Devising Assignment Week 4

Refinement

Monday 26^th, Wednesday 28^th and Thursday 29^th January 2015

Continuing where we left off

     Having made the conclusive plan to give an interview structure to our devising project, we continued to work towards the physical aspects/montages we ought to put within our main performance.  We also looked at how we could keep our character’s stories effective from the audience’s perspective, in order to make our performance a success.

     So to begin with we refined our previous achievements.  We showed to the rest of our tutor group, and to our teacher, what we created with our mysterious interview prologue/flash-forward and future scenes concerning key characters.  Keeping the mystery of our characters strong, to begin with, then expanding on certain character traits and origins (particularly within the love triangle and the affair couple) the response was mostly positive.

·         Good physical gestures to show character’s relationships.

·         Good use of music to support the character’s movement pieces.

·         and Good reference towards ‘Frantic Assembly’ and ‘DV8’ physical theatre performance styles.  

     Although there was one negative points given, that was worth taking in:

·         It was hard for them to establish what our character’s relationships were; this is something we hope to develop and expand upon, in future refining session, only then can reach the correct time run of the performance piece and give our upcoming audience the correct and detailed information about our performances storyline and characters.    

 

How did we develop what we had already achieved?

     Looking particularly at me and my partner’s performance piece (performing as the Affair couple) we wanted to really express the broken love between our characters.  So sticking closely to improvised physical actions, we wanted to keep certain character traits alive such as:

·         The woman wanting to end the relationship.

·         The man having enough troubles already and currently in a bad mood.  (Through constructive criticism I changed my characters persona for this scene to have more anger in his actions, rather than previously having a more awkward and fearful trait to my performance.  That way it give the audience more understanding of what my characters is going though.)

·         The man wants to keep the relationship going.

·         and The woman despises his adultery actions.

     While at first we did struggle to construct a movement segment showing, or even just hinting at, all these elements, we then turned to research for some inspiration.  We looked particularly at contemporary physical theatre performance’s that showed any hints or elements of friendship, hatred and anger.  The best video we found was of this performance piece within ‘C2C’s’ music video of ‘Happy’:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvY7Nw1i6Kw

     I particularly like the opening gestures towards his dance partner and I thought that could be useful movement gesture to show the woman’s now hatred towards the man. 

     Another element we felt the need to add to our performance was music, so together we browsed many emotional and dark songs that we felt best depicted the relationship of these characters.  The best piece of music that we both agreed on was ‘Ella Henderson’s’ ‘Say Something’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsXt7XF9a-I

     Together we agreed that this song was the best in summarising the message that the woman is trying to get across to the man.

     So we tried to add these inspirations/elements to what we had already devised for this movement scene, but quite frankly we weren’t getting anywhere with the performance space and what we achieved.  It wasn’t as detailed as we wished, and we got quite lost in the physical theatre elements.  Therefore with a little support we managed to start devising the affair couple’s movement segment for scratch.

     There was a physical theatre practice trust exercise, we used in our early stages of devising, and we were told that this could help us to expand on the affair couples relationship.  The exercise consisted of a pair walking in a straight line, yet keeping in contact with one another, that way it could show support and friendship.  But we agreed that we could use the exercise, but we thought we could use the exercise to tell a different story. 

     Removing the strategy of having both members of the pair supporting each other as they got from one side of the room to the other, we wanted to show the female character trying to escape, except the male character is blocking her path and he wants her to stay and the relationship to continue.  

      Here is a video clip showing what we had achieved using this exercise and what impact it had physically to the audiences perspective:

     I personally was really pleased with what we achieved in this little performance.  I felt we showed the character’s objectives and what state they are currently in.  But when we gained feedback there was some good point’s worth taking in:

·         There were too many holding hand actions.

·         and The time span was too short.

     I personally could have argued that the second point was wrong, because we had longer and equally effective movement segments showing the love-triangle that took up most of the performances time span, so our piece could have stayed as being short and effective.  But then again we, as a devising group, needed to extend the time span of the whole performance, so we took these points into account and begun to make the changes and expand upon them in future sessions.

 

How would we conclude the entire performance?

     Beginning in a group discussion we agreed that it would be good to include six interview questions, police officers would ask to crime suspects.  Having already created three questions to open the performance we wanted to write three more that we could use to conclude the entire performance.  The three questions we all agreed on were:

1)      “Do you know Doctor Joe?”

2)      “Did he show any signs of depression?”

3)      and “Do you feel responsible?”

     I loved these questions because we referred to them through our previous interview exercises.  Plus this give a stronger link to the stimulus, as we established that making my character the therapist, and the victim of the suicide, my character was essentially ‘Billy Joe’, so making my character’s name “Doctor Joe” gave a little reference, that will hopefully blow audiences minds when revealed what our stimulus was. 

     Not only that but all these questions were designed to miss lead our audience.  The first three were meant to intrigue our audience and make them wonder why these characters are here and what has happened to bring them here.  But the final questions miss lead them in the way that the audience knows my character has died, but are wondering if any of the supporting characters did it.  That way we could create two final ensemble pieces showing physical gestures that the supporting characters are innocent and my character committed suicide.

     But how could we stage this?  Well I suggested this performance structure from start to finish:

Scene 01: The flash-forward (the interview prologue).

Scene 02: The love-triangle (the first therapy session and physical segment of the love triangle character’s relationship).

Scene 03: The affair couple (the movement segment showing the couple’s troubles).

Scene 04: The love-triangle part two.

Scene 05: The second interview.

Scene 06: Doctor Joe’s suicide.

     Plus I and my partner worked on a plan to how we could stage “Doctor Joe’s suicide”.  Once again I was really pleased with what we created, because “Doctor Joe’s death” was now the strongest reference point to the stimulus, as he commits suicide by jumping off “the Tallahatchie Bridge”.  Plus rather than keeping it to a one man performance piece, we managed to make it an ensemble piece, and this is was we achieved as a mental plan for future sessions:

 

     Having a large block centre stage simulated the bridge and with physical movements of showing pain, confusion and depression I feel I can show to the audience “Doctor Joe’s” current state of mood and what he plans to do to rectify his situations.  Plus with our plans to include blackouts and mimicking followers to make it an ensemble piece, I feel we can succeed in concluding our performance in high, positive and dramatic note, leaving our audience wanting more.

     I felt that the conclusion of this week was amazing; as we gained new and better elements which I strongly hope to expand on and develop in future sessions in order to make our devising performance the best performance we would have given.

Devising Assignment Week 3

A Conclusive Business Plan

Monday 19^th, Wednesday 21^st and Thursday 22^nd January 2015

What we’ve so far

     So concluding last week, we had finally established what our characters were to be and how they related with one another.  This left us with a positive response and making us feel eager to see where we could take these characters and how we could present them through different physical theatre styles. 

     Beginning by splitting into three pairs we tried to establish these three pairs/couples and then later work on their love triangles and what physical theatre styles we could use to present them.  Plus we also looked into what type movements established them better visually.  The results we got were:

1)      The Gay Couple – Having fasted paced dynamics in time with music really helped show their love and future the character hope to gain with each other.

2)      The Best Friends – Once again they shared fasted paced dynamic, visually showing their strong, long lasting and good friendship and it was effective in hinting at potential dark future events.

3)      and The Couple having the Affair – We took a more slower pace with our performance, to show the love and knowledge that both characters knew they should be together, but I thought it had the potential to take a faster pace, but for then it proved to be effective.

     I personally found that having a faster pace in each of our movements had a way of relating to the style of ‘Frantic Assembly’ in having a naturalistic flow, yet had a very non-naturalistic look to it.  Plus it was a good starting point in establishing the characters coupled relationships, so our next focus was to show the other relationships within the two love triangles and show scenes in between those key movement segments highlighting the lead characters.

     But as we progressed to the end of the session, one area of focus we didn’t think about beforehand was giving our performance a structure.  While before we pictured having the stage structure as a police interrogation office.  As well as having a main plot device being a murder and all our characters were suspects.  Only that way we could strongly link towards the stimulus (‘Ode to Billy Joe’ by Bobbie Gentry) and establish our own original and unique characters that all have a say on the murder.  

     But we dropped that idea because at first we used interviews to create our characters, plus we didn’t know how to relate them with each other.  Not only that but it seemed to give our performance a flow that was repetitive in showing one interview after another, and that is not what we wanted to present.  Therefore it was our goal to create a new structure to the performance, making it seem more professional and allow us time to further develop the storyline within our performance, have stronger links to the stimulus, and show our characters relationship just a little bit better.

 

What we’ve changed

     In coming up with a plan for our performance’s structure, I inputted two suggestions:

1)      An Office Structure – In some ways I wanted to refer to it as “the office romance” as if suggesting that’s how all these characters met each other.  Plus the structure I visualised had a very organised feel to it, that way we could keep our earlier movements in establishing the characters just transfer them into this office layout space.

 

 



2)     The Night Club – I specifically wanted to call this night club “The Bridge” because that would link directly to “the Tallahatchie Bridge” which is where a possible suicide takes place within the storyline of the stimulus’ lyrics.  Making the key character’s suicides all the more relevant and effective.

 

 

     While I wanted to show both structure layouts if possible, some of my team members suggested the negatives in having a structure like a night club, with the usage of loud music and possible repetitive movement.  Therefore we all agreed to try the office structure but give it a layout that was slightly different to my suggestion.

     The new office layout had another very organised structure to it, yet we had a more horse shoe table layout at the front of the stage, and two desks at the back to suggest authority and tension within this particular office.  Plus it showed the two love triangles separated possibly increasing tensions and hinting at the question of where the performance could go. 

     But for the next step we had to visually establish our characters relationships again.  Except for this exercise we were to use no dialogue and stay within our love triangle so our teacher, who was now an audience member, could fully understand the characters relationship, whether it is love, hate or tension, we had to physically show it.  This was our feedback:

 



     But personally I found the non-spoken dialogue office scene to be really effective and I pictured it to be the perfect introduction to our performance.  Plus it very much reminded me of ‘DV8’s performance of ‘Enter Achilles’, as their performance had little to no dialogue yet we managed to understand the character’s friendships and their struggles throughout the story.  

 

What we’ve accomplished

     For our final session of the week, we did have to make some major changes, as not every member of the group was pleased with the progression of our devising piece we decided to take a new and different approach to our performance.  Returning to the idea of having an interview structure to the stage we instantly created a new formation for our devising project.

     Firstly we established our new characters and their relationship towards a recently murdered victim.  It was then suggested to make the interrogation the opening scene and have the rest of the performance to be a flash back so audiences can see how these came to be in this position and why?

     Secondly we created list of questions that we felt gave a strong intriguing element as our character’s answered, indicating to how they knew the murdered victim and what part they will play in the rest of the performance.  The three questions were:

1)      How are you feeling?

2)      What was your relationship to them?

3)      Did you do it?

     I thought these were excellent teaser questions and I felt it would strongly intrigue our audience, to find out why they are here.

     Finally we wanted to give a very physical theatre vibe to it.  The two particular styles that we wanted to stick to in referencing was ‘Frantic Assembly’ and ‘DV8’, only that way could we keep a naturalistic flow and have exaggerated movement.  These came particularly handy when we improvised movement pieces to the interview and to the following scene.  The use of chairs helped vastly for our movements, as you can see here:

 

 

     Using still image movements we managed to establish our new characters for ourselves and for the future audience.  Plus it gave us an idea of how to keep the structure throughout the performance and how they can be changed and enhanced through elements such as blackouts and exaggerated movements.

     As the session came to an end I for one felt please with what we did and didn’t accomplish for our devising project.  But in the end we created something new that we were all please with and were eager to continue down that road for our main performance.       

 





Devising Assignment Week 2

Developing our Devising Plan of Action

Monday 12^th, Wednesday 14^th and Thursday 15^th January 2015

Our Group

     Continuing our devising work towards our assignment ‘Ode to Billy Joe’, we set a goal to begin practical work and get a structure for our main performance.  Having spent the last week (our introduction to the stimulus) talking back and forth bringing in multiple ideas and suggestions to what we could do to bring the stimulus (‘Ode to Billy Joe’ by Bobbie Gentry) to life through Physical Theatre.  But before we could begin any practical work towards the assignment, we had to establish ourselves as groups.

     In our groups we had to come up with four bullet points and a Manifesto.  The four bullet points had to symbolise what makes us stand out when it comes to us working professional as a devising group for this assignment.  Plus a Manifesto was to be a short sentence or paragraph that summarises a slight motto of how our group likes to work in devising. 

Our four bullet points were:

1)      As well as inspiring others, inspire yourself first.

2)      Accepting and declining ideas as we progress.

3)      It’s not wrong until you’ve tried it.

4)      and Everyone’s input matters.

Our Manifesto:

We want to bring a collaborative and energetic devising process.  With a clear goal and an obstacle filled road, yet we like to enter each session in a positive attitude and bring our plans to life.

     It was from these written mottos that we set a plan to conclude the day by beginning to understand the basics of the storyline, for our future performance, and what our characters are going to be like.  Previously we had discussed a plan of having all our characters related in some way, and the best suggestion was making these characters close college friends, and then there was a plan suggested to make these characters involved in a murder.  At first thinking of making ‘Billy Joe’ the victim of the murder, and then possibly transforming ‘Billy Joe’ into our characters subconscious (or inner-demons), the debates/discussions went round and round in an endless circle.  So we devised a method of getting to know our characters through improvised interrogations.

     Through improvising an interrogation scene, one at a time, we had each member of our group step into the hot seat and the remainders of the group were to ask them questions concerning the fictional murder of ‘Billy Joe’.  Through this we would give improvised answers, in character, and begin to understand how to perform as our own chosen characters.

     The questions were various, but key questions that popped up for each of us were:

·         How do you know ‘Billy Joe’?

·         How long have you known ‘Billy Joe’?

·         Do you know anyone who might have taken a rivalry towards ‘Billy Joe’?

·         Did you stay in contact with ‘Billy Joe’?

·         Where were you last week?

·         Is there any reason you would want to attack ‘Billy Joe’?

     While the majority of the questions did concern ‘Billy Joe’ I found it to be very effective.  Because it established our characters relationships, as well as what they liked and disliked, what potential motivations they might have and why the do things.  I personally enjoyed our little interrogation sessions and I felt confident in using my current understanding of my character, and I wanted to put that to good use during the main performance.

 

Our Still Images

     Taking time out of our planning, our next session focused on our practical abilities.  Beginning with Physical Theatre games, such as trust exercises and team balances, we then looked to creating, in our assignment teams, effective still images.  The plan was to create still images that symbolised what we thought were the key themes within the stimulus, and what we believed we should show particularly in our main performance.

     In our group our three still images consisted of:

 

Still Image 1: The plan with this still image was to show the metaphor of having all of our character emotionally trapped, with their secrets and their well-being.  So for this image we constructed a visual cage with a victim trapped within, showing their emotions and the impact it has on them.

Still Image 2: For the second still image we thought it would be good to show the theme of pain within the stimulus.  Plus giving a visual image to the theme also reflected a scene we would potentially use in showing our characters haunting and painful origin stories of being bullied.

Still Image 3: Now for the final image we didn’t give it a representation of one of the themes within our upcoming play.  Instead we wanted to show the outcome of what these characters wanted to achieve, both physically and mentally, and that was “breaking free”.

     I found creating these still images and taking part in the Physical Theatre games helped us as a group to practically, instead of verbally, show our originality and commitment toward this assignments stimulus.  Plus these still images may come in handy for when we include a movement segment in our main performance.

 

Our Goal Set

     Concluding the week, we came to another group discussion concerning the structure for our main performance.  Having stated that we understood the basics of our characters, we now wanted to find a better way to have them all related in some way, and keep the themes and metaphors within their characteristics.  Whilst still including strong movement segment and having Physical Theatre elements referencing famous Physical Theatre Companies/Groups.

     So we established our character’s roles, relationship’s to others and characteristics and began improvising scenes where we could use movement elements that enhanced on the storytelling and referenced to what the outcome of the story may be.  I found that there were two main characters, who share the same outcome for the conclusion of the play. 

     The first character was to be a young man struggling with his sexuality, and showing how he has a crush on another male character, but he is already in a relationship with a female character and doesn’t quite know how to come out. 

     Yet the second character (that I would be portraying) was to be in a mist of a long-time relationship with a woman, and things are quite awkward, resulting in my character committing adultery and tension rising and he falls into depression and struggles to hide it.

     Both characters will of course have the same outcome, in that they will both commit suicide, referencing to an extract in the song ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ which is repeated in the lyrics saying: “jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge”.  Plus I did like the thought of having all the characters related in some manner, hinting at a slight Ancient Greek Family Tragedy, plus a Greek Chorus may be an element we may use in our main performance. 

     But all in all I was happy with our established characters and slight plot layout.  Also we had a task to show improvised movement pieces that we could or might use in our main performance, and we received good feedback, as our movement was rather fluent (like that of Frantic Assembly), slightly comedic (like that of Commedia dell’Arte) and showed the tense, awkward and authority within the character relationships.  All this I believe we can and will develop over time and we will soon bring a great basis for our main performance.   

Devising Assignment Week 1

Assignment Brief – ‘Ode to Billy Joe’

Thursday 8^th January 2015

The Second Assignment

     Our second assignment brief, yet our first Devising assignment, having had previous session exploring the many different types of Devising Physical Theatre and understanding what it is like to work in a devising process, I was eager to get underway in this assignment.  Beginning with a brief scenario of how this assignment was to play out (in three different groups we were to give three different devising pieces towards the same stimulus) and what we would get out by taking part in the main performance.  Having been told that out stimulus was to be a song; we went straight into the first stages of the assignment titled ‘Ode to Billy Joe’.

      To begin with we began to take notes of our first reactions to our stimulus and what we could use, Physical Theatre elementary wise, to bring a performance piece to life with this song.  The link below gives the lyric to the song ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ by Bobbie Gentry:

http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/gentry-bobbie/ode-to-billie-joe-13490.html

     In my text book I gave my initial response to the song, and later we were to be placed into three groups and we would have to explore the song together in more detail and explore how we are to perform the devising piece in these three groups.  My initial response listed as follows:

·         A soothing tune to open the song.

·         The lyric tell the story of a troubled family.

·         The story is located at a farm.

·         Lyrics possibly representing a characters diary entry.

·         Other characters mentioned being concerned family members.

·         Lyrics being very detailed in the locations and other depicted characters.

·         The theme of suicide throughout the story within the song.

·         Hinting at a love relationship between key characters.

·         and The possible loss of a child told within the story.

     After hearing the song twice I did find it difficult to analyse this particular song, but these note are what I extracted from the song.  But what I got, I feel got the rough nutshell sized summary of the story behind the song ‘Ode to Billy Joe’.  Therefore we had a brief discussion, to share what we all thought of the song and what it could potentially mean.  The discussion came to an end and we came into our groups to begin the plan of action towards future devising sessions.

     In my group our main areas of focus were; the themes within the song, which we could transfer onto the stage.  As well as all the potential characters within the songs storytelling, and what each of them could represent on stage.  But the main question that bugged us was who and what is this Billy Joe?  The discussions and debates went on for what seemed as hours upon end, and the spider diagram grew and grew.  Until we came to some agreements.

     With some help from our teachers, as we went to great depth into the themes and meanings of this one song, we managed to find a performance piece to relate to it.  Our key relation was with the famous play ‘An Inspectors Call’, as one key element of that was with the fact that the Inspector was playing with the characters minds.  Could it have been real or falsified to gain the guilt and understand the moral of responsibility.  We agreed we could refer back to this when creating characters and relating them to this ‘Billy Joe’.  But the main points of agreement were:

·         Billy Joe wasn’t to make a Physical appearance. - We agreed that Billy Joe was to be link that held our character’s together, as in Billy Joe being a vision of their imagination that could draw these characters to do wrong in their lives like suicide or downfall of their lives and mental being.  Plus we all agreed it would be affective if Billy Joe wasn’t performed by one actor, and was performed by everyone on stage to show that even though it is essentially the same person to each of these people, all the characters have different interpretations of him.  In different vocal formations, different standing postures, and even different views on the world.  We all hoped this would give a good effect toward our audience as well as potentially show how the human imagination works in different visions of the same thing.  

·         Each of our characters can represent something that affects society today. – One of the first questions that bugged us was why did this certain character commit suicide?  We ended up believing that Billy Joe could have been a character that bullied a certain character to do something that drove them mad.  Like a homosexual character could have been driven to suicide because they were battling for their sexuality and Billy Joe was a character that kept bringing doubt into their minds, leading to their suicide.  As linking into the first point of Billy Joe being a fragment of their imagination, this could be all the more effective in giving our characters sense of complexity as well as show multiple emotions that audience members can relate to.

·         The song should be played at the end of the performance. – A simple yet effective point made in the planning for the main performance, was to be whether we would use the song or not.  We agreed it would be a bad idea to use the song to open the performance, just in case any audience member could predict what we could physically show that represented the morals behind the song’s lyrics.  Therefore we decided to have the song as the conclusion to the performance, just to give the audience that realisation as to what they’ve witnessed and understand how the song is truly the stimulus behind the devising piece.

     There were many points made in our endless discussion and there were many places we could take towards the upcoming performance.  Although we didn’t get any practical work done in this session we certainly gained a great starting point and understood all we needed to know for when we started practical work for the performance.  I personally look extremely forward to the future devising session and seeing how we develop this to be a great physical theatre performance.

     Here is a photographic image of our spider diagram exploring in depth ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ by Bobbie Gentry:

 

Physical Theatre Research Blog 04

Continuing Devising Work

Monday 5^th and Wednesday 7^th January 2015

What should theatre be?

     Returning to a new term, continuing our devising work towards Physical Theatre, our main focus this week was to understanding the devising process and answering a question, ‘what should theatre be?’

     The warm up exercises were simple and effective.  Serving in two purposes to get us physically and mentally prepared for the session ahead.  But together in a group discussion our teacher gave us a sheet of paper giving us the top 10 devising process tips, in order to succeed in devising workshop pieces/productions. 

     Knowing where to begin is essential for devising physical theatre.  As traditional theatre likes to take an academicals, step by step, process in order to create perfection with their productions.  Whereas Physical Theatre likes to take a more effective process that involves three essential areas, a Stimulus, Originality and Improvisation.  

Stimulus                        This is a starting point for the performers as it gives them something for

them to work off.  For example, a song, a picture, a person or even a book.

Originality                     It is important for the performers to have originality within their work, in

order to keep their work unique and intriguing for their audience.

Improvisation               A great talent within the performing arts, this element comes in extremely

useful for devising work.  Because it keeps the practical exercises/processes

energised and it allows every group member to participate and bring their

main performance piece to life the way they all intend.

     After knowing and understanding these key areas once again, we then proceeded to answering the questions: what should theatre be?  The purpose of this task, I think, was to show our passion and understanding of theatre, by answering these questions we would be showing interest towards future topics concerning theatre and devising theatre for that matter too.  My initial answer was:

     ‘The chance to break free from reality’ – This gained a good response and I personally was quite proud of this answer.  Because I always imagined theatre and productions as being a chance for audiences to break free from the real world and witness another characters life, whether factual or fictional, it provides them with entertainment and frees their minds to wonder and imagination.  

     But how?  This was our next question, again linking into the first question, showing how we would make our interpretation of what theatre should be a reality.  So my answer for this question was:

     ‘Creating convincing and engaging productions’ – Only through convincing performances are the audience truly engaged and entertained.  Sure they can be entertained from pantomime productions, but that form of theatre constantly reminds you that you’re watching a play.  Whereas mature and well-structured productions take a process that truly bring the audience into their characters’ lives and provide seriously engaging entertainment.

     I felt this session was a success as we all gave mature answers to the questions and showed deep understanding of the process into devising theatre (and I will take the tips into account for our main devising piece).

 

The Pacing Exercise

     It was in this session that we now to begin a slight analysis of our own movement piece, in the same style that devising physical theatre analysis is taken.  Instructed to pace around the room, in no particular style, in neutral, and without making eye contact with anyone else, we did so and awaited more instructions to create a movement piece.  Our instructed listed from:

1)      Begin to make eye contact with everyone, without making any physical contact.

2)      Choose someone in the room and follow them, without them knowing you were following them.

3)      Then reduce the distance between you and your chosen victim.

4)      and Finally make physical contact with you victim, making it obvious who your following.

     As we concluded the pacing around the room, there wasn’t much I could analyse from it, but our teacher gave us a secondary task relating to the pacing.  Taking notes we began to write what emotions we could feel both when we knew who to follow and when we knew were being followed.  We all agreed that the following of a victim gave a slight sense of a stalker-type-character to our motivations.  I strongly agreed, in fact the main emotions I was feeling throughout that exercise were:

1)      Awkward – Especially when each person came closer to their victim.

2)      Claustrophobic – Which lead into the movement of us getting closer into a physical ensemble.

3)      Tense – Particularly when the tension arose in the room when knowing each of us were being followed by somebody else.

4)      Eagerness – Bizarrely I did feel a sense of eagerness to get to closer, and keep up, with my victim, which I felt kept a good sense of humour within the room and made the exercise more entertaining.

5)      Worry – As the exercise came to an end I did feel deeply worried for two reasons, firstly being I didn’t want to lose my victim amongst the crowd, and secondly I didn’t want my stalker to catch up with me. 

     I gained mixed emotions and feelings throughout the exercise, but all in all I did strongly feel eagerness most of all, as well as entertainment.  But when continuing the writing exercise we all wrote a sentence that summarised what we felt, and through specific instructions we took away many of the words and highlighted three words that I felt summarised the negative emotions that I gained, or anyone, could gain from this exercise.  My three highlighted words were:

1)      Awkward

2)      Claustrophobia

3)      and Followed

     Using these three words I had to use singular physical movements that defined the word and put them in a repeated pattern.  At first the purpose was unknown, as each and every one of us were repeating three singular movements that were unique to our written text.  But it was all towards our final physical task.

     Memorising our three words and movements, one by one we all went onto the wide space that would represent the stage and all in time with one another we all gave our movements.  Without the use of dialogue, and using singular sounds that defined the emotion, then we were to take a single step after doing all three of our movements and repeating then at a different spot in the room, without interacting with anyone else.  Half way through the sequence I was called aside to watch everyone else’s movement on the stage, and without anyone interacting, repeating the movements and sounds to me it created an image.  All I saw was life. 

     From my observation I could analyse this as a scene of everyday people walking throughout their local town choosing not to interact with anyone and trying to keep to themselves.  It was quite an interesting piece of movement, but what fascinated me the most was its origins.  We began with a stimulus of thinking of what it would be like to step into a stalkers shoes, then extracting certain emotions, turning them into a piece of physical medium, and finally transferring the movement together to form a true movement piece giving off multiple visions and interpretations as to what it could be. 

     It was an interesting and entertaining exercise and I felt it was a brilliant introduction to how to create and analysis and devising piece of physical theatre.