The Final Post - Extra Rehearsals and Our Intentions

At today's extra rehearsals we looked into finding more content for our piece. We had already come up with a polished chair duet, 'I fucking love Game of Thrones because...' and the Butoh walk with the peeling off the walls effect.

We decided that we wanted to add in some slapstick comedy to put in a fun element. We did a quick brainstorm of ideas and came up with a love triangle scene between Game of Thrones characters Daenerys, Khal Drogo and Daario Naharis. The men would end up fighting for the same woman using slapstick moments between the trio to cause a laugh within the audience. We didn't have access to all the equipment we needed but managed to find a way to make it work. Slapstick was something we enjoyed doing during our Physical Theatre module.
Another thing that we experimented with was props and costume. In the earlier weeks Daniel urged us try and use costume to enhance our piece. We we gave it a go and found that it improves our piece and gives the audience something more interesting to look at.
We also came up with a darker side to the performance with Roosa, who knows nothing about Game of Thrones. She gets attacked by another individual for not sharing the same passion as they do. The main aim of the scene is to create more depth and add a sinister tone.

Here are a few photos we took today:

What are the main intentions for the rest of our rehearsal process?

One of our main aims is to polish off the scenes that we already have so we get exact timings for how long the show will run for. If it's not long enough we will add scenes to make the extra time, still keeping it in the direction we want it to go. 

Another aim is to make more use of the costume that we have available to us. Rhys and Steph have quite a large collection of Game of Thrones memorabilia which we think can be used in our performance, particularly if portraying characters like we are with the Daenerys, Khal Drogo and Daario scene.

Week 12 - Group Performance Work

This week we finished and polished our chair duets from last week. We combined all the things we had done over the two past weeks to see how much time our performance was. We were advised to flow the movements into one another rather than going to the beat. Overall we liked the end result. We realised our chair duet had some elements of Biomechanics with an etude before each movement and its clear cut movements moving systematically into one another. After finalising our chair duets we ran what we had all together before moving on to creating some more scenes.

Passion is what drives our performance: the passion for power in Game of Thrones and the passion we all have towards the show. Roosa who has never seen the TV show acted as our neutral audience and represented the population who have never seen the show. 
The idea of using costume and props came into play. We were advised to explore the darker elements of the show and possibly the obsession people have with it. The Red Wedding is one of the darkest and most surprising episodes in the show with the murder of two of its main characters. That episode alone has greatly affected many viewers. In the initial weeks of deciding our ideas The Red Wedding always came up and we all knew that we would like to include some kind of element from that episode into our piece.

We experimented a lot with different music from the soundtrack but particularly liked one of the tracks - Rains of Castamere by Sigur Ros.

We liked the darkness within the music and started to created some movement to go along with it. The 5 of us spread out across the room and placed our backs against the wall except for Roosa who started at the bottom, representing an "underdog" who manages to make her way up. The idea for this is to have our bodies peeling off the walls and slowly making our way to a chair representing The Iron Throne. It gave a dark element to the performance and with more work and polish we hope to make it an effective scene.

Using the space gave us inspiration to use it even more. By using the room divider it created a perfect backdrop for our silent movie slapstick scene. We incorporated stories form the show and created scenes by turning the dividers. One of us would be on one side of the it while the other one turns it to reveal the other actor. The dividers were fun to experiment with as it gives an exciting effect of transitioning from one scene to another. With more time and practice we would be able to make it look smooth and sharp and hopefully the audience will enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Week 11 - Group Performance Work

Today we introduced our idea to Ildiko. She liked our plan of exploring the themes of Game of Thrones (although she had never seen the show) but thought we would have to find another layer to look into, otherwise the piece would turn out a bit flat and one-dimensional.

We continued working on the piece, staying with GOT. We decided to explore a storytelling exercise we did before on a lecture with Dan, starting by thinking about things everyone in the group (except for Roosa) loves about Game of Thrones. Roosa thought about why she does not watch the show. How the exercise works, is one person starts it by saying something quite normal and the others follow the lead. While more things are being said, they turn into bizarre or even nasty things. In the exercise everyone starts their sentence the same. We decided our sentences start with, "I fucking love Game of Thrones, because..." except Roosa says, "I fucking hate Game of Thrones, because...". We planned a series of movements for it as well to make it more interesting.

The rest of the session we worked on chair duets. We all thought that the themes (love, rivalry, sex, family, war, etc) of Game of Thrones could quite easily be turned into stories using the chairs. We had used the chairs before and already had one chair duet ready but thought there was more in it to work on. We came up with the following scene:

Now our next job is to find the new layer to the piece and give the performance more depth. We will continue working on it next week.

Week 10 - Group Performance Work

In today’s lecture we introduced our idea to Dan for some advice, we wanted to know if ideas that we had discussed would be suitable for a performance. We were told to go with our Game of Thrones option, but base it more around the themes within the show rather than doing key moments this is because of how popular the show is if we just recreate those scenes, we are not creating any original ideas. To begin creating our piece we discussed themes and words that pop into our head when we think of Game of Thrones, this was an easy task but was something that benefited us a lot in terms of how these word could spark an idea for the piece.  Although we chose to use GOT as our stimulus, Roosa hasn't seen any the show therefore only had a basic knowledge of the show from what other viewers have told her about it, this was also a good thing for the performance as it means that we have varied opinions on it rather than one. 

Here is the list of the words and themes we came up with.

Steph suggested that we take some of these words and add movement into it, to make it look visually interesting for our audience, after playing around with idea we made a scene that starts with the group walking in the space (apart from Roosa) doing the Butoh walk, to create a state of tension and rivalry between us. This also highlighted that we were using techniques we learnt throughout this module.We also used Laban's effort actions to choreograph an small fight scene.

We wrote down our ideas from today’s lecture and what material that we could use for our performance.

We have now created foundations for our performance that we can continue to expand and create a well structured performance. After seeing what we produced in this lecture Dan gave us some feedback which we will take on-board and use to improve our piece.

Week 9 - Lewys Holt

In today’s session, rather than have a regular physical theatre session, we were visited by touring practitioner Lewys Holt, who delivered the session. During the session, we explored things such as contemporary dance and freeze frames before watching Lewys’ performance ‘Of, Or at A Fairly Low Temperature’, a piece that ‘examines being ‘cool’. It mixes contemporary dance with storytelling and comedy to question what is ‘cool’?’ (Theatre Royal Concert Hall, 2014). The session was very useful in relation to our groups devising process as it gave us ideas of what we could add into our piece and allowed us to explore some of the different forms of theatre (such as storytelling and semi-autobiographical narrative).

We began the session by completing a full body warm up, before moving into a dance sequence which included a variation of different movements and levels. It involved us doing things such as pivoting on the spot and crawling along the floor and gradually rising until we were back on our feet again. This was to allow every part of our bodies to be warmed up and practice our flexibility. After this, Lewys made us get into a circle and perform a group exercise that involved us at first passing a clap around the circle. Once we got the hang of that, Lewys then proceeded to add an action rather than a clap to the game, which reflected a struggle, like carrying a heavy object. We all began to copy Lewys and complete a relatively similar action to the one he had done. We then broke out of the circle and started to move around the space while still performing these actions, until we all began to gradually fall to the floor until the last person with the power was standing. I believe the purpose of this task was to allow us to explore group dynamics and how we effectively use the stage space.

The next task we had to complete involved us creating a series of 3-5 movements that reflected specific words, such as ‘badass’ and ‘cool’. Once we had completed this, we were made to get into pairs and perform our movement sequences to each other. After this, Lewys made us add a word to each movement in our sequence that related to the topic ‘nature’. The reasoning behind this was because Lewys wanted to us consider the effect of adding random words to a sequence of movements and see how the audience reacted to it. A majority of the performances that were showed came across in an amusing way because having added words such as ‘wildlife’ and ‘leaves’ to my sequence, I found this added a comical effect to the piece.

For the final exercise, we again repeated the process of adding words to a sequence of movements but rather than using a random topic, we based it off of set topics Lewys had given to us. For my piece, myself and my partner based our movements off the topic ‘Coronation Street’, and created a set of moves related to the programme. This included using different levels and gestures to recreate notorious parts of the show. I found this task interesting because it made me consider how to use my body to create different things and how I could do this effectively (I recreated one of the characters and one of the businesses that are reoccurring in Coronation Street).

 Reference List

Theatre Royal Concert Hall (2014) Lewys Holt (UK) presents: Of, or at A fairly low temperature. Available at: http://tickets.trch.co.uk/single/PSDetail.aspx?psn=125980 (Accessed: 17 April 2016).

Week 8 - Mime

During the lecture, we looked at mime and slapstick comedy and ways in which we could use them physically. 

We started the lecture with a warm up like we usually do but this time, it was a lot different to the full body warm ups which we do on a normally weekly basis. The warm up we did was the Charleston dance, which is a highly physical dance that contains a particular sequence of steps made to a rhythm. The Charleston became famous during the Ragtime/Jazz period and it was said that the steps originated with the African Americans who lived on a small island in Charleston, South Carolina. It became most prominent during the 1920's, which was when most performances of the dance started to arise, travel and develop further all across the globe. We learnt a short sequence which lasted for about 3/5 minutes. Most of the moves were quick and repeated but very easy to learn once we got into the rhythm. Here is a video of the 1920's Charleston to get an idea of what we did. Also attatched is a video of our own, admittedly, not very good version of the Charleston.

We then moved on to a character development exercise which required us to use physical improvisations to create a character from scratch, starting with the feet first. This exercise was used by both Jacques Lecoq and the physical theatre group Complicite. We had to find two characters with different physicality. For example, Rhys' first character was an older, miserable character that would move slowly with his feet turned inwards, whereas the second character the Rhys created was more graceful in terms of movement, with a poised, upright posture. We then did a smaller exercise to create a story with two character played by the same person that never meet. This was quite comical and similar to slapstick. There was no speech involved, with sounds to emphasis the moods of the character being portrayed. Some people chose to do theirs in pairs which turned out to be slightly more challenging as we found it harder to bounce of one another as we had to think on the spot without conferring what we wanted to do.

We then did an extra exercise of Lecoq's which was a cafe sketch. This was where three characters would be in a scene at a cafe and character A and B would be sitting together and character C would try to flirt with character A, whilst character B is oblivious to what is going on. After watching all of the groups, even though they were slightly different, they all had the same comical effect. We took inspiration from the following video (0.00 - 0.27 secs).

During the session, we also learnt about several theorists who have influenced mime and slapstick over the years. Here is a list of practitioners and how they influenced mime.

• Jacques Copeau - He removed all stage lights to concentrate on the physicality of his performances. He was known to use physical games and improvisation exercises to get actors in the right frame of mind when performing characters. He was nicknamed the 'father of modern theatre'.
• Etienne Decroux - He preferred to use poetic force rather than imitating life. He would rather create more abstract characters than characters based on somebody else.
• Jean Louis Barrault - His work was influenced by the 'total theatre' theory which was an artwork that followed Richard Wagner's 'total work of art' or 'Gesamtkunstwerk' theory. No single discipline would gain more weighing than the other. He would use all areas of performance such as dance, music, text and visuals and have them at an equal presence. Here is an example of his work:

• Jaques Lecoq - He believes that play is important in training and taking time using trial and error when developing characters. He believes that clocking the audience is paramount to any mime as you have to get across those comedy moments. He says that when theatre loses it's way, it resorts to mime to renew itself. He also introduced 'disponibilite' which is a state of discovery and physical and emotional/psychological openness and are symbiosis with each other. He also said an authentic and profound ensemble cannot be complete without complicity as it requires constant attention to rhythm and tempo. He came up with the four different types of mime, which are as follows:

1. Pantomime - mime the word to communicate.
2. Figurative - the actor becomes the environment or re-enacts the environment (mimicry).
3. Cartoon - similar to silent movies and slapstick comedy. e.g. Charlie Chaplin.
4. Storyteller - combined narration and mimic interpretation.

We then saw a few videos which showed different types on mime and how effective on stage it can be. David Armand performs songs with no speech, just physical actions. I found that it was more enjoyable to watch as the comedic value is seen more through each action of a word. We then saw another piece from Buster Keaton called 'Scarecrow'.

The final activity that we did during the session was creating a mime to a well-known film. The film that our group chose to re-create was West Side Story as all of us within the group knew it well and we found it easy to break down to pick key scenes we wanted to physically create. We also felt that it was easy to effectively show different emotions such as anger, sadness and love. The scenes we chose were scenes that were full of emotions so it came across when adopting our characters.

Here is a few pictures from the session of our group during the final activity:

References:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/978278105591242/1006916702727382/?notif_t=group_activity&notif_id=1460203872721061
http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3chrlst.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR32Ths4WX0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfkWC3zCmxA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgAAzj82moY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUpAcPAipDA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U2DKKqxHgE

Week 7 - Dunraven Beach Trip

During this week’s session we did something different. Rather than staying in the dance studio we were offered an opportunity to visit a beach with the 3^rd year’s Site Specific group. Our whole group turned up and started taking pictures of our trip. Dunraven was a 2 hour bus journey, and we were advised to pack something white and to wear comfortable, warm clothing, because of the very cold sea breeze. Prior to the trip, we were told to read about Body Weather by Min Tanaka.

Once we arrived at Dunraven, we were greeted by the cold sea breeze and made our way to the heritage centre, where all our belongings were to be kept. Once we arrived and settled in we were briefed about the day and were introduced to Alison, our guide. She explained what we were going to do and her involvement with the beach. She was the set designer for a theatre company who were heavily involved with Dunraven. It was really interesting to hear about her job. One story that particularly stood out was when they tried to put a piano on the beach but failed due to weather conditions.

After eating lunch, we were split into groups according to the lecturers who were there (Daniel and Jane). Nurisa, Steph and Rhys followed Jane and Allison to the site where all the ruins were situated, whilst Mark and Roosa went with Dan to the Cliffside. 

  

We first explored the ruins. They were very interesting to look at with a lot of historical background. The most beautiful structure was the one in the above picture. It used to be an old entrance for a home. The place was massive and looked like it belonged to a wealthy family. After a tour of the place were told to create a performance based on any space in the site. Rhys, Stephanie and Nurisa were in one group, and picked a place that used to be another entrance with cobblestone flooring. 

We had with us a white towel, which we used in the performance. We pretended it was something valuable and the performance was based on the idea of getting past guards and trying to bribe them with the treasure (towel). The next sequence involved us trying to get it back and running away. It was a silent piece with a lot of physical movements and running. Overall the feedback was good, people liked the relationship between the towel and actors and how we used it in our piece. 

 

Everyone else's piece were interesting. They used the energy and the surroundings of the place by integrating the breeze or site they picked. 

Meanwhile, in Dan's group with Mark and Roosa, they explored the ideas of Body Weather by Min Tanaka. 

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Once we reached the cliff, we were told to do the famous Buto walk, where one walks slowly towards an opposing side. Once we finished this exercise, we went to another part of the cliff, where we were told to stand almost on the edge in order to feel the wind, energy and nature of the cliff and felt it carry us.

Everyone did it, different sizes of sheets were distributed. The task involved holding up white sheets against the wind to feel resistance whilst walking into it, creating many different shapes and images. They also tried to put each shape with a state of mind, such as struggle and pain. Because some sheets were on varied levels, the shapes created looked different to others and were carried differently. When carrying the sheet the actor must not let the sheet move them. We were told to move on our own and not let the sheet influence our actions too much.

This experience taught us to be one with nature and tells us that the body is like the weather, it constantly changes. When the sessions were finished, groups swapped and did the activity the other group had done first. 
Once we were all done, everyone made their way down to the beach for the last workshop.

For the first part of the beach workshop, we made our way to a massive rock pool. The path leading up to the rock pool was to be used as part of a exercise. Staying in our groups, one group would stay near the rock pool and the other would create three moves en route. The last group would then greet the arriving group with a specific pose.

This exercise was interesting and something we have never done before. It was a good way to use the space we had. The final workshop was based on stories of wives waiting for their husbands to come back from war. All of us spread out along the beach and created a series of poses facing the sea. It was calming and spiritual experience. It was nice to use the atmosphere and story.

The beach trip, although tiring and quite cold, was a nice change. The whole experience taught us that the body is closely linked with nature and the world. Reading about Min Tanaka and Body Weather before the trip gave us a good foundation, and meant the workshops made more sense.