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.