Wednesday 20th January
This week we looked at the opening section of our
show, which will be a mix of everything from the God’s Poem and the play
itself, but in a 3-minute movement section. We were split into groups,
where we all came up with 3 lots of 8 movement sections. I was in a pair with
member of the class. We had the theme of smoking, so we came up with a set of
movements for someone borrowing a cigarette.
We found that starting the movement piece was hard,
because it was bit awkward to find the right movement as well as this we
haven’t work together before so it felt we need to find common ground to begin
working. Despite all the hesitations, when we started it flowed from one
movement to the next. We forgot to count the number of movements, so we had to
shorten it to fit with the allocated time. Doing this a number of times helped
getting it in my head, as well as helping us keep it to the right timing.
We then started working on the opening, which consists
of a movement piece that it's performed to the music called "Kanye West -
Black Skinhead (Instrumental)"
I find that it took me a while to get used to the song
as it works for the piece as it’s something I would listen to but I found that
once I had listen to the song a couple of times I find that I could find
pattern to help me remember different sections.
It took me some time to get all the different
sections, but I finally understand the order. I am still struggling with the
different emotions and how to interpret them, as there are quick changes in the
routine, from one emotion to a different one, and the most difficult part at
the moment is remembering the movements whilst going through the different
emotions, which have to match perfectly; I will keep going over it again and
again and I will get it by the shows.
We also did a run through of "Today", which
went well, as it gave us the performing order and we can get a clear idea of
how it will run as a finished product.
The order:
1. God Poem
A. Opening movement
2. Narrators
3. Checkout girls
4. Narrators
5. Nurse
6. Narrators
7. Bus movement piece
A. Teacher
B. Good student movement
C. Teacher
D. Bad student movement
E. Teacher
8. Transport scene
Friday 22th January
I found that doing a run through of the play, helped
me work out what I was doing and set the running order. I feel I have a better
understanding of the play now, as well as how it will be presented on stage. We
split into small groups and I was involved in the group that was looking at the
ending sections, which are all about “Acts of Kindness”, so we made a list of
acts of kindness and thought about what we could use as some examples,
including same sex couples and breastfeeding, as these are issues that some
people don’t need to worry about as it doesn’t affect them. We somehow
incorporated ideas into our piece to show that we live in a world where being
different doesn’t matter, we also thought that you can do a small kind gesture
and it becomes bigger and bigger, so we will keep thinking of using a small
symbolic gesture which will grow, as the teacher wants a movement which
symbolizes something, rather than a full gesture. When doing this task, I find
that I wanted to put across a message/issue when I should just have thought
kind gesture.
Physical Theatre
The teachers were swapped over, so it meant that I was
in the “Bad” student group. We worked in small groups of different
stereotypical bad student characters which were smokers, graffiti, and fighters.
I was in the fighters group and as one of the members was not there, I stepped
in, so they had someone to work with. I kept forgetting that I wasn’t that
character so when I was thinking of a move, I kept thinking of what I could do,
which I needed to keep tell myself that I was the not that character. I also
feel that our section looks more of a scene than a physical theatre piece, so
next week we need to look at the scene again and develop it to be more
physical. I find that doing this task the “bad group” limited their scene as
they could have made it crazy and more wild.
I had a couple of ideas which would work in the
section where the children are in detention; my ideas are: the kids are at
their desks and the teacher turns around from them; we will have 1 or 2 counts
of 8, while the students do silly things behind the teacher’s back, so when the
teacher turns around the class isn’t the same. I also came up with the idea
that when the students try to leave the room without the teacher noticing, the
teacher turns around and the students slowly move towards the door; the teacher
can look like she/ he is going to turn around, but doesn’t, so the student are
given a false alarm; the movements they can use for this scene can be based on
lifts and counterbalance, like they are hiding behind each other.
My strengths for this lesson would be that I feel I
pushed myself in the movement section and I am finding the confidence within
this project, like remembering sequences and
timing, but my weakness are that I’m struggling with characterization
for my different characters in the opening scenes, as there are lots of mood
changes that I need to work on, as well as the character in my scene, which I’m
not worrying about just yet, as I am signing, so I will need to work on that
when I get my cues, so I can animate my actions.
