video as a real anchor for us to use and work off of, it stems many ideas.

Human Library research task notes

Sue, Wheelchair user, 54

Accident when she young, helping another wheelchair user, when she was 21. Helping him to go the toilet, very heavy chair. Got caught in the chair - 1000/1 chance of that happening.  Lives at home with  full time carer.  Who does everything for her.  Flat she lives in Norwich, makes it very difficult for her.  Been interested in acting and drama, very heavily involved in drama. Always wanted to be a nurse.  Worst thing to lose was being able to go on long walks.  Constant pins and needles feeling on left thigh.

Some ways its become easier, some ways harder.  What happened has opened her up to what she does now, but it is hard and difficult to get around and get to places.

Last day?:  Go to Yarmouth, have a meal in her favourite restaurant.  Would want to take everybody who cares about her. 

Janet, Sue’s Carer, 60

First thing is get the cats fed.  If she wants a lay in then she gets a lay in.  Washes her, does everything for her.  Home care work, retirement home work, all over.  Only cares for Sue over three our four years.  With Sue 24/7.  People seem to stay away from her so she doesn't ask them to do anything.  It can be lonely.  Thinks people are scared to talk incase they say something wrong or inappropriate.  Although she sometimes feels like she has no time for herself, she also volunteers. HUK.  Enjoys photography.  Enjoyed social sciences.

Last Day?:  Take Sue out somewhere nice. Make sure cats are well and fed.  Yarmouth is good for wheelchairs.

Jackie, Young Transgender, 23 awaiting surgery.

It’s not particularly a choice to be trans.  Used to wear make up and mascara until he was about 11.  Studied hairdressing and make up artistry.  Worked at a bar, was very gender fluid and went on a journey of self discovery.  Knew something was going on but was unsure.  Spanish people used female pronouns and that sort of made sense to her.   Came back from Ibiza and sort of got on.  Knew she was a female and wasn’t right.  Doctor referred her to surgery.  Go through a lot of tests to make sure you're off a sound mental state.  The process took three years but she has a friend who's just come out as trans and its only taken three months which means its getting better.  Been on hormones for about a year and a half now.  Sexual reassignment surgery can cost about £11k. Before the surgery, the worst thing about it is beating yourself up about how you look and pursuing change when there is nothing you can change at all.  Dating is cool.  Dates straight men.  It was problematic because it was seen as a fetish at one point instead of being seen seriously, presented as a heterosexual female.  Doesn’t miss anything about being male.  There are people who go through the operation and the suicide rate is very high with people who regret having the surgery. Suicide contemplation or attempt rate is 60-70% in transexual people.  Dad really really hated it.  Because all her life, he had always been trying to get her to go fishing and shooting and stuff.  Mum was always been accepting though.  She probably would have committed suicide if she hadn’t been able to change.  Kaitlin Jenner is a bad representation of trans women.  Like she had only been out for two months and already took full reconstructive surgery.  Internet is a huge part of things now.  Tumblr and stuff.  Her friend’s dad just completely cut her off. 

Last Day?:  Feels really good to say your story.  So many people who have helped me.  If she had one day, rather than just getting out and getting wrecked, she would like to tell everybody who has helped her how thankful she is for everything, it would be closure.  

"Nightmare" Verbatim Theatre

In our piece's scene "Nightmare", we use Verbatim Theatre to portray people's dreams to the audience.  There are three different nightmares included in the scene but we have made the scene appear conversational, as we believe it adds more to the strangeness of the dreams.  The dreams we used in our piece came from a classmate, my mother and my little sister, and the fact that the dreams are real really adds something to our performance of them.  Verbatim theatre means that you aren't just acting as somebody, you are becoming them, which is a freeing experience.

Notes on Merchant of Venice by Propeller

Characterisation and Understanding of role and performance 

-          Constantly refer back to the text

-          Ensure full understanding of text

-          look for specific characteristics of each character:

Your characters reaction

Your character’s way of acting

-          Constantly think about what you can see/what each character is to you.

E.g. someone who needs to be wooed.

-          Background research of your piece, relate, react to what would have been going on around you

Symbolism and messages

-          Prison representing the imprisonment of the mind

Ideas of money/love/possession

-          Understand the message of the play

Play about racism not a racist play

-          Explores anti-Semitism (hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.) Doesn’t project anti-Semitism  

-          Aims to make the audience uncomfortable

-          Explores aspects also of modern culture worse to be openly racist or secretly racist and carry on as normal?

Important to not shy away from content/wash away more comic side

Relation to main play

-          Cut out 65% of the full length play

-          Main play – more comedy in the plot, another act, kept trial scene as heart of the play, take everything that leads up to the trail and leave everything else out.

-          “Court room drama”

Ensure you understand what you are saying and the message you are trying to get across.

-          Clues:

Important word at the end of a line

Iambic Pentameter

Constant challenge to make sure the audience understands – overcome by constant process of simplification

Looking at audience whilst aware they are watching them

-          Aim to have a presence in the auditorium

-          Breaking down fourth wall

-          Chairs to the side

-          Set idea earlier to speed up audience understanding

-          Take the show everywhere – easy set easy to adapt to new places

Objective in bringing shortened Shakespeare

-          Why pockets?

-          For younger audiences

-          Began in Kent south east England

-          Getting Shakespeare into schools

-          Every word comes out of Shakespeare’s original, no “dumbing down” not patronising , same pace, same intentions

-          Easier for schools, young children

Company having a break, may do something new e.g. not Shakespeare, mixed gender cast

-          All men

-          “Serendipity of an artistic choice”

"Escape" Scene

So, a scene Michael and I have been looking at recently is called "Escape".  It is one of the scenes I wrote which we have decided to use in our devised piece of theatre.

The scene itself displays two people who want to escape their surroundings and get themselves excited but by the end of the scene they have managed to convince themselves out of it.  This is a metaphor for how in our lives, there will be goals and objectives which we set ourselves which we will not achieve, and that some people allow the fear of the unknown and the future to dictate their lives.  This is portrayed in how the two men are extremely eager to get away and yet can't bring themselves to do it out of fear and a lack of security; even though the grass is clearly greener on the other side.

When we were looking at performing this, we attempted different techniques in order to try and help ourselves with the characterisation process of the scene.  We tried several different scenarios, playing the scene with a variation of characters and settings from from young boys in a school corridor to patients in a psychiatric ward, in order to try and get it fixed in our minds how we intended to play the scene, even though the scene itself is left very open to the audience's interpretation.  From this, Michael and I believe we have a much stronger sense of understanding around our characters now, and that we can perform as them effectively in scene.

String theory idea

So, the other day Owen found a cool poem and a video which we, as a group, found very interesting. The video is a dramatic reading of said poem whilst he uses string to link people together.  We like the string idea as it clearly shows evidence of the connection and hyper-connection felt between different people.  One point raised is whether the use of social media is a positive or a negative connection; displaying the fact that with the internet we can protect information which could otherwise be lost or news about loved ones who are far away, although it also portrays the internet as a pit which we are being sucked into more and more each day.  Also, this power of knowing things far away can disconnect us with what we have closer to home, as we worry less about our surroundings.

Script

In order to display some of my ideas, over the first few weeks of the school year I began writing a detailed script, which was far from set in stone and I which I was happy to edit or cut accordingly depending on my group's opinions.

EDIT: The script has become successful in parts and I am very happy that I decided to make it because it helped to fuel a lot of the ideas which we were able to mould in our piece.  While only a few of the scenes have made it through the cutting period, the ones which have remained are being strengthened every day and are coming very much to life.

Initial Ideas

After being informed of our stimulus "Connect/Disconnect", my group and I began to discuss this topic and try to figure out ideas from these two words which we could eventually mould into scenes for our work.

There were a few key themes which we kept finding ourselves coming back to.


Technology.  We found ourselves talking a lot about the digital age and how people in our generation could find themselves lost inside their technological lives; yet, at the same time, have forged a system in which they can connect with people freely.  Such sites as Facebook and Twitter take away the personal aspect of human connection and replace it with a digital bond between people; where they can now talk with anybody they know within seconds; yet we are losing the face-to-face communication between people which we had before.  It's a bit sad.  We find that every day our lives are being lived online more and more, and there is no foreseeable end of it in sight.  It could/has cause(d) problems such as people having a lack of social skills in the future because without physical interaction, people can be left unknowing how to respond or communicate with actual human beings, and not AI screens.  The internet is making our generation lazy and unresponsive.

Reality.  What actually is reality?  It's hard to actually perceive what reality is and it's tough to put a finger on whether anything is real.  There are many examples; from ideas as simple as 'how can we be sure that the emotions we feel are real and if they are, are they worth it?' to confusing Matrix-eske speculation on whether the reality we see is actually a fake projection implanted in our memory.  It is very difficult to actually understand why we are on earth or what our purpose is; and many people spend their whole lives unknowing of what they were put here to achieve.

Escapism.  In the world we live in, it is clear that in fight-or-flight situations, people are much more willing to accept the latter nowadays.  In any given situation, whether it be work issues, family issues or anything, people would rather avoid or escape from it than tackle it head on.  People find solace to escape in such everyday things as music or sport/hobbies and tend to resort to using them rather than face their issues.