EVALUATION OF DEVISED PERFORMANCE

by Heta Nikula

This is an evaluation report on our site-responsive performance. I will be critically discussing the positives and negatives of the show and exploring what I've experienced during the devising process.

Overall, my groups performance piece went better than I had hoped for. There were few to none mess ups. During rehearsals we had made sure that we went over each part as much as possible, so that the performance would go smoothly and have a flow to it. Even thought we succeeded in this, it was also pointed that perhaps we rehearsed some of the parts too much, since the excitement and energy of some of the part fell a bit. Too, much rehearsals isn't necessarily the problem, but rather that we weren't able to keep the rehearsal process fresh for ourselves, and so got a little bored with the piece by the end.

During the beginning parts of devising, we were lucky enough to find our poem quite early on, which meant that we had more time to create the piece around it and learn our lines better. My group also thought, that we could use different chorus techniques, such as call and response, unison, and echoes to emphasize the important parts of the story, but also create different levels to the over all experience. Unfortunately, our devising was more focused on the movement and after changing our room, adapting our piece to the new site and so at some point we forgot about focusing on the poems potential. In hindsight, this is something I would like to change, since it would have brought so much more to our piece. It would have also used all of the voice skills we were learning last year and so showed how we are able to take in new skills and apply them into different projects with different focuses to create a piece of theatre.

Using practitioners might not be evident from the piece itself, but we had three pain sources of inspiration to our devising. We used DV8 in creating a lot of our movements in the beginning, starting from simple gestures and then broadening them to make them more effective and powerful. We also used Frantic Assembly's Chair Duet's in our piece and were inspired by their method of starting out with robot like turn in creating movement, and then by rehearsing it, giving the movement more of a flow. Michael Chekov was probably our main practitioner, since in our performance we used radiating to create silent, but powerful moments to tell the story to the audience. We also kept in mind Yoshi Oida's idea on Jo-Ha-Kuy to keep a balance between different parts of our performance.

Working in this group , I found myself in a leadership position. I initiated a lot of rehearsals and made sure we were on track, but also found myself encouraging my group members to bring out their ideas to the table. This role was hard at times, since I went trough a lot of stress in my life and this showed in my actions during rehearsals. From this I learned the importance of keeping work and personal life separate, but also to be honest to the people you work with and ask for help.

Adapting to a new space

    My group was asked to perform our piece again at the open evening, the difference being that we would be performing in the drama studio, rather than our chosen space. This presented somewhat of a challenge, since we wouldn't be able to use our shadow work anymore, because of the black walls and the projection would have to point at the wall for the piece, rather than projecting to the ceiling. Also, rather than performing a lot around the audience, we moved Chloe start so that she will come behind the curtains and me n Jenny would start near the wall, centre stage. This way, the audience didn't have to move between our and the dancers performances and everyone would be able to see clearly what was going on. Of course, after performing we did realize that the change in location took away from the emotions and mood we had created, and honestly us performers just didn't have the same connection any longer. The stark contrast of the white light with the white walls created shadows to the room that really gave the piece some layers, where as the drama studio just didn't have the same effect as a site. One part, we noticed that suffered a lot, was where we smack into the wall, as if we fell from the trapeze and smashed to the ground. Because the walls in the drama studio are padded to prevent sound from escaping the room, it didn't make the same loud sound as our previous rooms brick walls and took away from the moment.  

17.10.14

   We got to know that our room had been changed yesterday. To be hinest, me and my whole group was very bummed out about this, so we didni't do much work that day. We had a room that we were looking at to do our piece in, but this room was very small and light, which wasn't anything like our previous room, that was covered in concreat and had a industrial and dark feel to it. BY the end of the day, we found a better room. This one still isn't exactly what we wanted, but it will do in a situation like this, where we do not have a lot time to devise our piece.

So, today we started in our new room to try and adapt our already done parts of our piece. There were some problems immedietly; we didn't have the cupboard nor the glass room that we had in our earlier room. Good new was, that they were able to bring the cupborad to our room, so that the first parts of the poem with Chloe wouldn't have to be changed majorly. Still, the part with me in the glass room had to be changed and we decided to have it in a corner near the second exit(see picture below). It won't be as effective this way, since it isn't exactly responding to this room, but is something special to our previous one. We will still need to get back to this bit, since it could be a lot stronger, but for now, we decided to keep working on our devising for the rest of the poem, since we fell behind a bit because of the change in rooms.

For now we had devised the first part and second one complitely, and some of the third part of the poem. We have been stuck on this part for a bit now, since this the where we start building up for the climax of the poem, where all the movement and emotions start becoming more tense and high in energy. Why we struggled with this was probably because we didn't really know where to start devising the next movements. We didn't want to continue using the poem and depicting literally what we are saying, but rather pull movement from emotions and situations. Simply improvising movements didn't really work for us, for reason it was just hard for us to start movement from nowhere.

”and despite and army of friends

who all call him and inspiration

he remains a conversation piece between people

who can't understand

sometimes becoming drug free

has less to do with addiction

and more to do with sanity”

This parts talks about friends and how even though people try to understand and see your problems as something that are in the past, they rarely understand that it isn't the past, but something you keep fighting for every single day. To make it easier to create something, we started thinking about childhood and what kind of games would have represented unity and friendship. We thought of how as children there was a common game where everyone holds hands ind a ring and sing a song while dancing and jumping around in that ring. Since we had already possitioned ourselves a kind of a circle, it would be a easy transition to just turn towards the audience, perhaps create a more twisted version of the game we used to play as children. At this part the poem talks how the friends of the person call him an inspiration, but then there is still something wrong with this equation, because he still remains an item of conversation and perhaps even mockery. In a way this person is trapped so that he won't ever be able to escape his problems, as long as people keep talking about them. So this 'playful' circle turns into a rat race, of a sort, that ends in us all ripping ourselves free, just fall on the ground. This also scatteres us around the stage, for our next part in the poem. Unfortunately today we didn't have more time to go into the next part, apart from devising a series of movements we would use in the beginning. I will talk about in the next blog more, since we definitely need to work on it more in extra rehearsals

   In extra rehearsals, we decided to devise our ending, since we wanted it to be simple, it shouldn't take too much time. That way tomorrow we would have the whole piece to show everyone, and we can get notes for our over all piece. This is important since the show is in a about a week, and we want our performance to be as good as possible.

”why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them”

We start this part with all of us three in a row down stage. Because this part talks about cheering, we thought of doing a lift at this part, since especially in sports you see the winner to be lifted up for the standing ovations. I thought to have a big lift with me and Jenny raising Chloe of the ground and taking her somewhere, but the girls pointed that we wanted the end to be not so showy, but more peaceful. Also, it would be hard for us to do a big lift with only two people lifting. So we ended up with a simple lift of the ground for a second and then putting Chloe back to her place. After this, Chloe will twirl me and Jenny in front of her.

”we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are  not 
the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me

of course
they did”

From in front of Chloe, me and Jenny will sort of 'launch' Chloe to the front, us facing towards the video on the wall. Again, wanting the end to be quite simple, this part we will all stay put, but the line ”names will never hurt me”, Jenny and Chloe will say it in canon, creating an echoes effect. At this point, Jenny and Chloe will also move from teir places to their end position by the wall, with the video reflecting on them.

”but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty.”

We played around with end a little bit, wanting to explore different meanings for the end as well. As I say the last piece of the poem, I will walk to the girls and join them, by taking their hands. We thought that, we could face the wall, to convey the message that things don't always get better, but then thought that it would be better to end the piece in a happy note, facing the audience, with a  small smile.

4.11.14

  After half-term we really wanted to try out doing the piece with performing the lines ourselves, since now all of us were memorized and had had time to work on our parts of the poem. Beginning half-of the day we really spent on adapting ht epoem into the movement and getting the pace and rhythm right. Then it was time for us to start devising the end half of our piece, part 5 and 6 of the piece.

We thought that since we were going to be having the projector first pointing at the ceiling, after smacking on the wall the video image would turn from the ceiling to the wall in front of us. This way, after the smack we have a moment of silence, where we look at the video and give the audience time to process what has happened and see how we long for the happy memories that are presented in the video.

”but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought

we used to be”

We then turn away from the video, addressing the audience again. Jenny said that it would be good for us to be scattered again, and so we decided that at the line 'is just debris' we scatter around the stage again, and switch side by running towards each other, just jump in front of the audience and briefly fall to ground, just to get back up again with confidence.

”and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer”

This part we wanted to address the audience directly, not making too complicated movements, but rather looking them in the eye and telling them, that the person staring back at them in the mirror, is not a monster.

”because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong” ”

Now we wanted to pick up the pace again. Me and Chloe run to the middle to grab our hands, leaving Jenny to the other side trapped. She then tries to push herself through, only to have us trap her in the middle of us, squeezing her tighter in. To create hope, Jenny gets trough us and we go and grab our chair to the middle. I stand on the middle chair and Chloe and Jenny grab my hands, preventing me from falling off. Then I lift the two from their seat with a twirl and jump down from the chair with the last line. We created this part on the chairs to transition us to the next bit, where we really wanted to use Frantic Assembly's Chair-Duet to our advantage, since right at the beginning of our devising, we played around with the chairs, but didn't find a good place to use them yet.

”because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong”

We devised this bit the same way we used this exercise before devising started. We started of by everyone creating one gesture at a time, and then tightened it and made it smoother by practice. We still need to get it way more tight and precise, but rehearsing it everyday should do the trick. We really want this to be fast movement to contrast the end we have been planning.

At the line ”you have to believe that they were wrong” we all get up on our chairs and at the last line, kick the chairs backwards to end this section with a bang, and start the end for the piece. 

   I decided it would be good to make a separate post on the light, video, music, costume, make-up and hair notes considering our piece, since we have been talking about these things during multiple different rehearsal sessions.

LIGHT, PROJECTOR & MUSIC
   In our original space, we thought about giving all the audience members their own torches, so that they would have the power, who they follow and what they see. But after changing our site, we saw the opportunity to play with shadows and decided to change it to LED-lights with white light. It is very simple but we wanted to have the focus on the movement and later on the projection.
   The video we discussed would be quite chopped up and wouldn't have a narrative, since we didn't want it to take too much of the attention, but rather work as a way to make story we are telling even stronger. We are going to also film some of our shadow works for the video, but I have found some old home videos from the internet to kind of create the happy childhood memories that the speaker in the poem misses, or never had.
   It didn't take us too long to choose the music. We had a clear idea from the beginning that we wanted to have a very simple music track in the background just to create some mood. I found David Buechner's 'Music for Strings' and played it to the rest of my group, and we all agreed that this was the song for us.

COSTUME, MAKE-UP & HAIR
   For the costumes, we thought about having it all black at first. We wanted something simple, but black wouldn't work with the projector and turned it to white shirts, to bring more attention to the video. We want to have flowy white shirt that will follow our movements and have maybe even a slight pajama-looking effect, to represent the sleepless night of someone trouble and depressed.  The make-up would be neutral, except we would make our eyes look a bit tired, even messy to follow on the sleeplessness.
   We are not yet quite sure about the hair, Chloe suggested for us to have half-up, so that we wouldn't have hair on our faces when performing, but still wouldn't just have it up.

24.10.14

   Today was the day before half-term, and so everyone performed their pieces to each others. I thought this was very good, since we all needed notes and especially my group wanted to see what people thought about our newly devised part to our piece and what can we do to make it better. For now, we still used a recording for our poem, since we are not completely memorized yet. These are the notes we received:

• Used poem well to the movement
• Opening needs work, all of the audience might not see what is happening
• Draw the focus, Chloe!
• Timing a bit off!
• Usage of the whole room good
• Facial expressions too neutral
• dynamic of the movement too strong, try being more light footed
• when on the chairs, look like you are about to fall!
• Movement and voice don't have to be at the same time

We also got notes on that people actually liked the recording, and perhaps by using the recording we would have more room to work on our expressions and so bring more emotions to be piece over all. We discussed this later with my group and we are still going memorize the poem and most likely perform it ourselves. For me personally, saying the lines myself and performing brings more power to be as a performer and so gives me that extra fire to deliver. Still, we need to work on our facial expressions more and make sure that we are all in character throughout the piece.

For the timing, it'll be probably fixed once we are actually memorized, and have more control over the pace we say our lines. Also, once we are memorized we will be able to change up the rhythm of voice and movement, so that the delivery is a bit more interesting than just saying the lines at the same time as the movement.

Later on in class, Siou also gave us all a question to think about when we are devising the rest of our pieces: What is your connection to the audience? Can you see them? I feel that, in our grouop, the audience is sort of a image of the speaker of the poem, the audience is in our heads, in our thoughts, observing. We have moments in our piece where the audience simply observes us, but we also address them directly and move around them. It is a complex relationship, but I feel it also connects to some of our themes; depression. In my personal experience, depression was being somehow unconnected from the world, not caring what is happening around you. But then, there were days when you are suddenly re-connected. Those were usually the bad days, but somehow it was a relief to feel something for a minute or two, and this is how act with the audience. Most of the time, we are performing as they weren't there, but there are moments where we create eye-contact and bring them back to the room that these are real people that they are looking at, and these are real things we are talking about.  

22.10.14

   Since half-term is soon coming up, we really needed to crack on with our movement to be in schedule. Originally, at this point, we had planned that we would have most of the movement done, so that after the week of we could focus on our poem and vocality, but since the change in rooms we have fallen somewhat behind, but not too much. So as a group, we decided that it would be better of our time to film the material for the video during our thursdays extra rehearsals, and focus on finish the 4^th part of the poem, rather trying to get the movement finished now. In this blog I will focus on our movement devising and make a seperate post about the filming.

”we weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
and if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?

every school was a big top circus tent
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
and yeah
some of us fell”

Yesterday my group briefly started to devise some of the first movements for our fourth part of the poem. After falling to the ground we get up ready for a movement sequal. We used what we saw in the DV8's movie on how to create movement – start from a normal action and them blow it up. Starting off by thinking abour what being bullied feels like, like you want to hide and block off everyone. We created 4 movements, mostly using our hands and upper body, to convey these emotions. The sequence would start very formal, everyone in the same pace and then turn in to manic mess of all of the different gestures melting together. This would stop suddenly when Jenny says the line ”kids can be cruel?” .

After this we took the poem quite literally to turn into 'freaks from the circus', just because we thought that this imaginery was so strong. Twisting our bodies and moving towards the middle we would then position ourselves into a line to create a shadow on the wall of a person with three sets of arms, to convey the feeling of trying to heal even bigger. We created this shadow pattern during filming the video for our piece, playing around with the LED-lights. We then move from the line to a diagonal row mimicking the movements of walking the tightrope. We wanted to some how have the moment of falling very strong, but didn't want to just fall on the floor, it was sort of used already. So, Chloe thought of, perhaos we should 'fall' to the wall, creating a loud thump-sound and creating a climax to the piece. This also gave a stronger JO-HA-KUY, this being the 'HA or 'middle' of the piece.  

Research Report on the Apple

RESEARCH REPORT

APPLE

by Heta Nikula

   Apple is a fruit of the apple tree, originating from Central Asia, but they have been growing thousands of year both in Asia and Europe and it was later brought to North America by European colonists. China still produces almost half of all apples, United states being the second-leading grower. There are more than 7,500 different kinds of apples, designed for multiple purposes, e.g. fresh eating, cooking, and producing cider, but also to be aesthetically desirable. Winter apple is an example of a different cultivar of an apple, that is picked late autumn and restored just above freezing. This certain cultivar of apple has been an important food in Asia and Europe because of this aspect. It is believed that Alexander the Great himself found dwarfed apples in Kazakhstan that he brought back with him to Macedonia, that might be the roots for the dwarfing stocks.
 

   But apple is more than just a fruit; it has spread throughout the world to become one of the most known symbols of all time. It can be found from multiple different cultures in art, mythology, fairy tales and religion, but it doesn't necessarily always hold the same meaning. For example, in many tribal communities apple can be seen as an omen, a way to tell the future of your children. The apple is cut in half to see, whether there is a worm  inside of it. If not, the child future is fine, but if there is, it tell of the death of his or hers future children and so they have to perform a traditional dance to ask for forgiveness from the fruit gods to spear their own children. In this case, the apple represents life, especially the life of future members of the tribe and these practices are still used in many tribes today.  In China, an apple, especially the blossom of an apple tree symbolizes peace harmony and beauty, but also the colors of the blossom, pink and white, refer to apples symbolizing healing, warmth, love and purity . One of the most known appearances of the apple is in the biblical tale of Adam and Eve, where the two are banished from the paradise for eating from the forbidden apple tree. In this case, the apple symbolizes sin and temptation, but also knowledge and the fall of man. It is often seen as a forbidden and mystical fruit.

    The apple presents itself in multiple other stories as well, but actually, it is very hard to tell if it actually is the round shaped fruit that we know today. As late as the 17th century the word 'apple' was used to describe all foreign fruit, including nuts. In the story of Adam and Eve, it is far more likely that the 'apple' was actually a pear, fig or a pomegranate, since in the Near East, where the story was written, apple was unknown to the area at that time. Connecting apple to this biblical story as a forbidden fruit, probably comes from apples Latin name and pronunciation 'malum' that is very similar to the word evil, spelled 'mălum', in Latin.

   Artists have helped to generalize apple to many old stories and myths, by interpreting the fruit in case to be our modern apple. They used it often in art work because its spherical shape, that refers to totality and unity, and it is often connected with Venus, goddess of love, sex, fertility and beauty. Apples also capture well in paintings, so they might have been and are used sometimes without drawing meaning to the symbolism of the apple itself.
   'The Son of A Man' is a surrealist painting done by René Magritte in 1964. It depicts a image of a man in a suit and wearing a bowler hat, with his face mostly covered by a hovering green apple. The artist said that the painting represents the curiosity of humankind, how everything is is hiding something behind it, and we as human, want to see what it is. In this case, it isn't the apple necessarily the main symbolism in the painting, but it still holds an important mission within the painting. Many have speculated that the apple and the name of the painting point towards the story of Adam and Eve in the Genesis, where Satan tempts them to taste the apple. Still, this has thought to be added by the artist just to fool the critics. 

Rehearsal Schedule

OCTOBER

MON	TUE	WED	THURS	FRI	SAT	SUN
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7 *Make rehearsal schedule *Theme? *Story	8 *Finish story Outline *start exploring movement	9	10 *Discuss poem *continue movement	11	12
13 EXTRA → Explore the Poem ”To This Day”	14 * Start on Part 1 *Projector? EXTRA → Finish part 1 → start P2, if time	15 * Run P1 *Devise P2	16 EXTRA → P2 → Start P3	17 * Devise P3 *Transitions between P1, P2 & P3	18	19
20 EXTRA → Devise P4 → Video?	21 *Finish P4 EXTRA → Run, work on details → film for video	22 * Run *Music *film for video	23	24 *Movement mostly devised! *Run!	25 HALF-TERM GOALS: Memorize lines!	26 → Poster → edit video
27	28	29	30	31

NOVEMBER

MON	TUE	WED	THURS	FRI	SAT	SUN
					1	2
3	4 *Adapting voice and movement together *finish P5 *Run through! EXTRA → start P6 → Costume → Make-up → Hair	5 *Finish P6 *Work on Notes	6 * Try out light + sound and projecting	7 *Work transitions * Run through → work details	8	9
10	11 * Tech Run! → work on notes	12 * Run trough → Tweak parts that need work → Costume run! → Run trough!	13. THE SHOW!! * Run Troughs all day!

08.10.2014

Before getting on with devising our pieces, Siou decided to run some exercises with us to practice our focus and complicity. We started off with an exercise that is quite similar to us, where you throw a ball to a particular person, so form an order. The game gets harder as more balls are added and either places are switched or rewind order. Then, we started to walk around the space, still keeping up the same order. This game really required for us to focus, but also to be a ware of our space around us to be able to throw the ball to the right person.
   The next exercise was called 'flocking'. In it the whole group gather together, like a flock of fish or birds, and follow the leader, trying to stay in unison. As the direction of the flock is changed, the leader changes and the changes should go as natural as possible. This took a while to get, since people get stopping or not keeping up with the flock, but as we added vowel sound to it, changing the vowel as the leader changes. Complicity was an important factor in this exercise, but also the leader-follower dynamic. It was important that someone was always there to take the place of the leader, but also to be willing to follow.

Bird-eye view of the audience placement plan for our performance. X's represent the audience members and the red circles mark most of performance space.

   After this we were able to go back to our sites and continue our work. We focus on looking at how the audience would be in the space, so that once we start getting more into the movement and devise it, we will know exactly how much space we have to use and where we have the possibility to travel. We planned this by putting chair around the space, tweaking the placements and seeing how much we can move in that space. We thought that it would be good to have a small 'stage' in the middle of the people, so that we can bring focus on certain parts, especially when doing movement all of us three together. We also thought about whether or not to have the audience sit on chairs. On other hand, without chairs the audience standing would  form a sort of a forest, but then Chloe and Jenny pointed out an important factor; what if there is elderly in our audience? They might not be able to stand trough the entire performance, especially if they have already stood trough many other pieces. We could have everyone sit, but then the idea of a human forest wouldn't work as well. We also thought about only having some chairs in the middle, and have rest of the people stand, but again, we are not sure how this would look. I guess, we need either ask for the whole class to come along sometime and just try out different options and see which one looks the best. Of course, I later thought that since our theme runs around depression and possibly bullying, the chairs might make a school-environment feeling for the audience.
   We've also really started to look into some poems we could possibly use in our piece, and we are hoping to choose the final one on Friday, so that we can finish our rehearsal schedule. The first poem we have been looking at is To This Day by Shane Koyczan.   It is one of my favourite poem of all time, since it really talks to me, I feel like it is a poem about my feelings in a way. It is poem addressing the life long effect bullying has on people, it is not just kids being mean, but kids possibly changing the course of someones entire life. We like this poem, since it has deep understandable meaning to it, and we thought that we could very well create movement to this poem, and show our own interpretation of it. Still, we feel that it might me too mainstream and perhaps even too easy, for the audience to understand. We want to challenge the audience, but is the site set-up enough?
   Second poem we are looking at is Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe. This really is almost a contrast to the other poem; it is harder to understand and its meaning isn't as clear. This could give us a free creative playground, really have the focus of the piece to be in our movement rather than the poem, but also it is a little out of our decided theme. We have been talking about asking for help, depression and bullying and this poem doesn't directly connect to anything. This Poe's poem is about a journey to a dark land, a land that you might not actually want to travel to. I connected this to be a metaphor for suicide and death, something that is connected to depression quite heavily. But, it might be too much of a stretch for the audience or the piece itself.

7.10.2014

Now that we have our groups, our sites and most of our research on apples done, we were really in need of getting on the devising, especially discussing our starting points. This was really the first time we got into our space, an abandoned classroom and ex-canteen. This dusty large room might at first look seem like an easy space, no challenging levels or interesting structures, but my group saw it as an opportunity to create something new using the audience as our set. I talked about this idea before, where the audience could stand around the room, so that we performers could create our movements in between the audience, We discussed this today and lead to the inclusion, that if we decide to do this in the end, the audience should have marked places, otherwise planning the piece will be impossible. I still think using the large space to our advantage by having the audience act as our 'forest', or at least have them somehow interact with our piece, will give us the best result.

We also continued to further discuss our theme and what we wanted our piece to be about. It was good for us to finally get to explore our site, since it gave us a lot of ideas how to develop our initial idea based on our stimulus. Our base came from apple being a symbol of giving and friendship. We didn't want to leave there tho, so we started to play with giving and receiving and ended up with receiving help. But what if you do not get any help? Or rather, won't be able to or cannot ask for help? We thought these were very inspiring questions to start on, and when we got into our space Chloe and Jenny noticed that the room used to be a classroom. There was whiteboards and other supplies that directed us to that thought. Bullying came in mind, since it is still something that a lot of students, including me, experience during their school years. It is often not noticed, since children and teens often tend to deal with these things alone, are too afraid to tell anyone or simply don't know how to approach adults about their issues. From this we also lead into depression to be a plausible theme for our piece, since bullying often leads to it and searching for help when you are tired and lost in this emotionless void, is usually not the first priority. This could easily be connected to the 'forest audience', since being sick with depression can feel like you are lost, with no light to guide you.
   Since we want our piece to be movement based, we decided not to really have traditional dialogue or scenes, but rather incorporate a monologue or a poem into our movement piece to build the story. With it we can also create rhythm to the piece, without using too much music, even tho we did think a gentle and simple melody on the background could work. So, right now our main priority is to find a piece that fits in with our site and themes within this week, so that we can properly start devising as soon as possible. We should also start looking at movements that connect to our theme to create a base for our movement piece and make it easier for us to then include the poem/monologue into it.

03.10.2014

Environmentalism

   Today we had our presentations on site-specific and -responsive theatre, and within the presentation the term 'environmental theatre' came up, and so I decided to do some research to find out what it exactly is. This form of theatre has a lot in common with site-specific theatre, but I believe that the main difference is, that the actual environment and the site become the set or imitate of the theatrical story. It was created in the 1960's to blur the distinction between the audience's and actor's space.

   Andy Goldsworthy is an environmentalist artist who creates site-specific sculptures and land art, someone whose work I have admired for years now, He sees nature as his play ground, creating art where ever he goes, meaning, that most of his pieces are not simply found in galleries, but rather the pictures are. But it also means, that someone, anyone could be on a walk in a forest and stumble upon a sculpture made out of fallen branches. Indeed, Goldsworthy doesn't think that it is necessary for him to edit his materials, but work with them. He uses his hands, teeth and found tools to create his art pieces and it is generally considered to be founder of modern rock balancing.

Stimulus - Apple

Hans von Marées (1837-1887), Hesperides (1884), Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Hans von Marées (1837-1887), Hesperides (1884), Neue Pinakothek, Munich

 Hans von Marées (1837-1887), Hesperides (1884), Neue Pinakothek, Munich

So as our stimulus is the apple, we of course need to do some research on it. We also need to write a report about our research, so I will keep this post more about the information I gather, and ideas that might arise from this. I will also try to think of how me and my group could use these ideas in our devising! One thing to remember, this is just my initial research to get an idea of the vast symbolism of apples and as my devising goes forwards I will further research some elements.

A P P L E

• Symbol found in many cultures, religions, fairy tales and mythology
• Biblical tale Adam and Eve, show apple as a symbol of sin, immortality, knowledge, temptation and fall of man
• Unlikely that the fruit was an apple, since when the bible was written in the Near East, apple was unknown to the area and in some traditions the fruit ha sbeen imagined as pear, pomegranate or a fig
• In many tribal communities, an apple is picked out and presented to the parents of a newborn child. If the apple has a worm inside of, when sliced open, it is seen as a bad omen and the child must perform a dance to the fruit gods to spare the life of their own children
• In Celtic mythology there is a story about Conle who receive an apple that feeds him for a year, but gives him a desire for fairyland
• Apples and especially apple blossom is seen as a symbol of peace, concord and beauty in China
• Pink and white the colours of the blossom of an apple tree, symbolizes healing, warmth, love, purity and encourages motion and outward orientation 
• Rebirth(even resurrection) and fertility are common interpretation of an apple in agricultural societies, since rotting and then planting the seed to the ground, 'the burial', will bring new life --> harvest
• Apple tree a guarantee of immortality in Irish tradition
• often mystical or forbidden fruit
• hard to identify, since as late as the 17th century the word 'apple' was used to describe a foreign fruit, including nuts
• Artist have generalized the apple in their artwork, which is why we often connect the today apple as the fruit in many stories and symbols.

• art as well made it a symbol love and sexuality(e.g. the goddess of love, beauty, sex and fertility is often seen holding an apple in painting)
• Spherical shape can symbolize totality and unity
• A Student giving an apple to their teachers has been a common tradition in America, Denmark and Sweden since the 19th century
• originated as a gift for poorly paid teachers
• apple was also a healthy, sweet snack, that would not bruise in the schoolbags full of books
• Johnny Appleseed - man who introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana in 1800's
• became a legend due to his kind, generous ways

More On Initial Response

    

Son of a man

• Painting by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte
• Magritte's self-portrait
• "At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present" - René Magritte

Ideas?

• I found Magritte's comment on his self-portrait interesting, that we are all hiding something in plain sight. This could connect to many things, for example depression that could develop to become a theme in our final piece.
• I like the idea of apple being a symbol of giving and helping, something that can be explored further to use in our piece. This also wouldn't be, in my opinion, the most obvious choice to develop on, but it still strongly connects to our stimulus

01.10.2014

   We focused on the bamboo stick at the beginning of the class, with an exercise that challenged us to be precise and thoughtful of our actions. Starting the exercise, we had to walk around the room, keeping the space in balance, and have the sticks around 10cm of the ground, making sure the distance would stay the same. Then we moved on to our groups to move together and slowly start making movements with the stick, in unison. Of course, someone had to lead, but the point was that it wouldn't be visible for others, who was leading, but let the others lead naturally and taking lead when you felt the moment was right. The movements had to be completely improvised, in the moment, and then mimicked by the other group members. This exercise really helped with spacial awareness, precision but also focus and complicity.

   After this exercise we were told to go in our groups and go around college, looking for possible sites for our piece and throw around some ideas. My group already had some ideas from our previous round and so we headed first to the long hallway near the painting rooms.

 

The first time we came here, I had this image in my head of the audience been gathered around the either sides of the hallway, and have one of the performers run from the other end of the hallway towards the audience, to fall down in front of them with flashing lights around them. I discussed this with my group, and they thought it was a pretty good idea, but also we felt that the hallway might be too restricting with the size, but also because a lot of the other groups were planning something either along the hallway or very near to it. We decided to kind of leave this as our back up plan, or have a start for our piece here, then to follow our story else where.

 Then we headed to the large empty room at the end of the hallway, near to the exit towards the mechanics area. Unfortunately we weren't able to get inside the room, but by looking inside from the large windows, we already got plenty of ideas. For example, one of the good ideas were that, since the space is so large, it would be interesting to play around with the audience and how they will be interacting with the piece and the space. I thought of having the audience scatter around the space, as in trees in a forest, and have the performers travel around the space and in between the audience.
 

    We also explored a completely different kind of relationship between the audience and the performers, with having them be in two different rooms. We floated around an idea for a bit that we could have had the audience watch the performers do their piece from inside the drama studio, whilst the performers would be outside. This could have been a very interesting project to take on, but after taking pictures and some video, we discovered, that the distance between audience and the actors is too large for such small group of performers, since there is only three of us. It could have worked in some sense, but we felt that we wanted to be ourselves more in contact with the audience, rather than just performing for them.

30.09.2014

The Cost Of Living

   DV8 created a short film that uses dance, dialogue and physical theatre to tell their story about "two performers and their interaction with other performers". It really explores the life of a disabled performer and how their life can be sometimes like in a circus, with close minded people treating them wrongly. The movie also addresses feminism briefly, and how a person that on the other hand treats his disabled friend well and like any other person, but then women to him are more of an amusement. This film really inspired everyone to try out different approaches to our devising, but also to think how they had created the movements and connected it to the story. In many occasions, like when Eddie, aggressive and misogynist main character, is at the club dancing, his head bobbing was over done and almost silly looking, but it created an interesting take on club dancing, and also gave insight to his character. I personally also liked the relationship between two of the more minor characters, who had contracting personalities. One, very shy and quiet, didn't really do any sort of movement at all at first, but then slowly came out of his shell to become a somewhat awkward but endearing character. His crush, a hola-hoop performer on the other hand was a confident woman who's movements were smooth and large, the hoops making her seem even more dominating. She also used the hoops to protect herself from other men later on in the film, which also tells that she is very protective of herself and perhaps used the hoops as a bolder. I thought this was a very interesting movie to watch, and it will definitely help us to explore more common objects and gestures to create our movements from.

   After the film we were divided into our final groups for the pieces. I got into a group with Chloe and Jenny. We also went around college looking at possible spaces and discussing different factors we have to take in consideration when choosing them. For example, if we wanted to have the piece outside, how would the weather affect to it? How would we arrange light and sound? Also, in other spaces, especially small and cramped ones, we had to think is it was safe. Moving the audience from different spaces to another was a topic of discussion. Could there be smaller performances to lead the audience to the right direction? Or should some pieces connect or start from one place just to end in another? or would using stewards be the best choice? All these things are something everyone needs to think about when we are choosing our sites, since we still want the entire experience to be smooth and amazing, not just the individual performances.

26.09.2014

   The main thing about today's class was our stimulus, the apple. We started off by simply writing our first thoughts that came in mind about an apple. I feel like I missed out on the most obvious things, fairy tales, 'The Big Apple', pies or even Adam & Eve, because I had a personal story to connect to it. My mother was diagnosed with cancer two years ago and me and my family had to witness her shrivel away into a tired and hopeless person. But then my father bought five apple trees for her, something my mother had always wanted and five because each tree represents a member in our family.  Long story short, the trees gave my mother joy and hope for a better future and now my mother has fully recovered and the apple trees are blossoming, giving us more apple every year to come. For me, apples and apple trees symbolize hope, but also family and giving. After this we gathered around and shared our ideas and stories on apples. Isaac Newton and him discovering gravity was mentioned as was apple bobbing and alphabets.
   Then we moved on to an exercise where, in partners, we had to give the apple to the other by discovering different ways to do it, and keep the apple as the focus. This helped us explore travel and how does distance affect the relationship. It does tell of a different dynamics of two people if they hand the apple to each other right next to each other, or from a distance. It brings across the actors thoughts and feelings

Today we were also introduced to our stimulus for our site-specific performance; an apple, but first we explored a new practitioner; Yoshi Oida. He is a Japanese born actor and director who blends oriental tradition of supreme and studied the Western way of performer personalizing characters and showing all the depths of emotion. He believes that the audience shouldn't ever see the actor, just the performance, or the magic of theatre will die. We started the class by exploring Oida's different exercises, like the simultaneous clapping exercise to raise complicity and focus. This also help with keeping up the same rhythm and Oida believed that understanding rhythm helps an actor to deliver their emotions and structure their feelings and actions. "Jo-Ha-Kyn" is a technique he uses to practice this rhytmh and later on in class we had an exercise with this technique. "Jo-Ha-Kyn" roughly means the beginning/opening, the break/development and the climax and we explored this by each improvising a short silent scene with the apple. The idea was that we were going to give the apple to someone we love, and show this with only our actions and expressions. To help us do this, we had to use this rhythm to convey the feelings we wanted to, whether it was joy, doubt or sadness.
    

 

24.09.2014

In our earlier class, we had had a look at Frantic Assembly's Chair Duets, but with poor results. So, today we started to try it again, with new partners and watching a short video first to give us an idea of how the exercise should look like. Last time, we had almost automatically added a narrative to our gestures, which wasn't the point of the exercise, but rather create a movement piece with simple gestures and then expanding them.

   We started off by looking into some exercises we've done last year, to really get us in that focus and complicity we need to master the chair exercise. These exercise also explored Minor and Major, and self-awareness. Using complicity, we had to stop and start walking all together, without talking and after that we trained minor and major, by having to do the same exercise, but instead of everyone stopping or going, only one person moved at a time. We also changed this exercise a bit, by having someone start without telling, making the person walking before stop.  As I said, we have used both of these exercises many times before, but it is always good to keep doing them, since they use very important parts of ensemble work and bring up the focus. After this we explored working with the chairs on our own, by having to make four different situations with the chair. Then, in the musical chairs-style, we created a game where the one person without a chair would choose someone to start a improv with, to get the other one give the chair( or what ever object it happen to be in the improv) to them. This really helped us as a group to let go of thinking too much, or trying to create a sensible narrative, which we tend to try and do.

   Stage Craft was also something we took a look at during our class, discussing the different elemnts needed to perfect your performance. Stage craft is simply the work of an actor, how you do your work. The different parts of stage craft we talked about were:

• Complicity
• Self Awaremess
• Spatially Aware
• Physically
• Emotionally
• Level 
• Shape
• Split Focus
• Balancing The Space

We didn't go too deep into discussing these, but I am sure, that int he future as we use each of these elements, we will learn more about them. We did do an exercise on balancing the space with the plate game. Simply, in the middle of a circle one person would more around and the other person had to mirror the movement and be aware of the space to keep the balance on the plate and 'prevent it from tipping'. This was a very fun game, and it also really helped me to see how much balancing the stage can affect the mood of the seen and the relationship between the actors. It also can be quite hard to do just on the go, without too much thought into where your counter partner is.

23.09.2014

Michael Chekhov isn't exactly a new acquaintance for us, since we have explored his technique of radiating, but today we looked at other theories such as Moulding, Floating and Flying. These help the actor to be within the characters and be able to "translate their inner thoughts into an outer movement". We started working with these ideas during an earlier class, using a jacket and a stick or two with a small group to explore each way of moving by observing the way the jacket moves. Moulding is sort of a slower movement and imagining that you are moving in thick mud or imagining mocing in water helped a lot to create that heaviness to each movement. Floating, on the other hand, is a lot lighter and an airier movement. Flying is a strong, sharp and usually quite fast movement.

  We explored these techniques further by creating our names as a continuous movement. My names letter H E T A, do not feel very flowing to me, so it was a challenge for me make different kind of movements for each letter. I decided to use my whole body to create the letters, rather than just drawing them to the air with my hands and so create movements including my whole body. Then we were divided into pairs that we had to teach our piece to. After this we were then combined with another group that we did a full piece with, learning each others pieces and creating a complicit piece, using the space to our advantage and exploring different ways to make it more effective.
   We had to do this all in silence, which has been a common rule with a lot of our exercises. I personally feel it helps us as a group to focus, since we end up chatting to each other way too easy, taking the focus from the work we are supposed to do.

19.09.2014

I thought today's class was very exciting, since we were introduced to Frantic Assembly's and the chair duet. This exercise is a lot about improvisation with movement, but also not thinking about what you are doing or what you are supposed to do, Also trust in your partner, or in my case partners, is important, since you need to let them show their ideas, receiving their offer and then offering something to add to it. Unfortunately, most of us did not really get the main idea of this exerciser, creating a movement piece without a narrative, but rather all of us seemed to have some sort of narratives in our pieces.
    The instruction was to have natural movements you would do sitting on a chair or sofa, which is what I think confused many of us. After showing the pieces to others, and getting some notes from Siou, we tried doing the same movements without expressions on our faces. This did help, but many of the movements still created a narrative, especially my groups that just seemed like a love triangle.
   After the class, I believe everyone really took with them the fact, that you just need to let go sometimes and not think about the movements too much, but also be brave enough to try out things and do some unusual movements. I'd very much also like to corporate some kind of chair duet in the site-responsive performance we will be working on, since I think it is a very innovative and interesting way to do movement.

I found this very inspiring video that is a version of Frantic Assembly's Chair duets and just thought it would be interesting to share!

16.09.2014 - Research: Radiating

   We started today's class with some skills we had explored before, like working with the bamboo sticks(LeCoq, among other practitioners) and going further into pulling and pushing, deepening our knowledge about relationships. In the exercise you simply shared a stick with your partner, each having one finger on one of the ends of the sticks to balance it between you. Then you just had to start experimenting with different movements and how you could move the stick between you to create something interesting. We especially talked about major and minor, and how you had to either lead or follow for the exercise to work, but changing the roles. This wasn't something you would agree on with your partner, but rather follow your instinct and trust your partner to either follow your lead or take control.

   Next we started to discover one of Michael Chekhov's techniques called Radiating. We have done an exercise like this last year, which we called 'Just Be', but rather than just standing in neutral, in radiating we had to give out a certain welcoming energy out to the room and the audience. We tried in couple of different ways, with and without sticks to expand our arms, getting small notes from our tutor, how to relax your body or how to radiate the energy. I honestly felt more comfortable doing the radiating without the sticks, even though they made me feel more powerful, it was harder for me to relax using them.

   After the class, we were asked to look into one of the things mentioned in class, like site-specific or -responsive theatre, epic theatre(Brecht) or pushing and pulling. I decided to look into radiating more, since I really wanted explore the background of it in more detail.


Radiating: Michael Chekhov

• It is the ability for an actor to willingly send out their thoughts, feelings, or qualities. 
• Invisible energy
• The actor is to become attuned to the direction their prana
• Prana: similar to chi, sanskrit word for "life force", universal energy drawn into the body through breath
• It was inspired by eastern philosophy, particularly Buddhist and Hindu spirituality
• Receiving: actors ability to take in the atmosphere, the audience and information from other characters(including what they may be radiating)
• Acting is the energy which is created by the two performers and exists in between the two and the space the bodies live in.