24/03/16's Lesson

I feel the piece we began to develop as an entire class - the slow motion running - could definitely be extremely effective if we work on refining it. I really liked Jasmine and Ivory's initial ideas for the piece - contrasting it with loud footsteps underneath, allowing individual stories to be played out, the quick running at the end - and I think it could be very powerful once it all comes together.

Working with TJ to establish a father/daughter relationship was interesting as we wanted to explore a different way two people in that situation with that relationship would react. We tried hard to show how protective a father would be of their daughter however, this was slightly hard to do in slow motion - especially the moment he picked me up. This is because it caused him to lurch slightly to carry my weight and he couldn't properly control his movement.

The slow motion movement really allows us to explore the different stories individually as it prolongs a moment that is usually done quite quickly. It's extremely hard to control your movements so you have to be fully committed to make sure it doesn't look bad. 

Piece with Sonia and Robin

Using the poem "Home" by Warsan Shire as stimulus, we developed a piece looking at the idea of how our a place of comfort - like your home - could turn on you and become unstable;

"no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i’ve become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here"

We felt the most effective way to show this was through the innocence and obliviousness of children - a lot of the children who have been caught up in migration, will not know what they're running from or where they're going. All they know is that they can't go back home. We explore the simplicity of children playing a game of hopscotch that would then morph into something darker - a minefield and escaping bombs. This was to show how a simple game you play as a child can be distorted by war. 

As we were looking out sounds this lesson, we decided to contrast our piece with the sounds of children playing in a school playground. This is a sound that everyone who has gone to school or lives by one, recognises - it's a very familiar sound of everyone's childhood. Furthermore, it highlighted how safe you feel as a child in your playground compared to how unsafe the conditions the children running from war torn countries have to play and live in. 

It would be quite hard to involve everyone in this piece, however we did question perhaps involving the audience in a game at the beginning before splitting off and performing but we didn't get round to rehearsing that properly. 

Piece With JJ

Using this FOX News article as stimulus, JJ and I wanted to explore the idea of welcoming something only to turn your back on it. This was boiling down the main idea the article was presenting into it's simplest forms. We decided to do this through using a scrunched up piece of paper - representing the war torn migrants who had fled from their home country. This was our way of attempting to get our story across without being too literal. We then unfolded the paper carefully to represent the surge in volunteers and countries beginning to welcome refugees across their borders. This was our attempt to show 'protection'. However, as the last few months have gone on - a surge of anti-migrant protests and right wing groups have gained popularity, especially after the attacks in Paris and Brussels. We then scrunched the paper back up and tried to get the other to take it - this was our way of showing the idea of 'it's not our problem' - an ideology that many people seem to possess.

In 17/03/16's lesson we decided to try and develop the piece without using the paper or words - making it purely physical. This meant that we really had to tap into what we were trying to explore and the very basics of what 'welcome' and 'enough' means and how to portray that. I feel we did this quite successfully as we did not have a lot of time but we were able to have a piece that was ready to perform (despite not performing it). I would like to expand and develop that piece further as it has a lot of potential, I believe, as a piece on a whole.

Evalutation of assessment performance

Overall, I feel my performance went well, considering how nervous I was before hand - I didn't let it effect how I moved. As I was performing in a much bigger space than i had been rehearsing in (my bedroom), it meant I was able to express my movements fully.

I believed I carried out all of my movements successfully, I had no major mistakes or mishaps that hindered my performance. This is a big achievement for me as although I had rehearsed the piece over and over, I'm not the most graceful and so there's always the natural fear of making a huge mistake in front of everyone. However, I feel I performed with fluidity and with enough confidence to carry the piece.

An aspect I had been worrying about was my speech. I stumble quite a bit when I talk if I'm nervous another issue I have is that I tend to talk quite quickly - I put a lot of effort when I was rehearsing into slowing down my speech and really working on being clear and I feel that was successfully evident in my performance. By putting the effort into making sure I spoke clearly and with clarity, I was able to ensure that my piece ran smoothly and without hiccups - this was a big success for me.

The main aspect I feel I could've improved on is my timing. It felt like it was just a little bit too short - shorter than it had been when I was rehearsing it, and I feel mainly that was because of how nervous I was. I tend to go quite quickly when I'm nervous. If I had more time, I would've liked to have done more research and development on the verbatim side of the piece - find video recordings of refugees and interviews - so I could really try and capture their voice and movements through verbatim.

In conclusion, I am very happy i was able to push myself into doing a solo piece as I was completely dreading it at first. I would've liked to have expanded it to being slightly longer and maybe with some props, but I feel my performance worked fine without it. I kept my energy up and I don't feel at any point it dropped to being stagnant or boring.

As my piece is verbatim, I went back and looked a the previous work I've done using verbatim pieces - mainly, my group physical theatre piece from last year as well as the work we did on Nadia Fall's Home and various productions by DV8. I love working with verbatim and other people's words as it really feels like you're giving someone a proper voice - though this is more difficult with my stimulus for this project as I don't know how my speakers said the words or their tone of voice, I'm still trying to be as authentic as possible.

In particular I looked at DV8s production of JOHN - a verbatim piece of physical theatre. It was extremely useful to research this as I was able to grasp how they combined one man's story with bold and interesting movements that told it extremely truthfully.

In an interview about their process with creating JOHN, David Grewcock - Assistant to the Director and Company manager stated at one point that they:  "We put the ‘finished’ edits of the interview audio recordings onto iPods and the dancers then repeat the words they hear back in real time as they improvise or complete physical tasks in order to generate material."  

This is a similar process to the one I took as though I didn't improvise using recorded word to improvise with, I did repeat my lines over and over as I developed my movements to ensure I always stayed on task and stuck with what I was really trying to say behind the lines rather than moving for the sake of it. This was very useful as it allowed me to really pinpoint and work specifically at developing movements for those particular lines rather than just generalised movements for the theme.

Techniques

I mainly used DV8s technique of working from the inside out - developing the feelings and drive behind the movements and then using them to develop and devise the work. This meant everything I created had a purpose and objective behind to colour it. It wasn't moving for the sake of moving. I worked from improvisation, using my stimulus to drive the movements rather than planning from beforehand. I went through different routines over and over to find different segment of movements that I felt work.

I looked at using different levels when improvising - working on the ground, doing smaller movements through one run then looking at bringing it up from the floor and using bigger movements. This meant I was able to develop a range of different movements and sequences that I was able to combine and experiment with, nothing was too same-y.

I did however also explore Frantic Assembly's routine of creating the movements and then adding the words on top - though in less detail. This was through the improvisation I did at the beginning by simply working on top of the news report I used as my background sound. Once I found a set of movements I liked from my improvisation, I developed them into more set and precise movements and then added the lines on top - rather than using the lines to develop the movements. Though I may not have used them in my final piece, it was very useful to explore the different aspects I could undergo to create my piece as it allowed me to have access to a large range of different movements created by different techniques that I could insert into my piece.

Scratch performance

From my scratch performance I mainly got positive feedback from everyone who spoke. I need to on something that always troubles me with performing - talking too quickly when I get nervous. I talk quite quickly naturally and I have to put a lot of effort into forcing myself to slow down and speak clearly when I'm performing.

Isabella gave me a note saying I should experiment with my piece on whether or not it works with the news report in the background. I went though my piece at home multiple times at home without the news report in the background but it didn't sit right with me. I want to show the contrast between the news report - an outsider looking in and the actual quotes from refugees.

I was told that my movements were delicate - this is a surprise to me as I definitely to not see myself as a delicate or graceful person but I feel (if it's true) that I could definitely use it effectively to power my piece. I want to really show the contrast between the delicate movements and the gritty, awful, real life things these poor people have experienced. This also gives me an incentive to create moments in the piece that aren't delicate or graceful - moments that are bold and angry - this is to try and extend my range of movements in the piece to ensure it's as interesting and vibrant as possible.