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.