What is the answer to life?....4.48

This week (1st - 5th October) we started work on looking at our upcoming Artaud Theatre Performance of 4.48 Psychosis

Monday (1st) was a simple and straight forward lesson as it stands. We were introduced to our script that we shall be using for our class Artaud piece which in this case is Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. First we were introduced to the person behind the script which is just as dark as the script itself. Sarah Kane suffered from severe depression and 4.48 Psychosis was her last script she wrote before hanging herself. For anyone reading this script don't get stuck on the fact that Sarah Kane hung herself as a way of stating that this script is autobiographical, I am sure some of her experiences with depression have fed into the script but not in it's totality. Personally I concluded that 4.48 Psychosis has a rawness as there are no "stated" characters  the script is jagged, it lacks punctuation in parts and that it has a brutalism about it which is to make the audience think rather than feel.

Tuesday (2nd) unfortunately Maria wasn't in which slowed down progress on the script however me and Georgia managed to brain storm a vast amount of ideas for what we could do for the actual performance and this really took up a very large amount of time of the lesson and we just kept getting more and more ideas. Here is a list of all the ideas we came up with as well as roles for each of us to take on during the course of this piece:

• Location - We struggled at first for finding the right location as we wanted the possibility of a complete black out during the performance but the only space which can do that is the tiny cupboard in the drama studio. Georgia flippantly suggested a tent which we all agreed after thinking about it could be an excellent idea due to the cramped nature of it and the possibility of compartments. I then had an epiphany of where would could do it, the sports changing rooms are big areas and due to there being no windows a complete back out can be achieved and we can huge a big audience too.
• Characters - We figured that we could represent the Psychosis of the "main speaker" as three different emotions which we shall all take on. Anger, Depression and Fear or I suggested also they could represent Artaud's Chaos, Creation and Destruction.
• Roles - This is the means of what role we shall take on for getting to the final product of the performance  I shall be taking on the role as sound director (if that is the correct term?) and I shall also be in charge of projections for the piece  Georgia decided to take up make-up and costume and possibly set design. Maria took charge of movements and choreographing. We will all be directors since this project lends itself to ensemble directing rather than solo directing,.
• Script - After finding an online full version of the 4.48 Psychosis script Georgia initially took it upon herself to create a refined script that would fit to the theme of our piece  and now we are all having input into the script.
• Theme - we decided we wanted a theme of cleanliness of the piece so we want to try and set it in a hospital scene with Mr. Fearnehough acting as the doctor reassuring the audience
• Audience - We decided from the beginning that we wanted them as part of the piece and due to the nature of the theme we suggested that would could dress the audience up in lab and science coats to make them feel as if they are in character watching in on a patient.

And here we...go!

Friday (5th) was first started by Mr. Fearnehough saying that the school has signed up for a free trail use of The Routledge Performance Archive which looks like a very useful tool as it is a new and always growing archive of everything theatre from Stanislavski to Artaud and everything in between. After that small intro to the lesson we then spent the remainder of it action planning our Artaud piece, whether we will keep to it is another question all together.

Other than that it has been a pretty successful week in the terms of actually starting to think about how we will go about performing this script.

Richard #1