What a Bloody Mess we've got in to!

Last week (23rd - 27th January) was strange and exhausting to say the least

Our week of Theatre started off with Tuesday where we discussed what we were to expect from Forced Entertainments Bloody Mess (pictured left), we read part of Tim Etchell's book and learnt how he felt the audience should experience things, for example he does not want his audience to be simply observers but more witness'. We made small progress through the extract, however it was still intriguing to see how a piece from Forced Entertainment starts out.

Later that day (well in the evening) Me, Georgia, Spencer, the 3 year 10 students, Grace and one of Mr. Fearnehough's TMA adults all headed over to Theatre Garonne so that we could witness Bloody Mess first hand. Now comes the hard part which I've failed at countless times before which is.... EXPLAINING BLOODY MESS. It was chaos, pure chaos, Gorillas throwing popcorn, women flashing, naked men with stars, a miserable clown, a cheerleader, some drama queen and two 'sound technicians'. That is the closest I'm going to get, so that is all you are going to get. This 2 hour long piece was disturbing, strange, chaotic, random, weird and a matter of all other words which to someone who has never seen Bloody Mess will never get.

However, after the show for around half an hour we got the chance to ask the director of Bloody Mess and creator of Forced Entertainment (Tim Etchell) some question that did (well kinda did) clear up the piece. Some important things he said was that the piece of Bloody Mess is made to be chaotic (with more than one thing going on at a time) so that each individual audience member's takes a different story out of the piece, this also meaning you could watch it a second time and come out with a completely different story. Also the reasons for not having an interval is due to it ruining the actor/audience relationship since he wants to achieve reactions from the audience from a bio-mechanic level of participation. Tim also explained that the characters seen in Bloody Mess were taken or "quotations" from popular culture such as pantomime, circus, greek theatre, technicians at theatres ect ect. One question asked was about the use of practioneers (such as Brecht, Stanislavski, Boal, Artaud) which he responded to that they are rarely used, more poked fun at than anything even though each actor has most likely trained with these conventions, which is also the other side of the problem. Forced Entertainment hires actors which have been classically trained which is a problem since Forced Entertainment just want the simplicity of human, just an absolute normality. Another point he made was that like all theatre companies they have good and bad shows, and that they always run into problems just like any other theatre company putting on a show, however instead of sitting down and letting it overcome them, they just keeping trying out everyone's ideas to see which one fits best. They never stop, they just keep moving forward, he also mentioned that even though onstage Bloody Mess looked like chaos, the final months of rehearsal are extremely and tightly policed.

One final thing I would like to add is that but then end of the 2 hours the actors looked exhausted but also as an audience member I felt exhausted too! This is what Tim meant by a bio-mechanical level of audience participation.

Wednesday was a long, tiring but also interesting lesson to say the least. It was 2 hours of tyring to pin down what Bloody Mess was all about. We came up with five words explaining our feelings towards it, Raw, World, Real, and two others. Any one remember (leave a comment)?? Mr. F described the class as a dissection of Bloody Mess, and that is was, a full 2 hour dissection in the end making it slightly clearer but nothing that makes us say 'This is what it was about'. And I also think that we will never be able to say so. 

Also a few hours after school was the 4th show of the Panto (Beauty and the Beast) which Spencer and Mr. Fearnehough came to see, who both seemed (well I hope) enjoyed it! I know I did!

Friday, the first 30-40 minutes was talking about the Panto and a look back upon the week, but then our hopes and theatrical dreams were crushed when Mr. F announced.....THE ESSAY! -insert dramatic music-. So yeah we've got to write a good ol' lengthy essay upon non other than......

STAN THE MAN!

Exploring his system and how we as dramateurs integrated that into our A Doll's House piece. Which is both ways is easy since the depth we explored it but hard as we have to find those specific regions of A Doll's House we used it!

Richard #1