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.