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.