Thursday, 28 January 2016

FMP - Post 2 - 20th and 22th January


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.

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