So this week in drama we messed around, and had really good fun.
Its okay though, the reason we were playing was to devise. We spent the first part of wednesday morning's lesson working out the "conventions" of Bloody Mess and Forced Entertainment. Once we had done this we spent the second half of the lesson "playing". I was terrified when I first got into the room, I was like looking around for something to save me or for someone else to tell me what to do. I think I must have the loudest "policeman in my head" ever, as I permanantely worry about what I'm doing. So playing to devise is like one of my worst nightmares. However, that is probably one of my best lessons ever. I really did get a lot out of it, I know I started later on, I had to wait for Richard and Spencer to begin before I felt it safe to start. I did see a lot of myself in maria, she seemed uncomfortable and exactly how I expected myself to behave, but I shocked myself and had a go, and had fun. We also got a lot out of this devising process, we learnt about characters, movement and key things we could include in our piece.
I found this in drafts and don't have much of a clue as how it was there and never got published. I don't think I am particularly good with blogging, I find that words come easier when typing rather than writing but that I put it off more or something comes up or I forget, I think having a book in my hand is a solid reminder that I have something to do. I also find it difficult to bold words that stand out, but when I do re read my work I read it all so I don't know if my lack of highlighting words is a problem or not.
Our last week at school was a difficult one, as due to snow Maria wasn't able to make it to all but one lesson. So on the tuesday lesson we did a bit of round table analysis and discussed our characters. I found this time very useful, we decided that our characters would have an exaggerrated quality that we have, for example Spencers wandering and eating or Marias slightly controlling/aiming for perfection thing. As I'm playing a James Bond type villian while I wouldn't normally be like bad it's because while I expected to hate this new way of devising I didn't, so I'm sort of bringing out a contradiction/opposite in my personality with my character.
On the wednesday lesson we did some devising on the structure of our piece and the bits we are going to put in, then we filmed about half an hour of our rehearsal to show Maria. I found the film useful to look back on and it has kept all the thoughts that we had while devising fresh in my mind through the holidays. The film is basically us showing Maria what is going to happen and when, and who's going to be where and stuff. We have kept the line up idea like we saw in 'Bloody Mess', so we are going to all introduce ourselves to the audience and explain the character we will be playing etc. We are also going to use Maria's character to play with the audience and get them involved, something we will work on more throughout the piece as I think audience interaction was a key theme/idea for Forced Entertainment.
On friday we finally had Maria back, and instead of starting straight away we sat down as an ensemble and discussed our thoughts on the video. While Maria had been away we had worked on her character, which without her was difficult, and we put down out thoughts into the video which she then watched. We kind of made her into a bossy doninatrix type character and used the fact that she did not like the messing around devising and we used a comment she had used in her blog as a joke. Maria took the joke the wrong way and so posted about it in the facebook group, I talked to her about it before the lesson to check everything was okay and then we discussed it as a group. It is the first time that there has been a misunderstand within the group, and I think the only reason it really happened was becuase we weren't there altogether. We are a close group and I think we're good friends as well and wouldn't ever want to offend. it's all good now and I'm itching to get back to school to work on our piece, and showw off my acid test, which I'm quite proud of.
Georgia Stanley
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Even though I haven't been at any Theatre classes this week, I think we could learn a lot from it. True, I wasn't there when everyone did their brainstorming about ideas and started to get it up on its feet, no. It's about one tiny little comment that I didn't even care to read through in my previous blog (which I have now changed of course) that caused some small, although important issues.
I think making that mistake was actually not such a bad idea after all; think about it, next year while we will be presenting our TPPP we will certainly have to discuss how we all worked and collaborated as en ensemble. Now if you just stand there and say:" Everything went quite well, we never had any issues about anything" then from my point of view it makes you a rubbish Theatre student. Through the two years you will be spending with the rest of your group, there is going to be a time where you are not going to get along with the rest of your group OR there is going to be a misunderstanding about things. Now for me it doesn't sound correct if there hasn't been ANY ISSUES AT ALL in the ensemble, there will have to be hard times like that. I am certainly not saying that it should stay that way, you will have to be able to solve those problems of course, which makes the bond even stronger between each ensemble member and creates a stronger group. Also, this is actually our first time we have had some issues.
That is exactly what happened to us last week before the holidays. I was absent that week due to the weather conditions but everyone else was able to make it in. They started to brainstorm their ideas from the playing day and on Wednesday apparently they continued and started to get it up on its feet a little bit. They recored the second half of hour and did send me a copy which I thought was really nice so I started to get excited and was looking forward to what they had come up to. I absolutely loved the beginning of it, the fact that we were all lined up and each of one of us had to get up and present our selves in front of the audience. But it had to be ourselves we were presenting, only a lot more exaggerated. I also loved the fact that they had created my character as this really bossy dominate girl who wanted to be "in control of everything" and they made me a huge entrance in the beginning if I am not mistaking? I loved that. The thing that I wasn't so thrilled about was that they had put something that I didn't appreciate at all and from my point of view, while I was watching it from the video, I thought they were making fun of me and that little comment that I had posted on my previous message which was ONLY AN EXAMPLE. But anyway, the problem got solved and on Friday I actually thought it was quite a bid deal that we can't just ignore and put it behind us as if nothing happened, I think we can learn awfully a lot from this. Perhaps this "conflict"might be something interesting saying in my future TPPP?? That we have had our differences and that we haven't always been able to get along as we wanted to which made the ensemble bond between us even stronger?
Anyway, the important thing is that it's all good now and I think that we have progressed a lot as an ensemble which is really good. I am looking forward to our next Theatre class to get on with this piece.
I think making that mistake was actually not such a bad idea after all; think about it, next year while we will be presenting our TPPP we will certainly have to discuss how we all worked and collaborated as en ensemble. Now if you just stand there and say:" Everything went quite well, we never had any issues about anything" then from my point of view it makes you a rubbish Theatre student. Through the two years you will be spending with the rest of your group, there is going to be a time where you are not going to get along with the rest of your group OR there is going to be a misunderstanding about things. Now for me it doesn't sound correct if there hasn't been ANY ISSUES AT ALL in the ensemble, there will have to be hard times like that. I am certainly not saying that it should stay that way, you will have to be able to solve those problems of course, which makes the bond even stronger between each ensemble member and creates a stronger group. Also, this is actually our first time we have had some issues.
That is exactly what happened to us last week before the holidays. I was absent that week due to the weather conditions but everyone else was able to make it in. They started to brainstorm their ideas from the playing day and on Wednesday apparently they continued and started to get it up on its feet a little bit. They recored the second half of hour and did send me a copy which I thought was really nice so I started to get excited and was looking forward to what they had come up to. I absolutely loved the beginning of it, the fact that we were all lined up and each of one of us had to get up and present our selves in front of the audience. But it had to be ourselves we were presenting, only a lot more exaggerated. I also loved the fact that they had created my character as this really bossy dominate girl who wanted to be "in control of everything" and they made me a huge entrance in the beginning if I am not mistaking? I loved that. The thing that I wasn't so thrilled about was that they had put something that I didn't appreciate at all and from my point of view, while I was watching it from the video, I thought they were making fun of me and that little comment that I had posted on my previous message which was ONLY AN EXAMPLE. But anyway, the problem got solved and on Friday I actually thought it was quite a bid deal that we can't just ignore and put it behind us as if nothing happened, I think we can learn awfully a lot from this. Perhaps this "conflict"might be something interesting saying in my future TPPP?? That we have had our differences and that we haven't always been able to get along as we wanted to which made the ensemble bond between us even stronger?
Anyway, the important thing is that it's all good now and I think that we have progressed a lot as an ensemble which is really good. I am looking forward to our next Theatre class to get on with this piece.
Tuesday, 14 February 2012
Superheroes and Leather
The last week of half term (6th - 10th February) was a little difficult...
It was the week that snow finally arrived in Toulouse, closing school on the Monday. But luckily with the WTF System of Theatre (Wednesday, Tuesday, Friday) we missed no Theatre at all. However we were stumped for the Tuesday and Wednesday lessons since Maria wasn't here so we had to compensate slightly, but noting major.
Tuesday was the Brainstorm Day. Deciding on certain things to include, such as a line up, and the "beautiful types of silence Fear", then beginning to flesh out our characters which were nothing more than a vague skeleton of what they will eventually be. We all decided as a class that ours characters should partly be us, however we take a certain aspect (for example Maria's bossiness) and "turn it up a few notches" so the original idea is there but it is way more clear and in your face than just that subtle trait you actually see in real life. Spencer took the trait of always wanting to move about (wander off), Georgia just took the trait of a complete bad-ass, and as for me I was unsure but by Wednesday I figured it out (I'll get onto this in a minute). We also had the task of trying to create and make-up Maria's character, so we took and built from what we had and these things were a quote from her blog, and her natural in control trait and so built around that.
Wednesday as per usual was the biggie, the double lesson! The first hour was basically another brainstorming however we began on structure, this does not mean in a linear fashion...Far from it really. Any idea that popped into our heads after our play time lesson, however the ideas became more concrete. Such as entrances, music, costume, each time getting more and more intricate even if we have no where close to a "finished" piece (if you could ever call a piece like Bloody Mess finished). So we discussed for a while and then decided to begin going through the line up which is the VERY beginning of the piece. That is when it hit me (metaphorically not literally), just as I walked up to do my complete improv line up speech, I had an epiphany, I knew what trait I would take for my character. YES! That side of me that I think is "funny and humorous" but usually comes across as vain/arrogant so then it just developed from there and kinda went along the lines of, "Well, I don't want to boast but I think I am the best actor here. The funniest one too. I bring light and colour to this already bright room where as the others don't. I want you to look at me throughout this piece and if you are not laughing you're doing something wrong. Your diaphragms should be failing and your eyes blurred with tears of joy and laughter....Thank you". Something along the lines of that is what my character is now based around, it's Core you could say.
Wednesday second lesson was different. We got up and started to...not play but experiment in places. It was still heavily focused around the line up since we didn't want to go steaming ahead without Maria since it would not have been fair on her since she was unable to get into school due to the snow. Anyway we decided to film the lesson for her benefit and for ours later on, after watching it I can say that filming rehearsals is rather useful (something that I would like to do more of in future). It was nothing special, we weren't acting for the camera, most of it appears to be my back for a strange reason. It's not so much the video but the audio which is key. The line up was underway so we headed onto our entrances (which would take place after the line up), we played around with music to see what fitted best for each character. For me the music was the Theme Tune to Superman, Spencer it was Dancing In The Moonlight, Georgia was You Make Me Wanna Die and we had the idea for Maria's character of the song Maneater but she rejected it and now has decided on another song, which we'll discuss when we get back. In all after alot of tuning, re-going over the line up, finding music we came to the end of a successful lesson. Gotta get a whole piece now!
Friday was more of a cool down lesson, we sat and talked (about relevant stuff). With Maria we filled her in on things and cleared/wrapped certain issues up. Giving out homework, wrapping some issues up, filling in on the piece, giving her some notes on how we did. That was pretty much the final lesson of the Half-Term. Nothing special just a wrap-up lesson.
It was a good week, it had its ups and its downs. I just hope Maria can catch up on everything we did since she missed a big chunk of lessons. I'm sure she will, however I think there won't be much time to re-go over what we did. I feel that Maria will have to accept it as it is for now. But that shouldn't be a problem at all!
Have a great Holiday guys. When we get back lets get straight into it. Think about costumes and what not, I'll start to get music onto my laptop/iPod.
Richard #1
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Creativity Thaw
This week was a little weird, with Monday being a snow day and Maria being absent on Wednesday and Tuesday, but we did make a fair amount of progress. Last week we filled the whiteboard full of potential ideas and possibilities that we had come up with by playing around, This week was about applying what we had come up with.
We had the "User Requirements" meeting on Tuesday. We discussed what we needed to have in the final project and ideas to keep in mind while devising. We also came up with the idea of having a line-up at the start of our piece, as they did in Bloody Mess. We were also told that our character's should be from us, which caused issues for us, as we weren't very sure about our characters to begin with. I really wanted to get last weeks work on its feet right away but the discussion taught us a lot.
Wednesday was really when we picked up what we had created on Wednesday. We started with the line-up because we knew that we wanted that in, it was rather hard though as F.E had introduced their character and themselves. The individual intros were individual improvisation that were evolved as we went through the line up a few times. Following the line-up we took different parts of Bloody Mess that we liked and applied them to our piece, Conflict between Characters, and a Character stopping the performance. We were playing around just as much as on Wednesday but it was much more structured. We had definite starting points and we expanded on those, than expanded on what we had discovered. Due to the fashion of development it was much easier to develop the character of ourselves. We also recorded the second half of the class(as F.E does). I was worried that the camera would become the focus of our attention and distract us, but it was rather easy to forget about it.
While it is nice that we have a two week break, I'm also a little worried by it. Our piece(we should come up with a name) is rather chaotic and fragmented, so I'm hoping that the video while be enough to remind us of what we were doing. I'm also really worried about Maria, she wasn't part of putting together the ideas and it while be two weeks before we can work through it with her.
We had the "User Requirements" meeting on Tuesday. We discussed what we needed to have in the final project and ideas to keep in mind while devising. We also came up with the idea of having a line-up at the start of our piece, as they did in Bloody Mess. We were also told that our character's should be from us, which caused issues for us, as we weren't very sure about our characters to begin with. I really wanted to get last weeks work on its feet right away but the discussion taught us a lot.
Wednesday was really when we picked up what we had created on Wednesday. We started with the line-up because we knew that we wanted that in, it was rather hard though as F.E had introduced their character and themselves. The individual intros were individual improvisation that were evolved as we went through the line up a few times. Following the line-up we took different parts of Bloody Mess that we liked and applied them to our piece, Conflict between Characters, and a Character stopping the performance. We were playing around just as much as on Wednesday but it was much more structured. We had definite starting points and we expanded on those, than expanded on what we had discovered. Due to the fashion of development it was much easier to develop the character of ourselves. We also recorded the second half of the class(as F.E does). I was worried that the camera would become the focus of our attention and distract us, but it was rather easy to forget about it.
While it is nice that we have a two week break, I'm also a little worried by it. Our piece(we should come up with a name) is rather chaotic and fragmented, so I'm hoping that the video while be enough to remind us of what we were doing. I'm also really worried about Maria, she wasn't part of putting together the ideas and it while be two weeks before we can work through it with her.
Monday, 6 February 2012
Maria isn't perfect and she knows it
We are supposed to devise a piece based on Forced Entretainment and this week we have been working on it.
On Tuesday, we made a list of all of the "conventions" of F.E and we had to choose 3 of them which we particularly liked and wanted to include in our piece. I wanted Brecht and Artaud's influences in our piece but apparently it wasn't such a good choice. On Wednesday, we "played". Yes, we did. When I heard Mr F telling us to go out in the studio and play, I was shocked. I thought" right,as long as we have an idea to begin with this doesn't bother me". But we didn't. We were supposed to come up with EVERYTHING by PLAYING. I am going to be honest since we all have to, I HATED it. I didn't enjoy it at all, the whole time the others were playing I felt so stupid just sitting there doing nothing. You can't just tell me to go in a room and find ideas to devise a piece with no starting plan!!! If I would have been given a starting plan or idea, for example school (I know it's a stupid example but it was the first thing that came to my mind), THEN I would have been able to pick up ideas, I could have been able to picture some scenes in my head, the characters, and I would have been able to PLAY with the stuff that was in there. But seriously, I don't think the playing is supposed to help you find an idea for devising a pice, you need something behind it so you know where you're going. Otherwise I see it as a waste of time. I wasn't nervous or scared at all if that's what you are all thinking, I just couldn't play. Something was blocking me to have "fun" even though I didn't see that as fun. And don't you dare tell me that it could be that I have never had a good childhood because I was a heck of a child when I was little; children used to be scared of me in the playground because I wanted to play with everything in MY WAY and if they didn't like it I slapped them. No really, I did slap them. That was until I started school, then I started to settle down a bit and became more disciplined. So my childhood has nothing to do with me not being able to play on Wednesday. Georgia told me that she could "see herself" as I was the one sitting there doing nothing. She had imagined her self not being able to play since she needs to see other people doing what she's supposed to do. Although I didn't see "my self" in her when she was playing. I would have been much more wilder and louder than her. I knew deep down this day would come, that one of these days I wouldn't enjoy one of the Theatre topics we would study. Even Richard told me that on Friday, while we were writing down the ideas "we" came up with on Wednesday, and that made me realize it even more. I finally admitted it to my self and I am sharing this with you guys now, so don't you DARE MAKE FUN OF ME ABOUT THIS because it's really hard for me to do! I thought that I would enjoy every topic in Theatre since I am obsessed with it and that I want to be perfect in it but I am going to accept that sometimes I will find it really boring and I will have to try open-minded about it and try to enjoy it, which I am doing right now.
Now it's your turn to share something with me guys!I just did it HA!
We are supposed to devise a piece based on Forced Entretainment and this week we have been working on it.
On Tuesday, we made a list of all of the "conventions" of F.E and we had to choose 3 of them which we particularly liked and wanted to include in our piece. I wanted Brecht and Artaud's influences in our piece but apparently it wasn't such a good choice. On Wednesday, we "played". Yes, we did. When I heard Mr F telling us to go out in the studio and play, I was shocked. I thought" right,as long as we have an idea to begin with this doesn't bother me". But we didn't. We were supposed to come up with EVERYTHING by PLAYING. I am going to be honest since we all have to, I HATED it. I didn't enjoy it at all, the whole time the others were playing I felt so stupid just sitting there doing nothing. You can't just tell me to go in a room and find ideas to devise a piece with no starting plan!!! If I would have been given a starting plan or idea, for example school (I know it's a stupid example but it was the first thing that came to my mind), THEN I would have been able to pick up ideas, I could have been able to picture some scenes in my head, the characters, and I would have been able to PLAY with the stuff that was in there. But seriously, I don't think the playing is supposed to help you find an idea for devising a pice, you need something behind it so you know where you're going. Otherwise I see it as a waste of time. I wasn't nervous or scared at all if that's what you are all thinking, I just couldn't play. Something was blocking me to have "fun" even though I didn't see that as fun. And don't you dare tell me that it could be that I have never had a good childhood because I was a heck of a child when I was little; children used to be scared of me in the playground because I wanted to play with everything in MY WAY and if they didn't like it I slapped them. No really, I did slap them. That was until I started school, then I started to settle down a bit and became more disciplined. So my childhood has nothing to do with me not being able to play on Wednesday. Georgia told me that she could "see herself" as I was the one sitting there doing nothing. She had imagined her self not being able to play since she needs to see other people doing what she's supposed to do. Although I didn't see "my self" in her when she was playing. I would have been much more wilder and louder than her. I knew deep down this day would come, that one of these days I wouldn't enjoy one of the Theatre topics we would study. Even Richard told me that on Friday, while we were writing down the ideas "we" came up with on Wednesday, and that made me realize it even more. I finally admitted it to my self and I am sharing this with you guys now, so don't you DARE MAKE FUN OF ME ABOUT THIS because it's really hard for me to do! I thought that I would enjoy every topic in Theatre since I am obsessed with it and that I want to be perfect in it but I am going to accept that sometimes I will find it really boring and I will have to try open-minded about it and try to enjoy it, which I am doing right now.
Now it's your turn to share something with me guys!I just did it HA!
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Toychest of Drama
This week was very different from any of the previous weeks, and very different from the Stanislavsky work. It was really fun though, and interesting.
On Monday we had to come up with a list of conventions for Forced Entertainment's productions, which was both harder and easier than I though it would be. I was worried that the difference between Bloody Mess and any other piece that I had seen, would make it hard to drag the basics out the it but the study pack that we were given proved to be very useful. While we as a class came up with ideas such as, contradictions and Organised Chaos, the study pack told us that they started with small fragments and developed on these Fragments into a full piece by trying different improve ideas. When I look back on Bloody Mess, it is quite easy to see where different members of the cast came up with new ideas and applied them. It was probably even easier to apply this to Bloody Mess due to the different worlds allowing ideas to clash rather than having to select a main idea. Personally this sounds like a very good way to devise a piece but also a risky one. It won't work if the actor feels that they must come up with a new or good idea, as such thinking limits the expansion of the process.
Wensday was expirmenting with F.E's devising process (minus the drinks and nudity). We were left alone in the Drama studio for two hours with no instructions. We were basicly left to play around and come up with random ideas. It was interesting to see how people became involved, Richard quickly became very entusicastic and active while Gorgia was more happy to follow along than chime in with her ideas. I found it interesting though that it was hard for people to start, but once you started the ideas just started to flow (Statue of LiberTree, Superheros, and Green Carpets). There is this kind of energy that only seems to come when people are being truly creative and inolved, and this energy throws you into a malstorm of ideas and creativity where your imagination can run rampent.
Friday was summurizing what we did on Wensday and seeing what bits we can take out of our playing around. The main bits that I found interseting were a dissucussion of imagination and the bias of sources. Many people had stopped doing games that involved imagination in Middle School while I still routinly imagine, quite vivdly, the battles that are happening in some of my video games/ books and when I'm think of what to write for my stories I tend to create fully dressed charcters and their personality while commiting very little to paper. The conversation about sources though pointed out some rather obvous but easy to miss guidelines, such as China goverment websites shouldn't be trusted(lack of free speach). I do wonder about the diffrence between the imagination of our class.
On Monday we had to come up with a list of conventions for Forced Entertainment's productions, which was both harder and easier than I though it would be. I was worried that the difference between Bloody Mess and any other piece that I had seen, would make it hard to drag the basics out the it but the study pack that we were given proved to be very useful. While we as a class came up with ideas such as, contradictions and Organised Chaos, the study pack told us that they started with small fragments and developed on these Fragments into a full piece by trying different improve ideas. When I look back on Bloody Mess, it is quite easy to see where different members of the cast came up with new ideas and applied them. It was probably even easier to apply this to Bloody Mess due to the different worlds allowing ideas to clash rather than having to select a main idea. Personally this sounds like a very good way to devise a piece but also a risky one. It won't work if the actor feels that they must come up with a new or good idea, as such thinking limits the expansion of the process.
Wensday was expirmenting with F.E's devising process (minus the drinks and nudity). We were left alone in the Drama studio for two hours with no instructions. We were basicly left to play around and come up with random ideas. It was interesting to see how people became involved, Richard quickly became very entusicastic and active while Gorgia was more happy to follow along than chime in with her ideas. I found it interesting though that it was hard for people to start, but once you started the ideas just started to flow (Statue of LiberTree, Superheros, and Green Carpets). There is this kind of energy that only seems to come when people are being truly creative and inolved, and this energy throws you into a malstorm of ideas and creativity where your imagination can run rampent.
Friday was summurizing what we did on Wensday and seeing what bits we can take out of our playing around. The main bits that I found interseting were a dissucussion of imagination and the bias of sources. Many people had stopped doing games that involved imagination in Middle School while I still routinly imagine, quite vivdly, the battles that are happening in some of my video games/ books and when I'm think of what to write for my stories I tend to create fully dressed charcters and their personality while commiting very little to paper. The conversation about sources though pointed out some rather obvous but easy to miss guidelines, such as China goverment websites shouldn't be trusted(lack of free speach). I do wonder about the diffrence between the imagination of our class.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Messing Around
So this week in drama we messed around, and had really good fun.
Its okay though, the reason we were playing was to devise. We spent the first part of wednesday morning's lesson working out the "conventions" of Bloody Mess and Forced Entertainment. Once we had done this we spent the second half of the lesson "playing". I was terrified when I first got into the room, I was like looking around for something to save me or for someone else to tell me what to do. I think I must have the loudest "policeman in my head" ever, as I permanantely worry about what I'm doing. So playing to devise is like one of my worst nightmares. However, that is probably one of my best lessons ever. I really did get a lot out of it, I know I started later on, I had to wait for Richard and Spencer to begin before I felt it safe to start. I did see a lot of myself in maria, she seemed uncomfortable and exactly how I expected myself to behave, but I shocked myself and had a go, and had fun. We also got a lot out of this devising process, we learnt about characters, movement and key things we could include in our piece.
I found this in drafts and don't have much of a clue as how it was there and never got published. I don't think I am particularly good with blogging, I find that words come easier when typing rather than writing but that I put it off more or something comes up or I forget, I think having a book in my hand is a solid reminder that I have something to do. I also find it difficult to bold words that stand out, but when I do re read my work I read it all so I don't know if my lack of highlighting words is a problem or not.
Our last week at school was a difficult one, as due to snow Maria wasn't able to make it to all but one lesson. So on the tuesday lesson we did a bit of round table analysis and discussed our characters. I found this time very useful, we decided that our characters would have an exaggerrated quality that we have, for example Spencers wandering and eating or Marias slightly controlling/aiming for perfection thing. As I'm playing a James Bond type villian while I wouldn't normally be like bad it's because while I expected to hate this new way of devising I didn't, so I'm sort of bringing out a contradiction/opposite in my personality with my character.
On the wednesday lesson we did some devising on the structure of our piece and the bits we are going to put in, then we filmed about half an hour of our rehearsal to show Maria. I found the film useful to look back on and it has kept all the thoughts that we had while devising fresh in my mind through the holidays. The film is basically us showing Maria what is going to happen and when, and who's going to be where and stuff. We have kept the line up idea like we saw in 'Bloody Mess', so we are going to all introduce ourselves to the audience and explain the character we will be playing etc. We are also going to use Maria's character to play with the audience and get them involved, something we will work on more throughout the piece as I think audience interaction was a key theme/idea for Forced Entertainment.
On friday we finally had Maria back, and instead of starting straight away we sat down as an ensemble and discussed our thoughts on the video. While Maria had been away we had worked on her character, which without her was difficult, and we put down out thoughts into the video which she then watched. We kind of made her into a bossy doninatrix type character and used the fact that she did not like the messing around devising and we used a comment she had used in her blog as a joke. Maria took the joke the wrong way and so posted about it in the facebook group, I talked to her about it before the lesson to check everything was okay and then we discussed it as a group. It is the first time that there has been a misunderstand within the group, and I think the only reason it really happened was becuase we weren't there altogether. We are a close group and I think we're good friends as well and wouldn't ever want to offend. it's all good now and I'm itching to get back to school to work on our piece, and showw off my acid test, which I'm quite proud of.
Georgia Stanley
Its okay though, the reason we were playing was to devise. We spent the first part of wednesday morning's lesson working out the "conventions" of Bloody Mess and Forced Entertainment. Once we had done this we spent the second half of the lesson "playing". I was terrified when I first got into the room, I was like looking around for something to save me or for someone else to tell me what to do. I think I must have the loudest "policeman in my head" ever, as I permanantely worry about what I'm doing. So playing to devise is like one of my worst nightmares. However, that is probably one of my best lessons ever. I really did get a lot out of it, I know I started later on, I had to wait for Richard and Spencer to begin before I felt it safe to start. I did see a lot of myself in maria, she seemed uncomfortable and exactly how I expected myself to behave, but I shocked myself and had a go, and had fun. We also got a lot out of this devising process, we learnt about characters, movement and key things we could include in our piece.
I found this in drafts and don't have much of a clue as how it was there and never got published. I don't think I am particularly good with blogging, I find that words come easier when typing rather than writing but that I put it off more or something comes up or I forget, I think having a book in my hand is a solid reminder that I have something to do. I also find it difficult to bold words that stand out, but when I do re read my work I read it all so I don't know if my lack of highlighting words is a problem or not.
Our last week at school was a difficult one, as due to snow Maria wasn't able to make it to all but one lesson. So on the tuesday lesson we did a bit of round table analysis and discussed our characters. I found this time very useful, we decided that our characters would have an exaggerrated quality that we have, for example Spencers wandering and eating or Marias slightly controlling/aiming for perfection thing. As I'm playing a James Bond type villian while I wouldn't normally be like bad it's because while I expected to hate this new way of devising I didn't, so I'm sort of bringing out a contradiction/opposite in my personality with my character.
On the wednesday lesson we did some devising on the structure of our piece and the bits we are going to put in, then we filmed about half an hour of our rehearsal to show Maria. I found the film useful to look back on and it has kept all the thoughts that we had while devising fresh in my mind through the holidays. The film is basically us showing Maria what is going to happen and when, and who's going to be where and stuff. We have kept the line up idea like we saw in 'Bloody Mess', so we are going to all introduce ourselves to the audience and explain the character we will be playing etc. We are also going to use Maria's character to play with the audience and get them involved, something we will work on more throughout the piece as I think audience interaction was a key theme/idea for Forced Entertainment.
On friday we finally had Maria back, and instead of starting straight away we sat down as an ensemble and discussed our thoughts on the video. While Maria had been away we had worked on her character, which without her was difficult, and we put down out thoughts into the video which she then watched. We kind of made her into a bossy doninatrix type character and used the fact that she did not like the messing around devising and we used a comment she had used in her blog as a joke. Maria took the joke the wrong way and so posted about it in the facebook group, I talked to her about it before the lesson to check everything was okay and then we discussed it as a group. It is the first time that there has been a misunderstand within the group, and I think the only reason it really happened was becuase we weren't there altogether. We are a close group and I think we're good friends as well and wouldn't ever want to offend. it's all good now and I'm itching to get back to school to work on our piece, and showw off my acid test, which I'm quite proud of.
Georgia Stanley
Friday, 3 February 2012
My Crazy Inner Child...
This week, this crazy crazy week (30th January - 3rd February)
This week has been an interesting one, we have been following on from last week where we watched Forced Entertainment's Bloody Mess. Over the previous week end we were told to figure out and note down conventions that Forced Entertainment use. We then took all of Monday's lesson to note down and sort out what we thought we the conventions used during Forced Entertainment's devising process. The most important conventions we came up with were, quotations from popular culture, audiences are witness', start with fragments, division through play and messing about and the idea of contradictions.
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| Six feet under |
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| A Masked Hero appears! |
As you can see from these two images, there was no structure or idea to what we did, we just did. Pick up random objects and use them. Literally just played that was it. I was really surprised at Maria. She found it boring and just sat there for like half of the lesson, something that I never expected from happy clappy Maria, someone who is always bubbly and happy to find having complete freedom to find it so boring. It was interesting... Whereas for me, after Spencer had done a cartwheel and came out with a ski mask, that is when it clicked and I went crazy. I took the bed sheet, ski mask and pink scarf and created this -------------------->
So, today (Friday 3rd February) we talked a while about trusting resources and what not on websites (important for keeping in mind for RI and Extended Essay). This went on for around 20 minutes and was rather interesting. Then we went into the studio armed with a plethora of white board pens and wrote all the ideas and observations we gathered from out 'messing about' lesson. It was hard not to begin to intellectualise this whilst writing down due to the amount of ideas that were just emerging from what we did. Which I am sure we will soon figure out where we want to go with this. We copied this down into our Journals and there we go, end of the lesson. Now it is time to make sense of what we did...The Harder Part
Also at the end of Friday Year 12 (IB1) all got an email from Mr. Fearnehough saying what subjects we would be doing our extended essays on. Maria and I will be doing it on Theatre which was my first choice so that brightened up my day slightly :D Just gotta get that question nailed....
Richard #1
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